As noted everywhere, author David Eddings has died. The Guardian has a remembrance posted today.

Fellow fantasy author Stephen Hunt said that Eddings was one of the reasons he became a writer. "I was in my early teens when I discovered these books, and they opened my eyes to the fact that not all fantasy had to be the ‘Ye Olde Speake’ variety favoured by Tolkien – they were fantasy, but they carried a modern feel to the dialogue and characterisation, while still being firmly placed in a deeply believable fantasy world," Hunt wrote on his blog today.

I also discovered Eddings when I was in my early/mid-teens. The day before a big school field-trip, I found myself in a drug store, desperately casting about for something I could read on the school bus. (In those days, fantasy and science fiction were not so scarcely represented on supermarket shelves.) I stumbled into the first book of The Elenium; a long association with Eddings’ other books followed.

I think that, as modern fantasy authors go, Eddings was a rock-solid storyteller and literary entertainer. His books were good fun, and he will be sorely missed.