My First Book Jacket Blurb!

Well, here's one of the first signs you're a "real" academic -- a blurb from me on an academic book. I'm actually quite excited about this volume (Magic Words, Magic Worlds: Form and Style in Epic Fantasy by Matthew Oliver), which is about style in epic fantasy texts. One thing Oliver does exceptionally well is describe stylistic features in a really concrete way, through actual quantifiable stylistic techniques. There's none of that "impression of" nonsense or cherry-picked sample sentences from which egregious over-generalizations are made.

Incidentally, my wife and I saw Oliver's presentation at ICFA 2022, and his was one of her two favorites of the whole conference. (My wife is a non-academic.) Turns out she really appreciates concrete arguments as  well!





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