On Fantasy

[tealin]

A few weeks back, I posted two covers for one book, the Advance Readers’
Copy and the final public release. The ARC had an illustration of the title
location of the book, the Floating Island. The final published version had a
dragon, with the island relegated to a cameo in the corner, for no apparent
reason, because the only dragon the book contained was drawn on the door of
an inn and only mentioned in a passing description. There started a conversation
on marketing, fantasy, dragons, and the merits thereof, where I admitted that
the presence of dragons in a story is a pretty good indicator that it’s
the type of fantasy I don’t like. This raised all sorts of hackles (not
just on this blog) and the subsequent challenges have been rattling around in
my head ever since. I’ve been sorting out where I stand on fantasy, what
works for me and what doesn’t and why, with the aim of eventually writing
it all down and tacking it up in the shop window of the internet so everyone
knows exactly what I mean. Since I can’t find my paintbrushes, it looks
like tonight is the night to do just that.

First I must reiterate: I DO NOT HATE DRAGONS. There is nothing inherent in
the large scaly flying saurians that sets my teeth on edge or makes me want
to burn things. My grudge is not against dragons themselves, but against the
type of fantasy they usually appear in. Before getting in a huff (or at least
before getting in a huff about that) please know that I have not read
all that much fantasy. This is probably due to having a few run-ins with fantasy
in my early years that I couldn’t get into or that was just plain bad;
it has pretty much turned me off the genre and has made me wary of any fantasy
recommended to me ever since. I only read fantasy that’s been recommended
because it’s too vast and terrifying a world to wander through unguided
and, like I said, I’m wary. Obviously, though, I do read fantasy –
in fact, almost all the fiction I read and own could be classified as fantasy.
So it’s not like I hate the whole diverse genre just because of a few
airborne reptiles. However, the sub-genres I connect with are the ones in which
dragons, if they appear at all, do not feature prominently.

Some examples:

LIKE

DISLIKE

Watership Down Redwall Harry Potter (most of the time) Discworld (and other Pratchettings The Bromeliad and Johnny Maxwell) Thursday Next The Dark is Rising The Bartimaeus Trilogy Roald Dahl's books

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Dragonriders of Pern Dragons: Fire and Ice The Hobbit (please allow me to explain myself) Harry Potter (sometimes) Anything with Dark Lords, stupid lizard- or pig-men, animate skeletons, magic crystals, mystical destiny, psychic visions of the past or future, telepathy, scrying, glowy fantasy weapons, names that read like randomly selected Scrabble tiles, ordinary Words that are capitalized to make them Special, or extensive use of deus ex machina.

Generally, I like fantasy that has at least one foot in reality. I need to
be able to relate to it if I'm going to be sucked into the story at all.
If I feel like I've not just dived into the deep end but fallen out of
the sky into the middle of the ocean, I am going to put the book down because
there are no landmarks by which I can navigate. If I can get a toehold on
the reality of the world the author has created, that is a good start, and I
am far more likely to be interested in what happens to the character because
I can relate to them in some small way at least. Many of the fantasy books I
like start with a reality very much like our own but add an extra layer or two
that go unnoticed by everyday folk but are very real to the people in the story.
Not only does this give me a grounding from which to explore the story but is
fun to apply to the ‘real’ world as well, such as spying out quartered
circles which are significant in The Dark Is Rising, or passing off
bangs in the night as the Knight Bus. That's fun. Fantasy that can add enjoyment
to what otherwise might be a boring world is always welcome.
I also like fantasy that works. This is why I like Discworld even
though, on the surface, it looks like Not My Kind of Fantasy, as it's got wizards
and trolls and all the other bells and whistles of your archetypical capital-F
Fantasy or, as I call it from here on out, Wacky Fantasy. Luckily Terry Pratchett
has thought about this a lot and is a lot better writer than I am, so here's
what he has to say, from The Art of Discworld:

Sometimes I wish I'd left out the bit about the giant turtle. It's a respectable world myth, but it might lead some prospective readers to think it is, well, not serious.
     In truth, the turtle doesn't have anything to do with most of the stories except, as it were, to carry the plot. I used it to signal this is a fantasy world, with all the unusual suspects: wizards, witches, gods, and heroes. The twist is that it is taken seriously; not taken seriously as a fantasy, but taken seriously as a world.
     In this I owe a debt to G.K. Chesterton, who pointed out on many occasions that the fantastic, when looked at properly, is much less interesting (and a lot less fantastic) than the everyday.
     Take magical lights, for example. A wizard snaps his fingers and light appears. Where's the fun in that? He's only doing what wizards do. But a bunch of apes weren't doing what apes do when they learned, over half a million years, how to take the universe apart and put it together again so that a bit of it was the electric light bulb.
     So Discworld works, more or less. People plough fields, file things, make candles, deliver letters and babies, produce newspapers, perform daily the thousand minor miracles that keep a city fed. Magic has pretty much the same status as nuclear power: under control it is useful, perhaps even essential, but too much reliance on it comes with a disproportionately high price tag, and only a loony would use it to catch fish...

And Discworld does work, in its odd little way. He takes the elements from
Wacky Fantasy and makes them work. Not only do they work in their own
right, but they're often wicked satire of both Wacky Fantasy and the real world.
That's the foot that rests in reality: the world itself may be fantastical,
but what happens in it is often so directly parallel to our own, albeit mirrored
or distorted slightly, that I can relate to that part of it.

Yes, Discworld has dragons. After all, 'You've got to have dragons ... otherwise
how can you tell it's fantasy? [...] As so often happens, they were developed
by taking seriously something not intended to be serious.' The most notable
book for them is Guards! Guards! where they appear in some number.
The important distinction here is that they are not only dragons but parodies
of dragons. The great big flying beastie is explained, sort of, and satirizes
the customs of Wacky Fantasy, but the real stars are the swamp dragons, which
... work. They're all thought-out, as if they were real biological
creatures. Not only are they fully operational creatures in their own right,
but they're also a parody of dogs, in a way. Sybil raises dragons and runs an
abandoned-dragon shelter the way other upper-class single women might breed
and run charities for dogs. Her elderly dragon shuffles around the house, drooling,
and puts his head in your lap at table. They're dogs, who just happen to breathe
fire and eat coal and corrode a hole in the floor when they wee on something.
The only other book where they feature prominently at all, as far as I can remember,
is one of the earlier ones, where Rincewind ends up in a dragon 'hangar' where
they hang from the ceiling and you 'walk' upside down by hooking your feet in
metal loops driven into the roof. This is way at the beginning of the series,
back when it was busy being a parody of Wacky Fantasy and not much concerned
with plot or character, and therefore I am not as much of a fan of those early
books as I am of the later ones – so much so that I've only read that
dragon book once, and can't even remember the title or what else happens in
it. (I feel okay about this because none of the later books has ever revisited
this place or idea.) This is also why I don't recommend people start reading
Discworld from 'the beginning,' because the first few books give an inaccurate
representation of what the series is like as a whole. Had I started with the
first books, I probably wouldn't have bothered reading far enough to get to
the ones I do like, but Interesting Times, which I started with, was
as much a parody of the real world as anything, so I could sink my teeth into
it. I didn't get around to reading the first ones until much, much later, and
never bothered to read them again.

The other series on my list that has dragons is Harry Potter, and this one's
a bit more complicated. Whereas Discworld is ostensibly set in another world,
Harry Potter is very clearly supposed to be this one. The earlier books are
much more grounded than the later ones, which may be why I like them better;
they fall more into the category of 'Fantasy Veneer' and less 'Outright Fabrication.'
Harry is a real kid, who lives in Surrey, a real place, and has been going to
a real school and living in the real world for eleven years with only occasional
unexplained things happening. Even when he goes to school, it's still really
obviously a school, it's got sports and chemistry and history and lunch
and bullies and all those real school things, just replaced with their magical
equivalents. The elements of fantasy that are included are drawn blatantly enough
from folklore and tradition that at times it appears to be a parody of Wacky
Fantasy almost as much as Discworld is, or at the very least a tongue-in-cheek
salute to long-standing traditional magical lore. Everything has been imported
into a reality constructed to 'explain' it or at least make it all fit together
in a plausible way; it's all pretty well figured out in that regard, and the
amalgamation of these disparate fantasy elements establishes the internal logic
of the series. The point at which this starts to fall apart, in my opinion,
is Goblet of Fire – coincidentally (and I mean that)
a book which prominently features dragons. (Yes yes, the first book has Norbert,
but he's a way to establish Hagrid's character, an excuse to get the kids to
his hut to he can 'accidentally' reveal important secrets, and a way to get
Harry and Ron detention so Harry can have his pivotal encounter in the woods,
more than he is a dragon in his own right. And we are constantly reminded that
Charlie works with dragons, but that's far, far in the background. After all,
'you've got to have dragons...') It is in Goblet that the
balance starts to tip from the majority of fantasy elements being imported from
folklore or long-standing tradition to ones made up by Rowling herself, and
from there on the series loses touch with reality more and more, until by the
sixth book it's a struggle to remember the Muggle world exists at all. And while
I have more abstract reasons for disliking the later books, such as plot structure
and character development (or lack thereof), it doesn't help that they're becoming
the sort of fantasy I don't like.

The book that probably most put me off fantasy as a child was The Lion,
the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I think I read it for the first time when
I was in Grade 2. I don't remember having any trouble comprehending it and it
shouldn't have been above my reading level at the time, but I didn't get into
it and didn't see what all the fuss was about. I tried again a few years later,
when my Grade 4 teacher read The Magician's Nephew to the class, which
I liked a little bit more if only because it actually tried to explain some
things, but didn't like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe any more
then. I tried again in high school to see if maybe with an older perspective
I could see why adults would have thought I'd like it, but was still put off.
The problem is, as a world, it just doesn't work. Even aside from the
author's condescending tone, which probably had a lot to do with my not liking
it at first, I couldn't believe this world could actually exist in its own right.
It feels like everything's cooked up with the sole purpose of serving the allegory
and little attention is paid to logic or biology or physics or anything. Fantastical
creatures are thrown in to be 'cool' or something, and magic is tossed around
at random with no apparent set of rules. And there's Father Christmas,
being very overtly Christmasy, in a land without any sort of religious tradition
– at least Discworld's Hogfather has an origin and ritual significance
rooted in the early, suspiciously European tribes of the Disc. Anyway, I could
go on, but The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is an example of fantasy
I don't like that, lo and behold, doesn't have dragons in it. As far
as I can remember anyway.

Another book that turned me off was The Hobbit. I'm sure I have just
made a few thousand enemies by saying that, but it's an important part of this
argument. The Hobbit, much like its contemporary mentioned above, didn't seem
to work. I'm sure it probably worked in Tolkien's head, but so little
of that made its way into the book that it's more or less a collection of fantastical
episodes, each featuring a different race or individual to interact with and
get past in order to meet the next. It didn't help that Bilbo as a character
wasn't terribly appealing or interesting, and for that matter nor was anyone
else in his fellowship, so I didn't really care what happened to them. The whole
premise that Bilbo is on this quest in order to steal something (something
that had, admittedly been stolen already, so he was stealing it back ... I think...)
nulled his 'heroism,' and made me care even less. Then there's the writing
which – and I have had independent verification of this – starts
out as a sort of adventure story for children, then partway through becomes
a much more serious fantasy epic with wars and kings and politics and stuff
that is completely different from the beginning, leaving the reader [me] with
an uneasy sense of not knowing a stable vantage point from which to view the
story. Much as with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I really
tried to like this book, I felt that I should like this
book, and I kept reading it over and over, assuming that the previous time I
just hadn't gotten it. People told me when I was eight that I was too young
for it, so I read it again when I was eleven and still didn't like it; when
I didn't like it again at fourteen I was told I was too old. But my problems
with The Hobbit were not with the dragon, they were with the story
that I could not relate to.

It was because The Hobbit left me cold that I never read the
Lord of the Rings which was strategically placed in my bedroom by a well-meaning
parent. (I hope you can hear me through my giant mouthful of humble pie, but
I haven’t read The Lord of the Rings! Not all of it. I've read
Fellowship now, but not the other two. It'll happen eventually.) It
was by the same author, it was in the same world, why would I want to go through
a five-times-longer version of The Hobbit when I didn't like the first
one? I did pick it up, and I had no end of fun figuring out the alphabets based
on what was given as a translation (my copy didn't have the appendix, just the
illustrations), so I can probably credit The Lord of the Rings for
my little alphabet fetish which resulted in devising at least three of my own,
getting really excited about Atlantis: The Lost Empire and spending
far, far too much time on omniglot.com. All I really have to go on
regarding that most famous of fantasies are the movies, and even they fall into
Like and Dislike. I like Fellowship. I like Fellowship a lot.
It surprised me how much I liked it when it came out because I had assumed it
was going to be like The Hobbit all over again, but it was so much
more. The way they approached the movie won me over as well, because they weren't
distracted by the fantasy and made it about the characters and the quest, even
choosing to minimise all but the most essential magical elements, and those
were treated in an almost realistically subtle way. The only part of Fellowship
that gave me that Wacky Fantasy squirm was when Gandalf escaped Saruman's tower
on the giant eagle. The magic Ring (not just a ring but a Ring), great flaming
eye, dark zombie horsemen, elves, and wizards were treated so realistically
that I didn't question their legitimacy. The way they purposely treated everything
as if they were making a historical drama rather than a fantasy really won me
over. Unfortunately, the Wacky Fantasy elements started to creep in and by the
time Return of the King came around, it had gone completely to the
other side. There are many other reasons why I vastly prefer Fellowship
to the other two, valid storytelling and filmmaking reasons, but I might have
been more tempted to forgive some of them had they kept with the degree of realism
found in the first film. My suspension of disbelief can only hold so much weight
– if you throw in more and more stuff to believe in eventually it'll all
collapse and disbelief I would have suspended now gets turned around as criticism.
Oddly enough, round about the time my suspension of disbelief was starting to
feel the strain, the Ringwraiths switched form horses to ... golly, dragons!
Coincidence? Probably. But once again the symptom of Dragon indicated a more
general malaise.

In case you have any questions about the list above, I'll now address each
book individually:

Watership Down – When you go into a library or bookstore, this book is
not even shelved with the fantasy. And yet it's about rabbits ... that talk.
TALKING RABBITS. Fantasy, right? Rabbits don't talk. But this is meticulously
researched and very realistically written so that you can't help feeling if
rabbits could talk (or perhaps they do already and we just don't understand
them), this would be very very real. My dad read it to me when I was 5, and
sometimes I think this book is responsible in many ways for how I've ended up
as a person, for good or bad (but mostly for good, I think) – it's almost
certainly responsible for what kinds of fantasy I like.
Redwall – I was recommended this series by my Grade 4 teacher when she
found out I was a fan of Watership Down, but it wasn't until Grade 6 that I
actually started reading it. It also has talking animals but they're significantly
more anthropomorphised than the rabbits of Watership Down. They build buildings
and wear clothes and fight wars in ways animals certainly don't in real life,
but there's practically no magic at all. I lived in this world through most
of middle school and this was probably the only way I survived, but I started drifting
away from it as the newer books came out that started veering more towards the
Wacky end of the spectrum ... there was some actual 'real' magic, a bit too
much in the way of psychic flim-flammery, and increasingly far-out species that
seemed to be a gimmick to keep things fresh, which didn't work ... for me.
Harry Potter – See above for more details. It started out as adding another
dimension to everyday life of a magical community living in secret, but the
stories are simultaneously losing touch with the 'real' world and decreasing
in craftsmanship.
Discworld – See above as well. Discworld's 'furniture' is fantastical
but its stories, themes, and characters satirise the real world well enough
that I can relate better to them than to a large portion of 'straight' fiction.
The Bromeliad's central cast is entirely made up of four-inch high nomes that
live ten times as fast as humans but they live in the real world and their perspective
on it is like looking at reality from behind, or maybe underneath. Johnny Maxwell is, like Harry
Potter, an ordinary kid who ends up getting involved with some pretty weird
stuff, but it's always rooted in reality and comments on very real things.
Thursday Next – She lives in a world slightly different from our own
but similar in most of the important ways; most of the stories are spent rocketing
around the world of fiction, piggybacking on well-known established realities
in other books. Her bookjumping is, I'm sure, what many avid readers desperately
wish they could do.
The Dark Is Rising – This series is another one that adds an extra layer
or two to reality; like Harry Potter it's got an otherwise ordinary kid who
finds out he belongs to this secret society of slightly magical people. Instead
of getting swept away to a place where this is the norm and the ordinary world
falls away, he has a series of adventures in this world that involve
the magical layers. It's better than it sounds.
The Bartimaeus Trilogy – Another 'alternate reality,' in this case replace
all the politicians with magicians, reinstate the British Empire, do a little
juggling with European history, throw in a few demons who do the actual magic,
and tadaa. Very well thought-out and follows its own internal logic assiduously.

Roald Dahl's books – Books like The Witches and Matilda
turn the dial up on reality a little bit and then throw in a judicious amount
of fantasy – just enough to make it juicy but not enough to make the whole
thing unrealistic.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – See above. Basically everything
in the book either mindlessly serves the allegory or panders to children with
little regard for internal consistency or plausibility.
Dragonriders of Pern – When my Grade 6 teacher realized I was nuts about
Redwall she suggested this series. I got about ten pages into whichever book
she handed me before I gave up in despair because I was hopelessly lost. It
was on another planet, had completely different species, had dragons, and was
chock full of weird names and gratuitous capitalizations. The one thing I can
remember specifically was that the planet's orbit around the sun was called
a Turn (with a capital, note) rather than a year – just call it a
year! Give me something to hang on to! I don't care if it's not an Earth year,
if you explain that I can get used to it but why just go and rename EVERYTHING??
And capitalize it? Anyway, yeah. Not too taken with the Dragonthingies.
This book might have been the first to make me automatically suspicious of anything
with dragons in it.
Dragons: Fire and Ice – Okay, this isn't a book. It's a direct-to-DVD
CG flick I worked on. I'm including it in this list, though, because it was
about dragons, more or less, and its script (which is not great in
the final cut but was even more amazingly horrible in earlier drafts, if you
can imagine), seemed to have been cobbled together by listing every Wacky Fantasy
cliché on separate pieces of paper and rearranging them until the writer
got a shape he liked. It had:
Dragons
A Prince and Princess
- from warring countries
A Prophecy
Magic Crystals (excuse me, Krystals – because deliberate misspellings
are kewl)
-that glowed
A Evil Wizard
-who you're supposed to think is good at the beginning
-who flies around on a floating ice ... thing
A Mystic Portal to Another World
A Training Montage
Animate Skeletons
Stupid Lizard Men
An Evil Lair High in the Mountains
Mystic Destiny
A Complete Disregard for the Necessity of Agriculture
I'm sure there's a lot more but it's been a few years...
The Hobbit – See above. Having a central character who is a middle-aged
male homebody is probably not the most effective way to hook the kidlets. If
it could make up its mind what kind of book it was, perhaps I could have found
a comfortable mental place from which to watch the action but I had to keep
changing my frame of reference.

Well, I think that about covers it ... I've been thinking a lot about Rules
of Fantasy and the Snicket books but that's a topic for another day. I hope
I made at least a little sense and that my stand on the dragon issue is a little
more comprehensible.

Sorry if some of the formatting is weird; I composed most of this in Dreamweaver and copy/pasting the code can do funny things.

Comments

[/delurk]

[flamingbentley.livejournal.com]

You have just summed up how I feel about fantasy better than I have ever managed to express it myself.

And you like Thursday Next.

This is me in awe. It takes a lot to get me in a state of awe, so that's pretty damn impressive. (Funnily enough, it doesn't take that much to get me to aww, which, while being admittedly different, is similar enough to give a passing mention to.)

Tealin: you rock. If I didn't want to grow up to be me, I'd say I wanted to grow up to be just like you. :D

[james-padfoot.livejournal.com]

I love Harry Potter. Obsessed with it. But I agree (slightly) that its lifting off over realism.. Just like how Jo explained with Voldie's 2-d character (because of horcruxes), I would hope she clashes both in the 7 book.

In any case, add ERAGON and ELDEST (part of the Inheritance Trilogy) to your DISLIKE category. It's plaigrized crap. And the Dragon's are born with wisdom. And the riders (Eragon in particular) becomes a Sue. Need I say more?

[azvolrien.livejournal.com]

I still think you should read the Temeraire books.

[inkblot-fiend.livejournal.com]

The ending of the Dark is Rising Sequence really, really annoyed me. I wasn't overly keen on the whole series, but the end of the last book just ruined any goodness that had gone before.

And if you haven't already, read Elidor by Alan Garner.

[stonelizard.livejournal.com]

What are your thoughts on His Dark Materials? Now there is a hard trilogy to categorise... I for one loved them till the actual ending when it went a little bit too insane ( I hear they are planning on changing the ending for the films, thank goodness)

You have certainly given me some ideas for new books to try. I have found fantasy to become rather tiring and repetative over the past few years. This comes from someone who owns all the Anne McCaffrey books (sorry!) Though I have to say, I have been re-reading them recently and they really don't hold my attention like they had when I first read them as a child... and yes, they are impossible to read if you start midway through!

One of my favourite authors is William Horwood - if you are a fan of watership down esk books, you should like him too but his writing is very unusual and takes a while to get into... not a light, easy read and I often reach for his books then swing for something else as they are very epic. Well worth reading once though, in particular, Stonor Eagles.

[pyri-prongs.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything, even things like Hobbit criticism etc is completely justified and true, though it didn't bug me as much.
I think I didn't mind Bilbo as a character because he's very sweet and boring (well, most Hobbits are sweet and boring). I mean, at least he wasn't an elf: I can't imagine ANY series working if it's from the viewpoint from an elf, that would be terrible.

I love the Fellowship film exactly because it's main focus is their friendships etc. Two Towers is my least favourite film just because it's main feature is huuuuuuge epic battle scenes. Return of the King tries to fit in both, nearly pulls it off, but there's just too many battles which are given too much screen time. The books handle this MUCH better ^_^

It's really sad when books sort of float away from what made them great at the beginning: Harry Potter is the best example but, as well as being too young for me, Redwall has made a huge shift from what it used to be as well >:P

One of my most hated fantasies is the Wind on Fire trilogy: it's horrifyingly bleak and harsh and apocalyptic. It just left me feeling cold, blerg! It doesn't have dragons in, to its credit (it does have zombie thingies and an apocalypse and destined twins with a psychic link and an exodus to a promised land!). It should've stopped with the first book really 'cause that stands quite well as a disturbing children's fantasy, but to stretch it out to a trilogy is sadistic X(

/rant :D

[linda-lupos.livejournal.com]

Wow, you looked into my mind. ;)

I like Harry Potter and Discworld exactly for the reasons you gave: it makes real life just that bit more interesting. It's fun to be in London and walk into King's Cross and 'trace Harry's steps'.

And I completely squealed (well, pretty much) when I read that bit in The Art of Discworld (was it..?) where PTerry explains that he made sure that Ankh-Morpork worked, that he was aware that a city of that size needed so many of this and this many of that for all the people to be fed... My favourite books are actually set in A-M and I love reading about the every-day life. Which book was it that Vimes reflects that Vetinari was pulling of an awfully complicated job because he had to keep track of everything that went on and everything that came into the city and out of it again? (I think it was The Fifth Elephant, but now I'm not sure and I hate that...) I just really like bits like that.

That doesn't really stop me liking the more fantasy kind of fantasy books (Lord of the Rings for example) but I read those books when I'm in the mood for some 'otherworldlyness' and not for... a book that makes sense.
If that makes sense. ;)



(I'm curious as to the Snicket post!)

Delurking . . .

[(Anonymous)]

. . . long enough to ask, have you read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell? And if so, how did you like it? It has that "real world with strange extra layers" aspect.

MA

[ari-enchanted.livejournal.com]

Being an avid LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia (although I didn't like it so much when I was a child, or as it is also known, the target audience) fan, I disagree with a lot of what you said, but I have to say that nothing puts hate into my heart like Random Capitalization and its ilk. Magic crystals and telepathic links and prophecies and princesses just make me want to hurl. For the most part, anyway; I do love The Dark Crystal, but that's probably because of the Brian Froud-iness. I also hate those fantasy books where it's Joe the ordinary citizen SUDDENLY TRANSPORTED TO A CA-RAAAZY WORLD OF FANTASY!!! Where he undoubtedly fufills a prophecy by finding the magic Crystal and saving the princess from a Dark Lord. The only contemporary fantasy book (of that sort) that I can think of that doesn't make me see red is Green Rider and the sequel. That at least has interesting and compelling characters. Also, I started reading them when I was 13 and impressionable, so that may have something to do with it.

Anyway, good call on the Magic Crystal of Magic fantasy genre.

[cambryn.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't agree with your entire list, but I do very much agree that the later books of the Redwall series are lacking in something. Personally I think they're are pumped out without much feeling anywore, and Jaques should just stop.

As for Fantasy books in general... They haven't ever appealed to me very much. I'm more about character development and cleverness than I am about flash and bang, and I find that many fantasy books/novels tend to take themselves too seriously, have 2-d characters without much personality, and are more based around that 'wacky' sort of reality.

I am still an avid fan of Harry Potter, and the 5th book is my favourite, but I understand what you mean about being a bit out there. Like in GoF, when Harry HAD to compete in the tourney... I didn't see why he had to, or why Dumbledore was so clueless. I agree that Voldemort is very 2-d. I thought he'd have an actual reason for being such a monster, versus just being an orphan who randomly decided he liked to instill fear in people. I don't agree that the later books have lost anything in character development (excepting Hagrid who is the same he was in book 1, and the cute has rubbed off) and enjoy how you can see how they all have changed over the years, both personality wise, and their own points of view.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've read it, and I liked it ... I actually posted on it, uh, about a year ago? I didn't put it on my 'like' list because I can't imagine re-reading it as many times as I've re-read those other books (more because of the characters than anything else) but it was good.

[the-andorran.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd never meet someone else who didn't like both the Chronicles of Narnia and the Hobbit. I really enjoyed reading your thoughts.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

8|

Wow. I don't think I have ever been so highly praised. THANK YOU! I will look back on this when I'm feeling down. :)

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Eragon trailer reminded me suspiciously of Dragons: Fire and Ice in that every-cliche-under-the-sun way. Blar. At least that has the excuse that it was written by a 14-year-old homeschooled Idahoan, so it couldn't really draw upon a long life's experience and perspective, just on other books he might have read.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I agree (somewhat) on the ending ... the last couple books were a little too weird for me, but I like how The Dark Is Rising mucks around with Christmas and has made me enjoy aspects of it even more.

[dawncrow.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree with what you say on the Redwall series...I adored those books as a child, and a couple months ago I picked up the newest one and read it...it didn't even seem like the same series anymore. I had to double-check and make sure it was still Brian Jacques writing it and not some plaigerist.

The things I hate most about fantasy are the same as what you said, for the most part...although I LOVE dragons, and we'll just have to disagree on that bit, I hate Random Capitalization and Intentional Misspellings, I hate when fantasy authors cop out of explaining things with the excuse "because it's magic and it doesn't have to obey the laws of nature," and more than anything else, I hate 2D characters. I love Harry Potter, but Voldemort has been driving me CRAZY the past couple of books...he seems to be evil just for the sake of being evil, he's got no character depth. I had hoped that in book 6 we would see more of why he acts the way he does...but it was explained away as "because he only has 1/7 of a soul." That was annoying. Really annoying.

For me, antagonists can't just be pure evil. They have to be able to elicit just a little bit of sympathy from the reader. Because I HATE that "evil for its own sake" thing. It makes no sense. No one is evil because they want more evil in the world...they either think that their actions are right and justified based on the circumstances, or in a minority of cases, they're just completely insane. But for some reason, in fantasy, evil can be a wizard who just likes to kill people so he can take over the world, or a giant fiery eye that wants to cover the world in darkness, or a white witch who loves to coat the world in ice and turn fauns to stone, just for kicks and giggles. I like all of those books IN SPITE OF the lack of depth to their villains...I LOVE fantasy novels when their villains aren't so transparent.

I'll have to try some of the series that you suggest...although we disagree on some points, we pretty much agree in principles...this was a well-thought-out entry. thanks!

[bonnieslasher.livejournal.com]

Not much to say except that I agree wholeheartedly. Tend to feel the same way about vampires as you do dragons, despite loving vampires as a concept with a lot of potential. Most books and movies with them just... bleg. But they're brilliant in Discworld.

[wizardelfgirl.livejournal.com]

I confess myself as an avid fantasy fan, as long as the fantasy world is well built up and coherent. THowever, I admit it's not easy to plunge into the fantasy world. You need to be aware that when you enter that world you have to abide by the laws set by the author/creator of the world. These laws cand and will diverge from the actual laws of reality. As you have said, you like the fantasy to abide by the laws of our own reality and, if possible, actually be, let's say, a secondary element of a reality, like in Discworld (I haven't read the books though, so I'm working with what I've learned from you). Discworld behaves like a real world, with only the added element of having wizards and such, end even they still have the everyday problems of normal humang beings. In a world like, dunno, Narnia for example, everything is tied to the magic laws C.S. Lewis stated, the laws of Aslan I suppose.
About Harry Potter, I actually think the later books are more tied up with the real world than it seems. Because they feature the same kind of problems our world is going through right now: intolerance, war, prejudice, racism. Yet I admit that the fact that Harry is gaining more "wizardly" power is gaining prominence and therefore the fantasy part of the book has become the primary story and the war and stuff are more of a background. But in a way, this had to happen at some point. The boy is a wizard after all, so the story had to become more magical sometime.

[ravenclaw-eric.livejournal.com]

My own problem with _The Hobbit_ is that a lot of it is written in a rather cutesy, twee style, as though the author is talking to children. And all of Tolkien's works betray that the Kindly Old Professor was _no_ world-builder---in the scene in _Fellowship of the Rings_ when the Fellowship was down in Moria, being surrounded by zillions of orcs, I kept wondering what all those orcs _ate_ most of the time.

One light fantasist that I like is L. Sprague de Camp, particularly his "Reluctant King" and "Incorporated Knight" stories. Unlike a lot of fantasists, he was a Real Live Historian and a heckuva worldbuilder. Dragons do make an appearance---but the knight in one story that kills one is promptly arrested, for violating the local game laws and weapons laws! *Ooops!* In general, his worlds feel like real places.

Another fantasy writer whose world feels real (mostly) is George RR Martin, writer of _A Song of Ice and Fire._ For the most part, it's more like a realistic historical set in the Middle Ages---magic exists, but is mainly in the background, and dragons play a part in one subplot, but are not center stage. (And the Dany subplot is the one that leaves me coldest, although I am aware that I am in a minority on this point.) Unlike _The Lord of the Rings,_ Martin's cities feel like real cities, his characters do all the things that real people do, including the things that we mustn't mention, and there are no elves, dwarves or hobbits. To be fair to Tolkien, though, he could never get past his upbringing as a Victorian Englishman, or his religious beliefs---L. Sprague de Camp said, after an evening spent talking with Tolkien, that he thought that Middle-Earth didn't have religions was because Tolkien, as a very convinced Catholic, just couldn't get himself to write that in, even though equivalent societies would have religion in evidence.

If you like Pratchett, give Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser" stories a try. Like Ankh-Morpork, his city of Lankhmar _works._ And there are almost no dragons.

[aysquid.livejournal.com]

I agree with just about everything you said; if you're going to write fantasy, it better be set in a real, believable, and interesting world.

And on that note, have you ever read anything by Diana Wynne Jones? Her stuff has all kinds of magic and demons and fantastic animals and things, but it's all so rational and matter-of-fact that it's easy to forget you're reading fantasy. The characters are always exceptionally human, no matter what species they are, the dialogue is beautifully natural (one of my biggest issues with books/movies/anything), and the writing is just generally witty.

I'd suggest The Dark Lord of Derkholm first, because it deals with the toll pretend!fantasy takes on real!fantasy and ties in well with this entry, and also just because it's one of my favorites. :)

[fryingpanofdoom.livejournal.com]

I love any author who bothers to explain magic instead of saying, "It's magic...no explanation." There was one series that I thought was neat because it did the opposite--Rosemary Kirstein's series. Everyone in the world accepts magic as part of their lives--but what they call "magic," readers recognize as "technology." It's a neat concept, because the narrator never makes the connection. The characters interact with a protection spell that reacts when a box is opened. They think no more about it, but the readers can put two and two together and call it electricity. There are dragons--or at least what they call dragons--but we would call them robots.
It's an interesting concept because it brings to the front that magic is, innately, something that is not understood. Once it is understood, does it cease to be magic?

[martes.livejournal.com]

I couldn't bring myself to actually buy Eragon, but i did read peices of it while waiting in a store, and it is horrificly bad writing. Every crappy writing cliche' that beginers are told not to do, he does. And I heard the second book is even worse.

[martes.livejournal.com]

I've read almost all of Horwood's books. I'd say to read the first Duncton trilogy, Callanish and the Stonor Eagles. The Wolves of Time should be avoided because it was not the planned trilogy, but some wierd mutation that condensed book 2 and 3 together, and is incredibly frustrating to read.

For Watership Down type books the best ones out there are the Garry Kilworth books-- Hunter's Moon (foxes), Midnight's Sun (Wolves), Frost Dancers (hares) and House of Tribes (mice).

I read the first half dozen or so Redwall books, but got so disgusted at the predictable plots and absolute good/evil along species lines I stopped reading them.

I have a very extensive list of animal fiction on my site:
http://www.rozgibson.com/animalbooks/index.htm
That includes a section on "Watership Down" type talking animal books. I can almost guarentee that there's some books listed there you've never read or heard of.

Subject

[(Anonymous)]

ARGH!! I didn't see any of those problems with Harry Potter before, but now that I read this I actually do. I disagree with most of what you said about the Hobbit, but I can see where you're coming from on all the other books, and I agree with you. You have amazing persuasion skills. :)

[magicnme.livejournal.com]

Yay! Now I can totally rip off your explaination to explain to my friends why I hates The Hobbit and wince at Bilbo.

In agreement on PTerry, too. Satiring fantasy cliches while adding in some real heavy statements about our world IS the way to go. I think my clincher for taking Discworld as a serious series happened somewhere near the end of Jingo with a certain morbidly ironic passage with Vimes' organizer (Trying not to spoil for those of you who haven't read, but keryeesh, I remember reading that bit, taking a step back and going something like 'holy-frikin-woah')

I...think I disagree with you on Rowling, though. While her early stuff definitely rings in the style of Dahl (My first impression, upon reading the first couple of chaps of SS/PS, was that I was in the middle of a quasi retelling of Matilda with a boy) I'm...not sure its the addition of high fantasy elements that is detrimental to the later series. I don't mind slipping out of the muggle world perspective as it progresses, and while I understand it's very difficult to say a book like HBP has the same 'charm' as the earlier ones...eh, I think it's more of the change in tone and writing style that doesn't sit well with people, not necessarily the use of more fantastical elements.