Not to mention the author of the original article talks about all of these authors--bashing them endlessly--and then says, "Oh yeah, haven't read this stuff." If he read Abercrombie's THE HEROES, he would know that the title is meant for irony, is a direct product of philosophical discussions in the novel, and IS THE LOCATION THAT IS FOUGHT OVER FOR THE ENTIRE NOVEL. It's one of my rules to reviewing: you have ZERO right to review something if you haven't read it. A quick test: has the writer of the article read THE HEROES? No. It kind of invalidates his comments on it.
I also personally loved his little part on Steven Erikson which shows his complete ignorance. Again, he finds 1 bad review of the novel which he himself didn't read to help prove his point. Seriously? That's like me grabbing a random book at the store and writing a review based only on a cover-quote.
His claim that all the modern fantasy is nihilistic in nature is completely false, and saying that it applies to the works of Abercrombie and Erikson is absurd--again, it shows that he has read very little of anything by these authors (no matter his claims). There is actually very little in fantasy that is nihilistic. There is an astounding amount of hope, religion, righteousness in modern dark fantasy. It's what makes it good, in my opinion.
But the article writer MUST be right, and everyone else WRONG because he invokes the name of Tolkien. And EVERYONE knows that Tolkien was perfect, flawless, and a GOD. Nope, he never once got his ideas from anywhere else. Nope, before Tolkien, fantasy in another form never existed.
As usual in these laughable "essays" the writer points at an extremely few examples in the genre to make his point while ignoring the rest. And even then, he gets most of it wrong because he couldn't bother to read the full series, or take off his elf-colored glasses. He seems to be saying that all modern sword and sorcery is garbage, not game-changing, pitiful, and a diminished facsimile of "classic" work. I somehow doubt that all these so-called classics were immediately loved and accepted as the best thing since sliced bread.