Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Explore World Building, Religions, Food, Fighting & Weaponry, and much more, to craft an exceptional story.

Average Customer Rating:

Uneven

Customer Rating:

Volume 1 seems to suffer from a split personality: is this book designed for fan readers or for writers wanting to break into the fantasy genre? The combination of various authors and collaborators creates an uneven quality to the articles. Some are pretty thin. Some -- such as those on worldbuilding and combat -- are worth reading. This book is best used as a basic overview. If you want more in-depth information, you'll need to research other sources.

A change from the norm....

Customer Rating:

Yes, there are the chapters on weapons, combat, and world building. But there are also chapters on food, clothing and religion. When it the last time you have had a book on writing that had a chapter on food? And this is only volume one. I can't want to get my hands on the next one, which I have already ordered. With input from fantasy authors such as Tee Morris and John Teehan you know that they're not making it up - they have done work and they know what they are talking about.

guided fantasy	Customer Rating:
this book is a must have, extremely informative, simple and easy to read, well organized .... a real asset to the novice fantasy writer

you don't quite get what you pay for

Customer Rating:

I have been carrying this book around with me for the past 3 days. I bought it because it had the highest rating when I compared it to other books about how to write fantasy. Since each chapter is written by a different writer, the quality and helpfulness of the individual chapters are too varied for my taste. I do not have the time to go into an in-depth review right now, but I can point out the glaring omission that really miffed me: the "Arms and Armor" chapter had no description/explanation of bows and arrows or crossbows. Why? I really needed that, Tee! For this reason and the aforementioned general unevenness of the book, as well as one of the most pitiful indexes I've seen in a while, I give it a 3. It's a good jumping-off point, and it recommends some better, more in-depth references (some of the chapters do this, anyway), but I wish I had spent my $20+ on the TWO books (Orson Scott Card's how-to and Science Fiction Worldbuilding) that I have in my cart right now, instead of just this one.

How can it be a Complete guide if it's only Volume 1?

Customer Rating:

I ignored the bad reviews of this book and bought it anyway because it sounded like it had some pertinent information. Unfortunately the little pertinent information contained therein does not not justify the cost of the book. The book would be more helpful if it contained helpful tips at a more high-level; I found almost half the book to be the authors saying what bugs THEM. It's especially annoying when a tipster will repeat things like "never do this, ever, not even if someone threatens to kill you" and then adds the caveat of "unless you have a good reason." Can we do it or can't we? Should we do it or shouldn't we? It completely ignores all of the literature cases where those things HAVE happened simply because that particular author thinks that's a bad thing to do. I refuse to hold someone's subjective opinion as an authority on how to write fantasy. The book is full of information; I won't argue this. The relevance of the information, however, is something that can certainly be debated. In the end, if you use this book for what I use all "books on writing" for (to make sure I didn't forget something) then it serves its purpose while costing a bit more than the others. If you're looking for it to live up to the title of Complete Guide, you're bound to be disappointed (since that's an impossibility).