Raymond E. Feist Biography Quotes 14 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Raymond E. Feist, an American novelist best known for epic fantasy, was born on December 23, 1945, in Los Angeles, California. He grew up in Southern California and developed a strong interest in storytelling and history at an early age, tastes that would later inform the scope and texture of his fiction. He attended the University of California, San Diego, earning a degree in Communication Arts in 1977. During his time at UC San Diego he joined a tabletop role-playing circle whose collaborative worldbuilding would become the seed of his life's work. The group devised the secondary world of Midkemia as a setting for their campaigns, complete with maps, pantheons, politics, and a lived-in sense of place. That collective creativity fostered in Feist both a storyteller's discipline and a deep appreciation for shared myth-making, eventually leading to the formation of a small press to publish material set in Midkemia and to the first drafts of the novel that launched his career.

Midkemia and Breakthrough
After graduating, Feist began writing a sprawling fantasy novel set in Midkemia. That book, Magician, appeared in 1982 and introduced readers to the magician Pug, his friend Tomas, and a kingdom pulled into war by mysterious invaders from another world. In the United States, later paperback editions split the novel into Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master, while a revised anniversary edition restored material that had been cut from the original publication. The success of Magician established Feist as a prominent voice in modern epic fantasy and set up a multivolume saga spanning generations, continents, and worlds connected by rifts in space.

Expanding the Riftwar Universe
Feist continued the primary storyline with Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon, completing what became known as the Riftwar Saga. He then broadened his canvas with Krondor's Sons (Prince of the Blood and The King's Buccaneer), tracing the political and dynastic consequences of the original conflict. In the 1990s he embarked on the Serpentwar Saga (Shadow of a Dark Queen, Rise of a Merchant Prince, Rage of a Demon King, and Shards of a Broken Crown), a sequence notable for balancing battlefield spectacle with merchant intrigue and the economic underpinnings of power. Subsequent cycles carried the narrative forward through new generations and escalating cosmological stakes: the Conclave of Shadows trilogy, the Darkwar Saga, the Demonwar Saga, and the Chaoswar Saga, the last culminating in Magician's End in 2013, which brought a decades-long character arc to a resonant close.

Collaborations and Key Relationships
Collaboration was central to Feist's career from the outset, beginning with the UC San Diego gaming circle that built Midkemia and continuing through partnerships with other writers and creatives. His most celebrated collaboration was with novelist and painter Janny Wurts on the Empire Trilogy (Daughter of the Empire, Servant of the Empire, and Mistress of the Empire). Those books shifted perspective to the world of Kelewan and to Mara of the Acoma, creating a richly detailed study of politics, honor, and survival. The partnership combined Feist's grand-arc plotting with Wurts's intricate cultural and psychological nuance.

Feist later worked with fellow authors on the Legends of the Riftwar sequence: Honored Enemy with William R. Forstchen, Murder in LaMut with Joel Rosenberg, and Jimmy the Hand with S. M. Stirling. Each collaboration explored corners of Midkemia that paralleled or intersected with the main saga, giving secondary characters and frontier events a spotlight. His storytelling also intersected with videogame development. The acclaimed computer role-playing game Betrayal at Krondor, developed at Dynamix in the early 1990s with writer and designer Neal Hallford, brought Midkemia to a new audience and deepened the setting's cultural footprint. Feist subsequently novelized that game's story in Krondor: The Betrayal and continued the arc in Krondor: The Assassins and Krondor: Tear of the Gods, later tying off planned game-related threads in the novella Jimmy and the Crawler. Editors and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic nurtured these projects and sustained his long-running relationship with readers, helping manage the continuity and publication cadence required by such an expansive universe.

Style and Themes
Feist's fiction draws on classical epic structures while placing character growth at its heart. Apprenticeship and mentorship recur, as do the costs of power, the tensions between duty and love, and the ways ordinary people are swept into extraordinary events. He is known for clear, accessible prose and for pacing that alternates large-scale conflict with intimate, consequential decisions. The Riftwar books braid military campaigns, espionage, diplomacy, and trade into a coherent whole, reflecting his belief that empires are built as much by ledgers and treaties as by swords and spells. Thematically, the existence of rifts between worlds allows him to explore cultural contact and misunderstanding, presenting war and alliance as products of competing cosmologies rather than simple good-versus-evil binaries.

Beyond Midkemia
While Midkemia defined his name, Feist also wrote outside that setting. Faerie Tale (1988) is a contemporary fantasy rooted in American and European folklore, noted for its eerie atmosphere and for placing a modern family at the center of a mythic intrusion. Many years later he launched the Firemane Saga with King of Ashes, beginning a new secondary world unconnected to Midkemia and expanding his repertoire of political and military storytelling. The sequence continued with Queen of Storms and Master of Furies, showing his sustained interest in dynastic struggle, mentorship, and the burdens of leadership. He also contributed shorter work to major anthologies, including a Riftwar-era tale, The Wood Boy, in a landmark collection of fantasy novellas that placed him alongside peers who defined the late twentieth-century genre landscape.

Reception and Cultural Impact
Feist's novels have been translated widely and have sold in the millions, earning a global readership that grew up alongside his characters. For many readers and game players of the 1980s and 1990s, the synergy between his books and titles like Betrayal at Krondor demonstrated how shared worlds could thrive across media without losing narrative depth. His longevity rests on a steady output, respect for continuity, and a willingness to view epic events through the eyes of merchants, thieves, soldiers, and scholars as well as kings and magicians. Writers and designers who came of age in that period have cited his work as foundational for their own approaches to worldbuilding, campaign design, and serial storytelling.

Personal and Professional Life
Feist maintained close ties to Southern California throughout much of his life and repeatedly acknowledged the formative role his UC San Diego friends played in the creation of Midkemia. Over decades of tours, convention appearances, and interviews, he cultivated a reputation for directness and approachability, often discussing craft, the demands of long-form continuity, and the challenges of coordinating with collaborators in publishing and gaming. His partnerships with Janny Wurts, William R. Forstchen, Joel Rosenberg, S. M. Stirling, and Neal Hallford became touchstones for how he broadened Midkemia's scope while keeping a consistent voice. Through the patient work of editors and publishers and the enthusiasm of readers who followed multiple generations of characters, Feist sustained one of the most extensive and coherent epic fantasy universes of his era, while also showing, through projects like Faerie Tale and the Firemane books, that he could reinvent himself beyond the world that first made his name.

Our collection contains 14 quotes who is written by Raymond, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Writing - Parenting - Work Ethic - Mortality.