Fantasy: 1977-1989

Last post I asked several questions regarding Tom Simon's five-part essay on the impact of 1977's epic fantasy publications on the genre as a whole. I will hesitate to dive right into a discussion of whether current epic fantasy is locked into the sludge-pit that Tom Simon laments (yes, I'm being hyperbolic, but that is on purpose). First, I want to discuss the decade following the release of The Sword of Shannara and The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever from the perspective of the fantasy that was being produced at the time. And to do that, I have to discuss the impact Tolkien had on post-1977 fantasy.

Tolkien invented a few tropes. He also took some from Germano-Norse myth, Finnish myth, and medieval cycles (the Matter of Britain), whether consciously or unconsciously, and canonized them as part of the late-twentieth century epic fantasy genre. Some of these are:

• The pastoral, bucolic countryman drawn into events beyond his initial ken.
• The reluctant king in disguise or exile (or perhaps his kingdom is fallen).
• The wise, sagelike wizard guide.
• Dark lords, evil gods, or some other source of world-threatening power.
• Ancient races (elves, dwarves, etc.) that predate humans and live a fey-like existence quite removed from the mundane realities of humankind.
• Epic battles and wars.
• A journey into darkness.
• Evil lands or kingdoms.
• The chivalric ideal.
• Orcs, goblins, or some other sort of twisted creature that follows the dark lord/god.
• Gigantic, formidable monsters.
• Demonic, ghostly, or otherwise terrifying agents of the dark lord.
• Copious worldbuilding, history, backstory, languages, and myth.
• Infodump chapters where the peasant/country bumpkin hero is described the history and backstory.

All of these are present in works derivative of Tolkien. Indeed, many might suggest that they're unavoidable in the modern fantasy genre. Perhaps this is true. But let's take a look at the development of fantasy throughout the 1980s and pinpoint where and how Tolkien is imitated and how this continued to effect fantasy's development.

1982
Let me jump forward from 1977 to 1982. It was not only a watershed year for fantasy and science-fiction in cinema, but also in print. The epic fantasy genre saw the fifth installment of Stephen R. Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books, The One Tree. Terry Brooks published his followup to The Sword of Shannara, entitled The Elfstones of Shannara. Raymond E. Feist's Magician and David Eddings' The Belgariad also hit shelves that year.

Stephen R. Donaldson
In my previous post, I respond to Tom Simon's exhaustive write-up on Donaldson's work, so I'll refrain from repeating what's already been said.

Terry Brooks
As for The Elfstones of Shannara, it's been a very long time since I read the novel and cannot really comment much on the prose, the characterizations, or the plot inconsistencies. I do have the impression, however, that it was, in some ways, superior to The Sword of Shannara. The plot was not quite nearly so derivative as it's predecessor, much more tightly focused on the Westland and the Elves' struggle against the chaotic demons. I also recall it being much more focused on the main character's internal struggles and their outward manifestation via his difficulties with wielding the Elfstones. There isn't much more I can say. It seems to have been a step in the correct direction, but likely suffered from many of the same issues that its predecessor did. I recall the ending to be quite unsatisfying, especially the resolution and the return to status quo as having been weak.

Brooks' 1985 follow-up, The Wishsong of Shannara, was a return to form--a novel that recycled much of the plot of The Sword of Shannara with a few new characters (the Weapon Master, Cogline) and a great many reincarnations (Nazgul = Skull Bearers = Mord Wraiths, Jair = Flick, Morgan Leah = Menion Leah = Strider/Aragorn, Kimber Boh = Shirl Ravenlock = Arwen, etc.). The work is painfully self-referential and self-derivative, wholly lacking in originality to such a degree as to be some sort of postmodern pastiche or lampoon of itself.

David Eddings
David Eddings inaugurated an epic fantasy cycle for which he would (along with his wife) produce novels until his death. Pawn of Prophecy, another del Rey publication, was very much a Tolkienesque fantasy with a great many of the aforementioned tropes. Herb, from Places to Go, People to Be, found that Tolkien's influence was much more limited on Eddings than on Brooks. In his review of The Belgariad, he states:

You've read it a dozen times. It was old even before Eddings wrote it and has become downright cliche since he did. Yet he was able to fashion a very good novel with only a handful of flaws, mostly of language and slight omission, especially in the last book.

What then makes Eddings in my mind the epitome of the 80s fantasy quest to save the world and an huge influence on those who took up D&D at the time it was published. In my mind there are two main influences he brought to bear on fantasy RPGs: a literary realism and a knowledge of pre-Tolkein influences which imparted a fairly formalized structure.

..Eddings admires Tolkien but has knowledge of the same sources that Tolkien drew on and was influenced by them as well. ... The result was a kind of formalism that later fantasy literature would imitate. This shows most directly in two ways. First, each and every country on his map is visited. In fact, he uses this fact to structure the books into segments that, with two exceptions, carry the name of someplace on the map. The second is the usage of character archetypes. Instead of the fighter, magic-user, cleric, etc that D&D players know he used types more familiar to mainstream and medieval literature: "the wise man", "the knight protector", "the princess", and "the questing knight".

He goes on to describe the character archetypes throughout The Belgariad, implying that they draw far more from the likes of Chaucer and the Matter of Britain than from Tolkien. Herb states, "Eddings proved that quest fantasy that didn't slavishly imitate Tolkien could be successful without being weird or edgy like Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant." Herb is mostly focused on Eddings as an influence on role-playing games but from a fantasy aspect, he has a point. Perhaps The Belgariad wasn't purely Tolkienesque imitation, but it certainly didn't deviate from the established norms and cliches in any inspired manner. I do not think it very coincidental that he found a publication outlet with the del Reys. Although Eddings draws from pre-Tolkien sources, the end result is so similar that it might as well be imitation. It also should not be lost on the reader that, like so many other fantasy authors, Eddings continued to work in the world of The Belgariad right up until his passing.

Raymond E. Feist
Similarly, Raymond E. Feist's Magician (so large it was divided into two volumes in the United States) birthed a sequence of novels from which the author has yet to move (with the exception of Faerie Tale). The initial Riftwar Saga takes only a few cues from Tolkien. Indeed, Feist appears to only have approached Tolkien indirectly through role-playing games, since his novels tell only the backstory of the Midkemia of his gaming table (I will discuss the impact of gaming on fantasy in more detail later). Many of the Tolkienesque tropes listed above are either not present or subtly subverted. As a result, The Riftwar Saga only held a limited appeal for fantasists who preferred the quest perilous. Feist's own inspirations are much more obviously drawn from the pre-1977 sword & sorcery genre. Echoes of Moorcock and Zelazny can be heard throughout the series, with only a passing nod to Tolkien in the elven-language-derived terms "Moredhel" (i.e. Dark Elves) and "Valheru" (i.e. mighty lords), the dwarven Mac Mordain Cadall (Moria), and Elvandar (Lorien). Feist combined a variety of inspirational elements from more than simply Tolkien, combined them with a completely unique story of a war between two massive kingdoms from different worlds, linked only by the magic of rifts through space-time. There's gimmick there, the sort that fueled mid-twentieth-century science-fiction but it's propped up by a definite sense of adventure and discovery. There's real drama and tension throughout the novels. Feist makes political intrigue a major factor in his novels, as well as having characters that grow and change. Humans are human--capable both of good and evil, flawed and conflicted at times, at other times determined. The Riftwar Saga demonstrated a keen, fertile imagination determined to tell a damn good story.

Feist's work has gradually degenerated in quality (most critical reactions to his works from The Serpentwar Saga on have been rather dismal), but that does not diminish the uniqueness of his The Riftwar Saga. Unfortunately, he never seemed to acquire the notoriety and acclaim that Brooks, Eddings, or even Donaldson have. He's rarely blogged about on the most noteworthy fantasy literature blogs, even in retrospect.

1984
Two years after Eddings and Feist debuted, three other series appeared on fantasy bookshelves: Glen Cook's The Black Company, Dennis McKiernan's The Dark Tide, and Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman's Dragons of Autumn Twilight were the first novels in their respective series. Cook's novel was quite unlike anything else post-Tolkien and displayed precious few of the tropes that are listed above. Meanwhile, Weis & Hickman had fused the Tolkienesque heroic quest with the mechanics and stylistic trappings of post-Gygaxian "Silver Age" role-playing.

Glen Cook
Regarding The Black Company, I've written my own review and analysis here. Thus, I'll turn to Dennis L. McKiernan and Weis & Hickman.

Dennis L. McKiernan
The inaugural volume of The Iron Tower Trilogy, McKiernan's The Dark Tide is even more than The Sword of Shannara a copy of The Lord of the Rings "with the serial numbers filed off." Brian Murphy wrote a post for Black Gate Magazine, describing his "guilty pleasure" in reading what really amounts to little more than Tolkien pastiche.

Murphy's own words are more effective than mine:

One problem is that they [McKiernan and Brooks] borrow surface elements wholesale from Tolkien and repeat them ad nauseum until Elves and Hobbits (or Warrows, or whatever you want to call the little people they inevitably employ) become clichéd and galling. The deeper problem is that they’re imitations of style, not substance, and don’t engage in any of Tolkien’s underlying ideas. The result is a pretty vapid product. They strip LOTR of its literary qualities and reduce it to “mixed band of unlikely heroes on a quest to save the world” without any anchors to the human condition, mythology, or applicability to real world events.

... Even if today it now reads like a soap-opera version of LOTR with little of the poetry, and none of the depth or mythic grandeur. But with a bit more swordplay.

Not much more remains to be said. In McKiernan's defense, The Iron Tower was originally meant to be a tale of the fall of Arnor, set a few thousand years prior to The Lord of the Rings. When the Tolkien estate denied McKiernan the rights to publish a prequel, he simply redrew the map at the front of the book, changed all the characters' names, and retooled it into an "original" fantasy work.

This doesn't really help McKiernan's case, though. As Simon discussed with his segment on The Silmarillion, there's ample opportunity to explore the mythopoeic world of Middle-earth. His favorable review of The Children of Húrin and emphasis on the darker aspects of the human soul prove that great literature can be written from the annals of Middle-earth without being overly self-derivative and still preserve the mythopoeic flavor of Tolkien's prose and setting. Whether it is Tolkien pastiche or prequel, The Iron Tower trilogy does none of that.

Weis & Hickman
Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, and Dragons of Spring Dawning, all published within a few months of each other in 1984, are derived from a series of gaming modules designed for Dungeons & Dragons. The aim of the modules were unprecedented in the gaming world: to take a party of characters and insert them into a Tolkienesque quest of epic proportions, each one featuring one type of dragon found in the D&D Monster Manual. The characters are derived from the standard D&D adventuring party, with a few unique features and races (such as the kender, the setting's answer to the halfling) thrown in. The resulting Dragonlance Chronicles were a fast, fun read, but also an extremely puzzling one. Page limitations resulted in several modules being glossed over and left out since they didn't advance the main plot very much. Those that did advance plot but still weren't featured in the narrative appear piecemeal through flashbacks or as after-action-reports info-dumped by characters at council meetings. As with Brooks, the resonance and substance of Tolkien's work was largely absent from The Dragonlance Chronicles. It was so busy trying to marry the railroad D&D module with the perilous quest that it never really moved beyond being just another epic fantasy.

The Dragonlance Chronicles were incredibly popular, but their impact was highly limited. They're also an incredibly curious artifact, since they invite an entirely new discussion of the impact of D&D on mainstream fantasy and vice-versa (see James Maleszewski's post on Grognardia regarding the impact of the "Hickman Revolution" on D&D). To say that the plethora of novels published by TSR (and continued by Wizards of the Coast) do not have any relationship with mainstream fantasy would be erroneous, but it isn't for this post to posit on the exact extent of that relationship. Suffice it to say that The Dragonlance Chronicles are a thematic copycat of The Lord of the Rings, despite the massive amount of non-Tolkienesque D&D elements thrown in. The adherence to a cycle of gaming modules (and extremely railroady modules at that) weakened the series, but didn't break it. It did, nevertheless, demonstrate a lot of the difficulties Tom Simon isolates in Brooks' work, such as weak characters (some are incredibly well-defined while others, such as Riverwind and Goldmoon, are cardboard plot-pieces or token members of a necessary character-class) with inconsistent or pathetically shallow behavior and an illogical plot structure (mostly due to the necessity of adhering to the modules). Certain characters die meaningful deaths (Sturm Brightblade) while others die utterly pointless deaths that serve little advancement to the plot (Flint Fireforge).

The next year, Weis & Hickman returned with The Dragonlance Legends. While still locked in a D&D gaming world with all the necessary mechanics, Weis & Hickman actually managed to tell a story, complete with meaningful characters, a unique and engaging plot, and moral/ethical dilemmas. Despite a confused and somewhat unsatisfying ending, the series was leaps-and-bounds superior to The Dragonlance Chronicles, both in prose style and in narrative content. This would be again followed-up in 1988 with The Darksword Trilogy, an epic fantasy series unattached to any D&D mechanic. Weis & Hickman played around with some of the fantastic tropes, including an incomplete prophecy that is largely misunderstood, as well as a conflict between science/technology and magic.

1986-1989
Little else occurred during this period except for the continuation of many of the epic series mentioned above. In 1986, David Eddings would begin publication of his sequel to The Belgariad, entitled The Malloreon, which was, by-and-large, a continuation of the previous trilogy, except the characters were older and a new shadowy power must be defeated. In 1989, Del Rey would start releasing Eddings' The Elenium, which was slightly more original and politically motivated but still focused on the destruction of a dark god, relegating the series to a rehashing of The Belgariad and The Malloreon, except with a knight errant as the protagonist instead of the "boy-who-would-be-king." Eddings would become one of the most prolific writers of epic fantasy during the 1980s and also perhaps the most high-profile and influential in solidifying the derivative nature of the epic fantasy genre.

Genre-crossing British author Storm Constantine would begin a dark series known as The Wraeththu Chronicles in 1987. However, her publisher, Immanion Press, was far too weak in the United States for her work to have much of an impact on this side of the Atlantic. Alongside her, Mickey Zucker Reichert would take a page from Donaldson's book, transporting an American soldier in the Vietnam War to a fantasy world where the Norse Gods are real. Although fun, The Bifrost Guardians novels were not noteworthy or influential and were relegated to a single, abridged omnibus volume by the mid-1990s.

Then, in 1988, what appeared to be an ultimately derivative American series was released by Tad Williams. The Dragonbone Chair, on the surface, appeared to be little more than the Matter of Britain combined with The Lord of the Rings. It's full impact on the fantasy genre wouldn't be felt, however, until it was completed (at which point I'll comment further in the next post). But Williams' vision of "adult fantasy" being both challenging and literary as well as complete and self-contained would run up against the giants of Eddings' and Brooks' continuations as well as the new juggernauts, Terry Goodkind and Robert Jordan.

Where do we go from here?
From all this happening in the 1980s, what should we conclude?

Perhaps it is too early to posit. Nevertheless, it seems, on the surface, that Tom Simon was correct. Post-Tolkien fantasy seems to be dominated by the epic quest tale that is heavily derivative of Tolkien himself (or his influences). Authors like Donaldson, Cook, and Feist seem to be hovering just under the radar. Brooks' work becomes a pastiche of itself with The Wishsong of Shannara simply rehashing The Sword of Shannara. McKiernan simply wrote a prequel to The Lord of the Rings using paint-by-numbers without any of the drama, poetry, or substance of Tolkien's writing.

One thing has become abundantly clear--authors are not producing stand-alone works but sagas. Many of these authors would effectively beat their worlds to death. Feist and Brooks are still writing novels that center around their respective settings. Cook wrote a number of books set in his Black Company universe before (thankfully) turning to other subjects. Unfortunately, it seems that the subversive and unique nature of his novels diminished and became more lackluster and derivative as he wrote on.

In addition, these books are becoming doorstops. Tom Simon describes, in his essay Procrustes the Publisher, how page-counts grew as paperback prices started to increase during the late 1970s/early 1980s. Publishers were demanding more fluff. The terse, rapid style of the pre-Tolkien novelist (Zelazny, Moorcock, LeGuin, etc.) was gone--in its place, long descriptions of characters and actions were becoming more common. This would eventually lead to the word-bloat that would plague fantasy during the 1990s (which I'll discuss later).

So far, however, we've a number of examples of writers succeeding where McKiernan and Brooks failed. Eddings was capable of creating halfway decent characters by drawing from medieval romance (as opposed to Tolkien), but the end result was still the same cliched epic quest. I, myself, never got past The Pawn of Prophecy because I could predict where the whole of The Belgariad was going from halfway through the novel, robbing it of any dramatic tension. In addition, as I quoted from Herb above, Eddings (with the help of Brooks) helped to formalize fantasy (such as "each and every country on the map is visited" and "the usage of character archetypes"). This formalization can be useful in structuring novels but in the end turns into a sort of literary crutch that eradicates any distinctiveness individual fantasy books might demonstrate.

Weis & Hickman's first foray was ultimately derivative and uninspired, but that was entirely due to the source material having been railroad gaming modules that were themselves derivative of Tolkien (but stripped of the mythopoeic luster and possessing a heavy reliance on the game's engine). Their later works were stronger and more substantive, displaying a desire to explore the possibilities of fantasy and challenge some of its thematic assumptions. However, Weis & Hickman were largely damned to the "D&D dungeon" for most fantasy fans uninterested in gaming, and like Cook and Feist, ultimately flew under the radar with The Dragonlance Legends and The Darksword Trilogy.

Thus far, the most noteworthy fantasy of the 1980s is, yes, derivative. Everything that was strong but more original was noticed by only a few and had a limited impact on the genre. Subversive stuff was almost completely ignored until later, when popular authors of later decades would reference them. The popular stuff emphasized description and tropes as if they were the secret formula to a great fantasy epic.

What would emerge in the 1990s would appear to submerge fantasy in a morass of doorstop-sized volumes loaded with fluff, dominated by quest-oriented trope tidally-locked to the above-mentioned bullet-points, bereft of the substance and poetry of Tolkien's narrative despite thematic imitation. In combination, fantasy would rely on gimmicks of worldbuilding as a source of originality, but these would, by-and-large, be superficial elements, as the overall stories would progress along the same lines as before. Meanwhile, the likes of Eddings, Brooks, and Feist would continue to hammer out less-and-less inspired novels (with a few exceptional gems here-and-there).

Nevertheless, there was hope in the form of the aforementioned Tad Williams' nascent Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. But I'll discuss this in a later post.

The State of Fantasy in 1977

Four years ago, Tom Simon's site, Bondwine, featured a five-part essay on the state of fantasy in 1977, with special focus on the impact of Tolkien, incorporating the del Reys, a couple newly-released fantasists, and Tolkien's own posthumously-published The Silmarillion. His essay is keenly astute and tightly focused on 1977 and the works that were released in the nascent days of epic fantasy. As one author wrote in an article for Black Gate Magazine's blog, "The man with two R's didn't invent the field, but he dominates it to the extent that we all write in his shadow."

It is a fascinating read. Simon eloquently and effectively dismantles The Sword of Shannara on its own merits (or lack thereof) and not on its "slavish imitation of Tolkien." His analysis on The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is impressively penetrating. It reminds me of John Fultz's own series of posts on Discovering the Unbeliever. Although I've not read Niel Hancock's The Circle of Light, Simon's thorough analysis of its story and shortcomings don't really inspire me to pick it up. Tom Simon finishes with a heavy commentary on why The Silmarillion fails as fantasy fiction.

I've written down my own thoughts on Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara. By-and-large, Tom Simon's thoughts dovetail with my own, especially concerning Lester and Judy-Lynn del Rey. Although I've not really expounded on the impact of the del Rey's on fantasy as a literary genre, I'm very much inclined to agree with Simon that it's been quite negative, overall. Their attitude toward readers was that of a sneering penny-dreadful salesman and little else. Although some of the editing choices they had on Donaldson's work were positive, their motivations were puerile and avaricious, having nothing to do with the conventions of taste and substance.

Simon's analysis of The Silmarillion is incredibly insightful. He analyzes the causes for its failure and why it was eclipsed by The Lord of the Rings. Yet Simon's major flaw is that he overlooks Tolkien's purpose in writing it. I think Simon was acutely aware that The Silmarillion was written as a compilation and synopsis of Tolkien's entire mythos (that is, what parts of it he had finished). As a fantasy novel it fails. As a history book (or perhaps religious account) of a world-that-never-was, The Silmarillion is not nearly so flawed (although it is far from perfect). If one approaches it as though it is such a text, it becomes much more coherent. Simon's approach, though, reflects that the audience was neither looking nor prepared for the kind of work The Silmarillion was.

In the end, Simon doesn't really support the thesis that epic fantasy was a slavish imitation of Tolkien in 1977. He points out one work by Tolkien that was a disappointment to his fans (because they didn't know how to approach it), one highly subversive and challenging fantasy that most certainly is not an imitation (The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), one puzzling and ultimately unsatisfying work that seems to draw more from The Chronicles of Narnia, Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and The Wind in the Willows (The Circle of Light), and one single highly derivative work that cribs Tolkien (The Sword of Shannara).

Does this weaken Simon's argument? Well, what exactly is Simon's argument in the first place?

But in fact all these things were new under the sun in 1977. To anyone whose reading tastes were formed, even in part, by the avalanche of Tolkien imitators of the last thirty years, the fantasy genre of 1976 must be as alien as a lunar landscape. In those days Sword & Sorcery was king, and king of a very small domain. Except in children’s books, fantasy was the weak sister of science fiction, a kind of playground where authors like Sprague de Camp and Poul Anderson went to relax after a serious day’s work of Inventing the Future.

Well, it's apparent that Simon certainly believes that between 1976 and 1978 a very large shift had taken place in the fantasy genre. That the del Reys had something to do with it is undeniable. They pumped out Donaldson and Brooks.

When Simon speaks of The Silmarillion, The Sword of Shannara, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, and The Circle of Light, he says:

I believe that nearly all the genes, so to speak, of the epic fantasy sub-genre are to be found there, and also the chief reasons for the parlous and shabby condition of the field today.

A-ha! For Simon, what is wrong with epic fantasy today is not simply slavish Tolkien-imitation. It is something much more complex and deep. But what are those chief reasons for the shabby condition of the genre?

Simon says that The Sword of Shannara is "a train-wreck of a book," and gives numerous reasons why, but he doesn't isolate the individual "genes" that are consistently ruining the genre, aside from the reader's inference that it is simply imitation combined with "trying to write the worst book one can get away with." Writing a novel where the writer cribs from another, seminal, author isn't enough, as Simon points out a whole slew of plot and characterization issues where simply being The Lord of the Rings "with the serial numbers filed off" is not enough to make a good story with identifiable characters.

Simon's analysis of Thomas Covenant really seems to support the idea that its lack of success in comparison to Shannara and the del Reys' opinion that Shannara was actually superior (an opinion Simon doesn't seem to share) reflect a problem with both editors and readers of epic fantasy. They want Tolkien and they can't really comprehend the complexity of Donaldson's initial trilogy.

When Simon says Hancock's The Circle of Light's release, accompanied by fanfare recommending it to Tolkien fans was "a portent of worse things to come," I'm not exactly what he's talking about, except perhaps the fanfare. Without giving away spoilers, I'll simply say that the climax and resolution of the story is Deus ex machina that renders every single event in the novels as absolutely and utterly pointless. This, coupled with New Age pseudo-Buddhist/pseudo-Christian/synergistic moralizing turns the entire book into a philosophical/metaphysical upchuck. In this regard, Simon seems to be indicating that there is a lack of coherency amongst many fantasy authors in incorporating coherent philosophical systems into their narrative and then moralizing about them.

In regards to The Silmarillion, I think Simon's words speak for themselves:

I do not mean that a lesser writer should try to fill the gaps in The Silmarillion: God forbid. What I mean is that it, rather than the much-abused Lord of the Rings, should provide a standard and a signpost, pointing the way forward for epic fantasy. The Road goes ever on, but few have cared to follow it so far. If we truly honour the work of Tolkien’s heart, we should be out there, blazing trails beyond the last milestone, seeking our way to vistas yet unattained.

In other words, Tolkien had a lot of other stories he wanted to tell, many of them briefly glossed-over in his Silmarillion. He wasn't locked, like L. Frank Baum was to Oz or Piers Anthony is to Xanth, to Hobbits, Mordor, magic rings, and the Shire. He had a very vast world he wished to explore, with thousands of years of history and stories that had yet to be told. He simply let it pile up and pile up, works unfinished.

So, what are we to take from this? What are those chief reasons epic fantasy is in such muddy waters?

To distill from the above, it seems an over-arching adherence to Tolkien as the defining figure of the genre seems to be crippling it. In addition, attempts to break away from his influence often falter with both editors and audiences. Dabbling in the mythologies and philosophies of non-Western cultures can be interesting, but it must also be coherent--when its not you get confused and pointless sagas that go nowhere like Hancock's Circle of Light. Although I skipped over it, writing down to children seems to be a major turn-off (they're often quite capable of reading stuff that doesn't insult their intelligence--indeed, I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings while other kids were reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing).

But is this really the case? Is epic fantasy so locked into a ditch where all of these huge flaws are part-and-parcel of much of fantasy, especially its strongest-selling sagas? Or is Simon writing back to not only 1977, but also 1987 and 1997? Has he missed the past 15 years, with Stephen Erickson, George R. R. Martin, R. Scott Bakker, and Tad Williams?

This I will leave for a follow-up post: is the genre of epic fantasy in such a perilous and shabby condition today as it was in 1977? And if it is, how did it get there in the intervening decades?

Update of the Weekend and Gaming News

Between getting my car on the road and trying to arrange school and moving out of my temporary lodgings with my parents, I've had little time or energy to sit down and blog. This is unfortunate, because I've been sitting for over a month on an overdue analysis of John Keegan's The Face of Battle, as well as a loooong discussion of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man. In addition, I finished Battle Royale and owe a review of that monumental slaughterfest.

I'm re-reading Gardens of the Moon, this time much more critically. I've also picked up a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. They had copies of the British original version (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) in the stores in Korea, but I neglected to pick one up. Now I regret that. I recall comparing the American and British texts in a Kyobo Books and was astounded by how heavily the American version was edited. I'm actually quite disappointed by that--I find the British dialect to be quite charming and a much better fit.

In gaming news, I'm trying to put together a Conan game, but not very confident that it will work out. My cousin seems to only know how to play illiterate barbarians capable of saying little more than "Thock smash!" so I'm not certain he'll last long in a city where wits are just as important as sword-skills in order to survive. My brother is mentally exhausted from his job and doesn't even want to think about rolling up a character. Finally, everybody's schedules are so mixed and muddled that I'm already frustrated and disappointed with how things are developing. I imagine I won't be able to game for a while yet. I will make an attempt at getting things started this weekend, but my hopes are quite low.

Dammit, I want to run something, and I don't much care if I have to wait. But I want to run something.

I've made some headway into my own house-rules for Conan sorcery. I've adapted ley-lines and nexuses from Kevin Siembieda's Palladium system.

LEY LINES

Near (2 miles)

+20% range and duration of spells, wards, and circles

At/on Ley Line (or 2 miles from Nexus)

+50% range, duration, damage of spells, wards, circles

Sorcerer can draw 1 PP per round

Within 200 ft. of Nexus Point

Doubles range, duration, damage of spells, wards, circles

+2 Will save vs. horror or magic

Can draw 2 PP per round

Increased Energy Periods

Midday/midnight—Can draw extra 2 PP (4 PP at Nexus) for one minute

Vernal (spring)/Autumnal (fall) Equinox—Day (Vernal) or Night (Autumnal) 4 PP per round. Amount doubles to 8 PP at sunrise, noon, sunset, midnight of these days (1 minute each)

Summer/Winter Solstice—Can draw 4 PP per turn. At dawn 30 PP, sunset 15 PP (each lasts 5 minutes).

Lunar Eclipse—3 PP per round for 90 minutes

Partial Solar Eclipse—6 PP per round (2d4 minutes) and 50 PP at its zenith (1 minute)

I think these rules will work pretty well. I also added a feat for circle magic, especially as a sort of metamagic tool that can be used in combination with certain spells. I've house-ruled summoning to be more difficult--the summoner must engage in a "war of souls" (i.e. a battle of wills) with whatever he summons. Thus, summoned demons will have to be subdued. The use of special circles will grant bonuses to the summoner's rolls against any summoned entity. Not sure if I should limit the number of circles a sorcerer can know or not. I decided that I don't have to limit them. However, I should perhaps give them a DC check against Spellcraft to see if they can correctly draw the circle from memory.

I've never liked how D&D handled summoning monsters. It should be much more difficult and much more specific than how it is described in the spell lists. To that end, I vastly prefer how Conan's system handles it.

Again with the Not Abandoned

I returned to the United States a week ago and still am in the middle of a major adjustment period. When I get everything in my new American life up and running, I'll start posting again.

Book Review -- THE WHITE-LUCK WARRIOR by R. Scott Bakker

"Death came swirling down."

This oft-repeated phrase that Bakker likes to flog during epic battle scenes describes a lot of what happens in The White-Luck Warrior. After more than a month away from keyboard, I return with this latest installment of R. Scott Bakker's The Second Apocalypse epic cycle. The previous trilogy, The Prince of Nothing, I've reviewed here and here, and the first novel of his ongoing The Aspect-Emperor trilogy is reviewed here.

Bakker's novel is an excellent second act, in a trilogy which is, itself, the second act of a larger cycle. True to the three-act structure, the main characters--Esmenet, Achamian, Mimara, and Sorweel--find themselves in ever worsening situations. All attempts to take action are met with disaster. Esmenet watches as control of the New Empire starts slipping from her grasp. Achamian's journey to Sauglish turns into a deathmarch through wilderness with decimated, untrustworthy, and companions that appear to be gradually losing their sanity. Sorweel finds himself a pawn caught between the goddess Yatwer and the Aspect-Emperor himself as he marches through sranc-infested plains towards the Great Ordeal's objective. And in the midst of all of this, Yatwer's chose, the White-Luck Warrior, strides--a man for whom necessity and circumstance are inexplicably merged.

Bakker's writing is quite cinematic. It's easy to imagine the great, dusty vistas of the Istyuli Plains stretching out in widescreen, with hundreds of thousands of armed and armored warriors, flapping banners of a thousand colors, marching across the camera's view, reminiscent of films like Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia, or The Ten Commandments. You can imagine it being directed by Stanley Kubrick or Cecil B. DeMille with a cast of thousands. The climax of the book is extremely exciting, and easily lives up to the dramatic and terrifying end of The Judging Eye. Achamian and Cleric are an impressive combination and sparks seem to leap from the pages in which they interact (pun not intended--wait until you reach the end and you'll see what I mean). The bitter and ambiguous ending awaiting Achamian invokes (at least in me) the ending of Planet of the Apes, where Achamian discovers something that we, the audience, have known (or at least suspected) all along.

I don't have a great deal new to say about Bakker's style, philosophy, or grasp of history. I've said much already about how this world appears to be a thought-experiment for philosophical, religious, and gender-related issues. Both Mimara and Esmenet show immense strength of character and will. The abuses they'd suffered at the hands of men has not made them hateful or bitter, but something much different. They're survivors and Bakker demonstrates their determination not to succumb through their flexibility and ingenuity. Granted, neither character is perfect, but they're no more flawed (and in some cases, they're less so) than any of the male characters, such as Achamian and Sorweel.

One of the biggest criticisms that many readers have with Bakker is that his characters are almost universally unlikeable. To this, I must disagree. Bakker's characters are far more realistic than many of their other fantasy companions. His grasp of psychology helps him create characters that actually breathe and exude humanness. Their flaws, sufferings, idiosyncrasies are all believable and make them far more real than the over-romanticized two-dimensional heroes and heroines of many a fantasy novel. Indeed, perhaps the most obvious proof of Bakker's literary achievement is the ambiguity of Kellhus' role in this entire series. Is he noble and altruistic in his mission to destroy the Consult and the remaining Inchoroi? Is he truly a power-maddened megalomaniac? Is he something else? Bakker leaves this open for interpretation and if you ask different readers, they'll all give you different answers for what ultimately drives Anasûrimbor Kellhus. He's a different character to each reader, so much so that I believe readers are finding pieces of themselves in Kellhus every time they consider him.

In terms of plot, I must say that this book surpasses The Judging Eye. There were several points where I thought I could see what was coming but had guessed slightly wrong just enough to be surprised. It's incredible watching Bakker develop his characters. They grow, adapt, and change throughout the book. The challenges and difficulties they face, many of which are beyond their control or exacerbated by their actions, force them to evolve. Here Bakker's grasp of psychology shines through brilliantly as it had in The Warrior-Prophet and The Thousandfold Thought. Indeed, Esmenet gradually learns some of the most rudimentary techniques of the Dûnyain simply through the lessons she's had from her husband. She gradually comes to perceive the things that move the souls of those around her. Kelmomas' meddling comes to bite him quite severely, and for the first time his brilliance and conniving is met with dire consequences.

As usual, Bakker's worldbuilding is superb and consistent with his ideas and philosophical musings. History is a leash that all the characters wear about their necks, and Bakker's world is steeped in history and ruin. Having studied ancient civilizations myself, I've seen videos and photographs of places like Mycenae, Tiryns, Ephesus, Rome, Athens, and more. As Kellhus' Great Ordeal marches through the ruined north and Achamian makes his way to Sauglish, I find Bakker describing the sorts of worn and half-buried cities and fortresses about which I'd read and studied in college and grad school. Bakker's descriptions of these places are excellent and evoke the sense of unfathomable age and lost splendor that must accompany such ancient ruins.

Ragged patches of sunshine waved across the forest floor. Birdsong chirped and chattered through the canopy, light and inexhaustible. Here and there sections of wall rose from mounds like teeth from earthen gums. Layers of stonework ribbed the ravines they crossed. Blocks and fragments of every description stumped the ground. They passed a free-standing triumphal, the first thing Achamian clearly recognized from his Dreams: the Murussar, the symbolic bastion that marked the entrance to Sauglish's outlander quarter. Stripped of its inscriptions and engravings, it towered into the canopy, stone blackened, chapped with white lichens, shelved with moss. He need only blink to see the crowds bustling about its marble base: their garb ancient, their arms and armour bronze--men culled from all nations, from wild Aörsi to distant Kyraneas.

At this point, there isn't much analysis I can do since the trilogy is unfinished. Most of the analysis I've done already for The Prince of Nothing is quite similar to what I'm seeing in this series, although Bakker is doing some new things with it. However, I don't want to give anything about the story away, except to say that the ending is just as much an homage to Tolkien's The Hobbit as the climax of The Judging Eye was to The Fellowship of the Ring's Moria segments.

All told, The White-Luck Warrior is a fantastic installment in an already amazing series of novels. The philosophy is broadened only a little but the psychological character exploration and evolution is solid and the plot is absorbing.

The White-Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker
Style B+
Substance A
Overall A-

Not Abandoned

I'm not sure how many people regularly read my blog (I do have a few followers, though). I'm finishing up my third year working in Korea and am preparing to return to the United States, so I'm incredibly busy.

Currently, I'm reading Bakker's The White-Luck Warrior and will have a review up for it in about a week if all goes right. I've put all other reading on hold to finish it, which means I really haven't touched Takami's Battle Royale or Keegan's The Face of Battle. I'm thrilled by HBO's A Game of Thrones and I want to start watching Showtime's The Borgias. I'm finishing Season 5 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and have finished Season 2 of Angel--I was greatly remiss in never watching those shows ten years ago and am currently rectifying this deficiency.

My work schedule doesn't give me a lot of free time to really post much, and my posts have slowed to a trickle, and then halted entirely. But don't worry, this blog hasn't been abandoned. After I get back to the States, I hope to start posting regularly again.

Book Review -- THE THIN MAN by Dashiell Hammett

A thick web of lies and deceit. Bullet-riddled corpses. Mobsters knocking on one's door, packing heat. Police suspicion. A fortune in cash and bonds. Dope fiends and morphine addiction. Hysterical women and cunning femme-fatales.

Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man delivers, but not with the intense excitement and high-stakes of some of his other work, like The Maltese Falcon. (This, however, should come as no surprise, once the reader realizes that it was first published in 1934 as a serial in women's magazine Redbook--yes, that Redbook.) Although many of the female characters are conniving, treacherous, and often downright stupid and hysterical, Hammett provides a female character that is clever, trustworthy, and supportive of the main character--Nora Charles. This is a sharp divorce from the typical misogyny that runs through much of hardboiled detective tales. Indeed, the film version of The Thin Man is distinctively not very much film noir, and is actually quite lighthearted.

Greek American Nick Charles (an Ellis Island immigration officer changed the name from Charalambides), his wife Nora, and their schnauzer Asta, are in New York celebrating Christmas and New Years away from their company in San Francisco. Nick had once been a private detective before he joined Nora and went into business. Nora's keenly interested in Nick's past as a detective, and when one of his former clients turns up missing while the secretary is dead with four bullets in her, she gets her chance to experience a bit of the romance and adventure Nick used to inhabit. The couple was famously portrayed in 1934's film version of the novel by William Powell and Myrna Loy (notice below the dog is not a schnauzer), and in five subsequent films and a TV series that ultimately had nothing to do with Dashiell Hammett's books except the title.


The women actually make this book, and it is not surprising since the novel was written for (and serialized in) a women's magazine. Dorothy Wynant is a young airhead prone to hysteria and gratuitous overreaction. Her mother Mimi (ex-wife to the missing client) is vengeful, conniving, manipulative, and very much used to getting her way. Together, they do not provide a very positive portrait of women. However, Nora Charles, Nick's wife, is actually very much different from they, and are likely the primary character the female audience is supposed to identify with (despite the fact that the novel is written in first person from Nick's perspective).

Nora is problematic in that she's not an incredibly deep or incredible character. She's there, she's very prominent, and she has a very strong personality, but her weakness is that despite her strength, she's ill-defined. She's actually quite generic. She's smart--she helps Nick a few times by observing things that completely escaped his notice, teases him for being a lousy detective on occasion, and comes up with a list of suspects an motives. But her smarts aren't sharp. Of course, she lacks the experience that Nick has, and willingly takes a back-seat when he is doing his detective work. But in the end, she's just a glorified secretary. She doesn't play a pivotal role in Nick's solving of the crime. She's simply a pillar that holds him up. Nora complements him quite well, and they work very well together as a team. However, she doesn't really bring any special skills or abilities with her that Nick lacks save those traits a woman naturally has.

The book, however, is part of its time-period. I can honestly forgive its treatment of Nora. It isn't really chauvinistic, since Nora is definitely portrayed as a person of strength, resourcefulness, intelligence, and capability. One gets the impression that her and Nick are very much equal partners in both their business and their marriage. But the centerpiece of the book is not the business or the marriage--it is the mystery, and that's where Nick dominates the narrative and Nora recedes. She's still there, but she's a pace or two behind Nick. This isn't surprising. A powerful and dominant female detective would have been just as implausible to a 1930s housewife as it would have been to her husband.

The mystery itself is pretty convoluted. Hammett keeps the reader guessing through the immense web of deception that all of the women (except Nora) weave throughout the novel--including the deceptions of the deceased secretary (it seems that every female in the novel is a born liar).

"The chief thing," I advised them, "is not to let her tire you out. When you catch her in a lie, she admits it and gives you another lie to take its place and, when you catch her in that one, she admits it and gives you still another, and so on. Most people--even women--get discouraged after you've caught them in the third or fourth straight lie and fall back on either the truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying and you've got to be carefull or you'll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you're tired of disbelieving her."

Nick's character handles it with the adeptness, cynicism, and sarcasm of any early 20th-century gumshoe. His dialogue is dry and witty, and although he was played by William Powell in the 1934 film (and subsequent movie series), I couldn't help but imagine Nick as Humphrey Bogart.

The prose is nothing to write home about. Hammett writes in this clear, matter-of-fact style, but sometimes he lets some dry wit slip from his pen.

Morelli hit the fat man in his fat belly, as hard as he could without getting up. Studsy, suddenly on his feet, leaned over Morelli and smashed a big fist into the fat man's face. I noticed, foolishly, that he still led with his right. Hunchbacked Pete came up behind the fat man and banged his empty tray down with full force on the fat man's head. The fat man fell back, upsetting three people and a table. Both bar-tenders were with us by then. One of them hit the fat man with a blackjack as he tried to get up, knocking him forward on his hands and knees, the other put a hand down inside the fat man's collar in back, twisting the collar to choke him. With Morelli's help they got the fat man to his feet and hustled him out.

In case you didn't notice, the fat man is fat. That's an example of how Hammett's arid humor emerges through deadpan prose. You have to be paying attention to catch it, but when you do, it's hard not to cock a smirk in amusement.

The Thin Man was Hammett's final novel. I've only read 1930's The Maltese Falcon and found it to be far darker, cynical, and despairing of human nature than The Thin Man. The latter novel is much more uplifting and the tone is overall hopeful. Nick and Nora Charles are never really in any serious danger of being accused, arrested, or separated. The dramatic tension increases only slightly when the police briefly suspect Nick. There's not much truly at stake throughout the novel for Nick and Nora, with the exception of their vacation plans. As a result, the tension throughout the novel is really sustained through simple curiosity and Nick's natural desire to clean up a mess (which occasionally wars with his desire to simply go back to San Francisco and not be bothered).

With so little at stake, its not surprising that, although a delightful little mystery, I find it has less in common with Hammett's earlier The Maltese Falcon or Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, and more in common with one of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple stories. It's not a bad novel, but it certainly doesn't pack the nihilistic punch that a hardboiled noir mystery would. And here I reveal my bias--far and away, I prefer the sort of fiction that punches me in the gut. I enjoyed The Thin Man, but there was never any point in the book where I sat up and felt like Hammett was really nailing something about human nature or the human condition like he did with the end of The Maltese Falcon, where Spade tells O'Shaughnessy that he can't trust her and sends her off to prison. I guess my bias is toward the more painful and negative aspects of the human condition. I don't recall ever reading great literature and noticing a recurring theme of happiness and good times.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Style B
Substance B-
Overall B-