[ SECRET POST #2882 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2882 ⌋

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

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.



__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.


__________________________________________________



12.


__________________________________________________



13.









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

[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.

[(Anonymous)]

you hit the nail right on the head. I was thinking about this the other day when I was contemplating looking for recs much the same - that the problem with fantasy books is that they copied the surface embellishments of Tolkien when they should have been looking at what made his books resonate with so many people - the worldbuilding, the sense of wonder, the unpredictability of the plot despite it following the Hero's Journey theme...

I'm like OP, I don't want any more elves and dwarves and castles and England. I want other mythologies, other cultures/time periods, and most of all the ability to not know where the story is going after page 2. Thankfully, every time someone brings up this topic, f!s is full of recs and I eat them all up. So thank you for adding a few. ;)

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Interestingly, the only fantasy novel I've read in the last year with elves was steampunk political fantasy (The Goblin Emperor).

[xenomantid]

You're welcome. The principle you've observed is true of almost every author whose work gathers a sizable following—see also Lovecraft "pastiches" that use tentacle monsters and cipher narrators while discarding the originals' intricate atmospheric details, alienated tone, and sometimes hallucinogenic aesthetic. Speaking of hallucinogenic aesthetics, Clark Ashton Smith's work is famous for them; Penguin recently leased a collection of a fraction of his output (The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies). You might be interested to know that The Arabian Nights and Theosophy used to be much more influential among fantasy writers, especially American fantasy writers, before Lord of the Rings descended on the scene. Pre-LotR fantasy has many problems with it, as a general rule, but I like it more than much of what came later.

P. S. I can't believe I forgot about the Anglo-Irish fantasy master Lord Dunsany. He penned some achingly beautiful vignettes.

[cushlamochree]

Is there anything more annoying than a poorly-executed pastiche?

Also, speaking of Clark Ashton Smith, and also hallucinogenic aesthetics, did you ever read Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber (who, lbr, should probably have been mentioned in this thread already)? Really fun, interesting book, and references Smith in interesting ways without being totally a pastiche. If kind of overly 70s at times.

Also also, James Branch Cabell, if we're talking about pre-LotR American fantasy.

[xenomantid]

For the purposes of this conversation, nothing is more annoying than a poorly executed pastiche.

I haven't read Our Lady of Darkness, but I have read Conjure Wife and Swords and Deviltry. Datedness doesn't necessarily detract from my enjoyment of a work of fiction, as long as said work is comprehensible.

Which James Branch Cabell book do you recommend reading first? I have Figures of Earth, The High Place, The Cream of the Jest, and Domnei.

(Lastly, I meant "Penguin recently released" up there, not "Penguin recently leased.")

[cushlamochree]

It's hard to say which Cabell you should read first, and I'm not sure it matters all that much - I feel like he's one of those writers where it's as much about his distinct style as it is about anything else.

That said, Cream of the Jest is probably my favorite of his books, so I would default to recommending that.

[cushlamochree]

This is a good post, and I agree with it in whole and in part, although I think there is a ton of worthwhile fiction to explore within fantasy as well.

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.

I think that's a little unfair. I mean, it's an accurate description of a lot of early epic fantasy - when you look at Sword of Shannara, or McKiernan's Iron Tower series, it's more or less just LotR with the serial numbers filed off.

But I'm not sure how bad that is in itself - IIRC both Brooks and McKiernan were fairly upfront about the fact that they really liked Lord of the Rings and were basically writing fanfic of it. To me, the problem isn't them writing a bunch of fanfic because they like LotR. The problem is Lester Del Rey realizing that would be popular and that all people really wanted was something that felt like LotR regardless of quality, and then being proven right in that assumption. That's where you really get modern epic fantasy taking on its shape and becoming what it is today.

[xenomantid]

Brooks and McKiernan were the specific authors I was thinking of when I wrote those two sentences. By "authors who tried to follow [Tolkien]," I meant "authors who tried to effectively rewrite Lord of the Rings."

I agree that the problem is not that those books exist but that certain business decisions in the 1970s created a glut of repetitive epic fantasy. Fortunately, it seems to me that the backlash against Yet Another Medieval European Fantasy has been sufficient to create a greater number of more original works in the fantasy genre.

[(Anonymous)]

Your post is thoughful and amazing, and the fact that you recommended Peake makes me pretty much fall in love with you.

[(Anonymous)]

THIS, thank you, let me love you!

I think it's interesting that a lot of these pastiches add tropes that Tolkien himself actually seemed to subvert.

A big one is the whole "Chosen One saves the world" thing. Which, if you read Lord of The Rings... being "chosen" by the Ring was NOT a good thing. At all. Ever. And Frodo didn't save the world. At the last minute he chickened out and it was mostly accidental. Which is kind of anticlimactic and very different from a lot of these Tolkien-expy stories.

With the focus on "The Chosen One" and the Big Hero Guy or whatever you want to call him, it also misses the fact that there wasn't ONE Big Hero Guy in LoTR. There were several! It was about teamwork and friendship and family.

So, yeah - a lot of these stories /try/ to imitate Tolkien but they're kind of missing the point, and they just don't have the background and wealth of knowledge in other areas that Tolkien had.

[(Anonymous)]

I actually think Tolkien incorporated some of the *worst* aspects of his religion.