Will I love Legend?

I do not think any list relating to fantasy books would be complete without an entry from David Gemmell, a true gold standard of the genre. Legend is another book I first fell in love with as a teenager. I loved the simple enough premise: countless enemies at the gates of a fortress, and if the fortress falls, the Drenai Empire falls.

The story also introduces what I believe to be one of the most iconic heroes in heroic fantasy, the Deathwalker—Druss The Legend. While there were battles like nothing I had ever read before it was the interaction between… show more.

Legend and the rest of the Drenai saga were required reading for initiation into a fraternity that I joined many years ago. I can say these books were by far and away the most enjoyable required reading that I have ever been assigned. David Gemmell’s greatest strength is his ability to manage a vast cast of characters and keep the reader’s interest maintained in each and every one. He is an author who is lauded by his peers as one of the best to ever write in the epic fantasy genre and rightfully so.

Druss the Legend!

David Gemmell’s action scenes blew me away as a young reader. He doesn’t leave anything to the imagination but instead plants a crisp, vivid image into your brain and dares you to look away. But he knows you won’t. Or can’t. Legend is his first book and it was always in the back of my mind as I was writing my own saga because they both tell the story of a siege for the ages. Gemmell was an avid reader of history and is known for saying how he always wanted to write historical fiction but found… show more.

Druss, saddled with the blood of a butcher and wielder of a demon-possessed axe, is a man who knows just how far he could fall and exactly what kind of monster he could become. But with an iron moral code, and perfect devotion to his mystical wife, he earns renown on battlefield after battlefield and grows into a living legend. His inner conflicts sometimes spill outside of his head; he can be harsh, even brutal, but the code that defines him sets limits and forms the framework for the man he ultimately becomes. 

I was first drawn to Legend by… show more.

David Gemmell has a way of hooking you into his novels. It was with Legend that I found my passion for fantasy, reading about Druss in his tales of courage and sacrifice, the bitterness he endured, and the fame he got for it. This tale will take you on a journey you did not even know you wanted to take.