Alys, I was making it very clear that I was speaking of my own opinion of him. Telling me that something is this or that way. "Period." is not something that comes across as calm posting. It was snappy, and the only reason I could imagine for the snappiness was anger.I don't think that Eru was being huffy, Hobby but I could understand why if she was. I don't think that anyone minds that our favourite authors aren't liked by everyone, but it's easy to be miffed when we think that they're mischaracterised, or worse, dismissed. You described a book by an author that you know several of us admire as being, "basically fanfic, and bad fanfic at that, too" and I did rather feel that you were dismissing him rather that critiquing him.
Yes, I have.Oh and although it's probably my least favourite of all his books, and IMO the weakest in terms of writing, you must have been very lucky with your fanfic if you thought it was a bad example of that!
Read pip's stories Mith linked to above.
ETA: Estel, that was a good post on Kay's work - thanks for giving some background. I've just read this one book and disliked it on many grounds, so I wouldn't have noticed such detail on the sources he draws from.
(Although I wouldn't base my judgement on the quality of a book on how much it is liked by professors. )