Posted: September 17, 1999 at 05:22:09: by David Freitag
I first read LR in '66, always wanted more, never found it, kept coming back to the trilogy, what x15-20 now. Never even tried most of the books you guys have been mentioning, so I have no basis for judgement - I just didn't want to have to learn a new history, geography and mythology unless the payoff seemed worth the effort, as with Tolkien.
No one else has the depth or detail. Some of the same "flavor" can be found in Tolkien's literary brother, C.S. Lewis. He's, of course, more overtly Christian and less "northern," but try the first two Space Trilogy books (_Out of the Silent Planet_ and _Perelandra_.) The Narnia books stand on an even level with _The Hobbit_, though JRRT loathed them for sloppy naming among other things.
I like what I call "Mythological Fiction:" efforts to retell the old myths in a modern idiom, for adults, without too much over concern with justifying (or explaining away) the magic parts. Mary Renault's _The King Must Die_ and _The Bull From the Sea_ (the Theseus story) are the best here. I think all too much attention has been paid to the King Arthur cycle, everybody seems to have to write their version of the Arthur story. The only ones I got through were Mary Stewart's which are ok. I started _Mists of Avalon_ but it looked like Bradley was going to drag in Atlantis and other New Agey moonshine so I gave up. I liked Morgan Llewellan's _Red Branch_ (the Cuchulainn story) but haven't read any of her others.
Tolkien, of course, took inspiration from the Northern myths. I have two retellings of the Volsung cycle on my shelf: Diana Paxson's trilogy is ok (but she has an irritating habit of getting poetic and obscure at critical points: just what was going on in her version of Sigurd's fight with the dragon/man Fafnir is beyond me) while Stephan Grundy's _Rhinegold_ does have the right edge or noertern ferocity. Parke Godwin's _The Tower of Beowulf_ is a forgetable mess.
Can't go wrong going back to the sources: _Beowulf_, _The Volsunga Saga_, both Eddas, the Icelandic Sagas (they are actually quite readable and refreshing).
Also, for their sheer energy if nothing else, JRRT supposedly liked Robert E. Howard's stuff, Conan and otherwise, but avoid all "collaborators." He also liked the story telling powers if not the philosophy of E.R. Eddison's _Worm Ouroboros_, a book I never could get past the early chapters...
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