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I love walking down the endless isles of book stores and libraries, engulfed in silence and the smell of paper that causes my brain to swim in whimsy and nostalgia. As a child, I could never get enough of it. I would go through reading all the titles, occasionally pulling something off the shelf to take a closer look. My favorite was always the Fantasy isle. Back then the Fantasy section was the largest in the store, containing more titles than I'd ever be able to read in a lifetime. Which isn't to say I didn't try.

As I grew, my thirst for reading only increased. I spent countless hours immersed in the words of Michael Moorcock, Guy Gavriel Kay, J.K. Rowling, and so many others. But as time has gone on, those volumes for which once I possessed such a voracious hunger have begun to taste bittersweet. These days, as I go out expecting to find something new and wildly imaginative, I more often than not find myself reading the same, recycled words on newer paper. All the originality in modern writers' minds seems to have dried up. Has the Fantasy genre begun to stagnate? Tragically, yes.

I remember the first time I ever read The Hobbit. J.R. Tolkien was required reading in grade school, and then again in middle school. The first time around, even at my above average reading level, I'll admit that it was probably a bit too advanced for me to understand. Fortunately, when I had my second go at it, I was far better prepared. Most people rave over Tolkien's mastery of descriptive storytelling. They say he was a genius. And at the time he wrote it, it might have been true. Instead, as I labored through it once more, I found myself cringing at each new excessively long chapter where story was sacrificed to endless descriptions of flora and fauna and the only action seemed to be a bunch of walking. Occasionally a fight broke out, but let's just say I wasn't holding my breath.

Unfortunately for me, Tolkien has become the blueprint for virtually every modern Fantasy story out there. I am constantly exhausted by writers who merely refer back to Tolkien's interpretation of literary fantasy, never once seeking to challenge the paradigms it placed upon the genre. Elves, it seems, will always be the tall, beautiful, otherworldly creatures of Middle Earth while dwarves will continue to be the stocky, bearded metalworkers.

Dragons are another issue. Like how Tolkien crafted the model for elves, dwarves, and goblins, the long running Pern series

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