[ SECRET POST #2882 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2882 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 061 secrets from Secret Submission Post #412.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

08. http://i.imgur.com/fLbCMN5.png

[(Anonymous)]

This is why I no longer read fantasy.

[cushlamochree]

So read better fantasy. I'm sorry, but that's the only solution I've got here.

NB: You may have to find things that are not megapopular with most mainstream fantasy fans.

Let me put this in the right place...

[(Anonymous)]

And introduce you to "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch.

[othellia]

I look at fantasy the same way I look at fanfic. 95% of it is shit.

So yeah, depends on what you're looking for.

If you like a bit of humor, check out Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

If you like more young adult, there's the Abhorsen trilogy and His Dark Materials.

If you like the whole time period stuff, but are tired of medieval, there's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell.

If you like medieval, but want like, actual medieval instead of YE OLD FANTASYLAND medieval there's Tamora Pierce's books (which also fall under young adult).

And then if you want sexy times medieval/renaissance/AU fantasy, there's Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series.

Oh and then also somewhere in here, I like the Black Magician trilogy by Trudi Canavan, but holy FUCK is it padded out. Apparently she wanted to tell the story in two books, but her publishers wanted a trilogy. On rereads I usually skip the first book, and then just read Sonea's POV chapters in the second and third.

[(Anonymous)]

Really? I can't remember the last time I read a plot like that, and I eat up fantasy novels like candy. If you want something really different, try some of these:

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer
The Chosen by Ricardo Pinto
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

[ketita]

Every genre has its shtick, and regrettably, fantasy fell into its own. It's not that I mind the medieval elves etc. setting (hello Tolkien derivatives), but you're right that it gets uninteresting after a while.
I'm actually partial to modern worlds that also have magic, but a lot of urban fantasy is romance with vampires/werewolves/etc. which I'm not very interested in either. I think the true power of fantasy is the freedom in it, but sadly, not a lot of authors really strain their imagination, it seems.

But I can rec a few, if you're interested:

Nine Princes in Amber - Roger Zelazny. If you've never read Zelazny you definitely should. He writes very weird and out-there, and it's definitely not your standard fare. Amber is actually a series, which kind of gets more wtf as it progresses, so you might not want to read all of them. But I wish more authors took a page out of Zelazny's books.

Almost anything by Diana Wynne Jones - she creates whimsical, fun worlds, many of which aren't medieval, and put a bit of a different twist on the way magic interacts with society. I have never read a single thing by her which I disliked.

Dinotopia by James Gurney - admittedly, it's not exactly 'fantasy' in the traditional sense, because there's no magic, just sentient dinosaurs. The books are more made-up travelogues than plot, and spend a lot of time on cultural details (which makes sense, since Gurney is an artist for the National Geographic). But these are some of the most beautiful books I own.

The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett - do I even need to endorse this one? Everybody should have heard of these books and read them, or at least tried.

These are just some of the stuff I thought of off the top of my head. I'm a big fantasy reader, so I can try to come up with more interesting titles if anybody's interested.
(I will hope other people post recs!)

[(Anonymous)]

Odd question but…

Has anyone ever tried to write "reverse-fantasy"? Say, have an elf or dwarf main character who dreams of living in a world where there's really only one dominant species and technology and progress are important facets instead of being stuck in a never-ending medieval dark ages with interspecies (elves vs dwarves vs orcs) wars?

[(Anonymous)]

Well that is what happens when pretty much the entire genre is based of ripping off just one book: The Bible.

More seriously, you need to read more widely. It was true that up until the mid-90s most of the genre was LotR ripoffs, but that is nowhere near true any longer. Remember, a lot of "science fiction" works (particularly any books whose genre ends in the "-punk" suffix) are actually Fantasy-Fiction rather than speculative fiction or science-based fiction. Although you still have space-orks, although I believe they prefer to call them Klingons.

[redseeker]

It's a huge problem in fantasy, but there are still some gems out there, some authors doing their own thing instead of following the herd. Still, it doesn't hurt to read not-fantasy for a while, broaden your horizons, that kind of thing?

[(Anonymous)]

More recs for the grown-up fantasy reader:

N.K. Jemisin's DREAMBLOOD duology (The Killing Moon, The Shadowed Sun) - inspired by ancient Egypt; main characters are ninja assassin priests.

Kate Elliott's SPIRITWALKERS trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Steel, Cold Fire) - Afro-Celtic post-Roman alternate-nineteenth-century Regency ice-punk mashup with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendants of troodons, and revolution.

Lois McMaster Bujold's FIVE GODS series (The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, The Hallowed Hunt) - setting is inspired by medieval Spain and Germany; main character of the first is a crippled royal secretary; second is a middle-aged queen dowager.

Lynn Flewelling's TAMIR triad (The Bone Doll's Twin, Hidden Warrior, Oracle's Queen) - setting is inspired by Byzantine empire; main character is a girl magically disguised as her dead twin brother.

Martha Wells' CHRONICLES OF THE RAKSURA (The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, The Siren Depths) - main characters are occasionally humanoid, but are otherwise shapeshifting gargoyle-dragon creatures with a culture that's a mashup of lion pride and bee hive social dynamics.

[(Anonymous)]

Depends on the subgenre, to an extent. High fantasy falls into this trap a lot, but low fantasy, urban fantasy, and the odd in-between books can be better about it. Things like portal fiction and historical urban fantasy, stories with magic set in periods of our history, can be pretty good. A lot of it is YA or kids' books, but that doesn't really stand against it: I grew up on weird and wonderful myth-based fantasy, and even straight fantasy with more non-standard settings.

For a random example, try the Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. It has a truly unique setting and inhabitants, and a surprisingly dark and cynical outlook in places.

I think a lot of adult fantasy falls into a couple of traps of trying to be as epic as the proto-examples like Tolkien (high fantasy) or as grimdark as modern sensibilities (low fantasy). YA and kid's fiction doesn't feel quite as self-conscious, so maybe there's more room for experimentation?

[grausam]

I think it's more about comfort reading these days. A bit like fanfic that rehashes the same tropes and archetypes again and again with just enough own flavour to stay interesting.

Which is why these fantasy n-ologies get so friggen long, imo. It's not because it's necessary to flesh out the whole "world". It's to stay comfortably in one world as long as possible, with not too much density.

[queerwolf]

I've read plenty of fantasy that differs from that, at least in some respects. Off the top of my head:

The Black Jewels trilogy by Anne Bishop

The Sword Singer series by Jennifer Roberson

The Noble Dead series by Barb and J.C. Hendee

[feotakahari]

If you really want to see stuff that's different, go on TV Tropes and start looking up fantasy webcomics. I can't guarantee they're good, but holy crap are a lot of them different.

[(Anonymous)]

Read Michael Moorcock.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like lazy plots or characterization (and magic artifact to stop evil baddie was never a good plot even the very first time it was utilized).

But I unapologetically love medieval fantasy with elves, dragons, etc.

[(Anonymous)]

Read something other than epic fantasy. It's a pretty massive genre.

[dethtoll]

Welcome to 90% of why I don't do fantasy.

[(Anonymous)]

What I'm getting from this is you refuse to open up any fantasy book that doesn't talk about royalty, elves, and magical McGuffins on the jacket.

[(Anonymous)]

Fantasy has always bored me in general. It's just a genre that I'm not interested in.

[xenomantid]

Before you pick up another fantasy novel only to meet with disappointment, think about what you're looking for in fantasy. Do you want good-versus-evil conflicts on a grand scale? Displays of magical powers? The presence of supernatural creatures? Greek drama-style pathos? A sense of awe or cosmic scope? Depending on where your interests lie, you may be better served looking outside the genre.

Tolkien had much in his favor: a command of linguistics, the ability to imbue his writing with a sadness unusual in fantasy, a profound attachment to the English countryside and a concomitant fury at witnessing its destruction, religious devotion that allowed him to incorporate what he saw as the best parts of his faith into his created world (and whether you agree with Tolkien on that score or not, Middle-Earth would lack something without said religious applicability). The authors who tried to follow him didn't have any of those tools. Their assumption seems to have been that they could simply copy the surface trappings of Middle-Earth and produce a work of fiction as compelling and perennially popular as Lord of the Rings. They have their readers, but those authors forgot, if they ever knew, what made Tolkien's creation a touchstone of fantasy in the first place.

Thus why reading outside the fantasy genre may prove more satisfying than continuing to search for satisfying books sold as fantasy: you increase your chances of finding something that scratches your itch immensely. We wouldn't have the fantasy genre as we know it without mythology or the occult, and some accounts of mythology are like fantasy in their own right (e.g., The White Goddess). If you want a heightened sense of atmosphere, camaraderie and pathos, and an epic quest that doesn't involve artifacts, then Moby-Dick may be for you: someone on RPGNet many years ago described the opening as "an orgasm of words." If you desire to see what Lord of the Rings both rebutted and evolved from—and you understand Jacobean English—then read The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison (which is indeed a fantasy novel, so it may be closer to what you're interested in).

Finally, I'd like to second the aforementioned recommendation for Mervyn Peake and, to a lesser extent, Gene Wolfe.

[ibbity]

You should check out Mercedes Lackey's "Elemental Masters" novels. They take place between the 1880s-1910s and they're not at all medievalish-elves-and-dragon-find-the-magic-mcguffin stuff. They deal with the society of the time and social issues too, which makes it interesting.

[philippos42]

I get so annoyed by that derivative pap. It's called "fantasy," not "Tolkienian expyfic."

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Dumb and boring secret, probably a troll.