FANTASY FAN MOMENTS #3

“I can’t tell you what it meant to me when you stood beside me this morning. It was the highest point in my life. Nothing else mattered. I could see the sky — it was more blue than I’ve ever seen it. Everything was in sharp focus. I was more aware of living than I have ever been.”

— David Gemmell, Legend: Drenai Tales, Book 1
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Rek is an enigma, a brave coward. Gemmell presents us here with the everyman hero, not an unfamiliar trope. But this combination feels unique. Rek has exhibited courage in a key incident with a friend, courage following a period of hesitation. Hesitation for which he feels ashamed, but his friend is grateful nonetheless. Then attraction to a woman brings on another bout of bravery. And in the passage cited above, he describes what he was feeling — a higher motive he never expected to feel. The genius-touch of Gemmell moved me as a reader, and even more so as a writer.