Fantasy Novels

In the literature world, to say the word fantasy is to bring to mind cheesy, melodramatic writing of ancient lands and characters with strange names who go on quests and meet mythical creatures. You know, swords, cloaks, tunics and dragons. Primitive technologies but advanced skills presented under the guise of magic. As a genre, fantasy is typically viewed with even greater distain than scifi, and I must admit that I’ve fallen prey to this assumption as well. For the fact remains that like any genre, there’s a lot of gawdawful fantasy writing out there. Having said that, there's also a lot of excellent storytelling occuring under the cover of fantasy fiction, and i'm going to write about two of the best authors here: China Miéville and Usurla Le Guin.

I've read a few of Meiville’s books, but was most taken by Perdido Street Station and The Scar, two novels that take place in the same world but do not tell the same story. They are not masterpieces – they're overlong, for one, and perhaps because of that are a bit repetitive – but they are fascinating. He’s a fantasy author that straddles the border with horror (another ghetto genre!) with great aplomb.

The Scar in particular has stuck with me. At a high level, it's about the city of Armada, a floating city made of thousands of ships, whose leaders quest to send the entire city to the Scar, a mythical place where reality breaks down and anything is possible. The book uses ancient technologies to achieve modern ends in the manner of steampunk, but in my mind avoided the triteness of that sub-genre with fresh imagination: The Scar’s amazing inventions and creatures contributes to fully realized world, one that’s so successful Miéville used it in at least three books. It's an extremely engaging book, and is most successful when Miéville's explores the implications of the fantasy twists of his world or when he indulges his love of horror; for example, a scene where a character dives deep into the ocean and is stalked by shadowy creatures is absolutely chilling in effect and cinematic in scope. I saw the scene in my head and it scared the piss out of me.

My main problem with Mievelle is his occasional lapse into cliché – not fantasy cliché but just plain cliché – and his knack for anticlimax. For example, Amarda quests to capture the Avanc (a gargantuian lake monster from another dimension) and this task is built up over half the book as an incredibly hard task, as a universe-changing event, and yet once the Avanc is captured, this incredible feat is quickly accepted as a given and the book just moves onto the next plot point. The buildup never equaled the payoff, and this continued over the course of the novel gets trying. And perhaps it’s an English thing, but his continued use of the word “brine” as a substitute for “water” is trying.

Another type of fantasy writing alltogether is Le Guin’s Earthsea novels. LeGuin, a skillful author, is an old school Fantasy writer with a storytelling skill and feminist perspective that enable her to present wonderful stories for those people who can get past complicated names and phrases like “Pelnish lore.” The Earthsea saga is set in a world of thousands of small islands surrounded by mostly uncharted ocean. The original trilogy is about a powerful magician called Sparrowhawk, and his adventures as he grows into a powerful ruler and how he unites and saves the islands of Earthsea. It’s a world where dragons and magic are prevelant, and despite its complexity, is marketed as children’s books (in my mind, in the same manner as the Harry Potter books).

My favorite of the series is the second novel, The Tombs of Atuan. It was an easy read, and is separate from the rest of the books in that it’s essentially constructed as a standalone story (analogous to the non-conspiracy X-Files episodes). These types of stories serve as a digression from the main narrative, but typically teach us something about our heroes (usually from an oblique perspective) while incrementally enhancing the major narrative. In doing so, TToA touched on a lot of the series’ major themes: duty, responsibility, coming of age, etc. but did so in a fresh way, if not with the freshest prose. Le Guin, as good as a writer she is, can be prone to a lot of the fantasy clichés – although she’s been writing long enough that perhaps she indulges in some harmless self-plagiarism (which could an unavoidable aspect overproduction: see Stephen King or (in music) Ray Davies). For instance, the book contains a lot of “steely glances,” and her hero is inevitability tough and yet tender when it counts (or “Thoughtful and severe,” as LeGuin puts it on page 160).

All this would be as cheesy as the cover of my edition , if it weren’t for the skill in which she weaves the creation of her world into these books. And that's probably what ultimately draws me into these novels: the fun of living in a world of amazing creatures and fantastical things. I love reading about Miéville's Khepri (humanoid scarab beetles) and Cactacae (enormous cactus-people), with their everyday problems, hopes, and desires. I love losing myself in the intricate mythology of Earthsea, which is a mixture of multiple different religous and historical sources. These books are a refreshing escape from what can all too often be a humdrum life, and I highly suggest that you give them a try.