[Rbneader]

Mercedes Lackey.

At first, I tried to take Valdemar seriously, and spent way too much time facepalming over the nonsensical politics and economics, the convoluted and handwavy magic, the way her characters have about 5 main personalities and can't be distinguished without heavy accents, and the really weird attitude towards romance. Oh, and how the 'heroes' are lauded for kidnapping and brainwashing kids and teens. All the villains are rapists, or at least bigots.

Now I read them as satires on the romantic fantasy genre (also, deleted most of the rape scenes. Hurray ebooks!). From that angle, they're excellent and hysterical.

I gave up on Salvatore, although I still read my favorites of his, and Nancy Drew, and never got into Shannara. But I keep coming back to Mercedes Lackey because she's found the perfect formula for distilled essence of romantic fantasy and it's both great and terrible. Her writing's really improved over the years too - the 500 Kingdoms series is mostly decent.

I think some books are like sugar cookies. They've got no nutritional value and there's nothing unique about them, but sometimes nothing else will do.