Which is all right, I guess. I thought Elric was a bit dull at times, but it was generally quite fascinating, especially the world building. Glorianna was… not exactly *fun*, you know, but… hmm. Perhaps “interesting” is a diffuse enough word to use? Of course they both failed to deliver what they promised.

And the fun thing is, every one of these kinda make sense, when applied to me.

As for Ursula LeGuin, I’m diappointed they failed to mention her The Dispossessed, one of the best sci-fi novels I’ve read. Both the high-brow and the experimental ratings of that one ought to be much higher that what Earthsea earned her, but I guess that’s sci-fi for you.

Philip Pullman (b.1946)

3 High-Brow, -3 Violent, 13 Experimental and 17 Cynical!

Le Guin, I know very well who she is, she’s the woman with the famous Earthsea-books, but I only read one of those books once, back in eight grade. Remember very little of it now. It was a little too slow-paced for me back then, and the library had lost book number two to some water damage, so I never kept going. I’ve had a professor in English Literature a couple of years back, though, who told me I should try her out again. So I might, some day.

I am a wee bit disturbed by my high score in the experimental catagory. Probably because when I read “experimental” I automatically think “sexually ambigious”.

So, Ursula K Le Guin huh? Never heard of her either (my ignorance astounds even me). Are you familiar with her work?

Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Violent, Experimental and Cynical! These concepts are defined below.

Mary Gentle is a UK author whose work has received some acclaim. Her great break-through came with 1984 fantasy novel Golden Witchbreed, which depicts the travels of a UK envoy on a planet, Orthe, where the inhabitants have, by choice, abandoned a high-tech society for a seemingly less advanced way of life. Though nominally science fiction, the novel is generally called fantasy, partly because Orthe has the feel of a fantasy world. Nothing is what it first seems to be on Orthe, however, and the envoy’s journey across the planet gradually reveals a vividly imagined alternate society, where nothing is ever over-simplified or, for that matter, easy. Gentle revisited Orthe in 1987, when the sequel Ancient Light was published.

Since then Gentle has written the White Crow sequence, starting with Rats and Gargoyles (1990), which has received some acclaim, not least from other writers; China Miéville, for example, put it on his list of “50 science fiction and fantasy novels socialists should read”. She has also written Grunts! (1992), a novel set in a Tolkien-like fantasy world, but told from the point of view of the orcs, as well as several other books.

Gentle is not one to shun away from difficult issues in her works and is equally unafraid of discussing and depicting violence. Neither has she settled to writing the same kind of story over and over, and, while being at her best a great entertainer, she has the ability of twisting and bending fantasy environments and themes at her will, making unafraid a key-word of her career as a writer.

You are also a lot like Gene Wolfe.

If you want something more gentle (no pun intended), try Philip Pullman.

If you’d like a challenge, try your exact opposite, J K Rowling.

Hm, have never even heard of her. Oh well, I never take these kind of tests seriously anyway. I quite enjoy taking them though.