I had Reddit sockpuppets in the names of every major character in The Dying Earth. In my opinion, Jack Vance and American fantasy are the Bauhaus if Itten didn't leave. Don't get trapped into thinking there's a lot of it; the original Dying Earth is an anthology of short stories written prior to 1950, and then there are two legit Sagas written in the '80s. They're okay but not relevant.

I was entertained, but ended up confused by both detractors and praises.

I think the more an egghead likes a book, the more they make it "important." I've never wanted to bother with Salman Rushdie; prior to his fatwah nobody really gave a shit so all of a sudden his work had to take on enough meaning to support an East V West clash of ideals. What was that shit newspaper in France? Charlie Hebdo? Ain't nobody said anything nice about Charlie Hebdo until AQAP started shooting cartoonists.

My go-to is Margaret Atwood. She's a shitty author (shut up, she is). She's self-important. She's, by all accounts, a dreadful person. But because she writes pulp sci fi along the lines of "fear the Republicans" the eggheads support her in her assertion that she doesn't write sci fi, sci fi is grubby and she's important. Lather, rinse, repeat for David Foster Wallace. Meanwhile, Stephen King was out getting rich in the literary wilderness for 40 years, bane of English teachers everywhere, until he started dissing Trump on Twitter. All of a sudden his shit's literature.

No comment on Dean Brown; that thing practically fizzled out by the time I was in 4th grade.

He's a terrible writer and you don't need to read him ever. All you need is the following:

1) Anthony Burgess' review of Holy Blood, Holy Grail in 1980 was "someone should make this into a novel"

2) Dan Brown did exactly that

3) The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail sued him for plagiarism

4) Dan Brown argued "holupaminnit, you said yours was non-fiction" and the authors came back with "well... but nobody really believed that, did they"

5) Things went as well as expected

Holy Blood, Holy Grail? A breathless pseudoacademic conspiracy theory. Da Vinci Code? An Encyclopedia Brown mystery. If you ever come across a copy, voice Robert Langdon as Bullwinkle the Moose and Sophie Neveu (yes, really) as Rocky the Squirrel.