Tad Williams

Tad Williams is a popular Fantasy and Speculative Fiction author of the late 20th century, known for long epic stories with Loads and Loads of Characters. He's also known for subverting and deconstructing many tropes of these genres, with particular focus on things like Prophetic Fallacy and Earn Your Happy Ending.

Works by Tad Williams include (in order of publication):

 * Tailchaser's Song: A frisky tomcat, the eponymous Fritti Tailchaser, goes on a journey to find his girlfriend after her mysterious disappearance, fighting monsters out of feline legend along the way. Contains extensive Homage to Lord of the Rings.
 * Memory Sorrow and Thorn: A High Fantasy trilogy set in the Standard Fantasy Setting of Osten Ard, where the forces of humanity struggle against the growing threat of the Undead Storm King and his minions, with only the titular, legendary Three Swords offering any hope of saving their land.
 * Otherland: A Post Cyber Punk story set Twenty Minutes Into the Future, where a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits enters into a private virtual reality world controlled by a group of Corrupt Corporate Executives with a mysterious agenda that seems to involve stealing the minds of children.
 * The War of the Flowers: An Urban Fantasy set in the magical but strangely modern land of Faerie, itself a Deconstruction of a stereotypical Magical Land. The protagonist, Theo, becomes trapped there and is forced to become a pawn in the corrupt machinations of its lords, only to discover that he's more a part of it than he thinks.
 * Shadowmarch: A High Fantasy novel series set in the eponymous Shadowmarch Castle. Notable in that it originally started as a web-based novel and only later made it into print.