avocadia

# Is this fantasy novel shit?

I see stretching behind me a vast wasteland, devoid of life, featureless. A fantasy writer would have an inventive name for this empty terrain – the Vun Wastes, or something with diacritics. I, on the other hand, have a much simpler and descriptive name for it. I call it “All the fantasy fiction I have read”.
It has come to this – I almost can’t even face the fantasy fiction I do like. That dwindling list of authors whose fantasy work I can tolerate is becoming tarnished by the percentagers. The percentagers? Imagine, if you will, all those ex-fantasy role players, all those goatee wearing sophisticates in inner city cafes with aspirations to write and the guilty secret of preferring swords over depth. Some of those people will actually do it, they will sit at they keyboard and churn out some thousand page block of text. Then they shop it around, and some publishing company, playing the percentages will buy it, and publish it. Why? Because fantasy is cheap. There’s hundreds of thousands of those ex-fantasy role players out there, and if even just a tenth of a percent manage to write that book that they just know is a killer, well that’s a shitload of manuscripts to pick and choose from.
So, I have a theory. A theory that enables me to identify fantasy novels that I won’t be able to read past page fifty due to the droning bullshit contained within their covers. No, it isn’t “Is the book on the SF&F shelves”.
Is there a map? Maps are a message to you, the reader, from the author. You know what that message is? It says “I am so motherfucking impressed with my worldbuilding skills. I am the shit”. No. Stop. Take away that definite article, it doesn’t belong. Everyone thinks they are Tolkien these days. They draw their maps, they pencil in back histories replete with kings and wars and creation stories and somewhere along the way they forget that the most vital component of the story is the fucking story. A map does not paper over the fact that your novel takes 200 pages to zip up its pants after pissing its back-story-telling prologue all over me.
An explained magic system? Authors explain magic systems because they want to show you just how much they’ve thought over their world, how much mulling and the sleepless nights lost to working out exactly how one turns into a wolf. You know what? I don’t fucking care. While you were telling me the finer details of elemental flows and such, Elric was sacking Immyr. Explaining magic systems is like dissecting frogs; sure, I understand how it works, but it’s dead now. You made it mundane. Boring.
Druids? It is real simple. If a book has druids in it, it’s gone. I once picked up a book, read the blurb on the back and the first word that I parsed as I skimmed was “druid” and I felt my soul scream out in agony. Druids say “I have no imagination”. Same with dwarves, hobbits, dragons and rangers. No matter how much time you spend trying to attach un-misleading twists to them, you cannot cover up that the peak of your imagination was when explaining to the DM that you really did roll 18/00 but you don’t know how the dice got bumped off the table like that.
Royal protaganist? Fuck it. Over them. Boy kings, princes cruelly denied their birthright, lost-lost heirs, princes nobly suffering slings and arrows for Duty. Oh god, you have to be fucking kidding me. Look, if you are secretly writing a book, let me clue you in on a litte secret, a closely held truth that nobody knows but the publishing industry and myself. It’s been done. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It’s like that song you fell in love with when you were thirteen so you played it non-stop, rewinding the tape and playing it again. You remember what happened three days later? Meh.
Heavy Metal umlauts? Funny names? What can I say? Just once I want to read a fantasy book where the main character is Frank. Eileen. Ted. Jeff. Jane.
Trilogy? Pentalogy? Seriously, if you can’t tell a self-contained story in 300 pages, than you need to stop describing what clothes the characters are wearing. Stop clearing your throat and tell the fucking story. Homer may have needed twenty-four books to tell a story, but you’re not Homer.
Macho characters? Today I read the following lines as a character mused about how his life might have been better if only.
He would have broken enemy after enemy with the might of his hand. But in his accursed life, all he could do was skulk about with other womanish men and gossip.
Forget it. That probably would have impressed me when I was ten. Nowadays I have pubic hair and feel secure in my manhood, so I read that and hope the character dies really soon. Because it isn’t a character, it is a collection of words describing a shadow.
In case the point didn’t sink in despite me battering you over the head with it several times, allow me to give you an example that satisfies all my definitions of shit, yet is my favourite fantasy author. Robin Hobb has maps. She spends time explaining magic, however briefly. She has dragons. Royal protaganists, funny names, and three trilogies, with a new one just started. But she has a story.
Oh yeah, I nearly forget the number one sign that a fantasy book is shit. Is there a character named Drizzt?
- gilmae
- 08/03/2006
- # Re: Is this fantasy novel shit?
  
  Hehe. I bet you think I'm about to quietly suggest that you're being overly cybical and that there are some good fantasy writers out there.
  
  Well, you're wrong. Mostly. I still read Jennifer Fallon and I'll buy the next JV Jones. Other than that I've gone off fantsy. I'm reading more non-fiction these days- the last book I bought was Guns, Germs & Steel and actually managed some approving comments and glances from of the other scientists at the conference I was attending at the time. You think they'd have done the same if I'd been reading some sword & sorcery tome with a lurid, fancifully dressed boy on the cover?
  - Jehanneton
  - 08/03/2006
  - # Re: Is this fantasy novel shit?
    
    Dear me, don't I sound up myself?
    - Jehanneton
    - 08/03/2006
  - # I just finished Collapse
    
    You should do a write up of Guns, Germs and Steel for southsearepublic.org, it doesnt matter if you just pull a quote and put a paragraph around it, or if you do a 2000 word essay. Anything is fine. The more the better.
    
    I have the Wealth and Poverty of Nations around here. I have been meaning to compare it to Guns, Germs and Steel to see how they extrapolate intrinsic aspects of the environment giving societies and technology a leg up.
    - Cameron Riley
    - 08/03/2006
    - # My review of Guns, Germs and Steel
      
      Play Age of Empires. It is a simulation of the central premise of the book – "Have food will advance"
      - gilmae
      - 09/03/2006
      - # My review of War and Peace and War
        
        Play Civ4 – survive the barbarians and suddenly you have this huge military that has numerous upgrades. Can't just disband them, so a use has to be found for them….. oh noes …
        
        http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4077
        
        Cameron Riley
        
        09/03/2006
        
        # Re: My review of War and Peace and War
        
        I forgot to check back in on that thread. Mostly because of the way Online Opinion suppresses debate with their restrictions. You certainly did get a lot of (deliberate?) obtuseness.
        
        gilmae
        
        09/03/2006
        
        # Hardly worth replying when it gets comments
        
        like that. Online Opinion accepted an article of mine on the Middle East suffering due to demographics. It was based off the SSR article on the same point. I am sure that will get the clash of culture people howling when it is published.
        
        Sadly, the most popular articles in terms of comments are trolls that contain a flamewar inside them.
        
        Cameron Riley
        
        10/03/2006
- # What rants are
  
  Those who can, do. Those who can’t, rant. And those who wank do both.
  - gilmae
  - 09/03/2006
- # Re: Is this fantasy novel shit?
  
  Some valid points. On topic, it always used to annoy me that some authors would have a large group of adventures and split the party at first chance in order to lengthen the book as all their minor trials are explained in detail. I'm looking at you Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan – especially you Robert Jordan!
  
  By the way – if you have not read this webcomic then your days are about to get eaten away. Order of the Stick: http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=1
  - Dean
  - 10/03/2006
  - # Re: Is this fantasy novel shit?
    
    Again, not me. He raises a good point though. I think Terry Brooks does the group seperation with more class though.
    - Wolf
    - 10/03/2006