Far too many of the popular clones of The Lord of the Rings utterly lack the imaginative sweep and linguistic awareness which made that work such a paradigm. Although Kay has his own story to tell, he has obviously learned from the master. The story, in all its complexity, is of course about a grand battle between Good and Evil, this time in the first of all worlds, to which five University of Toronto grads have been transported. There they join forces with mages, dwarves, elves, and various tribes of humans to fight the minions of a dark god. The Fionavar Tapestry is so much better than this conventional outline suggests because Kay creates complex and emotionally profound characters, evokes the beauty and harshness of a rich natural world, and delves deeply into the heart of human sexuality.
Epic fantasies are grand narratives in the old sense of the term.
I confess I was completely caught up in Kay's powerful weaving of all the various realistic and mythic threads of his tale. Both the young protagonists from 'our world' and the many noble figures in Fionavar are recognizably human and unpredictably emotional. There are stories within stories, some happening 'now', some erupting out of ancient history. Kay mixes his own myths and the mythologies we know with superb panache. Ursula K. LeGuin's The Earthsea Trilogy and Patricia McKillip's Riddlemaster Trilogy .