I know Moorcock is held in great esteem by many – his novel Mother London made the Guardian's 1,000 novels to Read Before You Die list – but I've never read him or been particularly tempted to read him before, apart from a brief foray into Dorian Hawkmoon, because the concept of a brain-eating jewel made me laugh. King of the Swords, winning the following year. The first – and second – winner of the best novel award was Michael Moorcock, with the first novel in his Corum trilogy, The Knight of the Swords, taking the 1972 prize, and then the third, The The BFAs were set up in honour of the recently deceased – and amazingly prolific – August Derleth, at the prompting of Ramsey Campbell, and are voted for by members of the British Fantasy Society. (I chose the BFAs because they started in 1971, and the World Fantasy awards began four years later, but I may jump back and forth between the two prizes if one winner appears much more interesting than the other – suggestions welcome).

So, in the manner of Sam Jordison's manful slog through the Hugos, I'm going to tackle the winners of the British Fantasy awards, right from the beginning. I ploughed through 12-book series – I like to know the ending – and yes, I have read the bizarro chicken sequence from Soul of the Fire.īut I have been feeling of late that my literary education in those authors (apart from Tolkien) who shaped the fantasy writers of today is sorely lacking. Then I lapsed for a while, until I fell in love with someone at university after we discovered a shared love of Douglas Hill, and he introduced me to the endless series of George RR Martin (great), Robin Hobb (loved her, especially Nighteyes the wolf), Stephen King's Dark Tower sequence (I liked it so much I bought them in hardback), Robert Jordan (tedious and confusing), Guy Gavriel Kay (brilliant), Stephen Donaldson, even the progressively crazier, more polemic, frankly dreadful Terry Goodkind. I grew up on Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, Tamora Pierce and Ursula Le Guin. After Damien G Walter owned up to it last week, I'm going to come out and say it, too: I am a fantasy reader.

Corum by Michael Moorcock