If you had asked ten-year-old me about my favorite author, I would have replied unhesitatingly that it was J.R.R. Tolkien. The experience of reading The Lord of the Rings had been the most significant of my young life. It was a forbiddingly long book, and I was given to carrying my battered copy around, so that people knew I’d finished it. More importantly, it was my first exposure to a truly expansive quest narrative, and I was filled with wonder that a single person could imagine an alternative world so thoroughly. It was, in that sense, my first model of…