Religion in D&D

A couple of years ago, I did a brief workup of faith and ritual in the Forgotten Realms' Shadowdale.  This was a small overview of some ideas I had to deepen and broaden how I could handle faith and religion in The Forgotten Realms campaign setting.  I should clearly note that I do not use nor am I interested in any of the changes to the setting brought about in 4th (or now 5th) edition.

A great 2nd edition resource is the Faiths & Avatars book, which gives a really good write-up on the gods and the beliefs of their followers but the truth is, The Forgotten Realms, as presented, is a somewhat unrealistic approach to ancient polytheistic belief systems.  So, drawing upon what I know from Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane, Burkert's Greek Religion, Yehezkel Kaufmann's History of the Religion of Israel, and a couple of other sources on pre-modern polytheistic belief structures.  I would love to have gotten my hands on M.A.R. Barker's article "Create a Religion in your Spare Time for Fun and Profit."  (I hear they have a copy at DriveThruRpg.)  This blog entry over at Game Over provides a nice review and summary of the article for those interested and it has helped me quite a bit.

To build on this, we honestly need to isolate a number of cultural/linguistic groups that inhabit the Realms and determine how tradition and ritual (which are very, very important parts of religion) interact with the societies. There is one, singular pantheon for all of Faerûn and that is something that really just pulls me right out of that precious suspension of disbelief because of how dramatically unrealistic it is.  After doing some thinking, I managed to pull together some ideas about how cultural interaction and communication led to a diffusion of deities throughout the Faerûnian ecumene.  This would be similar to how, during the Hellenistic and Roman periods of Mediterranean history you start seeing gods being identified with one another, mixed, and new gods form, like Serapis in Graeco-Roman Egypt, Zeus' syncretistic identification with other chief deities, and the introduction of entirely foreign cults, like Mithraism from Iran.

So, I started working backwards through Faerûnian history to break down the human deities into distinct and isolated pantheons of gods.  These are based on language groups that are also cultural groups of humans that dispersed through Faerûn--Talfiric, Calishite, Luskan, Damaran, Netherese, and Chondathan.  The Netherese gods are detailed in the 2nd edition boxed set entitled Netheril: Empire of Magic, although it is important to know that Chauntea (whom I identify as a Chondathan grain goddess) was synonymous with the Netherese goddess Jannath.

From there I started to do some work mixing and matching, looking at which gods were worshiped the most where through the sourcebooks and discovered, low and behold, that I could pull out a logical sense of consistency for a lot of these different pantheons.  It took some work but hey, back then I was a lazy college student who liked wasting time applying my new scholarship skills to frivolous stuff like D&D back in the day.

So, what are the values of these cultures?  Well, for starters, I'm going to take a look at the Chondathan culture before I start tackling other ones.  Chondathan culture is a very distinctly Western European plus good ol' corn-fed United States red-blooded American sturdiness.  The Chondathan diaspora has spread out from it's titular lands, through the Vilhon Reach, Cormyr, Sembia, the Dales, and out into the Western Heartlands where they mixed with and culturally replaced the Talfiric peoples.  Basically, the population of the Heartlands of Faerûn, from Waterdeep to the western Sea of Fallen Stars littoral, is almost entirely of Chondathan linguistic speakers.  Language and culture are intrinsically tied, so much so as to be difficult to separate one from the other, therefore, even if the genetic stock of a region isn't Chondathan, if they speak a Chondathan language, it is safe to assume they have overall Chondathan cultural traits.

Anyway, I'm digressing.  A lot.  So, let me circle away from this tangent and back to my main points.  Alright?  Okay.

Now, while reading the review of Barker's essay at Game Over, the blogger emphasizes one of Barker's key arguments about how to build these religions in his summary:

It's not just a matter of phoning it in by whipping up a few names and one-paragraph descriptors for your gods either; these are entities which are going to govern the lives and livelihoods of player characters, and so you're going to want to answer a lot of questions about the gods and the religions from the players. ...

That said, the single-paragraph description of the god is still there; Barker demonstrates just how much of a religions' nature can be derived from examining a detailed and well-written description of its god.  However, it's not actually Barker's recommended starting point. ...

...  I bring this up partly to illustrate that the essay has considerable value beyond the issue of building religions in fantasy games, and partly to demonstrate how Barker actually recommends building religions: from the ground up.  Worry about the social, the political, the economic situation on the ground, in the cultures where the player characters move - then get your arse up there and think about what kind of gods might appeal to those cultures, or might have formed those cultures through exerting influence on their situations.  Treat religion as the social process it is and you'll get something rich and deep for your trouble.

Start at the bottom then work your way up.  The problem with most DMs, setting designers, etc., is that they never, ever, ever consider the actual duties and functions of their deities within the actual structure of the society itself.  Oh, yeah, in the 2nd edition The Complete Priests' Handbook the writers and designers give all sorts of advice for creating gods, religions, clergies, etc.  It's only the tip of the iceberg.

Where can one start?

With studying actual polytheistic faith systems that really exist in the world.  No, I'm not talking about Wicca, Witchcraft, or Paganism in the modern world.  Sorry, they're honestly new inventions and while they seek to reclaim and restore much of the lost religions of the old gods of Europe, they are still very influenced by modern perceptions of those cults than the actual worship and practice of ancient religious belief.

But permit me to digress, once more, by citing an excerpt of the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book.

Some Faerûnians zealously follow one deity.  Others make sacrifices to many deities, while upholding one as their personal patron.  Still others sacrifice to as many deities as possible, shifting allegiances as their circumstances and needs warrant.  It's a rare Faerûnian who hasn't occasionally hoped to avert the baleful influence of an evil deity with a propitious gift, or thanked a good power for an unexpected blessing.  The belief system of most Faerûnians generally centers on a particular deity whose interests and influences are most likely to affect them, but acknowledges other gods as significant and important, too.  --The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, 3rd edition, pg. 93.

The first sentence in this paragraph describes henotheism.  The second sentence as well as the last sentence describe monolatry.  Everything in the middle describes standard polytheism or (at most) kathenotheism.  In function, however, especially through the cleric and paladin character class, what we mostly get in Faerûn is henotheism and monolatrism.  This smacks me as problematic, especially because the common needs of the populace will require frequent appeals to a variety of deities.

If you read pages 93 and 94 of the 3rd edition Campaign Setting, it paints a fairly believable and solid picture of religion in theory but in practice most DMs simply take the easy way out--monolatry and henotheism, all clergy are paladins, monks, and clerics, etc.  The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting makes it clear that "most of a Temple's clergy are not clerics."  It goes on to say, "They're experts, aristocrats, even commoners who serve as advisors and counselors to the faithful and officiate at routine observances.  A cleric usually leads any particular temple, shrine, or order, judiciously using her spells to aid sick or injured followers and assist the local authorities in maintaining law and order in the community as it suits the deity in question."

Here, the authors actually undo some of what they were trying to build--true actual polytheism.  The key here is where they say, "the faithful" and "followers."  This can mislead players and DMs alike into the assumption that the clergy of a temple only administers to those who follow their deity and their deity alone.

When studying polytheistic belief systems, I tend to lean toward the Graeco-Roman traditions (specifically because I specialized in Graeco-Roman history, society, and culture in my undergrad and grad school days) and modern-day polytheistic traditions like Hinduism and Shinto.

I have a lot of exposure to Shinto through my stuc., and receive a good-luck charm that would bless their efforts in study with hopes that they would pass their university entrance examinations.  These students were not henotheists or monolatrists like the bulk of D&D non-player-characters and player-characters.  The temple provided a specific service to the students by taking offerings dedicated to Tenjin and interceding with the kami in order to grant his favor to the students.

So what do temples do?  They provide services to the populace but also to the state.  Their job is to be a basis for tradition so as to curry favor with the gods so that peace and prosperity is ensured, misfortune and catastrophe are prevented or warded off, and the cultural traditions continue.  The D&D campaign worlds are far too influenced by Christianity (whether players and DMs like it or not) in that each god has a sort of salvation or promised afterlife for their worshipers.  Relationship with the divine is a part of Judeo-Christian faith (more Christianity than modern Judaism, though).  Polytheists don't often seek to have a personal relationship with the divine unless they're rulers or dies of Japanese history and culture, as well as having visited a couple Shinto temples in Japan.  What I saw, for example, at the Tenman-gu shrine to Tenjin, the Shinto god of scholarship, made me realize that D&D (in particular) and role-playing games' designers (in general) have religion all wrong.

I arrived at Tenman-gu around the time when Exam Hell was just starting to ramp up.  Students would come to the temple and make offerings to Tenjin in money, incense, etoracles and even then it is rare because too much attention from the gods invites calamity as much as fortune.

So temples don't exist for the individual to develop a relationship with the god.  They're not where the populace go in order to commune with the deity.  They're where the populace go to offer sacrifice and store-houses or treasuries for various offerings.  They could also be a place where certain things are stored safely, like how the Temple of Saturn in ancient Republican Rome was the site of the Roman state's treasury and also where legal documents (like contracts, wills & testaments, etc.), archives, seals, and original measurement templates were kept.  They could be clinics, like the temples of Asclepius, the Graeco-Roman god of healing, or places where sacred prostitutes were sought, like the Temples of Ishtar or Ianna in ancient Mesopotamia.

Alright, what does the clergy do?  The clergy has knowledge.  This knowledge could take many forms.  It could simply be the knowledge of when and where to plow, when to sow and when to harvest.  It could be analysis of the calendar in order to decide what days are fasti and which are nefas.  It could be knowledge of medicine and healing, or how to examine entrails or flights of birds to divine the gods' will.  Some clergies may have knowledge of exorcism and warding against ghosts, evil spirits, or plain bad luck.  Still others will observe and maintain the markers of boundaries.  Even irrigation and water management has been known to fall under the auspices of temples in Bali.  Most importantly, however, the clergy of a temple has knowledge of how to carry out tradition, how to avoid ritual impurity, how to be cleansed of ritual impurity, when and how to store and display sacred relics and cult statues, when and how to perform ritual dances, how to offer sacrifice, what hymns to sing and their words, what songs or stories to tell and when, how to recreate and commemorate sacred events, and how to communicate to the gods both the fidelity of the populace and their needs, wishes and desires.

Notice that I say "the populace" and not "the people."  Polytheistic deities were often perceived as detached and distant.  This is especially apparent in Republican Rome where the primary gods were gods of the state.  The gods were more concerned with Rome as a whole than with each and every individual living in the city or countryside.

A major important concept to note is that religion is going to vary from region to region, especially in the form of traditions, cultic practices, sacrifices, festivals, and other details.  While in a wide Faerûnian ecumene it is likely that specific similarities in practices and traditions are going to be common, there is not much likelihood of there being any strict set of doctrines and dogmas.  Shinto doesn't have much in the way of guiding texts or dogmatic scriptures, for example.  Hinduism has numerous holy texts and different sects of Hinduism value the various texts differently.  Buddhism has a great many holy texts.  Greek, Roman, and Egyptian religion didn't have much in the way of holy texts that were monopolized by the temples and considered specifically holy and sacred.

Thus, a great starting point for actually building a believable religious tradition for your role-playing world will start at the ground and work its way up.  A phenomenal example of a compelling religious tradition can be found in the video game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.  The Tribunal Temple, the primary religion of the dark elves of the setting, is full of lore, hierarchies, functions, dogmas, traditions, rituals, and volume upon volume upon volume of in-game sacred texts, scriptures, and writings that the player can read and participate in.

Monte Cook Leaves D&D Design Team

I just had to post on this.  I'm delaying my personal opinion on the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle in favor of this particular story and its implications.  Monte Cook has left the WotC design team for 5th edition D&D.  I have to admit, this gives me a very "I-told-you-so" sort of feeling, mixed with a bit of Schadenfreude.  I can't help it, I think 4th edition was very much not a roleplaying game and am perplexed by those who say it is and enjoy it (read this if you haven't already).  The announcement of 5th edition pretty much made a Part II of my diatribe against 4th edition kind of pointless, admittedly.

The implications of Monte Cook leaving 5th edition's design team because he and WotC had creative "differences of opinion" should be apparent to almost everyone--WotC has learned nothing.  D&D 5th edition is probably going to be a disaster.  I don't blame people for holding out hope for 5th edition, but I'm not holding my breath.

See, by trying to create a versatile product that can be customized to satisfy the OSR player, the 3.5/Pathfinder gamer, and the 4th edition adherent, WotC is going to make a product that satisfies no one.  I don't care about all of the fans playtesting it and saying it's great.  Research states that focus groups don't work.  Psychology and in-group acceptance help to shape our perceptions and make us biased.  Therefore, people playtesting a game are predisposed to rave about it even though, six months later in their friend's basement, they're going to realize that the game is the opposite of fun and get this very sour taste in their mouth.

When you try to make a product that pleases everybody, you end up pleasing no one.

Now that one of the most creative minds in tabletop RPG gaming and game design has left the WotC design team, I have pretty much shed all doubts I had about the poor design and unplayability of 5th Edition.  What's worse is that the D&D community might fracture even more as a result!  If 4th edition fanatics dislike 5th edition, that's an entire faction that WotC just lost.

I keep saying that WotC should just sell the entire franchise to Eric Mona and the guys at Pathfinder.

Twenty Questions

I got these from Dennis over at What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse.

1. Ability scores generation method? Grid method. Roll 3d6 six times for each ability score in six columns. You can choose one score per ability but once you do, you can no longer select any scores from that column. This usually creates heroic characters without too many super-high or super-low scores that satisfy the players and enable them to qualify for whatever class they want to play.
   
2. How are death and dying handled? As per the rules. -1 to -9 is dying (unconscious and losing 1 hp per round). -10 is dead. Some campaigns I choose negative Constitution.
3. What about raising the dead? As per the rules.
4. How are replacement PCs handled? You meet them in town, on the road, or rescue them in the dungeon. Whatever is faster and more expedient.
5. Initiative: individual, group, or something else? Depends on what is more expedient. Small skirmishes are usually individual. However, if the PCs are being attacked by 20 goblins, group initiative makes more sense.
   
6. Are there critical hits and fumbles? How do they work? As per the rules for critical hits. Critical fumbles either result in the character losing a turn or the enemy getting a free attack/attack of opportunity depending on the situation. Ranged critical fumbles into melee combat result in friendly fire.
   
7. Do I get any benefits for wearing a helmet? As per the variant rules (if any) for helmets. Otherwise, I assume they're part of the entire AC adjustment for any armor worn.
   
8. Can I hurt my friends if I fire into melee or do something similarly silly? As per the rules. If they say so, yes. If they don't, then only on a critical fumble.
9. Will we need to run from some encounters, or will we be able to kill everything? Use your best judgment. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. If you read my previous posts, yes, players have run from encounters.
   
10. Level-draining monsters: yes or no? As per the rules--the monster can drain a level? Yes. If the rules say it's temporary, fine. If they say permanent, it's permanent.
11. Are there going to be cases where a failed save results in PC death? Yep.
    
12. How strictly are encumbrance & resources tracked? I try to make the PCs keep these things tracked. I keep up on them to make sure they're being honest.
13. What's required when my PC gains a level? Training? Do I get new spells automatically? Can it happen in the middle of an adventure, or do I have to wait for down time? You gain the level next time you sleep a full 8 hours. No, you do not automatically gain new spells unless you are a cleric/favored soul/etc. that would.
    
14. What do I get experience for? Killing stuff. Good roleplaying. Clever ideas. Self-sacrifice. Teamwork and comraderie. Spending gold frivolously (1 XP per gp spent carousing/wenching/drinking/etc.).
15. How are traps located? Description, dice rolling, or some combination? As per the rules. Perception/Spot checks. However, if you ask questions I'll give you clues. Keep asking and no rolls are needed. Same with secret/concealed doors, hidden compartments, etc.
    
16. Are retainers encouraged and how does morale work? As per the rules of the system. Morale is based on "what would they do in real life?" Morale checks in 2nd edition were a pain to keep track of. If half your team drops in one round, you're going to probably try to escape.
    
17. How do I identify magic items? Spells to identify them. Detect magic spells while using Spellcraft skill to try to get hints or clues. Testing them. Trying to figure out command words. Research and comparing them to items in old tomes. Knowledge (arcana) rolls to recognize what sort of item it is by its appearance, design, sigils/runes, markings, etc.
18. Can I buy magic items? Oh, come on: how about just potions? As per the setting. Does the town have an alchemist? An apothecary? A powerful wizard? Do they have shops? Depends on when, where, and who.
    
19. Can I create magic items? When and how? As per the rules. If we're playing 3.5 or Pathfinder, you need the feats. If we're playing 2nd edition or earlier, you follow those rules. Either way, I'm going to come up with ingredients and other stuff you need to make it and you have to find it. (Example: for a wand of lightning bolt you need the heartwood of a tree that had been struck by lighting and survived).
    
20. What about splitting the party? If you don't mind sitting and waiting while I deal with the other half of the party, knock yourselves out. I wouldn't recommend it--it's more fun to not split up and stick together.

Book Review--THE JEWEL IN THE SKULL by Michael Moorcock

EDIT: I'd like to thank Taran of One Last Sketch for the link to this most excellent review of The History of the Runestaff. Check it out. It addresses some of the reasons why I was so disappointed by this book--mainly Moorcock wrote it as a potboiler in the space of three days. Basically, he wrote it to pay the bills while the bulk of his time was spent on more serious projects. Apparently the 1990s omnibus editions were corrected of inconsistencies and such, but still remain very disappointing.

Anyway, on with the review... .

I'd like to start out with a few quotes:

Théoden King of the Mark had reached the road from the Gate to the River, and he turned towards the City that was now less than a mile distant. He slackened his speed a little, seeking new foes, and his knights came about him, and Dernhelm was with them. Ahead nearer the walls Elfhelm's men were among the siege-engines, hewing, slaying, driving their foes into the fire-pits. Well nigh all the northern half of the Pelennor was overrun, and there camps were blazing, orcs were flying towards the River like herds before the hunters; and the Rohirrim went hither and thither at their will. But they had not yet overthrown the siege, nor won the Gate. Many foes stood before it, and on the further half of the plain were other hosts still unfought. Southward beyond the road lay the main force of the Haradrim, and there their horsemen were gathered about the standard of their chieftain. And he looked out, and in the growing light he saw the banner of the king, and that it was far ahead of the battle with few men about it. Then he was filled with a red wrath and shouted aloud, and displaying his standard, black serpent upon scarlet, he came against the white horse and the green with a great press of men; and the drawing of the scimitars of the Southrons was like a glimmer of stars.

Then Théoden was aware of him, and would not wait for his onset, but crying to Snowmane he charged headlong to greet him. Great was the clash of their meeting. But the white fury of the North-men burned the hotter, and more skilled was their knighthood with long spears and bitter. Fewer were they but they clove through the Southrons like a fire-bolt in a forest. Right through the press drove Théoden Thengel's son, and his spear was shivered as he threw down their chieftain. Out swept his sword, and he spurred to the standard, hewed staff and bearer; and the black serpent foundered. Then all that was left unslain of their cavalry turned and fled far away. --J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

How about another quote?

And then, as the horde writhed and coiled upon itself, Amalric's lancers, having cut through a cordon of horsemen encountered in the outer valley, swept around the extremity of the western ridge and smote the host in a steel-tipped wedge, splitting it asunder. His attack carried all the dazing demoralization of a surprise on the rear. Thinking themselves flanked by a superior force and frenzied at the fear of being cut off from the desert, swarms of nomads broke and stampeded, working havoc in the ranks of their more steadfast comrades. These staggered and the horsemen rode through them. Up on the ridges the desert fighters wavered, and the hillmen fell on them with renewed fury, driving them down the slopes. --Robert E. Howard, "The Black Colossus"

And for comparison, this final quote:

From the remaining ranks of infantry, arrows flew thickly toward them and flame-lances sent searing fire. Count Brass' archers retaliated, and his flame-lancers also returned the attack. Arrows clattered on their armour. Several men fell. Others were struck down by the flame-lances. Through the chaos of fire and flying arrows, the infantry of Granbretan steadily advanced, in spite of depleted numbers. They paused when they came to the swampy ground, choked as it was with the bodies of their horses, and their officers furiously urged them on. --Michael Moorcock, The Jewel in the Skull

One can see a vast difference between the first two and the last quote, both in temperament and quality of prose. I would expect much more from the man who would later pen the essay "Epic Pooh," blasting Tolkien for the "sentimental, slightly distanced, often wistful, a trifle retrospective" prose that "contains little wit and much whimsy."

Tolkien's description of the Battle of Pelennor Fields and Howard's description of the battle at the Escarpment are both written extremely well. Tolkien's description eschews the sleepy quality that Moorcock describes as reminding him of A.A. Milne:

There is an element of conspiratorial persuasion in his tone that a suspicious child can detect early in life. Let's all be cosy, it seems to say (children's books are, after all, written by conservative adults anxious to maintain an unreal attitude to childhood); let's forget about our troubles and go to sleep. At which I would find myself stirring to a sitting position in my little bed and responding with uncivilized bad taste. --Michael Moorcock, "Epic Pooh"

True, Moorcock provides quotes to compare portions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to back up his argument. But Tolkien does not maintain a consistent voice throughout the novels. Indeed, he alters his voice depending on the circumstances and the Battle of Pelennor Fields reads more like Beowulf or The Iliad than Winnie-the-Pooh. Granted, Moorcock deals with these shifts and injects a good deal of politics into his assessment of Tolkien's supposed anti-industrialism and anti-democratic romanticism.

But this review isn't about "Epic Pooh." If you want to read a full rebuttal to Moorcock's essay, check out "Knocking Some Stuffing Out of Moorcock's 'Epic Pooh'" by Brian Murphy of the Silver Key. It's about The Jewel in the Skull and how I was profoundly disappointed by this book by the man who wrote "Epic Pooh."

Now, I've read Elric of Melniboné and remember enjoying it. However, I wasn't quite so profoundly moved or invigorated as I was by Tolkien's or Howard's prose. Indeed, the prose in The Jewel in the Skull is so weak that I had difficulty making it all the way through the book. I was profoundly disappointed by this work. Indeed, this book is weak in more than simply prose, but also in characterization and plot.

Firstly, let's discuss characterization. The main character, Dorian Hawkmoon, isn't introduced until fifty pages into the novel. This isn't bad in-and-of itself, however Moorcock fails to utilize it effectively by building a very compelling opening. Dorian could be easily played by Keanu Reeves as he's almost completely bereft of emotion for much of the middle of the novel. Granted, Moorcock was trying to use his strange emotionlessness as a vehicle, but he handles it so poorly that it fails completely. Our protagonist is absolutely unsympathetic and the reader is utterly incapable of identifying with him. Therefore, we don't really care if he lives, dies, wins, or loses.

The villains are cardboard cutouts, especially Baron Meliadus. The Dark Empire of Granbretan, which is uniting the continent of post-apocalyptic Europe, is evil... and engages in wanton slaughter and rapine of conquered territories... and that's about it. Oh, and it has an immortal god-emperor. Wow.

Moorcock establishes Baron Meliadus' villainy so clumsily that it comes off almost as a laughable parody of Robin Hood-type heels like the Sheriff of Nottingham. Of course he's going to try to abscond with the princess! Of course he's going to wound the aptly-named warrior-poet Bowgentle with villainous swordplay. Of course he's going to betray Count Brass' honorable hospitality. Of course he's going to swear vengeance and rant over every defeat like Skeletor, Cobra Commander, or Megatron.

Count Brass is likewise such an archetype of the honorable warrior-knight that he, also, becomes a laughable stereotype. Moorcock introduces him and develops his character but in so doing makes Count Brass so predictable and noble that he comes off as a flat caricature and not a character.

The plot is not much better, although it does have its moments. At least the opening sets the stage for the later conflict correctly enough. The Dark Empire wants the Kamarg--a portion of what used to be southern France--either with Count Brass' vassalage or through outright conquest. Count Brass, being honorable to a fault, refuses to become politically involved and thus cannot support Granbretan, although he feels that the unification of Europe under one banner and the ending of all the incessant warring (of which he's a renowned hero) would be a Good Thing, even if Granbretan is at the helm. This makes very little sense--he wants to see Europe unified, doesn't want to get involved, and yet is the ruler of a state that is a part of Europe and must eventually be incorporated into any unified whole. The entire time I'm reading, I feel that Count Brass is Lawful Stupid--noble and honorable at the expense of any real rationality. At least Ned Stark wasn't stupid--his honor and nobility got him a pretty rotten result, nevertheless.

Baron Meliadus, in comparison, behaves Retarded Evil. You'd think a Dark Empire ambassador would be much more subtle, but no, that would actually be interesting. Instead, Baron Meliadus tries to steal Count Brass' daughter and kill his best friends when Count Brass proves himself too stupid to live. He doesn't spend time scouting out the defenses or planting a spy network or finding ways to sabotage the forces of the Kamarg.

Enter Dorian Hawkmoon, a lord whose state was conquered by the Dark Empire of Granbretan and is now a prisoner. The defeat robbed him of his emotions and has left him a cold automaton who just doesn't give a damn. When Meliadus makes a deal with him ("sabotage the Kamarg and we'll give you your state back"), Dorian basically says, "meh."

Then comes the eponymous MacGuffin--a plot vehicle that is so weak and positively stupid that I nearly put the book in the trash. The black jewel implanted into Hawkwood's forehead is basically a magical camera that is connected to a machine in London that shows only what is in front of Dorian and provides no sound. The sorcerers of Granbretan assure Hawkwood that if he betrays them, the jewel will basically fry his brain. It's the tool they're going to use to blackmail him and ensure his loyalty. But it has immensely profound weaknesses. So, in the end, instead of Lawful Evil, the leaders of the Dark Empire of Granbretan has demonstrated how they, like their Baron Meliadus, are entirely Retarded Evil.

At least Count Brass and his friends aren't so stupid as to not see through Granbretan's ploy. They use their own technomagic to prevent the stone from frying Dorians brain, but it will only last a little while--the only place Dorian can go to get the jewel removed without killing him is somewhere out in Persia. But the armies of Granbretan are marching for the Kamarg. Now that Hawkmoon has met Count Brass' stereotypically hot daughter, he's starting to get his emotions back, but the presence of the jewel makes him feel hopeless enough that he refuses to allow himself to fall in love (although she has, predictably, fallen head-over-heels for him).

By this point, I want to bang my head against a wall.

The rest of the story consists of a couple of rather better chapters describing guerrilla raids on the Granbretan forces and a decent set-piece battle before descending into Hawkmoon's journey toward Persia, his gaining of a companion, and a very uninspired arrival in a Persian kingdom and his participation in a battle. I say "descend" because the rest of the book is just as uninspired as the beginning.

The problems with the plot are not the actual contents but in how they are handled by Moorcock. Coupled with his lackluster prose (which I will address below), Moorcock's storytelling is simply lacking. Other authors have written equally derivative works but did so with style and/or panache that Moorcock, as of 1967, did not seem to possess. Every opportunity he had to make the story more interesting he did not seize. As a result, the book reads like a dull attempt at parody. If parody it was, then Moorcock failed at this as well because there is no wit whatsoever in his writing. There are no moments where we realize that he's presenting these events to us tongue-in-cheek. It simply plays out dully, uninspired.

The prose simply serves to drive this point home:

Sparks scattered into the darkness of the hall as the two big men dueled, the broadswords rising and falling, swinging this way and that, every stroke parried with masterly skill. Sweat covered both faces as the swords swung; both chests heaved with the exertion as they fenced back and forth across the hall.

George Orwell said it best when comparing pulp boxing stories by British authors to those of American authors in "Boys' Weeklies:"

Notice how much more knowledgeable the American extracts sound. They are written for devotees of the prize-ring, the others are not.

An honest comparison of this to any combat scene by Robert E. Howard demonstrates this. The American writer wants the reader to experience the combat. I could also compare it to Zelazny's description of combat, which benefits heavily from his excessive knowledge of fencing. Moorcock's description is vague and frankly blasé. Obviously, Moorcock doesn't know anything about sword-fighting, but he doesn't even attempt to guess. Tolkien's description of combat is much more energetic for all his dreamy let's-all-go-to-sleep prose.

Moorcock also is guilty of the tell-not-show sin.

A conflict was beginning to develop in Hawkmoon's breast--perhaps a conflict between humanity and the lack of it, perhaps a conflict between conscience and the lack of conscience, if such conflicts were possible.

If such conflicts were possible? You tell us, you're the author! This is just clumsy writing, but it continues.

Whatever the exact nature of the conflict, there was no doubt that Hawkmoon's character was changing for a second time. It was not the character he had had on the battlefield at Köln, nor the strange apathetic mood into which he had fallen since the battle, but a new character altogether, as if Hawkmoon were being born again in a thoroughly different mold.

One of the advantages of writing a novel is the author can actually develop these changes through showing how the character behaves and actually describing a bit of their thought processes and feelings. George R.R. Martin does this very well with many of his characters, especially ones like Arya, Jon Snow, and Jaime Lannister. Moorcock is writing one of the very, very short SF novels that proliferated the discount bookracks of convenience stores (like my own antiquated DAW Books copy pictured below) and the like during the mid-twentieth century, so he has to deal with page limitations. However, I don't feel that is a legitimate excuse, especially since these problems are rife throughout the narrative and detract from the interest factor.

I could provide more examples of the disappointing writing, but I'll refrain. Suffice it to say, for the most part, The Jewel in the Skull reads like a rough draft or perhaps an extended summary of a story that could have really benefited from some greater detail and less derivative narration.

I don't know if I'm going to read any more of The History of the Runestaff, the four-volume series of which this novel was the first. Indeed, this makes me want to go back and reread Elric of Melniboné to see if it suffers from the same weaknesses in narration, characterization, and prose.

As I said, this book was a disappointment. I was very interested in reading it but when I finally did, it most certainly did not live up to expectations, especially considering the vocal criticisms its author leveled against other, noteworthy and accomplished, authors. There's a kernel of a good and exciting story here. However, in this volume at least, Moorcock doesn't deliver.

The Jewel in the Skull by Michael Moorcock Style: C
Substance: C-
Overall: C-

Book Review -- HARRY POTTER SERIES by J.K. Rowling

It took about three months' worth of reading, between classes and settling in after my return from Korea, to finish the Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling. Unfortunately, I never got around to buying the British versions when I was in Korea, and especially regret not having done so. While in Korea, I sat in a bookstore for a few minutes doing side-by-side comparisons of the two texts and finding that Scholastic had heavily edited the American versions (more about this later).

J.K. Rowling's story of rags-to-riches is quite well known. Published on June 30, 1997, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone had sold up to 300,000 copies in the UK by March, 1999. It was an instant success as a children's novel and was rapidly acquired by Scholastic Corporation, who strong-armed Rowling into changing the name to Sorcerer's Stone because they thought American children wouldn't want to read a book with the word "philosopher" in the title (more on this later). We all know how the tale grew to become a phenomenon complete with films and accompanying books about Harry Potter's world. Rowling has become an incredibly rich billionaire.

The story is incredibly well-known so there's no reason to discuss it. Essentially, Rowling's story is not at all original but that is not a criticism. It's long been mused that between Shakespeare, the Bible, and Homer, every possible story has already been told. However, Harry Potter achieves an incredible resonance with it's readers. Rowling was able to take Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays, an 1857 novel about a private boarding school in England, add such fantasy elements as magic and antiquity, and marry it to the Campbellian heroic journey.

Her brilliance in such a combination cannot be understated. Tom Brown's Schooldays had been extremely successful and spawned an entire genre of schoolboy stories during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its great appeal was due to the interest of poor boys who couldn't afford to attend boarding schools and their curiosity of what such a life is like. It also appealed to former such academy students reminiscing about their times there. Such a setting made it easy for Rowling to incorporate the elements of a typical bildungsroman. To increase the appeal and make the story much more dynamic than the typical school novel, Rowling added the idea that the school in her story (Hogwarts) specifically existed to educate children and adolescents who displayed innate magical talents and prepare them to live in a hidden society of wizards and witches. The Campbellian monomyth provided a tremendous cultural resonance to her stories.

The influence of the monomyth cannot be understated. Written well, a story that incorporates the monomyth can evoke a powerful emotional response in the reader. Written poorly, such a story devolves into formula and cliche, much like Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara.

Rowling's prose evolves as her protagonist and audience age. In the first two books, her writing style isn't very impressive. Indeed, if she had stopped at Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I'd not have any qualms agreeing with Harold Bloom's assessment of the books (more on that later). At several points, she felt the need to recap previous events, concepts, and setting material in the form of tedious info-dumps as the series progressed. This is jarring to her narrative rhythm and honestly unnecessary. To her credit, Rowling reduces these to a few stray sentences in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and virtually does away with them altogether in The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows. She never achieves a poetic or moving style of prose but I feel that had she attempted as much, her work would have been tastelessly turgid instead of straightforward and event-driven.

The characterization of Harry Potter and his friends is incredible. Rowling's characters feel like real people (with a few exceptions). The character dynamics between Hermione, Ron, and Harry are incredible. Many of the characters are spectacularly well-developed and fully realized on the page. Through their dialogue they take life and express their personalities. Very few of the major characters feel flat (and those that do are mostly villains, which does, admittedly, weaken her narrative, but I digress...) and their interactions are excellently enjoyable. It is difficult not to feel amusement and affection for Fred and George Weasley, for example.

Equally well-realized is the wizarding world, complete with its own lore, legends, entertainment, music, and culture. Rowling's world grows as the books progress and she reveals more and more of the land of enchantment which comes to be just as imaginative and dynamic as Carol's Wonderland or Baum's Oz and despite Bloom's criticisms (see below), much more self-sustaining. What irked me, however, was the complete independence the wizarding world experienced from the Muggle world in contrast to how events in the wizarding world would effect the Muggle world (Sirius Black's escape and the return of Voldemort, for example). Also, I found the helplessness of the Muggle world in the face of wizardly conflicts a plot hole (especially since the wizards went into hiding in the 17th century because of Muggle persecutions against magic-users). Rowling does a lot of wand-waving (heh, heh) to separate the Muggle and wizard worlds so much, often resorting (quite literally) to "a wizard did it" to deal with any potential for the isolation of the wizarding world being breached by the Muggle one.

Harold Bloom's infamous criticisms of Rowling's achievement are well known and discussed throughout the blogosphere. Just google "Harry Potter and Harold Bloom" and you'll be hit with a plethora of blog entries and magazine articles on Bloom's scathing criticism.

Bloom's primary points of contention?

• The books are bereft of imaginative vision.
• Rowling's setting and the action therein have nothing to do with reality, which he sees as completely contradictory to the "realism" of Tom Brown's Schooldays.
  
• Rowling's dichotomy of wizard vs. Muggle is offensive, especially when the Muggles are abusive, dull, and close-minded.
  
• Sex and sexuality is all but nonexistent.

However, Bloom's conclusion is quite revealing.

And yet I feel a discomfort with the Harry Potter mania, and I hope that my discontent is not merely a highbrow snobbery, or a nostalgia for a more literate fantasy to beguile (shall we say) intelligent children of all ages. Can more than 35 million book buyers, and their offspring, be wrong? yes, they have been, and will continue to be for as long as they persevere with Potter.

A vast concourse of inadequate works, for adults and for children, crams the dustbins of the ages. At a time when public judgment is no better and no worse than what is proclaimed by the ideological cheerleaders who have so destroyed humanistic study, anything goes.

The review was published in July, 2000, in The Wall Street Journal, almost at the same time as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire hit American bookstores and Harry had to deal with death and sexuality for the first time. Indeed, Bloom should have waited until the series was complete before he leveled his infamous criticisms against it. It does read as highbrow snobbery, as he frequently compares the novels to The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz as exemplars of imaginative children's literature.

Rowling's writing style and imagination matures as her protagonist--something that Bloom misses. Bloom characterizes himself as a guardian of the great books of the past. Indeed, I agree that the Western canon needs defending in this post-modern era and that many of the books Bloom holds in highest esteem deserve to be read and appreciated, I still feel that his attack on Rowling is endemic of the ivory-tower isolation of the academics from the masses and is a result of intellectual elitism.

The evidence is written all across the last novel. Harry Potter is faced with the realities of Dumbledore, his late guide and adviser, as a human with human failings and frailties of the heart. Harry is faced with making extremely difficult choices that result in the survival or demise of friends, teachers, and students. There is moral ambiguity in his decisions and although he inevitably triumphs, Rowling wisely glosses over the reconstruction and gives us a small glimpse into the lives of the characters and their children decades hence. The brevity of the epilogue leaves the aftermath vague and ambiguous, leading the reader to ask, "Was it worth it? Did everything go back to normal? How could it after such tragic events?" (The weakness of omitting the aftermath means we never see how many of the characters cope with loss and tragedy. It is impossible that the characters have all been able to return to their normal lives and I would have very much like to have seen how George Weasley dealt with his very tragic loss).

Similarly, the wizard attitude toward Muggles is never described as correct throughout her novels. With the exception of the Dursleys, Muggles are rarely encountered in the novels but it is evident that the Dursleys are not to be considered the model on which one should judge. The visceral reaction of the reader to the wizards' and witches' patronizing and (oftentimes inadvertent) bigotry toward Muggles (indeed, even the name sounds pejorative) should evoke a certain distaste in the reader. This is never a situation that Rowling addresses and is, necessarily, left up to the reader to wrestle. Though I do not believe Rowling did this purposely, that she did it is still a strength and not a narrative weakness. Indeed, she even intensifies this question through the revelations of Albus Dumbledore's friendship with Grindelwald.

The greatest weakness is the unsympathetic character of Voldemort. Although Rowling describes the difficulties and rejections he experienced as a child, Tom Riddle's development into an irredeemable villain is rather one-note. His inability to love is not only his greatest weakness as a villain, it's also his greatest weakness as a character. Voldemort is less human than Darth Vader, who despite being more machine than man still rescued his son from death. Despite being a common trope in fantasy, the monolithic villain that is so evil as to be inhuman and incapable of love or compassion is not nearly as interesting as a villain that has purposely rejected, submerged, and killed those emotions deliberately due to some pain or suffering in his past. Voldemort is not a tragic villain, he's simply a villain. Similarly, nearly every Slytherin character is petty, scheming, and hateful (I was very disappointed that no Slytherin characters besides Slughorn opted to fight Voldemort and the Death Eaters during the Battle of Hogwarts).

Another weakness in the narrative is the over-morality of the good guys. They never resort to use of the Killing Curse and never deliberately kill any of their opponents. Since such an action will result in breaking a person's soul apart, it is considered highly reprehensible. However, since the wizard community of Britain finds itself in a civil war, the prolific use of the Killing Curse by the forces of evil results in a growing disparity between them and the forces of good as the latter's numbers are reduced through attrition. Ultimately, Voldemort's hate and villainy are self-defeating and Harry triumphs without actually killing Voldemort. While there are many other examples of Harry struggling with pain and suffering, there is never a point where he is forced to kill in order to survive. He never experiences the pain and suffering that Simon experiences in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn as he is forced to fight and kill in order to save the people and ideals that he loves. Though in the setting the good characters are spared such existential suffering and dilemmas that typical war veterans have to wrestle with due to their exemplary conduct (not descending to the use of the Killing Curse), it doesn't make for a complex, compelling, and interesting narrative.

In the end, the books are still for children. Rowling skirts such issues as good guys killing or sex and sexuality in order to keep the books "suitable" for her audience. I don't begrudge her decision. She includes a great many other complex issues and ideas in her books that young readers must consider. By the later volumes, she refuses to "write down" to her audience. Through excellent characterization and a well-paced narrative progression, she keeps her readers' attention.

Rowling has definitely accomplished something. Are these books classics of literature? Bloom says no. I say yes. The Harry Potter series is not simply a flash-in-the-pan. Discerning readers who find the Twilight series to be utter garbage still consider the Harry Potter Series to be a fantastic work of epic fiction and adventure. I've read many works of literature, like Bloom, but unlike Bloom I believe that Rowling overcomes her shortcomings as a writer and the weaknesses of many of her narrative choices to write an increasingly complex and dynamic story. No, it is not the equal of Don Quixote, Hamlet, or even The Lord of the Rings. It's rife with flaws, plot holes, inconsistencies, and characterization issues (specifically among the villains of the story). Yet Rowling's achievement is still worthwhile and I'd argue that it is just as worth reading as The Wizard of Oz.

As a final note, I'd like to discuss Scholastic Corporation's editing choices in "translating" the British dialect to standard American idiom. This is quite galling and struck me as very disparaging toward American children. Granted, many of the terms would be a bit confusing, but instead of a translation, incorporating a short glossary at the back might have been a bit more respectful to the intelligences of the readers. Similarly, the opinion that American children would find a novel with "philosopher" in its title unappealing (as opposed to British children, who had no such problems) displays the innately low opinion that Scholastic Corporation has of American schoolchildren. Considering that Scholastic is a corporation that produces schoolbooks (indeed, its very name is, in this case, ironic), this begs a great many questions about American education and the people and companies we allow to teach our children.

The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
Style A
Substance B
Overall B+

Fantasy: 1977 to 2011. Wrapping It All Up

This project grew out of a response to Tom Simon's review of fantasy in 1977 and his lamentations regarding the trends that 1977's publications foreshadowed. I broke down Simon's issues with mainstream fantasy thusly:

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.

Each series Simon reviewed displayed problems that he had with the growth of these trends:

Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara represents imitation of Tolkien's work, debasing it into a set formula, without any of the thematic impact, narrative content, or unique characterization. This application the formula tends to be inept and riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies.

Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever represents how doing something different (and indeed, philosophical) with the genre will lack the mass-audience appeal of more imitative work and how a work is hindered by the demands of publishers for a follow-up trilogy.

Niel Hancock's The Circle of Light illustrates meandering plots without any meaningful pay-offs or resolutions. It also demonstrates how many later authors would clumsily employ different philosophies and religions as narrative gimmicks.

Finally, by analyzing The Silmarillion, Simon appeals to authors to blaze new trails and not get caught up in world-building to such a catastrophic level where the writer cannot escape it and becomes imaginatively bankrupt.

My own analysis of the 1980s and 1990s in fantasy seemed to uphold Simon's conclusions. I isolated a number of tropes Tolkien had established in fantasy, many of which were drawn from typical medieval and renaissance romances. To reiterate, they include:

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.

The successful authors, primarily Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind and David Eddings, exhibit many of the flaws that Simon identified in his examination of 1977's releases. That many of these authors were released by Del Rey or Tor Books should not go unnoticed. The growing influence of the publisher on the author (especially the cynical del Reys themselves) had a profound effect on the proliferation of doorstops and simplistic narratives. Some overly-slavish imitations, such as Dennis McKiernan's The Iron Tower Trilogy never garnered the audience of the more successful authors. Nevertheless, many authors who started strong, such as Raymond E. Feist, Glen Cook, and L.E. Modesitt, Jr., with imaginative worlds and interesting thematic elements, failed to maintain their uniqueness and strength in the long run. Feist, in particular, reached a high-water mark with A Darkness at Sethanon, but subsequent novels became more derivative and self-referential, with more repetitive conflicts ("bigger and badder" do not always equal better) and less-and-less payoff. Other authors, such as Tad Williams, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and C.S. Friedman, wrote unique, focused, imaginative series of finite length that didn't approach the mass-market appeal of other works.

It wasn't until George R.R. Martin and Steven Erikson debuted that mainstream fantasy received a much-needed shot-in-the-arm. Yet in the first decade of the 21st century, following Martin (in particular) came a bevvy of authors without the skill at crafting a coherent narrative that wrote in stark contrast to Tolkien. Indeed, they often seemed to blame Tolkien for the mire in which fantasy found itself. These writers were R. Scott Bakker, Joe Abercrombie, Stan Nicholls, and Richard Morgan. Many of them drew influence from pre-1977 writer Michael Moorcock and likewise fueled their writing with fumes of stark dislike for "Tolkien's politics."

This new generation of authors exhibited two distinctive and new traits.

1. Similar to Martin (and Tad Williams before), they sought to depict medieval warfare as brutal, bloody, savage, and destructive. They also described the effect of war on the populace--famine, rapine, pillaging, disease, and other features of the medieval chevauchée.
   
2. They also featured a lot of narrative elements subversive to Tolkien, such as morally ambiguous heroes, political intrigue, sympathetic villains, and a distinction between good and evil that is blurry at best (and often nonexistent). They were often driven by a polemic desire to protest Tolkien's politics and overthrow his influence over modern fantasy.
   

Unfortunately, these writers seem to focus mostly on these elements and not on cohesive plotting, believable characters, or effective dialogue. In effect, these elements are not included in order to advance the story or develop the characters. They are included for the express purpose of rebelling against Tolkien. This is the greatest irony of all: they are basically doing the same thing as Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara, but in the opposite direction and displaying all of the narrative and characterizing problems that Tom Simon identifies in his analysis of Sword. The authors do not realize that they, in truth, are just as derivative of Tolkien as his imitators. As a result, they fail to achieve any real literary merit, relegating themselves to cheap, adolescent grindhouse versions of fantasy.

Those authors who do employ these political and graphic elements successfully make these elements vehicles for plot and character development as any writer (fantasy or not) should. Therefore, I must insist that the weaknesses and errors that Simon identified (and to which I have added) are not unique to fantasy. Those who are successful at incorporating those two new traits (politics and graphic violence/sex) have done so in a manner that makes these elements meaningful to both the plot and the characters, therefore making them meaningful to the audience beyond providing "edginess," "topical relevance," and "realism." Those successful are Martin, Bakker, and Williams in particular--they were not revolting against Tolkien or attempting to push some sort of agenda but instead presenting worlds, characters, and situations designed to provoke questions for the reader to answer. If one were to remove the sex and violence from Martin or Bakker, the narrative would become weaker. If one were to remove it from Abercrombie, Morgan, or Nicholls, would it instead become apparent that the narrative was already weak?

Conclusion
So, is fantasy in as dire straits and as deep a mire in 2011 as it was in 1977?

Yes and no.

Yes because the issues which crept into fantasy haven't really disappeared. They've just changed their styles. The core problems are still present.

Reduction of Tolkien's narrative into a formula without any of the thematic impact, narrative content, or unique characterization, the application of which tends to be inept and riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies.

Lack the mass-audience appeal of less imitative work.

Demands of publishers for larger publications and follow-up material have contributed to doorstop fantasy series.


Meandering plots without any meaningful pay-offs or resolutions.

Clumsy and often dishonest application of different philosophies and religions as narrative gimmicks.

A tendency to get caught up in world-building to such a catastrophic level where the writer cannot escape it and becomes imaginatively bankrupt.

Add to this my own observations from the 2000s:

Hyperbolic and overly didactic political polemicism, especially anti-Tolkien polemicism, that is inherently and ironically trapped in Tolkien's legacy as much as Brooks' The Sword of Shannara. Spoon-fed lessons are a major factor, here.


A reliance upon gratuitous sex and graphic violence (often combined) in order to further divorce one's writing from Tolkien and earlier writings without these elements contributing to character or plot development.

What does this boil down to? Basically, bad writing. Fantasy publication since 1977 (and likely, publication in general) provides ample evidence that Sturgeon's Law is in full effect. The problem is that readers aren't reading the good stuff and are becoming convinced the bad stuff is actually good. This is why such writers as Robert Jordan are dangerous to young readers and aspiring authors alike.

I may be tempted to make the argument that all of modern literature is exhibiting these issues. There are more people writing and getting published than ever before and their material is becoming more uniform and less varied and prolific. However, I won't make such a broad and sweeping claim because I don't have much access to the dregs of the past and am keenly aware of the proliferation of penny-dreadfuls in the Victorian era.

What is unique to fantasy is that the genre seems to be tragically hidebound to certain styles and both audience and publishers are woefully ignorant of the finer points of style, taste, and literary substance. The fact is that most fantasy readers are ignorant of literature outside of the genre. Such knowledge might have a profound impact on their taste. Indeed, most readers would likely prefer to read through all 15,000 pages of The Wheel of Time than The Count of Monte Cristo, Les Misérables, Moby-Dick, and The Grapes of Wrath (totaling around 3,000 pages--less than one fifth the length). This, I find, both sad and disappointing.

In the end, the blame must be laid at two sets of feet--the publishers and the readers. The publishers are at fault because instead of being motivated to publish literature they are instead motivated by profit in only the most cynical manner (as exemplified by the del Reys). The readers are at fault by being so hidebound and ignorant of literature that they are bereft of any and all taste, motivated by a desire to either see Middle-earth last forever or be violently overthrown.

There is hope for fantasy provided good writers enter the genre. That is why I continually referred to Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Steven Erikson, and R. Scott Bakker as symbols of hope for mainstream epic fantasy. Williams unfortunately flew beneath the mainstream radar. Bakker's narrative is carried by extremely abstract philosophical, ethical, and psychological content (which makes sense, the man was a Ph.D. student in philosophy before he turned to writing and it shows in his work). This renders The Second Apocalypse a bit out-of-reach intellectually for most readers that cannot get past the surface elements of his novels.

Yet these writers are still going. And they're likely to inspire further writers to take on the genre and use it as a playground for their imaginations. Lets just hope that these future writers are far more literary and capable of good writing.

Fantasy: 1999 to 2011. Disillusionment and Nihilism.

My final segment of my brief history of post-1977 mainstream epic fantasy closes with the past decade of development in the genre and a bit of musing regarding the direction it's taking. To recap, I first began this as a response to Tom Simon's discussion regarding trends that arose in 1977 which came to plague mainstream fantasy. When I examined the 1980s, I noticed that the most popular writers were derivative of Tolkien and/or medieval romance. While analyzing the 1990s I found that those writers continued but were joined by didactic polemicists and gimmicky weak narratives; doorstop fantasies that meandered with little or no payoff were actually the biggest bestsellers.

I am still questing to see if Simon is correct in his assessment that mainstream fantasy has become so mired in formula and convention, bereft of little true creativity or writing skill.

This segment is particularly difficult to write because it was during this time that I finished college, went to graduate school, and then left for Korea. My tastes in reading were necessarily shifted by my studies, gravitating strongly toward more canon literary works, historical inquiries, and books of philosophy. Therefore, I drifted from fantasy for about seven or eight years, only returning to the genre lately and finding it very different from when I left it back around 2001.

During this time, most of what I read was drawn from Gygax's & Arneson's Appendix N from the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. I was more than pleased by the Del Rey releases of Robert E. Howard's short stories in trade paperback format (including his Kull, Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, and Conan yarns). I started reading Moorcock's Elric books, Zelazny's Amber novels, Vance's Dying Earth, and Leiber's Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser tales. I also dove into more SF with Kurt Vonnegut, Dan Simmons, Frederick Pohl, and H.G. Wells. I periodically pulled a few works from the shelves of the fantasy section, such as John Marco's The Eyes of God but overall, I wasn't really inspired to continue. Oh, I certainly enjoyed what I read. Yet there was something missing.

In the following, I cannot speak from firsthand experience reading these authors. I must admit a distinct bias which will, no doubt, color my assessment. I'm drawing much of my information from reviews found on blogs and amazon.com reviews. The uniting trend I've recognized, however, is that all of the negative reviews had very specific criticisms of writing and narrative style, weak characterization, and an overattachment to gore, violence, sex, and rape; all of the positive reviews were very vague, used adjectives like "enjoyable" and "exciting," and tended to compare the work to other authors the audience "may have liked."

Stan Nicholls
Nicholl's first Orc novels, Bodyguard of Lightning and Legion of Thunder were released amidst a small fanfare touting his subversive decision to write a novel from the perspective of the "bad guy cannon fodder" of fantasy. This wasn't a bad decision. However, Nicholls certainly had issues with taste. A lot of the criticism of Nicholls' novels focus on how he fails to actually detail and describe a different race; ultimately, they are humans with different skin--stereotypical noble barbarians. The over-fetishization of violence, rape, dismemberment, and gore do not make up for the lack of character depth and believable worldbuilding.

Joe Abercrombie
Abercrombie debuted with The Blade Itself in 2006, the first novel in his The First Law trilogy (followed by Before They Are Hanged in '07 and Last Argument of Kings in '08). According to one amazon.com reviewer, the trilogy is "Conan the Barbarian meets the anti-Lord of the Rings...and its not a compliment." While dialogue may be a strength, Abercrombie seems to lack the panache for character and plot development. His hard-boiled prose is apparently quite fitting and has garnered a great deal of complements on the internet, although the proliferation of modern swears and parlance in his character dialogue has been labeled as "distracting." Nobody gets what they deserve and almost none of the characters can be characterized as "good." This is not a problem, so much, except that all of the characters are basically evil. They might be sympathetic to some, but many who have not rejected the moral ambiguities of Martin's novels have rejected the amorality of Abercrombie's.

However, it appears that the most negative reaction to Abercrombie has come from his 2011 release, The Heroes, in which the eponymous characters are anything but. As one reviewer opined, The Heroes descends into being "a 500 page vignette on the folly and nihilism of war, brutally told."

Richard Morgan
With 2008's The Steel Remains and the forthcoming The Cold Commands (Oct. 2011), Richard Morgan has thrown down his own gauntlet against the perceived weaknesses of Tolkienesque fantasy.

A slow moving novel that attempts to challenge contemporary fantasy tropes with in-your-face assaults on the hero archetype. But given the lack of plot progression, the book seems to be a pretense for forcing readers of basic fantasy to digest homo-erotica as a statement, not in pursuit of a larger plot point. Yeah, we get it, good literature is hard to read - and in western culture gay sex scenes are challenging to many readers. But challenging literature is not necessarily good literature, and that's a logical fallacy Richard Morgan embraces in this novel. --amazon.com review for The Steel Remains by Oria S. Bjorklund

Another reviewer states that "if graphic rape is your thing, this book is for you." Brian from The Silver Key had a decent amount to say about Morgan's debut fantasy novel. The overall trend in the negative criticism of his work is that the writing style is weak and at times overly technical, eliminating suspension of disbelief. Like Abercrombie and Nicholls, the emphasis is on being "edgy" and "dark, gritty, and violent." One positive reviewer said of Morgan's writing that "this isn't Disney." What the hell that is supposed to mean, I'm not sure (maybe the reviewer seems to think that Tolkienesque fantasy is Disney, I don't know).

Morgan (as one will read below) is highly critical of Tolkien. Just read "The Real Fantastic Stuff."

China Miéville
Although technically a writer of the New Weird, a movement that seeks to move fantasy back to its SF and horror roots of the early 20th century, China Miéville is yet another anti-Tolkien author who is deeply critical of what he sees as Tolkien's politics in The Lord of the Rings. Miéville is a socialist and a Marxist and infuses his work with such themes as class struggle and industrialization, often setting his writing in parallel worlds full of magic and more modern/postmodern thematic elements.

I can't really comment much on China Miéville because I actually want to read him. Out of the current list, Miéville has the most awards and honors heaped upon his novels, suggesting that there is really some substance to his work. I'm purposely avoiding reviews of him in order to make up my own mind. But since he's one of the most active and heavily recognized writers in the SF/fantasy genre he deserves mention.

REMINDER: I've read none of these authors. I have seen how they've spawned a degree of backlash amongst a more conservative readership. Just read my "Realism and Nihilism in Contemporary Fantasy" and check out all of the blogs and articles I link throughout the post. Therefore, yes, I do carry a bias. If I ever attempt to read these authors, I will comment on them much more directly and where necessary redact any statements that might be erroneous.

R. Scott Bakker
Some might argue that they have read nothing more nihilistic, violent, or graphically sexual than R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor. I would disagree. The only nihilism there is what the reader imposes upon the text and Bakker's work most certainly transcends genre. Yes, his work is graphically violent and sexually explicit. Yet Bakker draws from not only literary influences within the SF, fantasy, and horror genres but from Freud, Plato, Gnosticism, Nietzsche, Jung, and countless other writers and sources of philosophy, religion, and psychology. He combines everything into a grandiose thought-experiment whose thematic narrative is not didactic or polemic but instead allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.

To be fair, Bakker's story is only one-half to two-thirds finished (he has five books thus far in his Second Apocalypse saga with two or three novels forthcoming). Thus far, Bakker is very deeply interested in the concept of damnation and the power of collective consciousness upon the Outside (and/or the hereafter), psychological determinism and whether or not we can truly control our conscious selves or are ruled by a subconscious, and the nature of knowledge and truth. Bakker reveals how his characters may believe they are acting out of a sense of justice or honor and strive for what they believe to be good but in reality are acting on subconscious motivations shaped by their upbringing, culture, religion, experience, and a myriad of other external stimuli. These revelations have thought-provoking implications for the reader and strike at the very heart of the human experience. This, in my opinion, catapults him far above many of his contemporaries into the realm of true literature.

Current Trends in Mainstream Fantasy?
What we see are two developing trends. The first is an increase in "adult" themes, such as sex and sexuality, violence and gore, and the gritty realities of medieval life and warfare (rape, pillaging, the chevauchée, religious and noble hypocrisy, class dominance, female repression, tyranny, widespread poverty and disease, etc.). These things are remarkably absent in not only Tolkien but also Eddings, Jordan (with the exception of sex/female repression), Brooks, Feist, etc. This growth of "hardcore" themes gives the new books an "edgy" feel.

The other trend is wholly political. Many of these writers are approaching fantasy from different postmodern perspectives (gender perspectives/feminism, Marxism/class struggle, industrialization, liberalism, atheism/alternative religions, etc.). We saw the dawn of many of these in the 1990s--for example, Philip Pullman published His Dark Materials during that time, which was keenly critical of the Catholic Church in specific and religion in general.

I've discussed a great deal about these trends in "Realism and Nihilism in Contemporary Fantasy." However, for the sake of argument, I'll repeat a few of my ideas below.

To me, it appears that mainstream fantasy has gone where comic books went in the early 1990s. With the relaxation of the Comic Book Code, grittier, more violent and sexually charged comics found release. In some regards, this was a good thing. Alan Moore's The Watchmen and From Hell, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and Frank Miller's Sin City, 300, and The Dark Knight Returns all dealt with mature themes and challenged the readers' preconceptions regarding the literary role comics could play. (All of this had been made possible by Art Spiegelman's Maus in the 1970s). However, the drawback was a descent into worship of amoral anti-heroes (cf. Rob Liefeld's Bloodwulf mini-series and Supreme), often featuring copious amounts of gore and sex. The end result was comics became less "adult" and more "adolescent."

I see a similar trend in fantasy. The growth of more "edgy," "realistic," and "hardcore" narratives is equally puerile, mostly due to the lack of authorial skill in characterization and narrative structure. Authors have found fantasy childish and are attempting to force it into maturity through writing more "adult" stories without the skills in telling a coherent story with well-defined characters.

C.S. Lewis responded (well, I think) to the concept of "adult" themes in literature:

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adults themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence…. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. --from "On Three Ways of Writing for Children," On Stories

Indeed, this speaks directly to just how adolescent and undeveloped a proliferation of gratuitous sex, violence, and gore in both comic books and fantasy fiction is.

"Battles and bloodshed occur and occur often, but do not take the story to a higher level each time. There is no build-up. Main characters die, but only because [the author] wants to play with the reader, that is, rather than eliminating them in the natural flow of things or to add an element of drama." --amazon.com review of The Blade Itself by Han Jie

This is a common criticism I see repeated in many reviews for Morgan, Abercrombie, and Nicholls. The violence and sex in many of these books exist simply for the element of subversion and shock.

The second trend I've noticed is primarily political in nature. Miéville, and Morgan, specifically, have openly criticized Tolkien's writing. Abercrombie admitted to finding the following more compelling than Tolkien's original material:

Endless scenes of torture, treachery and bloodshed drenched in scatology and profanity concluded with a resolution worthy of M. Night Shyamalan at his worst, one that did its best to hurt, disappoint, and dishearten any lover of myths and their timeless truths. Think of a Lord of the Rings where, after stringing you along for thousands of pages, all of the hobbits end up dying of cancer contracted by their proximity to the Ring, Aragorn is revealed to be a buffoonish puppet-king of no honor and false might, and Gandalf no sooner celebrates the defeat of Sauron than he executes a long-held plot to become the new Dark Lord of Middle-earth, and you have some idea of what to expect should you descend into Abercrombie’s jaded literary sewer. --Leo Grin, "The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasists."

Granted, I may be coming down a bit hard on Abercrombie but the trend is there and is being applauded by more than the likes of Michael Moorcock.

I'm not really interested in reading much of this newer stuff. If I wanted to, I'd read a history book about actual events. I don't read fantasy for the historical realism, I read it for the story. If the story is lacking, then it follows that no matter how subversive, postmodern, or politically topical the novel may be, I will find myself disinterested at best and angry/insulted at worst. Many of these authors aren't interested in challenging their audience and asking provocative questions--instead they take a moral stance and spoon-feed all of the meaning to the reader. Much of that meaning is highly agenda-driven and deliberately destructive of previous fantasy. Many authors have stated a heavy dislike for Tolkien.

it would be a foolish writer in the fantasy field who failed to acknowledge the man’s overwhelming significance in the canon. And it would be a poor and superficial reader of Tolkien who failed to acknowledge that in amongst all the overwrought prose, the nauseous paeans to class-bound rural England, and the endless bloody elven singing that infests The Lord of the Rings, you can sometimes discern the traces of a bleak underlying human landscape which is completely at odds with the epic fantasy narrative for which the book is better known. --Richard Morgan, "The Real Fantastic Stuff"

Morgan goes on to say in his Comments section:

The Gorbag passage I quoted is, I think, an example of Tolkien’s Authorial Talent shouldering his Priggish Metaphysical Concerns out of the driving seat for a while (you can see a similar dynamic in Milton’s handling of Satan), but, as I lamented in the article, it doesn’t last long, AT gets booted into the back seat again and PMC is back in charge. I think you can see similar examples of that struggle littered throughout the book, but the result is always the same. This is the retreat from the lessons of the twentieth century that I was talking about in the essay and it’s how we end up with a book written by a man who’s witnessed the slaughter of the Somme, in which massive frontal assault against suicidal odds is still seen as a Noble Thing. That’s the failure I’m talking about.
Here are a few things, off the top of my head, that might (IMHO) have thickened the mix to more adult proportions:
Denethor retains most of his disagreeable characteristics but is a handy motherfucker with a battle axe and repels with great gusto a couple of assaults on the gates of Minas Tirith, while still raging at Gandalf for interfering.
Theoden rides to Minas Tirith not because it’s The Right Thing to Do, but because he reckons there’s a chance he can lay his hands on Gondor’s levers of power in the aftermath (and Gandalf sells him that idea to get him into the saddle)
Faramir dies, Boromir lives (with his guilt unassuaged or not, I can see excellent dramatic potential either way)
The hardiest fighters at the siege of Minas Tirith are a company of renegade orcs who’ve changed sides and have the most to lose if the city falls since they’ll be tortured to death as traitors
The most terrifying asset in Sauron’s forces is a mercenary army of elves out of Mirkwood. Disgusted by the failings of men, they have thrown in their lot with the enemy on condition they will not be deployed to fight their own kind. The Nazgul hate them and don’t trust them, and those feelings are mutual. At Helm’s Deep the mercenaries come face to face with brother elves and Sauron’s broken promise……
An orc family provide Frodo and Sam with shelter as they cross the wastes – the family are starving and miserable, and just want the war over and their husband and father back from the front.
And so on…….

Such criticism of Tolkien completely misses Tolkien's point. Including these elements would have catastrophically undone the entire purpose of The Lord of the Rings. The narrative would have been too divided, cheapened, and unraveled. Those like Abercrombie and Morgan might see this as a Good Thing, but I don't. Why?

Literary Taste. George R.R. Martin and R. Scott Bakker can do these things in their narrative because these elements have a place in their storytelling. In The Lord of the Rings, such developments would have simply weakened the story, pacing, characterization, narrative flow, etc. Tolkien wasn't incapable of writing those elements into a story, as his Children of Húrin demonstrates. For this particular story, however, Tolkien didn't want to include those elements and his novel is better off because of it.

Literary taste demands the reader ask the question, "What purpose do these elements serve? Do they advance the story or characters? Do they increase the dramatic tension of the tale?" If the answer to the last two questions is "no," then the answer to the first will likely be unsatisfying. The purpose will be to "be edgy/hardcore/adult/realistic" and therefore be intrinsically flawed. All elements in any work of literature should be subservient to the overall narrative. If they are not, then the author is doing something wrong.

So how about the authors who have included these themes and done it right?

THE SUCCESSES
Frankly, it is my opinion that George R.R. Martin, R. Scott Bakker, and Tad Williams incorporate many of these "adult" and political themes far more successfully than many of their contemporaries. I've discussed Williams' work at length so there shouldn't be much more to say about him. Williams is not concerned with "updating" or "dethroning" Tolkien. His work is not a criticism of Tolkien or of anything at all. Despite all of the subversive elements he included in his tale, he still maintains a mythical and fantastic flavor of the sort that Tolkien achieved. Similarly, George R.R. Martin's novels do not seek to overthrow The Lord of the Rings. Martin is a great lover of Tolkien and once opined that when he dies instead of heaven he'd prefer to go to Middle-earth. R. Scott Bakker has openly admitted that the Mines of Moria inspired Cil-Aujas and the confrontation with Smaug influenced his climax to The White-Luck Warrior.

These authors have not written their works to criticize Tolkien. They're written their books to tell their own stories and wrestle with their own issues. Tolkien serves them simply as a source of inspiration as to what fantasy can accomplish. Martin, Williams, and Bakker do not descend to the adolescent levels that many of the other authors do. Bakker comes close but his voice is so matter-of-fact that he dodges both the "prude" and "pornography" bullets that many authors fail to do. Indeed, since sex is a part of life and the human experience, it forms an integral part of his characters' psyches and is therefore quite important in the development of his narrative and his exploration of the conscious and subconscious drives that direct people's behaviors. I am under the impression that Bakker is not writing to an audience that will be thrilled or shocked by sex and violence but assumes that his readers are mature enough to take his descriptions in stride. Indeed, it would be impossible to delve to such a primeval, Freudian level into his characters' psyches if he didn't write these things.

NOTE: I don't include Erickson and Esslemont as successes in this regard because they're pursuing a far different sort of tale--something drawn more from Gygax's & Arneson's Appendix N than from Tolkien. Yes, many of these political, sexual, and violent themes emerge in their works. Nevertheless, these themes are much more subdued in their Malazan novels. There isn't as much subversion in the Malazan world so much as an exploration of the infinite possibilities of the imagination through fantasy.

In other words, for Martin, Bakker, and Williams, sex and violence occur in the story in order to advance the plot. One of the major criticisms I've repeatedly come across regarding Abercrombie, Morgan, and Nicholls is the violence and sex in their books does nothing to advance the story or develop the characters.

To write something realistically in order to give definition and meaning to a story is one thing. To write realistically for the purpose of being realistic or "edgy" is another.

"Nobody writes realistic realism, and if they did, no one would read it. The writers that think they write it just give their own ideas about things they think they see. The sort of man who could write realism is the fellow who never reads or writes anything." --Robert E. Howard

Too often, writers are writing in order to be edgy.

So, what does this mean for fantasy? What about the trends that Tom Simon discussed in his essay?

I'll round that off with my final conclusion in a forthcoming post.