What do you people like in fantasy? Do you favor particular creatures and what do you like about them? Are there authors you like that write in the genre, and what do they do that impresses you? What do you write about yourself?
Just curious.
[This message has been edited by RMatthewWare (edited November 19, 2007).]
posted
I like so many different things it's hard to narrow down:
I write Urban Fantasy and Epic Fantasy. When I write, I think I'm going for the same thing I like to read: good characters. I can read anything if the characters are compelling enough.
Corwin of Amber (from Roger Zelazny's Amber series) is very likely my idea of a perfectly engaging character: He's arrogant, but with good reason. He's charismatic. He doesn't always come out on top, but given enough time, he usually wins... and, though he's something of an anti-hero, he's got a good heart and an even better sense of humor.
My favorite Urban Fantasy writer that's still writing would be Neil Gaiman. Though he's very much off in a class by himself.
I also enjoy Mario Acevedo, Simon Green, Holly Black, and Rob Thurman (to name a few).
In fantasy, I'm partial to: Patrick Rothfuss, George R R Martin, R. A. Salvatore, Micahel Moorcock, Weis & Hickman, Michale Stackpole, Brian Jacques, Tolkien...
posted
Hm... interesting question. I tend to go for epic fantasy, and I prefer stuff that doesn't have a strong magical element to it, unless it's YA Fantasy, which is most of what I've been reading lately. I have little patience for Tolkien-imitators and the like. I never really got into urban fantasy.
Favorite authors so far include Tolkien, GRR Martin, Gregory MacGuire, Diana Wynne Jones, Madeline L'Engle, Ursula Le Guin. On Jeanne T's recommendation I started reading Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksenarrion, which I've been liking quite a bit. I've also been planning to try Katherine Kurtz. David Gemmell is next on my reading list. Otherwise, it's all historical fiction.
I'll echo JFLewis about the good characters. If I don't get a good sense of character early on, whatever the book, I usually won't continue.
[This message has been edited by annepin (edited November 19, 2007).]
quote:What do you people like in fantasy[?<--sorry, couldn't help it. ]
Characters. Valor. I like to see the underdog rise to the challenge and be victorious. Doesn't everyone? There's a lot of angles to take this question from.
quote: Do you favor particular creatures and what do you like about them?
I don't know about you--and I may be alone in this--but, I'm sick of dragons. It seems that all fantasy wrioters envision dragons (whether they change from human-form or no) in the same way: wings, beak/teeth, horns and spikes, big leathery wings, or asian dragons. There's never any land drakes or water wyrms, or just big lizards that would one day be called dragons (or dinosaurs before they were called dinosaurs). Add faeries, mermaids, elves, and dwarves to last list, too.
quote: Are there authors you like that write in the genre, and what do they do that impresses you?
George R. R. Martin, David Gemmell, Robin Hobb, R. A. Salvatore, Robert E. Howard, Robert Jordan (RIP)--though mostly his earlier work, Tad Williams, OSC, Kevin J. Anderson, Neil Gaiman, Brian Lumley (I know he's supposed to b horror, but he has just as much sci-fi and fantasy infused with his work), Tolkien, Burroughs...
What they do to impress me was the answer to the first question.
quote: What do you write about yourself?
I write fantasy--in one form or another. What do I write about? Well, you'd have to read that for yourself.
quote:I don't know about you--and I may be alone in this--but, I'm sick of dragons.
What I hate most is the "cutification" or cheapening of dragons. Smog in the Hobbit was a great dragon, but it was written in the tradition of a very sly and terrible beast. There always used to be intense mystery around dragons, but now they are basically talking lizard-buddies. It's as if someone addressed the Sphinx, and instead of engaging in high-end riddles, they took turns painting each others' faces. (Hey, Sphinxy! I think you would look great as Gene Simmons!)
Anne McCaffery did do an excellent job with her Pern series, but that's the exception.
Nobility, meaning and adventure. Which has a lot in common with the character and valor IB mentioned. In addition to success of the little guy, though, I also like to see great sacrifice in fantasy.
I hate the attempt to tell a fantasy story expressed as materialism. A "scientific" representation of a fantasy story is no real fantasy story at all.
Arbitrary magic and magical events that have no rhyme or reason (can anyone say "Susan Cooper"?) do nothing but annoy me.
Simple-minded social analogies disguised as fantasy are also annoying.
I also generally dislike fantasy that takes place in modern Earth.
quote:Do you favor particular creatures and what do you like about them?
I mostly favor humans. :-D Other than that, I favor creatures that are more than just very dangerous animals. The crows in the LOTR are fantastic because of the way they mystically communicate back to Saruman. The crows in WOT were also effective. The eagles of LOTR with their majestic intelligence are also excellent. The more mysterious the creater, the better. Gollum is a character of genius on many levels. He was a creature whose living reflected the deterioration of his soul and mind. He was an intellectual enemy -- competing for Bilbo's life through riddles. Then he was a physical menace chasing Bilbo. He became a constant fear through much of the trilogy, then became an almost sympathetic character. He was symbolic in that he fleshed out the attitudes, strengths and foibles of the other characters. He was also the hand of providence. (The movie completely butchered the depth of Gollum--the scene on the stairs was unforgivable, but they missed many other things, too.) I would be hard-pressed to come up with a better fantasy creature than Gollum.
quote:Are there authors you like that write in the genre, and what do they do that impresses you?
There are many well-known authors I have not read. (GRRM and Terry Brooks to name two.) So I don't offer a well-balanced survey. That being said, I love JRRT far above any other. He is far and away the best at writing deep meaningful things into the fantasy stories. Every time you read them, you realize something deeper and more interesting. Some of Ursula K. Leguin's stuff is fantastic, too. I like the way her characters face extraordinary difficulties that go way beyond facing a big mean ugly guy who shoots lazer-beams out of his eyes. (Lathe of Heaven comes to mind.) Anne McCaffery is one of my old favorites. (Though I haven't read one of hers for probably more than a decade.) Probably the personalization of her characters has a lot to do with it, but I also remember that she was not simple-minded in terms of the social issues.
In juvenile literature, the Wrinkle in Time series, the Narnian books, the Indian in the Cupboard series are all good. Wrinkle in time because of character and originality. The Narnian books because of variety and underlying meaning. Indian in the Cupboard for inventive and interesting problems, and good character.
quote:What do you write about yourself?
When I get something finished, I'll tell you. :-/
Seriously, though, my attempts at fantasy deal mostly with internal conflicts and the external consequences.
posted
Oh! And who can forget the "creature" of the mountain in the Fellowship of the Ring that rejected the fellowship forcing them to take the Mines of Morea?
In the movie, they made it appear that Saruman was causing the snowstorm from afar, but that was crap. (It's just one more way in which the Jackson gang didn't have a clue about the meaning in the books.) In the book, the mountain was an entity in itself, and it was displeased with the party trying to cross, and it prevented it with its storm.
posted
This deals specifically with urban fantasy:
I find that when fantasy elements are introduced in an urban setting the author has to work very hard to earn my belief -- I'm less inclined to read books with wizards and demons plotting the Complete Destruction of the City, or Ending the Entire World Forever, Amen. I much prefer the witch who gives her mailman an uncomfortable itch because she didn't happen to get her package from Amazon.com in time for the book club meeting. Don't get me wrong, the stakes should be high. But not everything city-dwellers do is high-stakes, and being magical doesn't suddenly make your life more interesting. Sometimes the characters will be battling with eldritch forces atop skyscrapers; most of the time they probably use their magic to get their tea heated just right.
I like urban fantasy that plays with my expectations about the way the world works, that messes with my perceptions. If an author can make me rethink and re-experience an everyday occurrence and find the magic in that experience myself, that author has won me over. Few authors do this well, of course; Neil Gaiman comes instantly to mind (with his American Gods and Neverwhere), and so does Meghan Lindholm (with her Wizard of the Pigeons). In both Wizard of the Pigeons and Neverwhere, the author forces the readers to rethink their perceptions of street people, the impoverished and destitute who, at least in Neverwhere, live half-lives between the mundane and the magical. The homeless are such a common sight in cities that the idea that some of them might have chosen that life, or had it thrust upon them by a magical calling, is an interesting play on my typical perceptions of them. I can see how the old man who sits on the fire hydrant covered in pigeons might have a mystic connection with them.
And I need evocative passages of city life. Let me know what city this takes place in, and evoke it constantly. Do your research: find out all the annoying traffic times, when it might be better to enchant a carpet and fly into work than deal with the hassle of rush-hour; let me know about that one stop on the El train that lets you off in Hades, but only if you're standing in the right car -- hell, tell me what line to take and I'll like it even better; in short, let me know that these magical beings you're writing about are actually people, that they actually do their living in a city. What do their communities look like? Where do they go to church (do they? Does the bokor down the street attend mass regularly?), where do they send their kids to school? How do they make money? I want to know all about the mundane details, so the magic stands out more starkly in contrast.
posted
Oh, I'm not specific about which kind of fantasy I like---I've read too many good books in all kinds. There's of course the epic quest fantasy---Tolkien is a favorite, and I've read and enjoyed some of his successors and predecessors. There's the eldritch horror fantasies of Lovecraft and associates, or their modern successors in Stephen King. There's, the, hmm, whatchamacallit, fantasies that take fantastic elements and put them in a contemporary setting---I'm thinking of the works of Thorne Smith here, or the school of thought in the Unknown magazine of the early 1940s. (Maybe "urban fantasy" would be that, too, but I'm not sure.) There's works and writers I can't think of an easy classification category title for, alas---Thomas Burnett Swann, for example, or A. Merritt, or Malory's Morte D'Arthur.
And, after all, isn't SF a subdivision of fantasy?
quote:I hate the attempt to tell a fantasy story expressed as materialism. A "scientific" representation of a fantasy story is no real fantasy story at all.
posted
Yay! Score one for me for introducing someone to my beloved Paks.
I read a lot of different stuff, although very little science fiction. What I do like in that genre is mostly stuff like Speed of Dark which got Elizabeth Moon that belated Nebula last year.
Fantasy, there is almost no kind of fantasy I won't at least try. I love epic on the rare occasion it is done well. (Jacqueline Carey's The Sundering is an example of it being done well in my opinion.) Too much of it is not well done. I like some Sword and Sorcery. (I loathe Conan) There is a little Urban I like but not a lot.
It depends a lot on the characterization.
OH! If you want to see a dragon done right--READ The Sundering. No cute dragons! I must not read the same books because I don't come across dragons often. Because I don't read books that have them often, I'm not particularly "sick" of them. On the rare occasion they should be in a novel--they should indeed be fearsome and ancient. (And maybe I should say I'm not usually a Carey fan since I don't like Kushiel's Dart at all. The whole S/M theme makes me queasy. )
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited November 19, 2007).]
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited November 19, 2007).]
quote: and so does Meghan Lindholm (with her Wizard of the Pigeons).
You know that's Robin Hobb, don't you? Or rather Robin Hobb is she. Or they are both pseudonyms for (and according to her, separate personae of) Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden.
I mean things like trying to explain elves, dryads, and gnomes through evolution, or something. Or turning "The Force" into some biological phenomenon as they did in Star Wars. Then there are those who try to make magic just some form of chemical/physical trick.
In my opinion, that kind of materialist approach simply misses the whole point of Fantasy. (After all, there is nothing fantastic about mundane explanations of strange phenomena.)
I look for a story that has colorful characters, and preferably a significant struggle. I'm a sucker for arcane lore and legends that lead to epic struggles, though if the story feels like a shameless Tolkien clone, or *shudder* based on someone's D&D adventure, I get tired quickly. Vague, maybe, but I like what I like. I also love inventive worlds that have a rich atmosphere of their own, the sort where you want more and more stories just to learn more about the world, even if the characters change. Urban fantasy is a concept with oh-so-much promise that seems to generate oh-so-much junk. I'd love to write a really good urban fantasy, but in many ways I think it'd be harder than straight fantasy, since you can't build a world from scratch.
quote:Do you favor particular creatures and what do you like about them?
I am not a big fan of any creatures in fantasy. Unless you have a very clear reason for them to exist that couldn't be satisfied by humans of a different culture/background/ethnic group, then it's just people-in-funny-suits to me. That being said, I love dragons conceptually, but agree they are way over-done and watered-down. I also am a fan of natural forces as intelligent entities, though not when it gets preachy ^_^
quote:Are there authors you like that write in the genre, and what do they do that impresses you?
I have to agree on a lot of the bread-and-butter authors: Tolkien is the indisputable master, LeGuin is great, L'Engle, Lewis. In YA, I love Brian Jacques, somehow his shtick never seems to get tired. I also enjoyed a lot of Jane Yolen's YA fantasy/sci-fi. Her characters and stories were always well-constructed and felt believable as a preteen and teenager reader.
quote: What do you write about yourself?
Officially, nothing. But I usually write stories that are low-magic fantasy or cyberpunk. I'm definitely heavily influenced in my writing by having grown up in the burgeoning of Anime/Manga in America, so I enjoy exploring existential themes and moral conflicts in the context of an epic struggle...if that makes any sense...
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