Orson Scott Card... The first great fantasy writer?

People have their preferences for sci-fi and fantasy writers. Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Arthur C. Clark, Anne McCaffrey and the grand daddy of them all Tolkien. All of these authors are fantastic and they have created worlds and characters which many of us have loved like they were friends. But are any of them truly great writers?

I love Terry Pratchett and I find new forms of humour each time I read one of his novels but I can't call him a "great writer". Part of me wants to compare him to Jonathan Swift for his satire but I know that that is wishful thinking.

Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan have both written engaging stories set in engaging worlds with engaging characters. But doesn't a great writer put something more into it? Doesn't a great writer entice you to read a book 5, 6, 7 times and learn something new everytime? Elfstones and Wheel are fantastic fantasy novels but they've not fantastic novels.

Anne McCaffrey is more like a romance novelist with a unique setting. Arthur C. Clarke had an amazingly fertile imagination almost akin to Ray Bradbury but writing bizarre stories about the human psyche is not great writing either. Tolkien created a genre defining book but his writing and story are more engaging for their uniqueness then for any greatness in the prose. All of those people wrote novels that caused us to buy their books but in none of those books did I find myself marvelling at the actual writing or turning introspective as I learned a new truth about myself.

In Ender's Game I found myself doing both of those things. I've never met someone who read Ender's Game that didn't think it was one of the best books they'd ever read. I read the book with high expectations and somehow those expectations were vastly exceeded. In this day of commercial writing it's difficult to look at the landscape of the written word and find something that will have lasting value. It's hard to imagine the next Great Gatsby, Old Man and the Sea or Grapes of Wrath, let alone the next Shakespear. In Ender's Game I believe that there is finally a book worth grouping in with those.

I worried in reading his other novels that he would be a one hit wonder. Someone like Terry Brooks who would beat a setting into the ground for commercial success but really not contribute much more to the world or the genre. And then I read Seventh Son. In a new and unique way Orson Scott Card managed to rekindle the fire I felt after reading Ender's Game. Additionally, in Seventh Son, Orson Scott Card has managed to create a world nearly as unique as Tolkien's Middle Earth. Set in colonial America, Card merely adds magic and then shows us what happens. Sometimes the simplest of ideas create the most unique and profound experiences.

It's difficult to describe how much both of these books affected me. When I read great novels from great writers in high school I knew they were great and enjoyed them for what they were but I felt very little connection to them. They were typically set in worlds that I was separate from. They were about characters going through things that I could't imagine. They were members of genres which I did not enjoy. I hope every single one of you goes and buys Ender's Game and Seventh Son and reads them. You will not find two better books then these written today.