Chris Sharp's first novel, The Elementalists, introduced a dark YA series and was called one of the “Overlooked Books of 2014”, by Slate. His new novel is Cold Counsel.One of Sharp's five top books about trolls, as shared at Tor.com:
The Hobbit by J.R.R. TolkienRead about another entry on the list.
I almost skipped this one as it seemed too obvious—to be honest, it was the Rankin Bass cartoon version more than the book itself that so profoundly spoke to early me—but to omit it would be inauthentic to my trollish thinking. Three Stone trolls, Tom, Bert, and William Huggins,capture and discuss the eating of our fourteen heroes after a botched burglary attempt. These trolls are once again pretty dumb, but they make quick work of what are supposed to be an elite collection of dwarves who are only saved by the last minute cleverness of the Wandering Wizard. (The aforementioned savagery and greater fantasy world context for the trolls in this one showed me, and us all, the scope of what trolls, at their brutish best, could be. They had names, clothes, personalities, and a cave full of ancient booty. There was a treasure trove of unexplored myth there as well.)
The Hobbit appears on Charlie Jane Anders's list of top novels that are marred by a fatal flaw, Julie Kagawa's top ten list of dragons in fiction, Rebecca Jane Stokes's list of seven favorite fictional shopaholics, Derek Landy's top ten list of villains in children's books, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best beards in literature and ten of the best riddles in literature.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
