I saw on Twitter today that Patricia A. McKillip has died. She was one of the best stylisits in the fantasy field. I had the pleasure of meeting her at the 2000 World Fantasy Convention and again at the 2006 World Fantasy Convention

McKillip won a World Fantasy Award for her first adult novel, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld in 1974. She followed it up with the Riddlemaster Trilogy. This was the first thing I read by her in the SFBC omnibus edition.

I was hooked.

Over the years McKillip only got better. Most of her novels were stand-alones. Beginning in the late 1990’s, McKillip began publishing a series of novels through Ace books with the most gorgeous covers. I’ve got all of them, although I’ve not read all of them yet.

If you’ve not read her work, give it a try. It’s not sword and sorcery, but it is some of the best fantasy written in the last half century. I’m going to try to work more of her books into the reading schedule. I think I’ll give the Riddlemaster trilogy another read. It’s been long enough that a lot of the details have faded.