The Hero and the Crown is an older fantasy book, published way back in 1984 when Fantasy and Science Fiction were thrown into the same category because the books were so extremely rare. They were also such a tiny genre of the publishing industry that the publishers would pretty much take anything they could get because they knew there was a guarantee that it would sell, and it did. There were a set number, around 40K, of people who would buy fantasy and science fiction, and they'd buy anything they could get their hands on. Every now and then this number grew as more and more people became fascinated by the worlds these authors created. Now the genres are explicit, the lines are drawn, and it's no longer considered simply 'speculative fiction'. It's still fairly easy if you have a good start with magazines and short stories to get published in SciFi or Fantasy, but once you are in, it's extremely hard to get out and try new things.

The Hero and the Crown was a good story. The problem with me is that it wasn't well written. I stumbled over a few things through the book. The timeline was quite irritating as it would start out one place and the heroine would start thinking of another and the author would then enter that time. The book is short, only a mere 227 pages yet it took me forever to read it. I've read other books three times as long in a much shorter time period.

I think it would be amazing if someone actually was able to take this story and rewrite it. Give it more depth, more color, more of a streamlined approach. Music artists re-do each other's songs, why not have authors rewrite older fantasy and science fiction novels to give them a better go around the second time? I can see a huge issue regarding copyright and so forth, but what if the author (or the author's descendants) gave permission as long as they received some form of compensation for rewriting the story? There's another book that was written before this that does have to do with it, called The Blue Sword, but I highly doubt that I will ever bother to read it. If the writing in that book is anything like The Hero and the Crown then there's no way I'd bother to read it.

I do understand that fantasy and science fiction writing back that long ago was new and exciting, but that doesn't mean you should make up words for the heck of it, causing some people to pause and attempt to think as what you are attempting to describe. Unless, of course, there's a description to go with it. In fantasy, maybe people think of Medieval Times, so it would be msuch easier to refer to food from that time period if you were discussing a meal. Sometimes it's easier to go with what is known rather than to create your own words for (at the very least) food to get the story moving. It's very rare that a meal is so important that you have to create a whole new type of food anyway.

I can understand creating different words for creatures, but to me a wolf is a wolf and a bear is a bear. Makes things that much easier and you can always concentrate on other things going on in the story. Make the creatures or monsters that your main character is fighting against the fantastic things that can't possibly be real. Then I can believe it.

Besides, in the story a dragon was a dragon, so why couldn't a wolf be a wolf and a mountain lion be a mountain lion? Perhaps now you understand my point.