It started, 80 years ago in a hobbit-hole, with Bilbo Baggins.
Nowadays, George R.R. Martin’s got the market cornered on heavily initialed fantasy writers, and his hand guides the field.
Characters like Martin’s mercenary Bronn of the Blackwater are expected to say “fuck.”
Heavenly beings are denuded of potency and purity; while the gods may not be dead, divinity certainly is.
Modern fantasy and its subgenres, as represented in Martin’s work, might be positioned as anti-art in relation to Tolkien.
… I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water.
Bilbo’s warrior-poetry is big and boastful enough to go toe-to-toe with Muhammad Ali. »