What do you like and dislike about Fantasy?

gnombient said:

Another peeve about fantasy... I don't like how most fantasy stories these days revolve around "saving the world" in one way or another-- defeating the evil _____, retrieving/destroying the dangerous artifact, fulfilling the prophecy, etc. Of course, this is done by the unlikely hero (who is recruited by the kindly Mysterious Stranger) and his loyal (but diverse) band of companions.

I long for the return of the likes of Conan, Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, Nifft the Lean, et al. Why did they adventure? Often they had things stolen from them, had geases or other enchantments placed upon them by sorcerous types, were blackmailed by gods, or were hard up for some loot to replace that which they had just squandered; good old fashioned revenge was often a factor too...

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Alarum said:

Hate to say this, because people will get mad at me, but blame Tolkein. Tolkien was the one who started the 'unlikely hero saves the world' genre, and a generation or two of writers have been brought up sucking on that teat. It gets old, very quickly.

Anyway, if you like that sort of novel, Simon R. Green's Hawk and Fisher series is pretty much worth checking out. It's a pretty interesting bunch of novels. Green's novels always start out over the top and get wierder as they go on, so you have to enjoy a pretty madcap pacing, but they're great fun (I personally like the Deathstalker series better, but technically it's not fantasy, and it's pretty much save the universe). The heroes are always pretty properly heroic - there's no everyman heroes in his worlds, and they always have an extra ace (or sometimes deck of cards) up their sleeve. Of course their enemies are properly powerful too, so it gets confusing.

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Mr_Hursh said:

I know what the world needs - Fantasy CSI.

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Nienor said:

But Tolkien made it work.
I do wish people would stop leeching of lotr though. ...

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Mr_Hursh said:

I know what the world needs - Fantasy CSI.

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gnombient said:

Tolkien made it work, sure. He also made noble, forest-lovin' elves and grumpy, bearded, axe-wielding dwarves work. Heck, he made them work so well that at this point, I'm so sick of how common those tropes have become that I'm even sick of (gasp!) Tolkien's Middle-Earth as well.



I could see something like that being parodied in a Discworld novel...

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Mr_Hursh said:

So if people are sick of cliches, and if it is quite difficult to rid fantasy of cliches, would this mean that the Fantasy Genre is going out of style?

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Alarum said:

Nope, it means better fantasy is coming into style. We're finally seeing some really interesting works from teh genre, even some that are philosophical (which fantasy usually avoids like the black plague).

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Lessien said:

Yeah. The only mistakes Eragon made were accidentally cursing Elva and making Arya mad. Like ANY of us can relate to the first one!

Roran was very courageous, going after Katrina like that, and his getting mad at Eragon is totally understandable. He seemed sweet, but kind of headstrong--while not always good, his good traits balance out the bad ones.

I kind of sympathised with Murtagh--his joining the Empire and all. In the first book he was my fave, and now, I still like him. You can relate to his turning to the "Dark Side," and even though he's sort of evil, I can still see a little niceness left

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Lessien said:

I never really made it through Eldest. It seemed really cliched to me, and it seemed like he was just reusing characters and settings from other books like LOTR.

It's like fantasy has become so cliched that no books are original anymore, but unless you use the cliches that have already been beaten to death, then people won't accept it as fantasy.

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Mr_Hursh said:

So if people are sick of cliches, and if it is quite difficult to rid fantasy of cliches, would this mean that the Fantasy Genre is going out of style?

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Tariel said:

It's true...Star Wars and LOTR all mixed into one story...and somehow I got through it all. Maybe it was because I was desperate for something to read on the plane

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LOL!!!

In the second book Roran was easily my fav. character

Ann Murtagh is a close second (if only he had a pronoucable name )

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gnombient said:

I would say that fantasy as a literary genre been in the cycle of coming into and going out of style for at least 30 years. On another level I think it's been given a huge shot in the arm in the last 5+ years or so, what with the rousing successes of Harry Potter and the LOTR movies giving the genre an air of real mainstream credibility.

It's difficult to completely get rid of cliches in any fiction genre, be it fantasy, SF, mystery, romance, western, or whatever. There are certain genre cliches that are simply unavoidable-- Westerns are usually set in a particular historical period and geographic region of the US, there are always crimes of some sort in mystery novels, there's always a love interest in romance, etc.-- but this is not the case with fantasy. Does "high fantasy" have to include "elves" as noble pointy-eared vegetarians who live in the forest? Can it emulate, say, an ancient Roman or Mayan civilization instead of medieval Europe? Sure it can, but most of the time it doesn't. Fantasy is the most open-ended of genres, limited only by the author's imagination-- more so than SF even, because no "real world" social, historical or scientific extrapolation is required. Given the collective intellectual laziness on the part of most mainstream fantasy writers in their lassez-faire recycling of Tolkienian cliches, I would say that the fantasy genre deserves to go out of style.

Is it that "medieval fantasy sells, weird stuff doesn't?" I guess some people prefer the comfortable vanilla familiarity of the Tolkienian "high fantasy" world to wrestling with the learning curve of a more exotic setting; they see the same garden-variety elves, wizards, and dragons they loved in Tolkien's books, the same quasi-medieval-European setting, and they're off to the races. More power to them, I guess, but I'll take my vacations elsewhere.
[/rant]

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Nienor said:

My two favorite fantasy series at the moment are far from the cliches...George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is just amazing and works with a minimum of magic, which is something I enjoy, no one magically escapes.
The other is CS Friedman's Cold Fire Trilogy. One of the main characters who is forced to fight is one of the most hated villains. His relationship with the other main character is great. I love the whole series

On the other hand, I cannot stand Wheel of Time, Sword of Truth or Shannara.

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Alarum said:

There's someone else who has read the Coldfire Trilogy? Oh man! We're so rare!

Those books come highly recommended, for anyone who hasn't read them. They are very, very good.

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Nienor said:

I'm just a surprised to find another person who has read them I also highly recommend them

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Tariel said:

runs and writes down name...gotta go get them

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Lessien said:

lol. I was desperate for something to read at camp, but I figured I could do better than Eldest. I just skipped ahead to the end and read all the chapters that looked important so I could discuss it with my friends who seem to think Paolini is the next Tolkien. Maybe it's because he copied everything Tolkien did, then mixed it with a little Star Wars?

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Lessien said:

YES! FINALLY! Someone who doesn't think Eragon was the best character since Frodo Baggins!

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