Fantasy: 1990 - 2000. The Age of the Doorstops and Gimmicks

Two days ago, I read and responded to Tom Simon's review of several 1977 fantasy publications that established many of the traits that would, in his opinion, damage much of the fantasy to emerge in the next thirty-five years. Yesterday, I determined to trace major developments in mainstream epic fantasy through the 1980s in this previous post.

I will probably make a lot of references to those posts, so it would be helpful to read them before continuing through this installment of my essay. The main question I am asking is simply this:

Is Tom Simon correct that mainstream epic fantasy has been so locked into a ditch where all of these huge flaws are part-and-parcel of much of fantasy, especially its strongest-selling sagas? Have incoherent philosophical moralizing, uninspired attachment to a Tolkienesque formula, and an editorial/audience reluctance to pursue non-Tolkienesque fantasy truly harmed mainstream epic fantasy over the longe durée?

Yesterday, I determined that, yes, mainstream epic fantasy was very much damaged by these developments--especially the attachment to trope and formula. David Eddings played an enormous role in codifying and formulating these fantasy elements, far beyond the impact of Terry Brooks. Despite Eddings' awareness and inspiration of pre-Tolkien mythological and romantic cycles (many of which were the same as Tolkien's sources), his work lacked the poetry, thematic strength, and musing upon the human condition that Tolkien had done. Indeed, Eddings' work reduced mainstream epic fantasy to a tight, strict formula. A prolific writer, Eddings would dominate 1980s fantasy, publishing nearly one (sometimes two) novels a year.

In tandem with the formalization of epic fantasy came what Tom Simon calls "Procrustes the Publisher." As paperback prices began to rise, publishers began to demand more page-counts to justify price-hikes. However, page-counts do not necessarily equal quality and word-bloat became a necessary evil in the production of mainstream fantasy.

Then in 1988, Tad Williams published The Dragonbone Chair. On the surface, it looked like a knockoff of David Eddings, and a continuation of the formalization of epic fantasy. It would not become apparent until much later in the 1990s that mainstream fantasy would be divided into several camps. Old novels, once overlooked, would regain new life. Other authors would continue to slog in their worlds long after their original spark of inspiration had died.

Let's turn, now, to 1990, yet another watershed year in fantasy fiction much like 1982 and 1984 were.

1990
In this year numerous epic fantasy publications were to have a major impact on the growth of fantasy, some much greater than others. First, and perhaps most importantly, Robert Jordan released The Eye of the World through Tor Books. Terry Brooks broke ground with The Scions of Shannara. Tad Williams continued his epic saga with The Stone of Farewell. TSR, the makers of Dungeons & Dragons, released R.A. Salvatore's Homeland. And Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman kicked off a seven-novel cycle with Dragon Wing.

Tad Williams
Williams really deserves an entire post to himself, which I intend to get to sometime this month (or next). Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is literature of the highest quality and I owe it to his series that I give it a much more thorough treatment than I can give it here. For the sake of argument, I'll sum up my reasons why Williams is one of the greatest fantasy writers of the 1990s:

• Incredible use of thematic symbolism. The eponymous swords are not simply McGuffins, but their names should clue the reader in--they've incredible thematic and symbolic value that any English professor would be daft to miss.
• The employment of trope elements drawn from chivalric romance (especially Arthurian romance) and their elegant, artistic, and poignant subversion that, nevertheless, preserves the sense of epicness and romanticism.
• The villains, especially the Storm King, have deep, personal, and believable motivation beyond simply "covering all the lands in darkness."
  
• The ending. For some it may be a letdown but it makes sense and is, indeed, the best ending possible--given the motivations of the villains and the reasons behind their actions, the protagonist's decisions at the climax of the series have far, far more literary and thematic weight than anything since Gollum fell into the Cracks of Doom.
  

Robert Jordan
I've waxed wroth regarding Robert Jordan's novels elsewhere. Quite wroth, in fact. In my opinion, Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time was one of the worst things to happen to fantasy literature in the twentieth century. Jordan took the Tolkienesque/Eddings formula fantasy, padded it out to a thousand pages a volume, combined it with aspects of Eastern philosophy (admittedly much more coherent than Hancock's Circle of Light, but still erratic and somewhat inconsistent) as a religious/philosophical/supernatural gimmick, and initiated a saga that he would continue to milk ad infinitum, so much so that he would not even survive long enough to complete what has come to be a 15-volume whopper that meanders through character-relationships, political intrigue, laughably caricatured villains and their oh-so villainous plots, and a sequence of unsatisfying, anti-climactic endings.

And yet, people love Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. Why? Well, a New York Times article in 1996 explains that "Robert Jordan has come to dominate the world that Tolkien began to reveal." I'm tempted to ask "what world, exactly, would that be?" and also "how, exactly, does he dominate it?" My answers are not good. The world he dominates is that of the mainstream fantasy fan that longs for Tolkien ad nauseum and he dominates it through excessive description, soap opera character interactions, cliffhangers, and a paint-by-numbers adherence to The Formula (at least in the initial novels). When he finally starts to emerge from the repetitive fantasy formula Eddings codified, his books are so full of character and plot issues and so bloated as to be unsalvageable.

Terry Brooks
After the train-wreck that was The Wishsong of Shannara in 1985, Brooks took a hiatus from the Shannara world. Five years later, Del Rey published his first volume in his Heritage of Shannara series. At first glance, the new series would be, much like The Wishsong, a repeat of The Sword of Shannara, making it a copy of a copy of Tolkien yet again.

However, Brooks actually dodges that bullet, especially in The Druid of Shannara (1991) and The Elfqueen of Shannara (1992), before tying everything up in 1993's The Talismans of Shannara. Although not the soulless brick that were The Sword and The Wishsong, Brooks' new tetralogy didn't really break new ground and still suffered from the characterization issues that plagued the earlier novels. By this point, the Shannara setting had its own set of cliches and formulae to which Brooks would slavishly adhere. Nevertheless, The Heritage of Shannara seemed to be a step in the right direction and an excellent place to retire the setting.

If only Brooks had.

R.A. Salvatore
Salvatore's first publications by TSR, The Icewind Dale Trilogy (1988-1990) were predictable knock-offs plagued by more formulaic plotting, poor characterization, crippling reliance on D&D setting mechanics, uninspired villains with shallow motivation, and worst-of-all, a laughably feeble attempt at heroic prose. The term "hack" comes to mind.

A few months after thankfully closing The Icewind Dale Trilogy with The Halfling's Gem, TSR released Salvatore's Homeland--the first chapter in The Dark Elf Trilogy. Although not an incredible work of literature, the novel was highly unique in that its protagonist was a Dark Elf who was wracked by a morality that ran contrary to that of his subterranean society and culture, leading to his exile and search for acceptance on the surface. Its ruminations on racism, matriarchy, morality/ethics, isolation, and solitude weren't especially deep but it remains perhaps Salvatore's best series to date and a fan-favorite. It's certainly stronger, better-written, and of more substance than anything that came after.

Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
The Deathgate Cycle is, perhaps, the best thing that ever came off of Weis' & Hickman's typewriters. The nature of magic and the sundering of the world into a number of different elemental realms reachable only through magic gates were excellent gimmicks and highly imaginative. Combined with these ideas, Weis & Hickman wove a striking tale of trust and betrayal, racism, stereotyping, unforeseen consequences, and mistrust. The solitary protagonist would, through the course of his journey, find all of his prejudices and beliefs challenged, as would some of his racial opponents. The philosophical underpinnings of magic actually make a lot of sense and speak more to quantum physics than to esoteric spirituality. In addition, names of characters and places carry symbolic meaning and Weis & Hickman use language to reinforce these symbols. Seven novels in all, The Deathgate Cycle is an incredibly original, bold, and challenging piece of fantasy literature. Unfortunately, as I mentioned previously, Weis & Hickman seem relegated to the D&D ghetto and thus seem to be often avoided by much of the mainstream fantasy audience. Regardless, The Deathgate Cycle not only dodges many of the bullets Simon laments in his five-part review of 1977's fantasy breakouts, it goes above-and-beyond by featuring real dramatic tension and dilemma within the psyches of the characters and reaches for more substantive thematic and literary levels than many of the other fantasy novels of the time.

1991-1996
New writers began to emerge in a flood during this period and mainstream fantasy sales began to soar as more authors achieved publication. However, perhaps Sturgeon's Law was in full effect during this period. Tad Williams finally completed his trilogy, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn during this period. Terry Brooks published a prequel to The Sword of Shannara that completely undid all of the progress he had achieved with his Heritage series, and it became apparent that he intended to pound his world to death with sequels and tie-ins that sought to unite the current modern world with his decaying fantasy edifice. Raymond E. Feist would start publication on The Serpentwar Saga, which lacked the vigor, depth, and heroism of The Riftwar Saga but made up for it with a depressingly heady dose of directionless nihilism, marking a distinct shift in the tone and substance of his work. David Eddings would (with acknowledgements to his wife, Leigh) publish a sequel to his Belgariad and produce a series of novels that would follow-up on The Elenium with just as much adherence to the formulae that made him a paint-by-numbers success in the first place. Robert Jordan's projections for The Wheel of Time would expand from a trilogy to a sexology but by 1996's A Crown of Swords (volume seven) it would become apparent that the end was nowhere in sight.

A few new authors emerged onto the scene and a few more returned with new projects. Mickey Zucker Reichert fanned her fascination with Norse mythology in The Renshai Trilogy. C.S. Friedman debuted in fantasy with the science-fiction-infused Coldfire Trilogy. L.E. Modesitt, Jr. also fused fantasy with science-fiction in his Saga of Recluse. Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule would set Ayn Rand's objectivism in a fantasy setting.

Mickey Zucker Reichert
1991's Last of the Renshai, while not a bad novel, per se, was rather uninspired and didn't justify its thickness. Though subsequent novels in the trilogy would shift focus onto the character of Colbey Calistinsson, it was not the most imaginative fusion of high fantasy with Norse myth. Colbey is a male Mary Sue character who cannot be defeated and is capable of mastering any challenge that opposes him. The real dramatic tension is generated by the tightrope Colbey must walk, as his strict moral and ethical code is unwavering and might even lead him to inadvertently cause Ragnarok. An interesting read, Reichert's novels nevertheless fail to deliver much more than a bunch of stories about a slightly morally conflicted character who is essentially unbeatable. What would strengthen her work would have been a more mythic narrative style, akin to Tolkien's prose. Perhaps it is better that she writes in a modern voice instead of falling into the same trap as R.A. Salvatore and his trusty thesaurus.

C.S. Friedman
Friedman's background as a science-fiction writer gives her a way with gimmicks and informs her approach to the fantasy genre. What if humans landed on a planet that responded to their subconscious, making their fears real? What if this could manifest itself as magic and be controlled? What sort of institutions, programs, and individual actions could be taken to create stability and order on such a world? What kind of impact would this have on the native ecosystem of such a world and upon the planet itself?

Tackling these questions sets Friedman head-and-shoulders above other, more popular fantasy writers. Far more heavily influenced by Isaac Asimov than by J.R.R. Tolkien, Friedman ignored many of the formulaic fantasy conventions that had become canonized by the late 1980s. Thus, her work remained fresh, innovative, and unsurprisingly overlooked by all but a few. Incorporation of a believable antihero who chose evil for the good of the world introduces moral quandary and rumination on the human condition beyond simply examining how societies and institutions would be shaped in the presence of a magical that seemed to resist the rational.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
Similar to Friedman, Modesitt was heavily influenced by science-fiction and enamored of many philosophical questions regarding how societies and individuals deal with worlds where chaos and order are in constant combat with one another. Ethical questions, ecology, time travel, immortality, music, war, the physical and mental price of power, and other themes make frequent appearances throughout his Saga of Recluse. A prolific writer, Modesitt would hammer out nearly a book a year (sometimes two) set in this saga. However, he would also succumb to the same self-codification and self-imposed formalism that Brooks and Eddings would. Many of his books would feature the rags-to-riches/poverty-to-power model, weakening his later narratives despite his unique thought-experimentation on a wide variety of literary themes. Narrative weaknesses do plague The Saga of Recluse--the series itself jumps back-and-forth in time, making an exact chronology difficult to follow and the novels themselves often shift perspective.

Terry Goodkind
Robert Jordan's strongest competitor for the Doorstop Award, Goodkind's first novel, Wizard's First Rule, is objectivism in a fantasy setting with a strict adherence to Eddings' "visit every place on the map" structural formula. Yet again, like Jordan, Goodkind is compared with J.R.R. Tolkien's. Marion Zimmer Bradley commented on the back cover, "I really think it's going to sweep the country as Tolkien's work did in the sixties."

Similar to Robert Jordan, Terry Goodkind cannot even begin to pretend to being a good writer. His prose is dull and uninspired, his narrative employs nearly every single cliche in the most soulless manner, he recycles his plots and conflicts in every single subsequent novel with only minor variations, and he spoonfeeds the reader with his Randian Objectivism with no real room for alternate perspectives or philosophies. Goodkind's fetishization of rape and other forms of sexual torture go from shocking to boring and repetitive. The characters are flat and never really advance or grow. Essentially, Goodkind is the fantasy version of Ayn Rand: his entire fantasy series is the soapbox from which he preaches his own ethical system.

1997-1999
With the emergence of Jordan and Goodkind as dominant doorstop producers in the fantasy genre and the advent of their fanatic fanbase, it might indeed seem that fantasy is mired in an overly derivative period in which incoherent philosophical themes are jammed into narratives that often serve only as pulpits for the authors' moralizing. Very rarely did the novels really speak to the human condition. Authors began to delve into endless repetition of their own works, creating infinitely self-referential cycles instead of branching off and breaking new ground. There is no real thematic resonance in any of the prose--Tolkien and his sources might be imitated to varying degrees of substantial value but their voice is either ignored or imitated so poorly as to be excruciating.

However, during the latter half of the 90s, more authors began to emerge, many of whom displayed a more nihilistic bent. The reliance of gimmicks began to increase. For example, Dave Wolverton (writing under the pseudonym of David Farland) would write his Runelords series centered on an equally unique gimmick--the use of branded runes to "donate" traits to certain lords and warriors to make them superhuman. The donors would lose their ability to use that trait. For example, by donating your strength, you become bedridden; intelligence, an idiot; sight, blind; hearing, deaf. Mostly the donors were volunteers and their families were treated well. Nevertheless, it does grate upon our modern sensitivities to see people enslaved in such a bizarre manner and viscerally robbed of their own natural abilities for the glorification and enhancement of one person.

During the latter half of the 90s, though, two authors would release stupendous works that would shake up the fantasy scene beyond recognition.

George R.R. Martin
The other "man with two R's" would largely abandon the mythopoeic style of Tolkien, along with many of its trappings, retaining only a few tropes and drawing far greater inspiration from history. A Game of Thrones is not a happy tale. And the series it inaugurated doesn't become more lighthearted. Martin's story is one of politics and consequences--especially unforeseen consequences. Martin's characters are deep, believable, often not very likeable, but very human and his work is very much a meditation on aspects of the human condition. Martin uses fantasy as a backdrop and vehicle to tell his story. The fantasy world is rich and well-detailed, full of diverse cultures beyond the chivalric pseudo-Europe of Westeros.

What separates A Game of Thrones from works of other fantasy authors, such as Jordan, Goodkind, Brooks, Eddings, etc., is that Martin's story is most decidedly not a Tolkienesque quest (although quests do feature in it). It is the story of a very human civil war, although he does include a looming supernatural threat. Martin's narrative forces it's readers to ask damn hard questions regarding benevolent despotism, whether (and how) power corrupts, the impact parents have on their children, why civilizations become corrupt, decay and decline, and ultimately fall, and honorable conduct. Goodkind beats us over the head with his message. Jordan's characters sit around drinking tea and commenting how "men only think with the hair on their chests" or "women make no sense." Eddings and Brooks ask no questions at all but simply have their characters fight evil with magic McGuffins.

Steven Erikson
Erikson succeeds where R.A. Salvatore, Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, and other TSR/Wizards of the Coast writers fail--he takes a world he played role-playing games in and turns it into an incredible saga of war, empire, power, religious and cultural conflict, and race. Weis & Hickman succeeded with their tight focus on the Majere brothers in The Dragonlance Legends, but Erikson's 1999 publication, Gardens of the Moon, began a series of such immense scope it defies description. I've only read the first two novels of his series but I cannot deny his incredible talent. Similar to Martin, Erikson also asks incredibly difficult questions about religion, race, benevolent despotism and tyranny, and the decline of civilizations. Unlike Martin, Erikson's world is simply unimaginably HUGE and full of infinite possibilities. He eschews the traditional fantasy races for unique ones sprung from his and Ian Esslemont's imagination. Like Feist's Riftwar Saga, Gardens of the Moon incorporates a number of fantasy themes and ideas from not only the role-playing world (and its foundations in pre-1977 SF). Yet Erikson pulls inspiration from a host of other places as well, such as history (like Martin), the psychology of the rank-and-file soldier (like Glen Cook), and even throws in dark, dead gods.

The 1990s in Fantasy a Mess?
So, we return to Tom Simon's original statement which I've framed as a question: "Has mainstream epic fantasy been so locked into a ditch where all of these huge flaws are part-and-parcel of much of fantasy, especially its strongest-selling sagas?"

So far, yes (but there's hope). Let's take a look at the most salient characteristics of the major 1990s writers.

• By 2000, Feist, Brooks, Eddings, Jordan, and Goodkind are pounding out popular sagas that are all recycled plot elements, slavishly devoted to the Tolkien/Eddings trope formula, and largely bereft of literary substance.
• Jordan and Goodkind further dilute their own work with grotesquely turgid prose. This cripples Jordan's narrative so badly that it essentially goes nowhere.
  
• Attempts at philosophical exploration are handled clumsily, either descending into droning sophistry and moralizing or incoherent gimmickry.
  
• These are the most popular authors, propped up by a fanbase that was birthed by Tolkien fandom in the 1970s with a thirst for the same story ad infinitum.

Modesitt and Friedman may have been a ray of hope, since their sources of inspiration are found more in the pre-1977 SF milieu of Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Roger Zelazny, and Harlan Ellison. Indeed, the nature of their inquiry is much less fantasy and far more "speculative" and "science-fiction" oriented, hearkening back to the 60s and 70s. Indeed, Weis & Hickman's Deathgate Cycle tiptoes very close to the SF boundary as well. These authors incorporated gimmicks not to turn their settings into vast, immobile McGuffins but as vehicles for their speculative explorations. Unfortunately, these authors and their works had a very limited appeal or impact during the 1990s when compared to Jordan, Brooks, Eddings, and Goodkind.

Although Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn had a very limited appeal, it did have the very important impact of inspiring George R. R. Martin to turn his own hand to fantasy. Martin employed the trappings of fantasy but drew far more from historical reality to fuel his narrative. Erickson (and later Esslemont) would bring their impossibly vast and realized world of the Malazan Empire into print with a vengeance.

In my next post in this series, I'll write more about Martin, Erikson, and Williams. I'll give a spoiler, however, upfront just so my readers know where I stand: the best, most literary, and challenging authors in 20th century fantasy, specifically epic fantasy, are J.R.R. Tolkien, Tad Williams, Steven Erikson, George R.R. Martin, and R. Scott Bakker. Bakker, Williams, Erikson, and Martin, in my opinion, are the true inheritors of Tolkien's mantle. But I'll explain why later.

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-