tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41190976347266791232024-03-05T06:07:03.244-05:00Gods of Dark - Swords of LightReviews of Fantasy Novels--New and Old, Thoughts on Fiction, Theme and Philosophy, Magic and Horror, Abundance and Dearth, Depravity and GoodnessHammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-78632664180404198742018-09-26T11:35:00.001-04:002018-10-02T12:26:36.033-04:00BioShock Full Walk-Through Game Review<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MKA60W/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000MKA60W&linkCode=as2&tag=ravingl-20&linkId=f787f562ce61a80cb5dc6048589f070c" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&MarketPlace=US&ASIN=B000MKA60W&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL250_&tag=ravingl-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=ravingl-20&l=am2&o=1&a=B000MKA60W" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />So I've done this a handful of times, perhaps, but my aim here is not to review game play. As an adult, with a family, I really don't have time play games. No. Time. But my nephew had recommended to me that there were a few games (including BioShock) that had really fantastic stories and so I should look into them.<br />
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BioShock, is not told through cut scenes. Here is one, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfZ30sfjdLY">the opening six minutes</a>. There are a handful, but they are, at best, seconds worth of time. There are constant audio clips, contemporary advertisements, great 40s music, PA announcements, and then there are voluntarily read/played journal entries that detail the larger story. I suspect the reason for the latter is that many people just aren't interested in the story, or perhaps on replay, don't feel the need to hear it a second time. This is a shame really, I think story-telling is much more important than game play, and frankly, how many people do you have to kill before it starts getting a bit repetitive?<br />
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It was easy enough to find a no commentary <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFjMkFwB1ck">walk-through of the game</a>. However, this does present some problems. In an environment where you can look wherever you want, if the game player does not look where you want, you can definitely miss out on certain things. Still, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4WlDrdOOSbht-NKQ0uTeg">RabidRetrospectGames</a> did a relatively good job of finding and playing all the journal entries, so I think I got the full story.<br />
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SPOILERS within.<br />
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BioShock starts with passengers in an airplane, and the single and only time the main character speaks, occurs in that moment, although looking back, it's not clear he was speaking at all. "I was meant to do great things" the character seems to utter, and than the plane crashes. Next thing, we're beneath the waves, struggling for breath and dodging airplane fragments. This was a beautiful touch, and I really wish there were more of it. (Though I'm sure the lack of cut scenes was a conscious choice.) Then, our main character, who never really has a name, finds a small out cropping island, with a portal down to the depths of the sea.<br />
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We watch a short promotional video, a welcome to Rapture video, where we learn about <a href="http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Andrew_Ryan">Andrew Ryan</a>, a wealthy industrialist who wanted to escape taxes, and decided to found an underwater kingdom called Rapture just at the end of World War 2. The opening scene has some great references, and propaganda, and it's really the only time we ever see the grandeur of the underwater city, with a beautiful blue whale swimming between the buildings. It's a shame really, from then on, you're in the underwater city, really just one large apartment building it seems. There are lots of windows, but the character I followed never really looked out of them, so I didn't get to see as much as I would have liked.<br />
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The art and atmosphere that the developers at 2K Boston, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_Games">Irrational Games</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Levine_(game_developer)">Ken Levine</a> created for the game is breathtaking. The amount of research they did on 40s nostaliga must have been immense, really great <a href="https://www.elledecor.com/life-culture/travel/g12242834/art-deco-architecture/?slide=1">Art Deco</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googie_architecture">Googie </a>styling, including dozens of sculptures reminiscent of <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/anthonynovak/sculpture-dantoine-bourdelle/?lp=true">Antoine Bourdelle</a>'s work. The game takes place after the war, and at least one of Ryan's geneticists worked with the Nazis.<br />
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For all this beauty, when our hero arrives, Rapture is a dead and dying beast, filled with chaos and insanity. This is unsurprising, Andrew Ryan's dream was ultimately a libertarian one, promising ultimate freedom with no policing. It isn't long in the game before you discover the source of the insanity. Genetic modifications, called plasmids, and something called ADAM, a component of a sea slug that allows these modifications. An unfortunate side effect of these modifications continued use is insanity. So Rapture is now filled with insane splicers (who seem to be 98% of the inhabitants). Some of them have weird deformities, but mostly they have insane strength, and superpowers, throwing lightning, flames, moving objects, wind storms.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/bioshock/images/b/b8/CrawlerSplicerConcepts2.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20111025113006" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="800" height="207" src="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/bioshock/images/b/b8/CrawlerSplicerConcepts2.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20111025113006" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Representation of a Spider Slicer</td></tr>
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Anyway, if you want to watch the story, or read about it, there are plenty of places to do so. The purpose of my review is to complain about the story. While there were some interesting plot twists, plot twists themselves do not a story make. As we don't learn anything about the main character until the last hour of gameplay, mostly the story is finding out what happened to make Rapture fall. Which isn't nearly as interesting in the end as I hoped.<br />
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So there's this thing: a Big Daddy. We don't learn about what the Big Daddies are until quite late in the game, but if you remember going to the mall in 2007, you'll remember the massive cutouts of hulking figures in archaic aquatic gear with a drill for a hand, crowding the entry of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameStop">GameStop and Babbage's</a>.<br />
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In creative writing classes, something they always tell you: show, don't tell. And it's somewhat ironic, that in attempting to make the story optional for users, they end up neither showing, nor telling. While the voiceover work, and the talent of the actors was unquestionable, the story just didn't have the drama that it could have if some of the events described had been visualized in cut scenes. Usually game driven players can coast by cut scenes with the press of a button, so again, I'm not sure why this decision was made. Take a look at this (<a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/why-video-game-cutscenes-should-be-eliminated/">cranky gamer</a> on CNET) who frigging HATES cut scenes. But he's a gamer's gamer, so maybe that's why. Ironically, it appears as if the two game sequels do have cut scenes, so there must have been enough of an outcry.<br />
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Another issue I had with the game is that so much of what is intriguing here is the madness of the splicers. You can be creeping through a destroyed study, papers strewn across the floor, bottles of alcohol (which you can drink!) lining the shelves, and it's deathly quiet, then all of a sudden, you hear something fall and rattle to the ground, then a slow, completely bonkers chuckle. The splicers weep, beg for mercy, for compassion, have terrifying eruptions of rage, and yet, this fell short in the walk-through version because the moment our main character saw one, he shot him or her dead instantly. Add to this that the splicers have, through surgery and genetic modifications become true monsters, and here again, a few more cut scenes would have gone a long way, to truly displaying the horrors that these people had perpetrated on themselves.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/bioshock/images/0/08/Bshock_dancingsplicers.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091129113222" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/bioshock/images/0/08/Bshock_dancingsplicers.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20091129113222" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See these splicers, dancing? you have to kill them</td></tr>
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As a liberal, this wanton killing of people who were effectively drug addicts was more than a little troublesome. I get that video games have LONG since passed the threshold of common decency, and that I am somewhat archaic in viewpoint now. But killing Nazis in <a href="https://wolfenstein.bethesda.net/">Wolfenstein</a>, or monsters in <a href="https://www.doomworld.com/">Doom </a>made sense. Killing these poor unfortunates without out even an attempt at mercy, made me feel somewhat soiled. And I wasn't even pulling the "trigger".<br />
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To get back to the story, one of the most fascinating characters is Andrew Ryan. Wikipedia indicates that Ken Levine was heavily inspired by <a href="https://whistlinginthewind.org/2014/03/14/atlas-shrugged-is-a-ridiculous-book/">Atlas Shrugs</a>, by <a href="https://www.aynrand.org/ideas/philosophy">Ayn Rand</a>, or at least, by the imagery and characters within it. I don't hold that against him, as I found The Fountain Head to be quite inspirational--despite Ayn Rand's obvious prejudices and general failings. So Andrew Ryan, as this obscenely wealthy industrial is quite an attractive character. The foibles of the rich, the glitz, the glamour! However, his opposite number is a fellow called Frank Fontaine, in essence a mobster. Ryan controls the wealth, and the elite, and Fontaine controls the means of production. The Fall of Rapture, is the story of the conflict between these two men. Really, though, the Fall of Rapture is marked ultimately by a huge absence. The Rule of Law.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frank Fontaine is pretty skinny, huh?</td></tr>
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This is, of course, intentional. This is, of course, specifically what Andrew Ryan was fleeing. And as an idealogue, he ultimately upheld this decision. There are no police in Rapture, no courts, jails or judges. Add to that the fact that Ryan Industries sells flame throwing genetic enhancements, and, well... the Fall of Rapture seems pretty obvious.<br />
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As to the end, ultimately, one of those people wins. I won't spoil it for you. It's interesting because Fontaine and Ryan, are ultimately two sides of the same coin. They're both rugged individualists, capitalists, and while Ryan's view of the world contains an idealistic sense of achievement and beauty, Fontaine's view is completely cynical, musings on the baser attributes of human nature.<br />
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Which, I think is ultimately, why the story of Bioshock failed to impress me. The main character, ultimately, makes a moral choice that determines the end of both titans--but as his voice is completely absent from the story, ultimately there is no character growth, there is no catharsis (though there are a few revelations). Two, greedy, evil men, meet their end, in a watery grave, under the sea.<br />
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Ask me if I care about Rapture. No. Perhaps if I'd seen it lit.HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-71713127204095078322018-08-29T11:04:00.000-04:002018-08-29T11:04:05.486-04:00The Towers of Sunset by L.E. Modesitt<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0765398230/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0765398230&linkCode=as2&tag=ravingl-20&linkId=2b68855642f82b017b1b0b662380d395" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&MarketPlace=US&ASIN=0765398230&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL250_&tag=ravingl-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=ravingl-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0765398230" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />
I've wanted to review some classic fantasy for this site, and I got my chance to reread this book when <a href="http://tor.com/">Tor.com</a> dropped a free epub of the second book in the <b>Recluce Saga</b>. I remember reading it as a teenager and loving it, but many many things change between one's idealistic childhood and one's adulthood. And in this case, my enjoyment of the <b>Towers of Sunset</b> easily doubled in the intervening years. For two reasons: I like depictions of realistic relationships, and while medieval and medieval styled relationships were no doubt different in many ways, the subtleties of understanding between the sexes are always well developed in the realm of Recluce. The second reason, of course, is my devotion to economics and the study and display of economics in fantasy literature. That said, I can see this as a possible turn off to many readers. In my attempts to sell my own work, I've found some who think economics are boring! And I'm not even talking microeconomics, replete with equations and variables and charts, they find the macro stuff boring!
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Well, fuck them. The Towers of Sunset is a great book, full of chaos and order, and gives a fascinating glance at the history of Recluce, and the founding of a mighty nation. Before we get started, a reminder. The magic system of the Recluce saga is really quite original. There are forces of chaos, and forces of order. Order is black (without the chaos of light), and Chaos is white and red. Naturally, these forces must balance, and so one of our protagonists is a White Wizard, albeit a reformed one.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not Creslin, unfortunately, no fanfic in 1993</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #274e13; font-weight: bold;">Character:</span> The story of Towers of Sunset begins with a man and a woman. A man, Creslin, who is a swordsman and storm-wizard as well as a consort in a matriarchal society. He is chattel, and as such, an arranged marriage is forged to strengthen the bonds with another matriarchal nation. He spends the first 150 pages of the book running from that marriage. I found Creslin to be a very real portrait of a man. For one thing, his desire to flee and find his way is anything but focused. In my own experience of life, real focus is rare, and most of us fumble through with only the knowledge that we desire something different, and that this difference 'lies over there.' As such, we follow Creslin to the nation of Candar, where the White city of Fairhaven lies. Creslin knows something of his power as a storm wizard, but he knows little of Order magic, and he adopts a wait and see attitude. The Whites are fairly sophisticated nation builders, and recognize him immediately as a threat (both for his parentage, and his power). <br />
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One stylistic note about the writing of this book: Not all is explained; a lot is left unsaid. In general, I have enjoyed Modesitt's writing, and given the fact that he's written nearly 60 novels, it's safe to say he's pretty good at it. But there are these sort of weird gaps, that are really never explained. For instance, Creslin's parentage: his father was a pawn of the White wizards, and sent to seduce the Marshall of Westwind (the Matriarchy). But he has disappeared at the story's start, and we're lead to believe that something strange has happened. This is the sort of discrepancy one expects from a book in a series, but the first book in the series, the Magic of Recluce, takes place several centuries <i>later</i>!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Creslin is also not an elf, but he does play a guitar</td></tr>
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Like any <a href="https://www.quora.com/Do-guys-care-about-girls%E2%80%99-feelings">typical young man</a>, Creslin is fairly into himself, not in a crass or arrogant way, he simply doesn't think much about what other people think. He's strikingly handsome, and would have been popular with the ladies, had his mother, the Marshall of Westwind, not been very stern with her female guards about fraternization with the prince consort. This leads him to a great deal of difficulty with his wife to be, the beautiful fire-haired, Chaos wielder, Magaera. Magaera is hot-tempered and bitchy, the perfect compliment to Creslin's good humored, cool distance. That said, her dialogue, and the manner in which she tries to confront Creslin are spot on (at least from my perspective.) Creslin is simply not equipped, despite massive intelligence for both order magic and nation building, to handle feelings, and the second third of the book is an exercise in frustration for all three parties. (Creslin, Magaera and the Reader.) And it is SO frustrating: you want them to get along, and to stop fighting each other. But Creslin's hamfisted attempts to apologize, or even to understand what Magaera is on about are cringeworthy, and all too familiar for those of us in the mating game. Modesitt's marital and relationship writing style puts him in a class far far above both Jordan and Martin.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i1.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/death-of-chaos-cover-art-740x555.jpg?resize=650%2C488&type=vertical" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="650" height="240" src="https://i1.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/death-of-chaos-cover-art-740x555.jpg?resize=650%2C488&type=vertical" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Actual Recluce art, different book, see White Wizard</td></tr>
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The only other characters of note are the White Wizards, and they are not directly involved in the action. We see snippets of what the "bad guys" are planning, and what they decide to do to deal with Creslin, and his new nation-state. What makes them interesting is the atypical approach Modesitt takes with them. They are hands-off bureaucratic administrators, attempting to create an ever expanding empire of Chaos Magic, not through fire balls and earthquakes, but through road building, and trade policy! Truly, road building! It's an overlooked phenomena in the modern world, but the Roman's success early on had a lot to do with the massive roads they built, which allowed trade, but also quick passage for armies. Anyway, when your chaos mages can blow up big rocks with a flick of a wrist, road building gets a lot easier. All of this is extremely fascinating to me!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://orderinchoas.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/overview_morphology_fractal.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="240" src="https://orderinchoas.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/overview_morphology_fractal.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fractal trees show how chaos and order are linked</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche:</span></b> As we learn more in the Magic of Recluce, and in the various books that follow Towers of Sunset, Modesitt is a cliche buster. However, the two cliche's most heavily relied upon are: <b><span style="color: red;">Order</span></b> and <b><span style="color: red;">Chaos</span></b>. As mentioned above, the theory of magic draws heavily on these concepts. But the cliche of Order and Chaos is normally quite a bit different, usually Chaos is symbolized by the Abyss. Take the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, there the Dark One wants to break the wheel of time, and escape his prison, thus destroying the world and returning the universe to darkness. Not so in the Recluce Saga, Order (or <b><span style="color: red;">The White cliche</span></b>) is darkness, calm, lack of movement, structure, stasis, <a href="http://www.eoht.info/page/Neguentropy">Negentropy</a>. And Chaos, in a word it's opposite, or Entropy. Order wielders are healers, taking the chaos of infection and bounding it and strengthening the body's normal structures. Chaos wielders live short lives, but are stronger wizards since they can throw fireballs, lightning bolts, etc. There is one last thing that this cliche buster addresses that is IMPORTANT. I try not to dwell on racism in fantasy, but fantasy undoubtedly uses racists tropes on a regular basis. Black magic. No one thinks that black people use black magic, and no one should, but it's definitely an unfortunate and unavoidable connotation with this common trope. By making black magic, into good magic, Modesitt breaks with this common trope, and, I think sheds a hair more equality in a vastly unequal world (Check out redditor D3athRider on the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/8iw36z/one_racist_trope_i_really_wish_modern_fantasy/">Wild Savage trope</a>'s racism.)<br />
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A new one, possibly, let's call it <span style="color: red;"><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_thread_of_fate">Red Thread of Fate</a></b></span>. This cliche is the idea that two characters are bound together somehow, perhaps by blood, or some soul connection. The term I've chosen here relates (see the link) to the east asian belief in fate, symbolized by red string. Sometimes that connection is one of love, as in <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/2014/06/rhapsody-by-elizabeth-haydon.html">Elizabeth Hayden's Rhapsody</a>, and other times by hatred as in the connection between Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort, or the connection between Frodo and Golum. It is a useful cliche for writing, as it requires a certain cause and effect on the other character connected. In this case, Creslin and Megaera are bound together by their forced wedding vow. This connection wasn't supposed to be supernatural or magical, but owing to the power of both characters, the connection assumed a greater power than it might have otherwise had. And then, this connection between the two becomes a matter of life and death.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Because Storm is hot, and an X-Men</td></tr>
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Another new cliche would be the <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Storm Wizard</span></b> cliche, throwing lightning and wind is fantasy fodder for thousands of years. I mean, look at Zeuss, the ultimate god, why? because he's a badass who can throw lightning. Well, in addition to being an Order-Wizard, Creslin is also a Storm Wizard. While the mythos of the Recluce books contains knowledge of other storm wizards, apparently, Creslin's great strength (see Maintaining the Balance cliche) is due to the influence of the White Wizards of Candor on the world. So really, Creslin is the strongest Storm Wizard in this world's recent history. But it's bigger than lightning bolts, Creslin can move millions of metric tons of air, change pressure systems, bring massive rain storms, and turn the ocean into a ravenous hurricane.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Nation Building:</span></b> this is actually a pretty rare cliche, this book is about the founding of a nation, and so it takes place over a large space of time, through several epic battles and wars. It also contains a good deal of <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">economics</span></b> (again something I LOVE in fantasy). This is sort of a meta cliche, and it relates to the third section of this review, "Completion." A lot of fantasy worlds are entirely character driven, and outside of what is strictly necessary to make the plot work, the rest fails to hang together. But in this case, Modesitt makes a concious decision to set the stones for the entire saga, and it all hangs together, complete to a bumper crop of a bitter brandy called Green Berry, to how Creslin changed the weather patterns to turn Recluce from a desert, to a temperate paradise.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Medieval Trade Routes</td></tr>
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Other cliches only mentioned: The book touches a bit on The <b><span style="color: red;">Am I going Crazy</span></b> cliche, Creslin and Megaera's connection does begin to inflect seriously on both of their mental states, and indeed the end of the book has a moment where this cliche is addressed head on. <b><span style="color: red;">Broken Homeland</span></b>, Creslin is born in a strong matriarchy that is a major power in this verse, by the end of the book, his nation of origin is entirely shattered. I mentioned earlier this book deals with <b><span style="color: red;">The White</span></b> cliche, while true, even this is cliche busting. Usually The White, is good, all good, all clean, industrious, free from decay or corruption. In this case, The White is exactly the opposite. But even that is too cliched, because under the <b><span style="color: red;">Maintaining the Balance</span></b> cliche, even chaos-entropy is important to life itself. To wit, the wizards of Candar, evil as they may be, are not evil in the grander sense. In fact, the book goes through three generations of White Wizard Tyrants, as each is deposed by the younger generation for failing to contain the island of Recluce. Given Creslin's enormous power, he has taken thousands of lives by the book's end, this forces something of a <b><span style="color: red;">Hero's Redemption</span></b> cliche on him, though indeed, the weight of his deeds are never truly absolved.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My homeland (NYC), broken</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness:</span></b> The Saga of Recluce is complete in that, in that this enormous number of books (nearly 20!) Modesitt literally tells the entire history of this world, book by book. He jumps around a bit, the first book started several hundred years after the founding of Recluce, and this book details the start. There's even a book that (SPOILER) details the original colonists of this world. (SPOILER END). And Modesitt is very interested in the practical aspects of his world, he's invested in technology, trade routes, benchmark industries, GDP. If that stuff sounds dry, well, it is perhaps a bit. But there are plenty of sword fights too (Creslin's mastery with the Blade is without question). What's really interesting is just how differently Modesitt establishes this completness record from Jordan, or Martin. The book doesn't use documentary evidence (via epigraphs) or mysterious old ruins, or names and background of long dead nations. These are ways to establish a complete history that Modesitt eschews, instead, he concentrates on the present and details it excruciatingly. This is more on a level with Riftwar Saga's author Raymond E. Feist. I think one difference perhaps, is that to cite another cliche, neither Feist nor Modesitt's worlds are <b><span style="color: red;">Worlds in Decline.</span></b> They are more or less modern, thriving worlds where progress is derailed by war, and strife, but that the great wheel of progress is spinning forward furiously. So there really aren't massive ruins, or formerly great nations to discuss, because the world is full.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ancient Mayan ruins, because they're cool</td></tr>
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My overall recommendation for this book is definite, but qualified, yes! It is not teen fantasy, or YA, as the industry calls it. However, it is classic fantasy, published in 1993 when the genre was really starting to grow. And, with 20 books to this particular world, it's a good series to start if you want something with legs. I also really appreciate the seriousness of the relationship between the two main characters, something that is really quite seldom seen in traditional or young adult fantasy. Relationships are hard, and even love at first sight fades after that first sight, so it's rare that genre fiction actually handles the actual difficulties in making relationships work. Also, it's just a really cool magic system, worth exploring for those of you who like Brandon Sanderson's magic choices. My other reservation on this book (particularly for a younger audience) is that Modesitt really does enjoy the wonkiness of economic systems. It's still immensely readable, and a good way to learn about economics, but it might not be your cup of tea.HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-32037743507444820962018-08-20T15:14:00.001-04:002018-08-20T15:14:37.245-04:00Academ's Fury by Jim Butcher<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=ravingl-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=0441013406&asins=0441013406&linkId=db9cbe4253c262b03b8ced1cb1e12ff1&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></p>
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</iframe> I haven’t posted in awhile. Kids man, no time to write and when I do, I try to work on original fiction to further my dream of being an actual writer. As I'm jotting this down on my iphone, my 17 month old is singlemindedly slapping clothing on a doll and a stuffed animal<br />
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So, this is the second book in the <a href="https://www.lib.umich.edu/reading/Paul/codex.html">Codex </a>Alera. Part of a six book series. I like that he calls it a Codex, not too many of those—though to be frank unlike a lot of fantasy that creates fake literature to illuminate and foreshadow each chapter, this is noticeably absent from Butcher’s work. I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The plot is complex and full of intrigue, J<a href="http://www.jim-butcher.com/">im Butcher</a> continues to create a realistic fantasy world. If you are fan of Jim Butcher, check out his fansite, <a href="http://paranetonline.com/">paranetonline</a>!<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Character: </span></b>I think the main reason to read the Codex books is because of his main character, Tavi. He’s just a sunny, tough little guy who never feels sorry for himself and makes things work without all the special gifts that literally every other person in this land has. I just like him, and he’s a joy to read. His Aunt, is a bit of a drag, spoiler alert not really a spoiler alert, we begin to understand a bit more about her personal history. While we are on the topic: a person I respect at work told me her feelings on this book. Namely that a lot of the big reveals are pretty obvious, Tavi’s parentage being the most obvious. While I can see what she's saying, I'd say two things in reprisal: one, this does not detract at all from the excitement of the plot, or overall book enjoyment. Two, what's interesting is just how long these reveals take. By the end of this book you are some 800 pages in, and only one major reveal has taken place. That sort of tension is interesting, and I thought planned. The villains are also quite interesting, all returning from the first book. The sexy Lady Aquitaine, the dangerous and pragmatic spy Fidelious. And of course we get more acquainted with another High Lord, Kalare. Of course my continued sore spot for these novels is the romance and sex between The heroine Amara and the stalwart Bernard—it just doesn’t do anything for me and the intimacy is gratuitous. Both characters and their relationship fall into stereotypes and while I myself am proponent and supporter of cliche, I still find, as per my original review, these displays unpalatable.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Varg, the Canim Ambassador</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche: </span></b>So, new Cliche's in this book that weren't in the first book of the series, <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/2013/11/furies-of-calderon-jim-butcher.html">Furies of Calderon</a>. Well, Butcher does a good job of steering clear of most of the fantasy cliches. The first I can think of is less obvious. A minor new enemy introduced in the book is a species of half Dog, half Man, called the Canim. They are enormous though, and quite frankly, seem almost like <b><span style="color: red;">Minotaurs, </span></b>including the fury and menace that Minotaur mythology is said to encapsulate. These furry foes certainly share little with dogs as we know them.
Lady Aquitaine fullfils a nice <b><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/femme%20fatale">Femme Fatale</a></span></b> role, beautiful, sexy, horny, brainy, and powerful as fuck. She was briefly outlined in the first book, but we get to witness full use of her power as she (SPOILER) takes charge in the final chapters of this tale. It's a good use of the cliche, and her #openmarriage with Lord Aquitaine allows her to be free from some of the sexist baggage of the cliche as it is traditionally written. She might also get herself filed under the <b><span style="color: red;">Lady Wife</span></b> cliche, as she and her husband are deeply united on their goal of usurpation, if not of marital fidelity.
Of course, we must repeat the <b><span style="color: red;"><a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/Coming%20of%20Age">Coming of Age</a></span></b> cliche, as Tavi, now in his late teens, is still very much finding himself. That said, the use of this cliche is not quite so heavy here. While certain acts of incipient manhood are definitely reached in this volume, Tavi is already such a confident main character, that I do not really find his growth in this regard to be a major plot point. I guess the last cliche, a new one for this post, would be the <b><span style="color: red;">Giant Spider</span></b> cliche. We are terrified of bugs, creepy, annoying, as well as deadly. So there is a lot packed into a story where giant bugs are the main baddy. I think some people are probably turned off by this story because of it. The Giant Bug cliche is a common one for fantasy, think Shelob from LOTR, Lloth from The Forgotten Realms and Aragog from Harry Potter. What's a jauntin the <b><span style="color: red;">Enchanted Forest</span> </b>without an encounter with a nest of gigantic arachnids? But this Giant Spider cliche is at the heart of this series, which makes it a bit different. For instance these spider creatures have a queen, and are not in fact ALL spiders! Anyway, I found it refreshing, and this new installment introduces a terrifying new insect called the Taker. Which leads us to another new cliche!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shelob</td></tr>
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The <b><span style="color: red;">Zombie</span></b> cliche. Of course, zombies got their start in horror, but have had their own lackluster existence in fantasy. See my review of the <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/2011/11/walking-dead-season-1-v-walking-dead.html">Walking Dead</a>. Without spoiling too much, think of the two most terrifying things, bugs and zombies, and poof, you have Academ's Fury. The strength of zombie's of course is that they do not feel physical pain, they are utterly relentless, and utterly tireless. These zombies are a tad different. Read it, you'll see.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness:</span></b> This for me is where Codex Alera, while great plot driven fantasy does fall down from its ultimate potential as genre busting fantasy. While the plot is complex, and fully realized, as I mentioned earlier, it still lacks the depth and ancient history of Jordan's Wheel of Time, or even Martin's Game of Thrones. These books have histories that go back hundreds and thousands of years. While this is alluded to in the books, as in they are a splinter colony of an ancient Roman legion, the history is really too general to be of interest. It's a pity too because, there is a real opportunity in this book to do so. Tavi is in school, he even has a history exam where he discusses one scholar's old work about furies! Alas, Butcher is many great, great things, but an academic he is not. His scholarly discussion between Tavi and a cantankerous old buffoon is very disappointing. Tavi's best defense of his point of view, is that "many scholars agree". Tavi, this is not how you cite, even in an oral exam! Sigh, but that's my particular bias. Other than that, the realm of enemies and plagues facing Alera are very real, and very complete. This aspect of this very plot driven series is absolutely intact and fascinating.<br />
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To sum it all up, I definitely recommend this book, and if you do decide to buy it, click on the opening link and help a guy out!HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-88209166029939432782018-04-06T17:48:00.001-04:002018-04-06T17:52:21.088-04:00Werthamer Ex. 6.1<div style="background-color: #fdfcfa;">
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HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-41457535477556118322017-03-23T18:02:00.002-04:002017-03-23T18:02:52.501-04:00More Exciting Tests with Wolfram Cloud<iframe width='600' height='300' src='https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/2170ce2c-1c9a-497b-9a69-c7c1e9b31e38?_view=EMBED' frameborder='0'></iframe>HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-76742225282759982272017-03-16T15:08:00.003-04:002017-03-22T15:01:10.832-04:00Another experiment with the Wolfram Language<a href="https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/7c026a22-42ad-4bf9-af94-c5b776e39e3a">https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/7c026a22-42ad-4bf9-af94-c5b776e39e3a</a><br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" height="400" src="https://www.wolframcloud.com/objects/70c8de73-8130-4a46-92a8-
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So, this was the first book in a while that I couldn't put down. As usual I'm 8 years too late, but even though <i><b>the </b></i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002MQYOFW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1"><i><b>Hunger Games</b></i> </a>isn't truly fantasy, I thought it worth reviewing. At the very least to bolster my stats. Which, by the way, I'm proud to report are at nearly 30K hits. Averaging about 500 a month now. Leave a goddamn comment people! I did see <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392170/">the movie</a> for this book, though I did not see the two sequels. And, all pictures of Katniss in this blog, are of the talented Jennifer Lawrence. And for the purposes of SEO, Jennifer Lawrence is hot, Jennifer Lawrence is sexy, Jennifer Lawrence is a goddess. Glad that's over. She's ok, I have no dog in that fight.<br />
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I recall, when <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Sorcerers-Stone-Rowling/dp/059035342X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483339005&sr=8-1&keywords=harry+potter+sorcerers+stone">Harry Potter</a> came out, being late to get on that train as well. I had a conversation recently with a tenured anthropologist who shall remain nameless, wherein she basically encapsulated my feeling about Harry Potter, pre-reading: "I've been reading adult fantasy my entire life, why am I wasting my time on this kids stuff?" Of course, as anyone who has actually read the novels knows, the rewards are startling, immediate, and not at all vindicating for a former hater. So for <a href="http://www.suzannecollinsbooks.com/">Susan Collins</a> (btw, while I do not understand the her reference, I know exactly where Susan Collins was standing in Central Park when that photo was taken--GOD I MISS NYC).<br />
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This is classified as teen lit, but teen lit, <i>The Hunger Games</i> ain't. Seriously, I'm not really sure why it's classified as such, other than that the two main characters are teenagers. The Hunger Games themselves are about the yearly slaughter of 23 young people for spectacle and sport, something which is neither trivial, nor funny. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dystopian_literature">dystopian</a> society Collins has created is simply awful, and yet completely real. This is social commentary at its best, and <i>The Hunger Games</i> really needs to be added to the English curriculum in years to come. And the writing is actually really excellent. Much better, in fact than J.K. Rowling's prose. (That was an early turn off for me, in my Sorcerer's Stone reading.) "<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/11/hunger_games_catching_fire_a_textual_analysis_of_suzanne_collins_novels.html">Collins’ adjectives</a> are often used in a utilitarian manner, to describe processes (as in “One of the heaviest days of betting is the opening, when the initial casualties come in.”).Collins' prose is terse, spare, and utterly fitting for the bleak subject matter. And for all of that, the level of detail that I demand (and I demand copious amounts) is largely there.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Katniss, bringing the bow and arrow back for the new millennium</td></tr>
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<a href="https://pmchollywoodlife.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/the-hunger-games-katniss-peeta-kiss-ftr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://pmchollywoodlife.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/the-hunger-games-katniss-peeta-kiss-ftr.jpg" width="320" /></a>The other <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/10/the-8-habits-of-highly-successful-young-adult-fiction-authors/280722/">elements that make teen dram</a>a: are an over emphasis on sexual tension, sexuality, hormones, and teen drama. Well, this book ain't that either. Katniss is a largely asexual creation. And none of the anecdotes of the story feature any overt sexuality. There is frankly a lot of kissing. But it is all in the context of duress, where the heroin feels that she must provide a show to save both her life and that of her compatriot. Therefore the uncomfortable romance of the novel is one driven by political expedience. I think this novel could even be called feminist lit as, the subject of Katniss' body becomes everyone's business, and the ideas of <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/fem-stan/">disinterest</a>, individualism, power, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_objectification">objectification</a> are all explored in some very subtle ways, and other more direct approaches. I will read this book to my daughter one day, not all that long from now, either.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A strange, but supposedly accurate map of <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/5882371/perhaps-the-most-well-researched-map-ever-of-the-hunger-games-panem">Panem</a></td></tr>
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Even though <a href="http://mediaroom.scholastic.com/press-release/scholastic-announces-updated-us-figures-suzanne-collinss-bestselling-hunger-games-tril">everyone in the world</a> has either read the books, I think I should provide some basic info. In this future, the world has largely destroyed itself (likely through Nuclear war/winter. A surviving remnant of humanity (though there may be others) has organized itself into 13 outlying districts and a major metropolitan area in the Rockies which feeds on the mercantile production of the outlying districts. Each district provides a different commodity, though that in itself is a very strange, unlikely economic reality. It does make things easy for young readers I suppose. While it is certainly true that there are regions of the world which provide principally one export (oil based economies for example) in any sophisticated economy, such single export based economies are unlikely. And if it were true, a coal based economy like District 12, would likely be a good deal richer, providing as it does a major energy export. (Adherents to the series might say that nuclear power, in District 13 might have done for the District 12 what nuclear power did to coal rich regions like Wyoming and West Virginia. My counter would be: what District 13, it was destroyed, even with nuclear facilities in District 2, the price of coal would have skyrocketed.) Regardless of how unlikely such a scenario would be, the districting provides a useful structure for the books, a lot like "races" in a fantasy book. At one point in this post democratic society, a 13th district rose up, complaining about the excesses of the megalopolis, and the unfair treatment of those in the districts. And of course, brutal war followed that, destroying the 13th district altogether.<br />
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Following the war, for whatever reason, the Capitol decided that a ritualistic killing of young people was the best way to keep the districts in line. While this invention can be debated, it really forms the crux of the book, so there's little point. What matters is that the contestants for these games are randomly selected, but they can volunteer if they want. They have no recourse for selection, and they know that all but one will be killed in the game's arena. Our heroine, an aggressive, ornery, teenager named Katniss Everdeen is <i> not </i> picked. Instead her sister is, and she rushes forward to take her sister's place. The early pages of this novel feel a lot like Shirley Jackson's famous short story, <i><a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj184_9nKTRAhUL3YMKHTGpC3QQFggaMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fsites.middlebury.edu%2Findividualandthesociety%2Ffiles%2F2010%2F09%2Fjackson_lottery.pdf&usg=AFQjCNGhjbxpRySDPsD2c6R0tsnGDgORDw&sig2=T4ZK6HpPSv2PC7gkOj4Wuw&bvm=bv.142059868,d.amc">The Lottery</a></i>, where winning means death.<br />
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The rest of the book is one brutal killing after another, mixed with harsh social commentary on life in the Capitol, describing the profligate, media-driven, obsequious and superficial 1% of Panem. These critiques are stinging, though as always with such platitudes, it is easy to point "to the other guy" as the one who lives in excess. Still, I had to admire the grittiness of the tale. These were hard-bitten cynical people who had endured real suffering: starvation, beatings, cold winters, mal-nutrition. These are real things and they are not frequently in adult fantasy, let alone young adult fantasy. To add to this, Katniss is not a particularly eloquent character. She is terse, and represents <a href="http://psychologydictionary.org/self-alienation/" title="SELF-ALIENATION">SELF-ALIENATION</a> to a fault. She is really a very difficult character to like, which for fiction of this kind adds a great deal of charm. Her relationship with her sole surviving parent is sketched out in rather broad strokes, but her mother's depression following the death of her husband, caused Katniss to withdraw in a wonderfully original way. A parent's failure to parent, whether it be for mental illness, or even death, is nigh-unforgivable to a child.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The tracker jacker nest that kills one of the participants</td></tr>
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Perhaps one of the markers of real fiction, of fiction that actually makes the grade is the ability to show a character change. And Katniss does, and it is not the one that the reader wants--one more reason Hunger Games is a really phenomenal and unpredictable story. She does not get kinder, she does not fall in love, she does not turn into the Capitol's creature. Her personal growth is, to my opinion, a fairly subtle shade. She's very introverted, very in her-own-world, and as she becomes the media star of the Hunger Games, and then the wider symbol of a subversive movement she becomes if not a thrilled participant, certainly a willing one. Also, like many selfish people masquerading as selfless people, she begins to understand that people other than her sister depend on her. <br />
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One thing about Katniss which I find off-putting as a dyed in the wool liberal is her willingness to kill, and the ease with which she does so. That said, the other main character, her male counterpart in the games, Peeta has enough conscience for both of them.<br />
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SPOILER ALERT: I think the lack of love triangle with Peeta, Gale, and Katniss is an unusual one for a teen drama, and it drives the whole series forward. (A whole genre of <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Katniss%20Everdeen*s*Gale%20Hawthorne*s*Peeta%20Mellark/works">fanfiction </a>exists to explore this relationship) Katniss, who loved and revered her father, became emotionally crippled when he died in a mining accident. And with her mother's depression she was forced to assume too much responsibility for a child to have to endure. Perhaps as a consequence to this traumatic event her emotional growth really stopped at this time. There are two boys however, Gale and Peeta who have developed an abiding love for Katniss, and have multiple instances to prove said love. In all cases, Katniss rejects/or is completely ambivalent to this love. It's not that she can't choose, it's that she can't choose to not have either. This seems highly unusual for all fiction, let alone teen fiction. It also seems to be a pretty strong feminist interpretation of womanhood. The other important relationship, touched upon briefly, is the relationship Katniss has with her mother. It's a relationship described mostly by its absence. Our heroine does not crouch in the hard rain of the arena, desperately crying for her mommy, as any reasonable person would. But the anger and resentment against her mother is tangible in its absence. In some respects, I felt like this gaping hole was a problem, unbelievable. At other times, I felt that the absence spoke more eloquently than the pages of backstory would have.<br />
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The Hunger Games was such a good novel I read all three books in three weeks. Basically pushing off all other assignments. I think, ultimately, that is the highest review a bonafide reader can give.
HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-32213458030727047802016-10-08T02:29:00.000-04:002016-10-08T02:29:32.901-04:00Horselords by David Cook, Forgotten Realms 1990<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008ADC25U/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B008ADC25U&linkCode={{linkCode}}&tag=ravingl-20&linkId={{link_id}}" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&MarketPlace=US&ASIN=B008ADC25U&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL250_&tag=ravingl-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=ravingl-20&l=am2&o=1&a=B008ADC25U" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />This was a surprisingly good book for genre fiction of the time period. However two publication years into the <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Horselords">forgotten realms books</a> and still at the far outskirts of the world, places that haven't even heard of the great city of <a href="https://www.baldursgate.com/">Baldur's Gate</a>. Still with this, and the last Realms book I reviewed I'm seeing a pattern. The first two years of the Realms gave a snapshot of the interior of the realm. Now we are fleshing out the outskirts.
This book reminds me a tad of <a href="http://www.crydee.com/">Raymond Feist</a> and Janny Wurts <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Trilogy">Empire series</a>. It however is most definitely a vintage example of Orientalism. As I discussed here, I am on the fence about such uses of fantasy. On the one hand, done well it provides a welcome relief to standard European fare fantasy, on the other it imposes it's own set of tropes, stereotypes and racist or otherwise bigoted commentary. On the whole, I think Cook skirts the worst things about Orientalism and concentrates on character development and story.
One last general note: as <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/2016/04/iron-helm-by-douglas-niles.html">Iron Helm</a> had been about the founding of the Americas, Horselords is about Genghis Khan and the The Great Wall of China. That is a history that I know nothing about. But it isn't hidden or hinted at, it is written very clearly as a parallel. Remember that <a href="http://edverse.officeedgreenwood.com/edverse2/">Ed Greenwood</a>'s initial conception of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_Realms">The Realms</a> was as a nexus or hidden world, a reflection of all worlds and a fairy realm to our own. Meaning that the epic history told in the Empires Trilogy is meant to mirror our own world. Viewed in that light it is kind of neat, and readjusts our expectations for cliches.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Belive it or not, there is no fan art for Horselords</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Character:</span></b> there are basically four characters in the whole book. The lead is a priest character, a swami named Koja. He is a unusual in that unlike many D and D priest characters, Koja is entirely weaponless. That said, it doesn't matter since he is a hostage for the entire course of the novel. It is an unusual story in many respects: Koja is a weak character, indecisive and lacking in confidence. The main arc of the story is his Stockholm syndrome toward the Khan of Khans: Yamun. He abandons his church, and his nation. And he does not love the Khan either, like real life, we are swept forward by events with little in the way of epiphany. To be fair to Koja, he does wrestle with these demons, just not very hard.<br />
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The next character is Yamun, the great Khan. His character is fairly clichéd, forbidding barbarian King. If anything he's a little more cuddly then many such characters. One thing about Yamun's character, his desire to conquer the Dragonwall is inviolate. He is unable to even consider compromise, and never questions his own judgement. I feel this was a very deliberate choice by Cook, and I don't know, in the end if it reads as one-dimensional or as complex. After all not all characters have to be mealy mouthed and full of internal conflict to be interesting. Often in real life the most interesting people are the most blind. In many respects this novel surpasses the genre of stock swords and sorcery fiction. Much of the story is the interaction between Koja and Yamun, and it takes on the sort of oscar seeking biopic you might expect from Anna and the King. Koja is cut off from all he knows, but did not have too many ties to that world as it was, having lived as a monk. That said, there are many unanswered questions, why was he chosen as a negotiator, and what of his life before he is made captive by the Khan. We are never told, and while the book has many positive elements to it, the lack of background it evinces for its characters is a major failing.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche:</span></b> <a href="http://reappropriate.co/2014/04/what-is-orientalism-and-how-is-it-also-racism/">Orientalism </a>is probably the worst, the book is replete with customs and inferences drawn from ancient China. As a white person, I don't feel overwhelmed by said stereotypes, but I'm sure I might feel differently had I even a jot of Ghengis Khan's DNA. That said, apparently, like 10% of the world's population has <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan/#.V_dFgyErJD8">Genghis Khan's DNA</a> so maybe I do have some claim there. Fun fact, the term Khan, used in many fantasies is a <a href="http://www.behindthename.com/name/khan">Mongolian </a>word for King. Although the web link is silent on which came first Genghis, or the Khan. Another cliche, The Good Advisor cliche, is highly evident for obvious reasons. Koja's conflict over how to advise the Khan, particularly in light of the serious conflict of interest is only lightly delved into it. It's the sort of thing that all of the Forgotten Realms novels tends to fail at: none of the characters have history. We do learn of Yamun's ascent to power, and his relationship with his mother-in-law and first wife, Bayalun, but of the advisor we learn little beyond his cloistered life as a yogi of this temple. I hate to cite the Stockholm Syndrome cliche, over played and tired as it is, but any discussion of Horselords has to at least mention the fact that Koja's relationship to Yamun should be a hostile one. One cliche certainly not in evidence are the typical Dungeons and Dragons cliches. There is not a single dwarf or elf in the place.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness:</span></b> The world of Horselords is the outskirts of the traditional Forgotten Realms. Even in Iron Helm, there was mention of the standard Realms, characters and outside influence from the realms we've come to know and love. Not so Horselords, not even the gods are similiar, and the Shou Empire and the Tuigan hordes of Yamun seem to not take place in the same space at all. Inspite of this, the novel is written well enough that this subrealm seems entirely plausible. The Tuigan as a people are entirely tribal and believable as wandering marauders with little interest in outside realms, save war. The Khazari, a tributary nation conquered by the Shou Empire provides some depth to the political landscape. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Great Wall of China, of which this book is about.</td></tr>
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One thing that disappoints about David Cook's Horselords is the ending. A sort of standard double cross is planned, and SPOILER ALERT is never hatched, but is discovered well before the trap is sprung. While the double-cross was standard stuff, it was the dramatic conclusion to the novel, and without it, the ending was sort of uninspiring. I wonder what happened there. It was all set up... The novel is the first of a trilogy, so perhaps it was hacked to death and given this rather contrived ending to pick up the drama in later novels. Regardless, the next in the series, Dragonwall is next on my<a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_novels_in_order_of_publication"> FR list</a>.HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-67367898404655885922016-09-24T12:04:00.000-04:002016-09-24T12:11:45.810-04:00The Chronicles of Shannara on MTV, Season 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15575.The_Sword_of_Shannara"> Sword of Shannara</a> was the first big fantasy novel I ever read. I still remember walking into the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldenbooks">Walden Books</a> on Main Street in the New England town in which I grew up, and sorting through the titles in their tiny fantasy section. I remember the glowing sword on the cover. I remember turning back to that cover again and again, trying to imagine the three main characters fleeing the Skull Bearers in that flight to to the Silver River. I remember hiding the book in high school in that same New England town so that I wouldn't get teased by my peers. I remember that same book being thrown around a classroom while I struggled to get it back like some scene in a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000455/">John Hughes movie</a>.<br />
When I heard that the <a href="http://www.mtv.com/shows/shannara">Chronicles of Shannara</a> was being produced, I contained my excitement. It's a new dawn for fantasy, or at least, it is compared to what I grew up with. Given the success of <a href="http://www.hbo.com/game-of-thrones">Game of Thrones</a>, it was no wonder really that classic fantasy was sought after to produce. In fact, a television friend of mine even asked me for some recommendations. That was back before I left the center of the universe, NYC.<br />
When I saw that it was MTV that decided to produce it, unlike some fans, I wasn't perturbed. I liked "<a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/movie/the-100-tv-series/">The 100.</a>" Now that I'm officially old, seeing teen melodrama doesn't irritate me, it amuses me, and I admit a certain enjoyment of the eroticism in shows filmed to titillate the chattering class. I'd been meaning to review the Sword of Shannara for eons, and I am now doing a reread. However, the Chronicles begin at the second book. There is an interesting history to that second book, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elfstones_of_Shannara">given briefly by Wikipedia</a>.<br />
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To begin with, since this is a film review, I am not going to adhere to my usual rubric. I will simply comment on that which seems appropriate. First, the style. It is immediately apparent that this was filmed to capture the Hunger Games generation. I admit that I have only seen the first movie, and have never read the books. However, the starting scenes of the book show a very <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Games">Hunger Games</a> competition to become Chosen to the Ellcrys. The whole thing is filmed to maximize on a teen audience, from broad declarations of love and loyalty, to sex scenes that never occurred and gratuitous kissing/flesh, etc. None of this bothered me, and since I have not read <a href="http://shannara.wikia.com/wiki/The_Elfstones_of_Shannara">The Elfstones of Shannara</a> in twenty years I cannot yet comment on accuracy. Though, it seems pretty obviously NOT accurate. Again, I don't care so much. I care for the lingering success of my genre, for its mainstream appeal, and for what I believe to be the ultimate benefit: chiefly, the liberalizing of America.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoJsVv5O5FWi9VgbJBeg0lnwmHjoDK6KoItlkobcUCER_zSrLB9XH1E5anZUjb6_8JcwcbFPfcj6vTyugpMXwQOem37zmgVUg7XOeb3oMyoJsmTDb0wmMto0MYfLnxmSs2Vrml2o_44LCG/s1600/spaceneedle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoJsVv5O5FWi9VgbJBeg0lnwmHjoDK6KoItlkobcUCER_zSrLB9XH1E5anZUjb6_8JcwcbFPfcj6vTyugpMXwQOem37zmgVUg7XOeb3oMyoJsmTDb0wmMto0MYfLnxmSs2Vrml2o_44LCG/s400/spaceneedle.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Space Needle in Seattle</td></tr>
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In another shameless appeal to the younger generation, the show really rams home the post-Apocalyptic nature of the Shannara world. If I were a producer, I'd be saying, "Look at The Walking Dead, people LOVE this stuff!" At one point in the first season, the teens fall into an old ballroom decked out for high school prom (minus the skeletons). Though the books are pretty over-explanatory, the Druid Alannon outlines the entire history of the world in the first 100 pages of "Sword," they do not reference a single ruin or artifact of the old world until the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scions_of_Shannara">Scions of Shannara</a>, the fourth Shannara book written by Terry Brooks. The action in the Elfstones of Shannara (Season 1) occur several thousand years after the Apocalypse. There isn't a single car, bridge, or building remaining. Though the Hadeshorn lake is likely still a remnant of radioactive poison. In Chronicles, Season 1, ruins are ubiquitous. At one point, Will Ohmsford even asks his co star "don't you ever think about how remarkable ancient humans were?" This just doesn't happen in the books. Nonetheless, I like it, though it feels a lot less like fantasy this way. And the imagery the shows creators show is stunning, if not quite as original as some of its progenitors.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poppy Drayton. Just gorgeous.</td></tr>
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Let's talk actors, the series stars, Austin Butler, Poppy Drayton, Ivana Baquero, all three of them pretty hot. Though Poppy (I'm sorry Poppy, but if I'd rather be named Amberle than Poppy) is really stunning as the elf princess. I can't say much for acting. Not that it's bad, I just can't say much about it. Hers is not a character inflected with obvious weaknesses. She is a strong, smart woman, and she faces adversity with will and strength. Strong characters can be somewhat boring, it's true. Maybe she's a good actor, maybe not. Even though I spent a decade as an actor in NYC, I've never felt qualified toIt's been too long since I read the book, but I'm pretty sure that Ivana Baquero's character is made up for the series. Again, so what? She's hot too, and gets to take Will's cherry in the first episode or so.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Austin Butler, I'll "spare" you the images without shirt</td></tr>
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Will (Austin) is an interesting choice re hotness. Granted, as a straight man, maybe I'm wrong, but I do not think he is a particularly good looking man-boy. But what I like about him is his sort of soft, innocent, and caring appearance. Will Ohmsford is sort of an interesting character overall. In fact, all of the Shannara boys are, including Shea Ohmsford, (Will's father in the series, like great great great grandfather in the books), he is not a swash-buckling hero, he's not even a swash-buckling hero in training. He isn't a mage, or sorcerer's apprentice either. If he is anything at all, he is an apprentice healer. An odd choice for a hero. This grants a fair amount of depth to the young Will, allowing him to play the caring, feeling role normally reserved for female characters. On the otherhand, the two women get to enjoy more traditionally masculine roles. Amberle, a young warrioress elf, and Eretria, a thief character. However, this welcome role reversal does not make these characters particularly deep. Far from it, but it seems like MTV certainly tried to have strong female roles. Even if both women fall for one dude. Like many MTV properties, they even had some lesbian foreplay at one point, titillation for the younger crowd.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ivana Baquero, naked, in a bath, with Poppy Drayton</td></tr>
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One of my concerns about Shannara was going to be the casting of Alannon. Alannon is a different sort of Old Wizard cliche. Young seeming, but silent, withdrawn, and timeless, there is nothing funny about the dark druid. He is a druid, and falls more under the Druid cliche, though these druids are not worshipers of nature, but worshipers of the old order of men, purveyors of the knowledge of the Age of Man. I loved Alannon growing up, and having him as a fixture in a series whose faces changed with each book was a welcome sight, even if a grim one. As one character states, "when Alannon shows up, you know you're in trouble." Regardless, I can state with confidence that the casting of Manu Bennett is almost perfect. He is strong, reserved, and stately. He even brings a little bit of grim humor to the role. He is a tad good-looking for the role, something I was nervous about at first. But my reservations were quickly abandoned. Having begun my reread of the Sword of Shannara, I can state that Manu reflects the druid pretty well.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/98/af/c2/98afc2784281b5cc0006c203e7b706b5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/98/af/c2/98afc2784281b5cc0006c203e7b706b5.jpg" width="224" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Manu Bennett as Alannon</td></tr>
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One aspect of the show that falls short for me is that there is something flat and one dimensional about the world created by creator's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0332184/?ref_=tt_ov_wr">Alfred Gough</a> and Miles Millar. It's hard to define. When you read the Sword of Shannara you can't tell that it's Earth until Alannon literally tells you. In my mind, this had the opposite effect you might expect. The world is less familiar as a post Apocalyptic America then it is a world with a dynamic history and geography of its own. The beautiful vistas Gough and Millar create make you think of High Apocalypse novels, not of High Fantasy. I don't know why this matters, but it does. In some respects many fantasies take place in a post apocalyptic vision. The characters walk through ancient, haunted ruins, surrounded by a bygone era of grandeur, forever lost. Tolkien's Middle Earth was very similiar in that respect. The world of the Fellowship is a shadow of the world before <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Middle-earth_wars_and_battles">The War of the Elves in the Second Age</a>. Ruins are in the very bones of High Fantasy. And the swords, torches, and horses are the very outcome of low tech society that has lost its way.<br />
I think perhaps that one of the Chronicles Season One's failings is that while it discusses the history and frequently alludes to events that have occurred, it skips the prosaic matters that make fantasy worlds real. Traders on the road, the petty local politics of tyrants, the class struggles hidden, yet glorified by false visions of feudalism. The world of the Chronicles is shown to be a dystopian vision of isolated communities and roving bands of killers. While the <i>Sword of Shannara</i> actually makes a point of literally telling you that this decentralized version of the land is political choice (something in my reread I find unpleasant) it is ultimately lying about this because <i>there are</i> local politics and trade: decentralized political systems are a red herring. Gough's vision of the land of Shannara could take place on the same set as The Walking Dead. But it's just not true. The Apocalypse happened two to four thousand years prior, and world wars, which the land has experience many, are not apocalypses--just terrible.<br />
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Regardless, it appears that there will be a <a href="http://release-date.info/tv-series/the-shannara-chronicles-season-2-release-date-874000483902/">second season</a> of the show. And I'm glad. There was a time, perhaps when I was both jealous of a younger generation taking fantasy on, and grateful that my preferred medium was successful. But I am jealous no longer. With a daughter of my own, I am thrilled to see fantasy living and expanding past what my generation had done for it.HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-65031294898749953332016-08-19T02:16:00.002-04:002018-08-23T17:47:23.638-04:00The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/%3Ciframe%20style=%22width:120px;height:240px;%22%20marginwidth=%220%22%20marginheight=%220%22%20scrolling=%22no%22%20frameborder=%220%22%20src=%22//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=ravingl-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=0671721046&asins=0671721046&linkId=3f7bccae96a5af84fae9f46d094379c9&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff%22%3E%20%20%20%20%20%3C/iframe%3E"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=ravingl-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=0671721046&asins=0671721046&linkId=3f7bccae96a5af84fae9f46d094379c9&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"> </iframe></a></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">I'm ashamed to admit that I had not heard </span><span class="il" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">of</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"> <a href="http://www.elizabethmoon.com/">Elizabeth Moon</a> until just last year. In an effort to get actual blog readers and to meet more like minded people, I kept hearing her name in relation to foundational fantasy literature: genre defining stuff. A new friend had some of her books, and I took her up on her generous "deed." Having done some further research it is much clearer to me now, that Moon did much of her writing in the mid-to-late 80s and was merely part of the explosion of new fantasy at that time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">The quotes on the back of the book don't help. "This is the first work of high heroic fantasy that has taken the work of Tolkien, assimilated it totally, and deeply, and absolutely ..." <a href="http://dancinghorse.livejournal.com/">Judith Tarr</a>. (Whose life has taken a depressing turn for the worst, it seems.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span></span>
<span arial="" color:="" font-family:="" quot="" sans-serif=""><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Still, I think Elizabeth Moon's reputation is based on a delightful though traditional approach to fantasy, and her works are certainly part of the firmament of the fantasy galaxy. And if you've never read any Moon, you need to get yourself to your <a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780671721046">Indie bookstore</a> and buy <i>The Deed of Paksenarrion</i>. What makes fantasy, what really takes it from mere swords and sorcery, from plot-based fiction like Stephen Grisham, and much worse, the $2-3 ebook with 500 five-star amazon ratings, and turns it into something with impact, is it's ability to opine almost unerringly on what it is good, and right. And this is something that Paksenarrion does exceedingly well.</span></span><br />
<font-family: arial="" quot="" sans-serif=""><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span></font-family:>
<font-family: arial="" quot="" sans-serif=""><font-size: 12.8px="">Typically sold now as one volume, the book was released in three parts, the first of which is really the <i>Deed</i>. After which the second and third book titles are almost meaningless, though they are where the true meat of the trilogy rests. The book has sort of a slow start, and the first entire section if it, is devoted to a rather un-fantasy like treatise on the training of a mercenary company. But fear not, if you can get past the first book, Paksenarrion truly blossoms.</font-size:></font-family:><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><b style="color: #222222;"><span style="color: #274e13;">Character:</span></b><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: white;">The title character, Paksenarrion starts the novel as a teenage girl running away from home, and an arranged marriage, to join a mercenary company. There are a few things that jar about this from the get go, but I think it important to note that an important act of fantasy is the concept of creating an equal world. Not a world where everyone is equal, but one where equality is fundamentally valued by the author. All manner of awful things may happen in such a world, but when it is apparent that the author believes this, the worldview is upheld by a kind, just, and generous spirit. Such individuals create characters like them. And it is these characters who teach us, who show us (by their acts of unspeakable giving, love and faith) that humans are fundamentally capable of good--that despite our flaws, we are redeemable: that hope exist.</span></span></span><br />
<font-family: arial="" quot="" sans-serif=""><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span></font-family:>
<font-family: arial="" quot="" sans-serif=""><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Paksenarrion is such a character. She's not the sharpest tool in the shed. She's uncurious, easily led, blind to her own talents, and blind to the shortcomings of others, and these qualities make her a frustrating heroine, though a real one. Paksenarrion joins a mercenary company, and yet is surprised when the causes she is committed to are not always just. This seems inherent to we, so wise in the world. But she's a farm girl, fed on stories of soldiers, and living in a land far from the borders of any cohesive state. Her actions are charmed, touched by the divine, and one thing she learns, quickly enough is that while she loves to fight, and indeed possesses no qualms about killing, will not fight for causes that are not just. She loves her companions, and indeed never feels anything approximating lust or desire. <a href="http://www.tor.com/2016/04/11/asexual-ace-characters-in-science-fiction-and-fantasy/">She is asexual</a>, though never termed so. I have mixed feelings about this, though I think it functions well for a paladin character--though the choice to abstain is in most churchy literature, it is not a consequence of disinterest, the choice to abstain is given as a sacrifice in god's name. In Islam, it is the greater jihad, the fight to deny one's baser instincts. Though more dark fantasy has embraced women as fully in-the-world, capable of desire as much as men (and not just mere foils to men's desires', trophies and patsies to the hero) Moon's beautiful rose is truly white. To wit, a modern asexual woman, is itself a massive break with stereotype. </span></font-family:><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No author caption here: <a href="https://monstersc1.wordpress.com/tag/paladin/">fell down the rabbit hole</a></td></tr>
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<font-family: arial="" quot="" sans-serif=""><span 12.8px="" font-size:=""><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">However, the Deed of Paksenarrion is about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin_(character_class)">paladins</a>, and their becoming. </span>In my Forgotten Realms readings, I have uncovered a few characters of priests, such as <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Adon">Adon</a> from the <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Avatar_series">Avatar trilogy</a>. Even the the <a href="http://dragonlancenexus.com/lexicon/index.php?title=Knights_of_Solamnia">Knights of Solamnia</a> from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance">DragonLance</a> series. Or also from the <a href="http://www.malazanempire.com/site/">Malazan epic</a>, <a href="http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/Itkovian">Shield Anvil's</a>, the most devout servants of the gods of war. Priests are a difficult caste in fantasy literature. Indeed, books like <a href="https://www.pottermore.com/explore-the-story/harry-potter">Harry Potter</a>, and others before it were shunned and castigated by religious organizations like the <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html">Catholic Church</a>. It's interesting to note that fantasy tackles religious matters, and religious organizations all the time, and yet issues of faith, issues that come close to proselytizing are almost always handled at arms-length.</span></font-family:><br />
<font-family: arial="" quot="" sans-serif=""><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span>
<font-family: arial="" quot="" sans-serif=""><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">But in a story about <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePaladin">paladins</a>, such discussions become central to the plot. Let us not forget that original of all paladins, was also a female, Joan of Arc. I found myself becoming uncomfortable at times by the direction Deed was taking. Ultimately, however, I feel that The Deed holds to what is True in fantasy while avoiding the snarls of dogma. And for most of the series, Paks is at best agnostic in her faith.</span></font-family:></font-family:><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artist Unknown. Seriously, he probably died in a mass grave.</td></tr>
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<font-family: 12.8px="" arial="" font-size:="" sans-serif=""><br /></font-family:>
<font-family: 12.8px="" arial="" font-size:="" sans-serif=""><br /></font-family:>
<font-family: 12.8px="" arial="" font-size:="" sans-serif="">There are some difficulties. For example, killing even if it is only killing for right is glorified, and there is never a moment of horror, a moment of self-recrimination for the slaughter of enemy combatants. This is one of the reasons that I began to feel that Paks was not the brightest protagonist. By the end of the third book, something happens to Paks, and she is broken, a cliche we will discuss later, but her personal struggle is caused by something external to her, something evil that takes root in her, and is then rooted out. She emerges from the process in rough shape, but her main crisis is that she will be unable to wield a sword again, unable to fight, unable to kill. Now of course, there are certain aspects of feminism at play. For example, when Paks finds herself in a barn at night when two churls approach her. Her inability to fight would have left her in poor straits had not the gods intervened on her behalf. Now ultimately, the conversion, the self-examination that we want Paks to have, does happen. But there again, it happens because a druid explains a few things to her. It's difficult to parse, Elizabeth Moon may be one of those few, rare writers who does not write herself as the main character (not even Steven Erikson can say this). Moon is a brilliant writer, and obviously a very smart person, but Paks is not. Writing a dumb character, is I can say with all honesty, absolutely impossible for me. It's not that I'm so smart, it's that as an intellectual I am constantly assailed by self-doubt and recrimination, things which make a character by nature introspective and thoughtful. So let us at least say this: Moon proves her writing chops not in the detail of her world, in the pique of her characters (that's all there) but in that she is able to do what so few writers even attempt to do, to write characters that do not exist within the range of her own "voice."</font-family:><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche:</span></b>This is<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1117.Best_Fantasy_of_the_80s"> 80s fantasy</a>, so cliches abound. We will touch briefly upon the obvious ones, elves, dwarves, orcs, magic. The first book of the trilogy mentions the other races in passing, as well as gnomes, and a few other beasties. However, unusual to fantasy, the first book is almost entirely devoid of extra races. That said, elves and to a lesser extent dwarves, play a crucial role in the overall arch of the story. As usual, elves fulfill the usual <a href="http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Elves">Tolkien stereotypes</a>. Immortal, tall, otherworldly, slim, beautiful, musical, etc. One neat thing about the elven component of The Deed is that it references something that other earlier fantasy works maintain, namely that the faerie dwell in a sort of shadow kingdom, a world within a world, different and similar to ours. Though Tolkien's elves left the plane of Middle Earth, during their time in it, they were squarely involved "in the shit" as it were. Moon changes the Dwarven cliche nicely. Instead of the beer swilling, anvil hefting, gold digging, creatures we have come to know and love, the Dwarves are very fond of ceremony, and have a peculiar dialect. Unfortunately, we don't learn much more than that. Orcs only really emerge as combatants, quickly slain, and with no real reason for being in the story, merely as a side effect of Evil Influence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">However, Moon, may have been one of the first to embrace the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_elf"><b>Dark Elf cliche</b></a>, perhaps not even a cliche at the time. Tolkien's world explored the idea of the corrupted elf, Sauron, the ostensible reason for his long lasting evil. However, Sauron was an exception, there was no race of like minded long-lived evil ones. (I never did read the Simillarion though, so I can't speak to the whole of his work). Regardless, Moon's Dark Elves are unusual compared to the ones that the Dungeons and Dragons cliche embraced. They have the fine elven features, pointy ears, are long lived, etc. that all elves have. But they stink, and they intentionally corrupt all that is beautiful. I thought this was a really great detail, Dark Elves are the anti-elf in EVERY way in this series. The Dark Elves end up being a critical plot point for the series, though they make no appearance in the first book at all.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">By Gerald Brom</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">There are dwarves as well, though they play only a minor role. They fulfill some stereotypes, while trumping others. Moon's dwarves are different they have a formal speech, though they are boisterous by nature. A gnome stereotype exists which is quite interesting, though not much explored. The gnomes of Moon's writing aren't the slightly silly, less strong version of dwarves that you often see in the Dungeons & Dragon Realms. Their gnomes are fierce like Terry Brook's gnomes, but are strict adherents to order. Like many creatures faerie (another cliche) they do not believe in gift giving, only in fair exchange. It's an interesting dynamic, and explored more in later books.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Some of the cliche pages, like TV Tropes, point out that the Lawful Good cliche is in full effect here. I honestly don't think that's enough of a cliche to pursue. I do think Lawful Good characters are however, very interesting. It takes a lot of willful blindness to the world to always follow the law and still be good. Even a poor execution of a Lawful Good character can show this dialectic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><b>Adventure Time Cliche: </b>So in writing this post, I lost an earlier draft, wherein I noted how very much like classic swords and sorcery, dungeons and dragons gaming parts of this book were. I have no problem with that overall, I've been trying to do the same for some time. Real drama is created in such games (the good ones) and a story-teller's polish of such events can create real lasting value. It worked for R.A. Salvator and Margaret Weiss afterall. I noted that one of the scenarios was Paks meeting of a certain half-elf of ill-repute on the road. The two join-up, explore a dungeon, and slay a wizard. But I'd forgotten that they do almost the same thing later on, in Brewers Bridge, the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/TheDeedOfPaksenarrion">TVTropes site pointed out </a>that it is almost the complete scenario for AD Module 1. For a more thorough listing of Paks cliches, check out this <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/TheDeedOfPaksenarrion">TV Tropes site</a>.</span><br />
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</span></b><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness: </span></b>The Deed looks and feels like a complete world. Throughout the novels, we explore a good portion of the world, and the interconnectedness of nations is well-demonstrated. The wars of the south, for example, are in large part trade wars, defending various routes to various ports, and various choke points like the castle Dwarfwatch. These are the sorts of things that real wars are fought over, and I appreciate that detail. Moon has some military experience, and the battles are drawn in painstaking detail. Some readers are turned off by this, it seems, but strong detail is never a problem for me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The religious aspect is well-developed without choking, and was not offensive for an old-time atheist like myself. I've played a few paladins myself, and like I said, I find the character type pretty interesting. The Gods are real, and come across that way--unlike the idiocy and petty squabling of the Forgotten Realms gods, and still ineffable and mysterious, unlike the gods of the Malazan epic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">There are a few untied threads. Now, life is a series of untied threads held together by place, time, and financial obligation. However, those things are tenuous at best in fiction, and untied threads can always be blamed on the author. That said, many of these threads seem to be tied to these one off AD and D adventure modules that occur throughout the books. Mini-stories, that are engrossing, but ultimately have little to do with the arc as a whole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The arc is a long one, and many readers get turned off by the slow start. When Paks soul searching takes it's darker turn, and where it receives it's finest answer is where the book really starts to shine. It's also where Moon takes the gloves off and shows us some of what evil is truly capable of. In the end, I quite enjoyed The Deed. I did find some of its characters to be in part unrealistic, but wasn't ultimately turned off by it. The Deed of Paksenarrion is worth a read, and doesn't quite deserve some of the heated criticism its received.</span>HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-46603830334125074452016-06-05T02:11:00.000-04:002016-08-11T02:32:15.354-04:00Great Moments in Fantasy -- Paksenarrion Becomes a Paladin<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paksenarrion by Mandy Tsung</td></tr>
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A fair amount of background is necessary for this great moment. Note that while this is a spoiler, it may also be worth reading, regardless. These are moments that define fantasy, and have intrinsic value. If reading these snippets make you go and get the book, then surprise be damned.<br />
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This is from Elizabeth Moon's, The Deed of Paksenarrion, published first in 1988, though split into three novels. The story details the heroics of one Paksenarrion, a former sheep farmer's daughter, and paladin. I will be reviewing this novel forthwith, but here is a taste of some of what this novel has to offer.<br />
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At the first instance, Paks is at the nadir of her relatively short life. After having survived a number of harrowing challenges, and becoming known throughout the realm for her bravery, skill as a swords woman, and downright goodness, she has lost her way. A variety of poorly healed wounds, and psychological damage have crippled her. Lost, homeless, and starving, she finds herself at the glade of a Kuakgannir, a servant of mother nature. He heals her, but doubts remain, will her pyschic wounds forever ban her from fighting for the cause of good?<br />
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"What I can do has been done." Paks felt the certainty of this, and braced herse;f to carry her fear forever. "But," he went on, "there may be more you can do. You have spent a summer with the elves and part-elves and the powers of teh forest. I think you have spent it well--not thinking only of fighting, but learning, as you could, of the natural world. I cannot promise success--but if you have the courage to try a desperate chance, it may return your joy in your craft."<br />
"I will try," said Paks at once.<br />
"I have not told you what it is."<br />
She shook her head. "No matter. I will try."<br />
"Very well." He stood up and moved to the woodbox. "I have saved these from the spring; they'll be dry by now." He began to stack short lengths of wood by the fireside. "This is eart'oak--to look at, much like any red oak. The elves call it fireoak. And here are two lengths of blackwood--don't worry, not long enough for a bow, even for a child. I wouldn't burn bowwood. And--let me think. Yellowwood, shall it be, or rowan? What do you remember best, Paksenarrion about your visit here this spring?"<br />
She tried to think; the bees that had come in to the honeycomb came to mind. "Bees," she said. "You sang them away."<br />
"From yellowwood honey. Very well." He pushed most of the existing fire to one side of the wide hearth, and quickly piled the sticks he'd selected in its place. Then he lit them with a brand from the fire. Paks flinched: flames roared up from the tiny pile as if it had oil on it. THey were bright, brighter than the yellow flames on the other wood. The room came alive in that dancing light. "It won't last long," said the Kuakgan, turning to her. "You must name your gods, to yourself, at least, and place your hands in that flame. The heartwood of fireoak, for courage, and blackwood for resilience and endurance, and yellowwood for steadfast loyalty to good. Quickly!"<br />
Paks could not move for an instant--the magical flames were too bright and hot. She could feel the sweat break out on her face, feel the clenching of her stomach, the roiling wave of fear about tos weep over her. She spread her hands in front of her and leaned to the fire.<br />
The flames leaped up joyously to engulf her. She would have jerked back, but it seemed too late--the fire was too big. If I'm going to burn, she thought, I might as well do it all. She had forgotten to ask what would happen--if the flames would really burn--if they would kill her--and it was too late. Gird, she called silently, Gird, protector of the helpless. And it seemed to her that a stocky powerful man held his hand between her and the flames. And her memory brought another vision, and other names: The High Lord--and the first man stepped back, and trumpets blew a fanfare, and in the fire itself a cup of pure silver, mirroring the fire--Take it--said a voice, and she reached into the flames to find herself holding a cool cup full of icy liquid--Drink--said the voice, and she drank. Flames roared around her, hot and cold together--she could feel them running along her arms and legs. A wild wind shook the flames, drums thundered in her feet: she thought of horses, of Saben, of the Windsteed, father of many foals. She rode the flames, leaping into darkness, into nowhere, and then across endless fields of lowers, and the flowers at last wrapping the flames in coolness, in sweet scents and breaths of mint and cinnamon and spring water. Alyanya, she thought at the end. The Lady of Peace -- strange patron for a warrior. And kind laughter followed, and the touch of healing from the Lady's herbs. THen she thought of them all together, or tried to, and the flames rose again like petals of crystal, many-colored, closing her off from that vision as the Hall's colored windows from the sky. Higher they rose, and higher, and she walked through them, wondering until she saw in the distance an end.<br />
And recovered herself sitting on the cold hearth of the Kuakgan's house, with every bit of wood consumed to ash. The kuakgan sat beside her, as she could feel in the darkness. She drew a long breath.<br />
"Paksenarrion?" He must have heard the breath, and been waiting for it. She had never heard him sound so tentative.<br />
"Yes." It was hard to speak. IT was hard to think. She was not at all sure what had happened, or how long it had been.<br />
He sighed, deeply. "I was beginning to worry. I feared you might be lost, when you did not return at once."<br />
"I—don't know where I was."<br />
"I do not propose to suggest where you were. How are you?"<br />
Paks tried to feel herself out. "Well—not burned up—"<br />
The Kuakgan laughed. "And not burned witless, either. That's something, I suppose. Let me get a light—"<br />
Without thinking, Paks lifted her hand: light blossomed on her fingertip.<br />
"Mother of Trees!" The Kuakgan sounded amazed. "Is that what happened?"<br />
Paks herself stared at the light in confusion. "I don't know what I did! I don't know—what is it?"<br />
"It's light—it's a light spell. Some paladins can do that—haven't you seen it?"<br />
When she thought of it, Paksenarrion remembered the paladins making light. "Yes, but then—"<br />
"Then What? Oh I see. Well, as I half-suspected, you are a paladin outside the law, so to speak. Human law, that is."<br />
"But it can't—I mean I can't—and anyway, how do I do it? Or stop it?" She was still staring at the light; she was afraid to look away or move her hand.<br />
"Just a moment." The Kuakgan rose and took a candle from the mantle, and touched it to her hand. Nothing happened. "Ah."<br />
"What?"<br />
"It's true spell-light, not witchlight. Witchlight lights candles, but not spell-light." She could hear him rasping with his flint and steel. The candle flared a yellow glow pale beside her hand. "Now you don't need it. Ask for darkness."<br />
"Ask who?" Paks felt stupid.<br />
"Whom did you name? Whom were you with? You're a paladin remember, not a mage: you don't command, you ask."<br />
--<i>Please</i>--thought Paks, still in confusion. The light vanished. A bubble of laughter ran through her mind. "But do you mean it?" she asked the Kuakgan, turning to watch him as he lit more candles. "Do you mean I really am a paladin, after all that's--" Her voice broke.<br />
"I am no expert on paladins," he said again. "But something certainly happened. I know you aren't a Kaukgan. We both know you aren't a Marshal of Gird. You aren't a wizard. Nor an elf. That leaves few explanations for your gifts and abilities. Paladin is the name that fits best."<br />
"But I was--" She didn't want to say it, but knew he would understand.<br />
"Hmmm. I used to wonder how the paladins of Gird could be considered protectors of the helpless when they themselves had never been helpless. Rather like asking the hawk to feel empathy for the grouse, or the wolf for the sheep. Even if a tamed wolf makes a good sheepdog,he will never understand how the sheep feel. You Paksennarion: you are most fortunate. For having been, as you thought, a coward, and helpless to fight--you know what that is like. You know what bitterness that feeling breeds--you know in your own heart what kind of evil it brings. And so you are most fit to fight it where it occurs. Or so I believe."<br />
Paks stared at the finger that had held light. She wanted to argue that it could not be true--she had been too badly hurt--she had too much to overcome. But far inside she felt a tremulous power, a ripple of laughter and joy, that she had not felt before. It was much like the joy she remembered, yet greater, as the light of her finger had been greater than candlelight.<br />
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~~Elizabeth Moon<br />
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Even today, when I play, which I don't often get to do, I play paladins. I'm not religious. In fact, I'm an atheist. But something has always appealed to me about the order of paladin. This series has paladins and knights, though knights are so tarnished in mind by now that the inclusion is almost meaningless. It's not the instantaneous contact with God, or a god, that appeals. It's the sense of devoting your entire life to good, and it's pursuit. Here's another tidbit. I'm not a rule person. I have always felt that rules were mere guidelines for good behavior predicated by good sense, not abject fear of transgression. In the Dungeons and Dragons world, a paladin must be Lawfully Good. The strictest good available to choose. But Moon has given us a taste of a more true to life phenomenon, that service to the Good, is more than mere adherence to meaningless rules. It is fighting for what is good, no matter who you are. It is trying to do better, even when no one else is trying. It is caring despite the knowledge of one's own limitations and imperfections.<br />
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~~Godsol<br />
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<br />HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-69446363890440273202016-05-31T00:51:00.001-04:002016-05-31T00:51:54.432-04:00GODSOL Redesign and New Banner!Hi folks! I've wanted to redesign the look of the blog for a long time. While I have some artistic talent, I have not, and have never been, a designer. I shoot from the hip: I'm so excited about getting to the content, that it doesn't make sense to me to waste time on the window dressing. Of course, this is crazy. The rest of the world obsesses about design, and I've known that. I just never seem to have any time.
Regardless, in getting my new banner, I tried multiple craigslist ads in two countries, and three states. I'd get people interested in it, but no one ever followed through. Since I wasn't offering any money, and since the money I could offer would be miniscule, it was finally suggested to me that I look for work already completed and ask permission for use.
In my new career, I now have some access to graphic designers. I have not gotten permission to mention my designer, Naoko, by her full name, but if you like her work, I am happy to refer.
The artwork however is by a fantastic, or should I say fantastique French artists, <a href="http://sebastien-grenier.com/about-me/">Sebastien Grenier</a>. Sebastien granted me permission to use two images of his, and to combine them for the purposes of creating an awesome banner. Ultimately, I gave Naoko six images to work from.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTCOrSOonI_ux6j_UKgOpcLRKT_ywW2zzsMX3NlmgSJFHNvBWoRdQ6m1q1zajc87VvhXZsU6SOkG-J1y0YokgnhBQaO7L3x0DTXKY17BHxqBePBJgY_O7wrIP1oiy0PC57N5sq-wuTTDHe/s1600/ARAWN-la-couverture-couleur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTCOrSOonI_ux6j_UKgOpcLRKT_ywW2zzsMX3NlmgSJFHNvBWoRdQ6m1q1zajc87VvhXZsU6SOkG-J1y0YokgnhBQaO7L3x0DTXKY17BHxqBePBJgY_O7wrIP1oiy0PC57N5sq-wuTTDHe/s320/ARAWN-la-couverture-couleur.jpg" /></a>I liked this image a lot, the colors, the brooding nature of Sebastien's Arawn. But the character was front facing, and so was his awesome two-handed blade. The battle scene below, was also particularly awesome, as are the titan-like creatures wielding the enormous, wickedly spiked maces. I also liked the foreground, with it's panoply of armed creatures. Still, moving these images around, in what is a very small space proved impossible.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqywKOyTYgGkLyjBjJn_Ns0HHMuPsdiVJg67m7d0vZaK_wYbqlen_IsIhtdWWNYxHMTeVvXY0LVVOfzsObwCclTyMTDUVzQ879PnmCcApyjw_ak4kAKf6lidAL1Ha-E5oZU83LbxUFl2DP/s1600/battle-Arawn.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqywKOyTYgGkLyjBjJn_Ns0HHMuPsdiVJg67m7d0vZaK_wYbqlen_IsIhtdWWNYxHMTeVvXY0LVVOfzsObwCclTyMTDUVzQ879PnmCcApyjw_ak4kAKf6lidAL1Ha-E5oZU83LbxUFl2DP/s320/battle-Arawn.jpg" /></a><br />
Then there were the swords of light, which presented their own difficulties. I found great swords, and great gals to wield them. But few were in exactly the right position for a lengthwise web banner. Ultimately, Naoko, chose two beautiful images, and then photoshopped them until they fit. What do you think? On the one hand, I miss the colors from some of the fire laced images. However, given the dark colors of the new blog skin, I think the cold colors Naoko chose work well. Excited for this blog's next chapters. I have lots of good stuff in store!<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB1hOwwg15-mPMjn0A_eda09b75auhW0Kmp9BhNQQsPBQr8iLvxFBT0ywtdDVUxgbWxxrz7ZnzauRiv-p44knRLKAMDrZGmK5ONSkZMRSzIzO6epN3x0Z1RcctMIOnw9xms5Uk7p71ZZYe/s1600/ARAWN-t6-couv-regl7.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB1hOwwg15-mPMjn0A_eda09b75auhW0Kmp9BhNQQsPBQr8iLvxFBT0ywtdDVUxgbWxxrz7ZnzauRiv-p44knRLKAMDrZGmK5ONSkZMRSzIzO6epN3x0Z1RcctMIOnw9xms5Uk7p71ZZYe/s320/ARAWN-t6-couv-regl7.jpg" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_8lOhsniHIaGZLVq3N00kQq6PH95vD6k8EIgizM9N8kQ36MxHLQWhmYlYffq28K3wvBuvSjkhdEyjRF7UQLdnyHDfpEL0a5KLG1lzzJp1y_idbU7mRUZodMgJNtMeSa6qEyGuRYdDo1e3/s1600/Couv-couleur-Integral-ARAWN.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_8lOhsniHIaGZLVq3N00kQq6PH95vD6k8EIgizM9N8kQ36MxHLQWhmYlYffq28K3wvBuvSjkhdEyjRF7UQLdnyHDfpEL0a5KLG1lzzJp1y_idbU7mRUZodMgJNtMeSa6qEyGuRYdDo1e3/s320/Couv-couleur-Integral-ARAWN.jpg" /></a><br />
So one final thank you to Sebastien Grenier and his beautiful art, and for his allowing me to use it. And for the work of my wonderful designer.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-rSjjTUZcuqIRAqbK1t4-EFsVSxueNvK6jWFZW4op56zDE7QhG99ZHhoMp-fYd1Vxjl4o1etAK2FDgZTD-rpHxtgjZGqHLqEaEMOJ71jLAh1qvYucRCS8bhCu6jMTJS791_GxDqCP7GA8/s1600/Death-Dealer-final.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-rSjjTUZcuqIRAqbK1t4-EFsVSxueNvK6jWFZW4op56zDE7QhG99ZHhoMp-fYd1Vxjl4o1etAK2FDgZTD-rpHxtgjZGqHLqEaEMOJ71jLAh1qvYucRCS8bhCu6jMTJS791_GxDqCP7GA8/s320/Death-Dealer-final.jpg" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieHF6qR7BINJdZnSkRJzQaknalFA_64LAFrAwi-vqFzrW1FC5LV3e-uiurJWDQgxdpnvC-ejIRuWW4SW7LMLg6CwRzGwKdI7ZHd793tLrUG5VZrTdhXnqYelz0rlgq0W_7hfv-PANPZawI/s1600/Knight-of-the-moon.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieHF6qR7BINJdZnSkRJzQaknalFA_64LAFrAwi-vqFzrW1FC5LV3e-uiurJWDQgxdpnvC-ejIRuWW4SW7LMLg6CwRzGwKdI7ZHd793tLrUG5VZrTdhXnqYelz0rlgq0W_7hfv-PANPZawI/s320/Knight-of-the-moon.jpg" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguOFOfJp2i9pEh5QceIHvqP-2Ga93hlFAvLXXVgPAYxwYq7DyrV6XT8jRR2wq-yTbwMgxRE1eFmwgbXEd91_Vx-mV20Ct01_ylnlliBPoBJdx55ifZj9x3W8OqwyWBd2FBkekwpmBM4gP9/s1600/white-dragon-copier.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguOFOfJp2i9pEh5QceIHvqP-2Ga93hlFAvLXXVgPAYxwYq7DyrV6XT8jRR2wq-yTbwMgxRE1eFmwgbXEd91_Vx-mV20Ct01_ylnlliBPoBJdx55ifZj9x3W8OqwyWBd2FBkekwpmBM4gP9/s320/white-dragon-copier.jpg" /></a>HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-3054533401319031772016-05-09T01:16:00.002-04:002016-05-09T01:18:14.389-04:00Blog Word Cloud from MathematicaExperimenting with my blog in Wolfram's Mathematica<br />
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<br />HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-39103775705744709142016-04-19T02:10:00.000-04:002016-04-24T23:16:18.358-04:00Iron Helm by Douglas Niles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This was the second Forgotten Realms offering by The Moonshae Trilogy's author, Douglas Niles, <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_novels_in_order_of_publication">published in 1990</a>. And again, the novel details a land that isn't even on the map. Or maybe it's on some weird extended map. The novel was chiefly interesting because of a very obvious parallel to the discovery of the Americas by the Spanish Conquistadors. While this transparent comparison was so blatant that the cover featured a Spanish Comb Morion (Spanish infantry helmet) I enjoyed the comparison because I too, as a fantasy writer am interested in the time period because of the Spanish gold rush of the 15th century. Overall, it was an exciting yarn, with lots of room to expand, (and it did) as the Maztica Trilogy. Don't expect earth shattering character development, but for a summer read, it's not bad.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Character:</span></b> Though the characters are leaps and bounds ahead of Moonshae's simplistic Tristan, Robyn, and Daryth love triangle, and the moronic impulses of the God of Murder, Bhaal, the characters are still not terribly sophisticated. This is not necessarily a bad thing, the plot moves quickly and a number of unseen plot twists make the novel unpredictable (except for that which we know--the Spanish conquer America, and it seems likely that the Amnish mercenary company will do the same thing. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-87491460501412/spanish-comb-morion-engraved-helmet-1.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://ep.yimg.com/ay/yhst-87491460501412/spanish-comb-morion-engraved-helmet-1.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, this is a Spanish Comb Morion</td></tr>
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The hero's name is Halloran, a first level mage turned warrior in Captain Cordell's Golden Legion. He's loyal to Cordell, a man of iron ambition with a drow lover. However, events transpire to separate Hal from the legion and his loyalties are sorely tested, particularly when he begins to fall for Pocohontas, err, I mean Erixl, the female protagonist. Erixl's story is rather interesting. She begins as a girl, gathering magical feathers for her father, a craftsman of the local magic. By the story's end, she has been a slave, escaped, enslaved, and released to become an unwilling priestess of Coexycoetl. Possibly the most interesting character is Captain Cordell, the strongest one certainly. A general of a mercenary legion, but one who inspires great trust and loyalty among his subordinates. And yet, we're lead to believe he is capable of being quite cold, and then there is the mystery of his elf girlfriend, a sorceress of great power.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hot elfess, that is completely unrelated</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche: </span></b>The most obvious, and previously discussed cliche, not really a cliche per se, is the obvious parallel to history. I enjoy such parallels in my own writing, and I feel that as a technique, you can unpack a lot of learning in a fun and novel way. That said, while it deserves mention, it is by no means a traditional cliche. <br />
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Of course, like any Forgotten Realms book it uses enough of the Dungeons & Dragons Cliches. Although, as this book takes place away from a more traditional fantasy scape, it has far fewer cliches. Even so, it does have a dwarf and elf, and the dwarf at least conforms to all the usual stereotypes, tough, stalwart, grumpy, gruff, hard bitten warrior-type with a heart of gold.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness:</span></b> Well... yes, and no. This is the first book that touches on the City State of Amn, a place that is near and dear to my heart from my <a href="https://www.baldursgate.com/">Balder's Gate</a> days. However, the introduction, again, of a completely new section of the map, seems premature. I know all of these guys were friends, and that they all sat around the gaming table and talked this stuff over, but the map of the Realms is enormous, why did they feel compelled to write in this story a mere four years from the start of this completely new fantasy realm?<br />
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Overall, this was not the worst installment in the Forgotten Realms books. Surprisingly, or not, the internet has not saturated this story or this book. There may be only a handful of reviews of this book on the entire internet. Which seems a shame, because it's not a bad book. I suppose it's possible that some have found it distasteful because of the historical subject matter, shunning it because of its possible racial and demographic gauchness. Still, if you're doing a Douglas Niles reread, this book ought to make it to your list.<br />
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<br />HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-10977766436404255552016-03-20T02:24:00.001-04:002016-04-29T16:58:20.323-04:00The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The cover I got from the Long Lots Book Fair</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/contributor/lloyd-alexander">Lloyd Alexander</a> penned <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Book-Three-Chronicles-Prydain/dp/0805080481">The Book of Three</a> in 1964. It is a children's book, and I picked up my copy in the second grade bookstore. It was a formative book for me, but it was written in a time when fantasy was still almost exclusively written for children. It is a beautiful, simple book and it is without a doubt a classic. A lot of the cliches that I write about in this blog are present in this work as well, which gives rise to the possibility that many of the traditional fantasy cliches are much more generalized cliches adjusted slightly to a new medium.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Character:</span></b> though a plot driven story, Alexander's characters are eloquently and completely drawn. The text is sparse, the sentences refreshingly simple. Not uncomplicated, just short and sweet. So character descriptions are to the point, yet cast a long shadow. Our main character is Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper. This title is cute, amusing and novel, however hidden in that gem is one of Fantasy's oldest cliches, the <b>Diamond in the Rough</b> cliche: namely the hero is a boy of dubious means and no prospects. Now the pig he keeps is an oracular pig named Hen Wen, and he lives in a village with an old wizard, and he's an orphan--all things which point to a less than ordinary heritage. That said he does at some point in the story, unsheathe a sword meant for kings and the blade's curse backfires on him. So there is some proof that he is not a <b>Benighted Prince</b>. Taran is stubborn and pig headed, however he does admit when he's wrong, and the boy does know how to apologize.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dalben and Taran, beautiful illustration by Tim Probert</td></tr>
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Another fantastic character is the girl <a href="http://prydain.wikia.com/wiki/Princess_Eilonwy">Eilonwny</a>. You could think of her as a precursor to <a href="http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Hermione_Granger">Hermione</a>, sort of a cross between her and Luna Lovegood. For you non-Harry Potter fans: read strong willed independent, quirky to borderline odd. That is admittedly a male perspective: she does fall prey to certain stereotypes, namely that of expecting Taran to speak to her in a decidedly female way. For example when Taran asks her to stay with him he does so by merely assuming her interest and instead of asking he directly. Still her quirkiness makes her a very enjoyable character that certainly lives in her own right.<br />
And who can forget Ffewdur the Flamm, a fulfillment of the Bard cliche, though of an unusual variety. Ffew has a magic harp that pops a string whenever Ffewddur lies, and strains the boundaries of credulity. Why is a twenty something former King, yes he gave up his kingdom to travel and live as an itinerant musician, ceding authority to Taran, a fourteen year old boy? He gives a reason, several times, but it still seems unlikely. Regardless, he is a fun, stalwart addition to the team.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/prydain/images/a/a2/Eilonwy's_Arrow.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130323212805" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><img border="0" src="http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/prydain/images/a/a2/Eilonwy's_Arrow.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130323212805" height="320" width="287" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #274e13;">Eilonwy and Taran, no credit</span></td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche:</span></b> one thing to note about all the cliches in this book: The Chronicles of Prydain were written in the early 60s, while <a href="http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/The_History_of_Middle-earth">Lord of the Rings</a> was published in 1954. So at the time, these cliches were not cliches at all. The notion of dwarves and fair folk have been part of European lore for hundreds of years, but as writing tropes their existence was not nearly as well defined. The <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Diamond in the Rough</span></b> cliche is in pretty heavy use here. Taran is literally the lowest of the low, a pig-keeper. To be sure, he cares for a magical, world famous pig. That ain't exactly nothing--but he knows nothing about that. Only that Hen-wen, the pig, is wise beyond her pig years and has the knowledge of the ages at its cloven feet. Still we know that Taran is destined for greatness.<br />
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Eilowny is a good example of the <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Quirky Girl</span></b> cliche, and is probably a precursor for some of J.k. Rowling's characters. A quirky girl is slightly odd, she may be pretty but her youth obscures that fact. Usually quite clever and witty, quirky girls are good foils for over serious young men. Eilowny's aunt fulfills another stereotype, that of the <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Ice Queen</span></b>. An ice queen, harkening to one of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis originals, is a female magic user. Though there is no ice magic necessary to this stereotype, the coldness of the evil that animates their actions is palpable. It's interesting to note that evil male magic users like Sauron, are more often represented by fire. The ice queen breaks, or has a breaking point where her reserve flies into apoplectic rage. This is a common female stereotype.<br />
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Fflewddur represents the <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Bard cliche</span></b>, though he is not your typical sort of bard, shrouded in mystery and a born lady-killer. He is part of the story's comic relief and he fills another cliche in <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Humorous Sidekick</span></b>.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">The Big Bad</span></b>, or <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Evil King</span></b> cliche is also heavily prevalent. Alexander admits from the first that he has borrowed heavily from Welsh cliche, but he doesn't really get specific. Arawn and the evil realm of Annuvin seem direct analogs to Sauron and Mordor, but perhaps these cliches themselves were borrowed from an earlier mythology (I thought that Tolkien had adapted his Christian mythos--Fallen Angel, etc.) We don't see Arawn in this book, he is merely indicated. Alexander had intended to write a trilogy, so there is time to develop this plot. However the story has a more local Big Bad, The Horned King. Unfortunately there is very little character development for this enemy.<br />
Another cliche would be the <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Animal Sidekick</span></b>. Disney took full advantage of this when they adapted the second in the series, The Black Cauldron. Gurgi is a vaguely ape like creature loveable and hairy. He has hands and feet and can walk and ride. For example, in later books he even wields a sword. So a bit unusual for this cliche in that Gurgi is <i>almost</i> human. Alexander himself described Gurgi as on the awkward cusp between human and animal.<br />
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The <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Welsh</span></b> cliche, King Arthur was a Welsh legend, and it's from him that we have the <b><span style="color: #274e13;">High King</span></b> cliche. I spent an afternoon in Cardiff when I was a young man, and though in some respects it was a disappointment, owing to the fact that the castle is in a relatively modern town, but it did remind me of all those tales of King Arthur and King Math. The Welsh cliche, like the Irish cliche takes on a variety of naming standards like Gywdion, and Fflewddur, etc. Thirty years later these cliches were used by ElIzabeth Haydon in her Rhapsody quintet: lots of unnecessary ys ls and cs. There is also, rather than the more modern divisions between elves and dwarves, simply a fair folk that encompasses all the strange and wonderful creatures of the natural world: including something of a <b><span style="color: #274e13;">Mother Nature</span></b> cliche.<br />
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There is a powerful Druid-like humanoid who heals and protects the creatures of the forest. While he doesn't sprout leaves out of his ass or look like a giant tree, he serves as a popular fantasy link to a cult of nature worship present in most fantasy.<br />
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One interesting note: while there are no elves, per se, there is most definitely (spoiler alert) a link between the high King and his get, The Sons of Don and the Elvish summer kingdom, that is the concept, of a higher race of man, leaving the realms of earth for more commonplace men like Taran. This is evident by the end of the Chronicles, in The High King. There are many more cliches in the Chronicles, but I should probably save more of this material for the next book!<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness:</span></b> this book represents an earlier era of fantasy. As such it's completeness factor stems more from good writing then from good world building. Alexander manages to pen, in very few words a world both convincing and complex. However, in retrospect it doesn't feel as deep as we've come to expect from even teen lit. There is no world map, nations are mentioned but not given a history. We know that the world of Prydain has many wondrous things: magical swords, baubles, old sages, fair folk (who appear to be dwarves) and an ancient evil, but in this first installment very little depth is given. Modern fantasy is very different. Now, I know that there are four other novels in this series, and that the world will grow with every installment, but this novel could really use an additional 150 pages; and if it had been written now, and not in the sixties, I am sure Alexander would have provided it.<br />
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For now, enjoy and treasure this piece of traditional and historical fantasy lit. Remember that so much of what we read today has Taran, Gwydion, Eilowny and Arawn at its great, warm, heart.<br />
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HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-17170883336854596302016-03-10T23:29:00.004-05:002018-08-27T13:46:06.003-04:00The GODSOL's List of Fantasy Cliches and TropesOk, so the post title is a shameless attempt to grab a little piece of Internet. I started this post a year ago, and almost gave up on it. Rather than going for a complete list, I'm going with a running list. Now my names for cliches will not always match with the literary community. In fact, I can almost assure you that they won't. So, any English majors who read this, and aren't totally disgusted by my writing, please drop a note about what you think the correct cliche name would be. I can't promise I'll change it, but I can certainly make a note of it. .<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">I would also like to state that my intent here is far different from <a href="http://www.obsidianbookshelf.com/html/fantasyfictionmistakes.html">Val Kovalin's List of Most Hated Fantasy Cliches</a>. I am not terrifically familiar with Val's work, but the intent seems to deride cliches as things that must be avoided in writing. I revere cliches. There are no bad cliches, there is only bad, lazy, and boring writing. And there is a simple solution to that. Put it down and find something else. Having now found this list, I am going to avoid copying it as a courtesy to Val's copyright, but these cliches are VERY common, and I'm going for commonality in the naming conventions. Val doesn't own the cliche, or the name of the cliche, only the list and his conceit that the cliches are a negative and profligate. Having read a bit of his list, I found it very distressing. Almost all of the "most hated" cliches are cliches that have been used phenomenally well by prominent authors. The list, seems to essentially be a collection of internet trolls on the subject of fantasy.</span><br />
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First, I will list them:<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">The Cliches:</span></b><br />
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Adventure Time Cliche<br />
Advisor Cliche<br />
Achilles Heel Cliche<br />
Alignment Cliche<br />
Ascension Cliche<br />
Assassin Cliche<br />
Band of Brothers Cliche<br />
Beastman Cliche<br />
Big Bad Cliche<br />
Cataclysm Cliche<br />
Chaos/Order Cliche<br />
Chosen One Cliche<br />
Coming of Age Cliche<br />
Convergence Cliche<br />
Christ/Christian Cliche<br />
Dark Elf Cliche<br />
Dungeons & Dragons Cliche<br />
Diamond in the Rough Cliche<br />
Dragon/Dragonriding Cliche<br />
Dwarves Cliche<br />
Going Crazy Cliche<br />
Heroes Redemption Cliche<br />
Elves Cliche<br />
Evil Brother Cliche<br />
Evil God Cliche<br />
Fallen Woman Cliche<br />
Femme Fatale Cliche<br />
Hero's Redemption Cliche<br />
Industrialization v. Nature Cliche<br />
Innate Power Cliche<br />
Kindness Cliche<br />
Knight, The Cliche<br />
Lord of the Rings (LOTR Race Cliche)<br />
Norse Legends Cliche<br />
Norse Peoples Cliche<br />
Old Wizard Cliche<br />
Play within a Play Cliche<br />
Second Son Cliche<br />
Shapeshifter Cliche<br />
Sisterhood of Magic Cliche<br />
Slave to Greatness Cliche<br />
Sleeping Goddess Cliche<br />
Telekinesis Cliche<br />
Void/Abyss Cliche<br />
Welsh Cliche<br />
White, The/Good Cliche<br />
World in Decline Cliche<br />
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Then I will group them:<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">General Literature Cliches</span></b><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Achilles Heel </span>Cliche<br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Advisor Cliche</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Big Bad </span>Cliche<br />
Band of Brothers Cliche<br />
Coming of Age Cliche<br />
Convergence Cliche<br />
Christ/Christian Cliche<br />
Diamond in the Rough Cliche<br />
Evil Brother Cliche<br />
Fallen Woman Cliche<br />
Femme Fatale Cliche<br />
Going Crazy Cliche<br />
Industrialization v. Nature Cliche<br />
Play within a Play Cliche<br />
Second Son Cliche<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Fantasy Specific Cliches</span></b><br />
Adventure Time Cliche<br />
Alignment Cliche<br />
Ascension Cliche<br />
Assassin Cliche<br />
Beastman Cliche<br />
Cataclysm Cliche<br />
Chaos/Order Cliche<br />
Chosen One Cliche<br />
Dark Elf Cliche<br />
Dungeons & Dragons Cliche<br />
Diamond in the Rough Cliche<br />
Dragon/Dragonriding Cliche<br />
Dwarves Cliche<br />
Elves Cliche<br />
Evil Brother Cliche<br />
Evil God Cliche<br />
Fallen Woman Cliche<br />
Femme Fatale Cliche<br />
Hero's Redemption Cliche<br />
Industrialization v. Nature Cliche<br />
Innate Power Cliche<br />
Kindness Cliche<br />
Knight, The Cliche<br />
Lord of the Rings (LOTR Race Cliche)<br />
Norse Legends Cliche<br />
Norse Peoples Cliche<br />
Old Wizard Cliche<br />
Play within a Play Cliche<br />
Second Son Cliche<br />
Shapeshifter Cliche<br />
Sisterhood of Magic Cliche<br />
Slave to Greatness Cliche<br />
Sleeping Goddess Cliche<br />
Telekinesis Cliche<br />
Void/Abyss Cliche<br />
Welsh Cliche<br />
White, The/Good Cliche<br />
World in Decline Cliche<br />
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Now I will post a brief description of each. The reason for the duplicative nature of this list is that I intend this post as a resource for writers, reviewers and other thrill seekers. This list is simply alphabetized:<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Achilles Heel </span></span><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">:</span> </span><span style="color: #38761d;">Simply put, <a href="https://betweenasleepandawake.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/relating-to-the-tragic-hero/">a fatal flaw</a>, a weakness of character that may or may not be obvious, but will despite all odds to the contrary be exploited by the author to illustrate the illustrate the concept that the Greeks knew as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia" style="font-weight: bold;">hamartia</a>.</span><br />
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<a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/Adventure%20Time"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Adventure Time Cliche:</span></b></a> An older cliche, more prominent during the advent of table top gaming. Like the Dungeons & Dragons cliche, but not focused on individual races and monsters. This cliche refers more to the style of writing as being very much the way a Dungeon Master might narrate a real table top game. Characters have turns, they swing, they miss, they swing again. It sounds stilted, but good authors can make these sorts of yarns work in their favor. <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-deed-of-paksenarrion-by-elizabeth_19.html">Paksenarrion </a>followed this format.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;"><a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/Advisor%20Cliche">Advisor Cliche:</a> </span></b>This cliche is a general literature cliche, common in situations where the main characters are counseled by a false friend, someone who pretends to have the MC's interest at heart, but actually seeks to push his own evil agenda. Perhaps the most famous evil Advisor is <a href="http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Gr%C3%ADma_Wormtongue">Wormwood </a>from LOTR, poisoning the ear of King Theoden, and in that case also literally poisoning him. Rasputin, Karl Rove, and Steve Bannon all fall into the evil advisor categories, though the ladder two served bad people as well. There are good advisors as well, in Martin's Game of Throne's the men who graduate from the Citadel, and are distributed among the Lords to administer wise counsel.<br />
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<a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/Alignment"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Alignment Cliche:</span></b></a> In Dungeons and Dragons, and in hundreds of video games created on that gaming model, there is a stage in character creation when you get to choose your character's alignment. Lawful Good, Chaotic Good, Neutral Good, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil, and Lawful Evil. For a full list check out the list at <a href="http://www.easydamus.com/alignment.html">easydamus.com.</a> While these cliche's are obviously tropes, they provide the gamer with a reference point for how their character reacts to new stimuli. A Chaotic Evil barbarian might see a random dwarf, and attack him immediately. Why? He's chaotic, and he's a racist bugger. This cliche is reserved for fantasy books in which those distinctions are really really obvious, D&D based fantasy is a clear example.<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"></span>
<span style="color: #274e13;"><b>Ascension Cliche: </b></span>The concept whereby a being evolves, grows or ascends toward a higher level. Though this concept occurs often, it has been brought to an art form in the works of <a href="http://www.steven-erikson.com/">Steven Erikson</a>, whose characters frequently ascend from mere mortal to demi-god, or greater, through actions, events, great suffering, purifications. Here is the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence">TVtropes definition</a>.<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/Assassin%20Cliche">Assassin Cliche:</a></b></span> the Assassin Cliche is a type of warrior. The cliche includes the physical attributes of poisons, darts, daggers, stealth, tripwires, garrots, forced/stealth entry. It also includes the mental attributes of darkness, cold-hearted killer, loneliness, unfriendliness, watchful, distrustful, suspicious, careful, depression, and, of course, the one job the assassin will not take: the last vestige of humanity. Notable assassins include Hugh the Hand, Kalam Mekhar, Durzo Blint, Artemis Entrieri, Achmed the Snake. <a href="http://www.julianahaygert.com/2011/model-monday-3-assassins/">Juliana Haygert</a> has assembled some popular TV and Film assassins here. [MAKE NOTES IN COMMENTS AND I WILL ADD NAMES]<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Band of Brothers Cliche: </b></span> A small group, usually soldiers, who face particular massive extremity together and come to certain understandings, either of love, trust, companionship, or loyalty. The particularilty of the extremity matters. Soldiers who went through one battle, or a series of battles, are not necessarily bonded to another group, even within the same army, or the same conflict. This is a common fiction and non-fiction cliche. In fantasy I would name certain companies of the Malazan Army (Steven Erikson), as well as Glen Cook's The Black Company. In real life, I've met many soldiers who would sacrifice all bounds of commonality among people for their chosen brothers. Again, <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BandOfBrothers">TVTropes </a>has an excellent entry on this cliche. Note that I did not get this name from this site, but anytime my names match up with others', I am thrilled.<br />
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Beastman Cliche: </b></span> The Beastman cliche is an older fantasy cliche, a warrior, druid, barbarian, ranger type who bonds with a spirit animal, or several. S/he can command the obedience of animals, communicate with them, and in some cases even inhabit them or transform into them. Examples abound, the sorcerors of the Belgariad (David Eddings) who transform into wolves, Fitz from the Farseer Trilogy (Robin Hobb), Bran Stark with his Direwolf (George R.R. Martin). [MAKE NOTES IN COMMENTS AND I WILL ADD NAMES]. I was unable to find a direct correlation at TVtropes. Which is a good thing. There is the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ResistTheBeast">Resist the Beast cliche</a>, certainly a part of the Beastman cliche, and also the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VoluntaryShapeshifting">Voluntary Shapeshifter</a> (and <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InvoluntaryShapeshifter">Involuntary Shapeshifter</a>) all of which share similarities to the Beastman.<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><b>Cataclysm Cliche:</b></span> This is a cliche often used to "explain" the genesis of a fantasy world from the present day. Frequently used in Sci/fi and crossover fiction. A massive earthshaking Cataclysm, sometimes man made, sometimes nature driven has destroyed much of the world's population, all of the world's culture, reshaped the entire planet. It is linked often to the World in Decline cliche. Some examples would be The Dark Tower Series (Steven King), Jordan's Wheel of Time, the DragonLance saga, various Final Fantasy videogames. The Cataclysm Cliche allows an author to immediately posit an ancient history, while allowing a sufficient break between then and the present such that s/he need only allude to past greatness in the form of ruins and ancient artifacts.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Chaos/Order Cliche: </span></b> This is probably one of the most common fantasy cliches. It is a more modern substitute for good and evil, popular since it implies less morality and more "certainty," as chaos has a pretty obvious and uncontested definition. It also harkens to the D&D cliche of character alignment. The forces of chaos are generally pretty bad. This topic is worthy of a book of its own, so rather than discuss it here in full I will list some good examples. L.E. Modesitt's Saga of Recluce has the most spectacular treatment on the subject, actually giving some credence to chaos. Erikson's the Crippled God, whose powers are essentially chaotic in nature.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Chosen One </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><b><span style="color: #274e13;">:</span></b> [IF ANYONE KNOWS A MORE COMMON NAME FOR THIS I WILL CHANGE
IT]. Fate has chosen this young person, either by heritage or genetics for greatness. S/he has a power, often foretold by prophecy that will allow her to defeat the evil or Big Bad. I would say 75% of all fantasy epics use this cliche. Notable exceptions are George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, and Erikson's Malazan epic. Some classics include Rand al'Thor (Robert Jordan), Shea Shannara (Terry Brooks), and Harry Potter. Potter's "chosenness" is up for some debate, but he is literally called the Chosen One, and fate did make him uniquely capable of defeating Lord Voldemort. The Chosen One cliche is a favorite of the teenage crowd, an homage to the idea that there is something special about "you." A comforting notion, that.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Christ/Christian </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><b><span style="color: #274e13;">:</span></b> I am not one, nor am I well-versed in the large amount of symbology of Christianity. But there are a few obvious ones. Resurrection, Rebirth, Saints, Temptation, 12 apostles, the Cross, the Betrayal of Christ, the West, Water to Wine, Miracles, His Life for Yours. These are common memes in fantasy. It's one thing to use ressurrection, it's something to different to ressurrect as Aslan did in Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis was a very religious man, his Screwtape Letters being tongue-in-cheek instruction manuals for young Christians. Tolkien and Lewis bonded over their Christianity, and indeed Gandalf's transition from the Grey into the White, as well as both Saruman's and Sauron's fall into temptation reek of Christianity. Fantasy is frequently moralistic, but modern fantasy has managed to segregate these themes from a belief in a Western style Christianity. <br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Coming of Age </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><b><span style="color: #274e13;">: </span></b>This is a standard literature cliche. There is very little fiction that doesn't use this cliche. A young character, innocent and ignorant of the world, loses said innocence, becomes a little less ignorant. Usually this occurs through a fair amount of suffering, physical, and mental trauma. The upshot of the Coming of Age cliche is a character change that provides a vector for the story's growth, and allows fairly simple plot-based story to advance to something a little deeper. Some examples in fantasy would include Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling), Shea Shannara (Terry Brooks), the Eye of The World (Jordan), Garion (David Eddings)<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Convergence Cliche:</span></b> Though a convergence of fell forces is a common occurrence in fantasy, Erikson's Malazan Epic enumerated this cliche in a way that spoke openly and didactically about the nature of the tactic. Simply put, a variety of powers, strengths, armies, warriors and spell casters find themselves converging on a single event, a battle, a quest, the search for an artifact, a defense against evil. Spectacular forces are released, many are killed, everything changes and then denouement. One neat thing about Erikson's world is that it acknowledges that history is a series of convergences, not the lead up to a dramatic and final conclusion. In Terry Goodkind's<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Dark Elf Cliche</span></b>: A Black Elf, who instead of representing pure good, represented pure evil. It's disgusting now, as a cliche. And points to a continued and pervasive racism in common in fantasy memes. It's a legacy of the 80s, and Forgotten Realms in particular, as evil Elves in the Tolkien era were twisted by Sauron into the Orcs. Still, it's common enough to deserve mention. Dark Elves are dark skinned and white haired, but have the same delicate cast to the features, high cheekbones, narrow chins/faces, slender of regular elves. They also are magic users and frequently worship elven gods cast out of the pantheon by their godly brethren. By far the most famous is R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt Do'Urden, who rejected the evil nature of his birthright and left his subterranean habitat. Another example would be from the Marvel Verse, as enemies to Thor's Asgardian compatriots.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Diamond in the Rough </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b>: Another general literature cliche. The concept of good buried unseen in a character. Often used in tandem with the Chosen One cliche. As the Chosen One is frequently a Diamond in the Rough. However, the Diamond is a little less hackneyed, as it can be a character who is simply good, talented and hard working, rather than one fated for greatness. Though there must be many examples, I can really only think of minor characters. [HAPPY TO INSERT EXAMPLES, LEAVE IN COMMENTS]<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Dragons/Dragonriding </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><b><span style="color: #274e13;">: </span></b> Dragons are smart, have two to four legs, independent of two bat like wings. They range in size from that of a small dog to that of a two story house. Dragons are one of the earth's oldest myths. I won't pretend to scholarship, so here is a <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/where-did-dragons-come-from-23969126/?no-ist">list of links from the Smithsonian</a>. One thing that is common in the cliche is that the magic inherent in dragons is that they cause immense fear/awe. They also can transform into humans. Dragonriders of Pern, DragonLance, The Hobbit, Malazan Book of the Fallen, the Magic Ship Series are all good examples of common dragon use.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Dungeons And Dragons Clich</span>e</b>: There is a lot to unpack with this one. It involves a plethora of different cliches, race, class, alignment cliches, heroes parties, dragon, orc, goblin, dwarf, elf, etc. It also involves a battle system and a spell system that have been reproduced in videogames, television and film. There is some dispute in the community about the genesis of D&D and the Lord of the Rings Cliche. That original versions of the D&D gaming system borrowed heavily from Tolkien is undisputed, whether the borrowing was a lack of creativity or a blatant play to attract a burgeoning fantasy market is unclear. Use the D&D cliche to evoke the LOTR cliches without the religious subtext, the One Ring to Rule Them All mythology, the age in decline cliche. <br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Dwarves </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><b><span style="color: #274e13;">:</span></b> Solid, small, super strong, subterranean dwellers. Long beards, helmets with horns, battle axes, big noses, long-lived but not immortal. Crusty, irate, drinkers of dark brewed ale. Never the main hero, never a love interest. Have almost addictive personalities when it comes to gold and treasure. Great craftsmen, armorers and weapon smiths. Hate magic. Also, "they dug too deep" and discovered a great evil is a cliche within the dwarven cliche.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #0c343d;">Elves </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><b><span style="color: #0c343d;">:</span></b> Lithe, skinny, strong, tall or short depending on the fantasy. Lovers of nature, worshipers of trees. Fantastic archers, skilled with swords. Invested with magic, beloved and symbolic of good. Skilled magic users. Great trackers, skilled at woodcraft and stealth. Lives in forest communities.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Evil Brother </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><b><span style="color: #274e13;">:</span></b> the evil brother cliche is common in fantasy, but it can be seen elsewhere as well. In a medieval setting, two brothers one born to Kingship, the other merely a spare, the evil brother can frequently pair with the Second Son cliche. Also, in some works the Evil brother can be a twin, or half brother separated at birth. Some Evil brother action: the Farseer Trilogy (Hobb), Various versions of Robin Hood pitting King John against his elder brother Richard. See also the Second Son cliche.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Evil God </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><b><span style="color: #274e13;">: </span></b>evil gods are a staple in fantasy fiction. Given that fantasy is frequently posed in a medieval world, it is odd that a large pantheon of gods are so prevalent, when the historical<br />
equivalent was monotheistic. Evil Gods exist within the pantheon of gods, frequently cited as the need for balance, or a response to that which is worst in man. Frequently they begin as merely gods of vanity, fallen by arrogance into depravity. Some examples: Torak from the Belgariad (Eddings), Bane from Shadowdale (Awlinson), then Crippled God (Erikson), Shaitan from The Wheel of Time (Jordan). The problem with the evil god cliche is that even an evil god is still a god, and when evil gods start start talking, they sound a lot less godly and a lot more petty and contrived.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Fallen Woman </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b><b><span style="color: #274e13;">: </span></b>not a common fantasy cliche, though as the genre has grown up considerably in the last thirty years it is becoming more common. A Fallen Woman is a character, main or side, whose virtue is not merely tainted, but utterly and willfully compromised. For a genre that still uses old sexist tropes like a freeing a maiden from a dragon, or rescuing a princess from an evil witch, having a fallen woman, a woman who enjoys sex, and has it with more than one partner. Who is too cynical for love, or is so blinded by hatreds and jealousies. Expect to see the Fallen Woman more often. By far the best examples are within the Malazan epic (Erikson) Felisin and Scillara. The first, a noble woman, cute, curious, and loving, was sent to become a slave in a mining camp. She becomes a whore and a drug addict, and even after she is saved from the mines, her attitude is irreparably damaged, and she becomes a true anti-hero. Scillara on the other hand, is a whore, born of a whore, who gains freedom, finds love, and chooses to give up her child literally minutes after the baby is born. There is much to say on this topic, and it is a difficult discussion to have without resorting to sexism of any type: offensive, blatant, implicit, second-hand, micro-aggression.<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><b>Femme Fatale Cliche:</b></span> A strong woman. Honestly. That said, to use more common language, a beautiful woman who uses her charm, intelligence, and sexuality to manipulate men. She can be killer, but is not necessarily a killer as much as believer in justified expedience.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;"><a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/Am%20I%20Going%20Crazy%20Cliche">Going Crazy Cliche:</a> </span></b>I have written of it before as the "Am I Going Crazy?" <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/Am%20I%20Going%20Crazy%20Cliche">cliche</a>. In essence, the main character begins to experience things so strange and irreconcilable with reality that he begins to seriously consider the possibility of suspecting his own sanity. This is a general lit cliche, though used frequently in fantasy. Used by authors to explore the rational mind's capacity to handle that which is clearly impossible. A variant of the Going Crazy cliche is the Acting Crazy cliche, made famous by Shakespeare's Hamlet. In fantasy, this is typically used to explore character's burgeoning new skills and abilities, see Rand al'Thor of the Wheel of Time. And written about in the above link on Sanderson's Way of Kings. It also supplies a useful foil for alienating characters from their friends and family.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Hero's Redemption <span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span>:</span></b> This is a standard lit cliche, and a fairly obvious one. There must be a better term for it. If so, leave it below in the comments. In fantasy, it occurs fairly frequently as a general story arc, in which a benighted character finds his honor, learns to love again, makes good on a promise, etc.. This cliche taps into the concepts of deep rooted shame, and is very effective for building character motivation, as well as for shaping story arc. Think Sturm Brightblade, Rand al'Thor. This type of cliche occurs in epic fantasy more often then not. In more modern fantasy, or dark fantasy, there is frequently no, or little redemption offered (though the cliche is still operative by mere dint of expectation).<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><b>Industrialization v. Nature <span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span>:</b></span> A common fantasy cliche, the idea that "progress" loosely defined as an efficient means of doing things, including mass farming, factory production, munitions development and "horse-less carriages" leads to a rapid urbanization that destroys the environment, as well as destroying the rather bucolic idea of simple living. Frequently, the cliche leads to a nature "striking back" in a typical man v. nature dialectic. Sometimes this cliche is paired with the Cataclysm Cliche, it is a very moralistic take on fantasy, though as a meme it occurs quite often.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Innate Power <span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span>: </span></b>This might be duplicative of the Chosen One cliche. The idea however relates more specifically to the powers, attributes or magic system pertaining to the story at hand. One thing is clear, power is internal, given at birth, and though it can be shaped, trained, developed and honed: you either got it or you don't. The One Power from the Wheel of Time (Jordan) is very like this. Some people just win the genetic lottery.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Kindness <span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span>: </span></b> I've written often that fantasy is by nature liberal. Kindness isn't really a cliche, but it figures heavily in fantasy. Kindness is the seminal virtue of Tolkien's hobbits. They aren't tough, strong, quick, smart, or particularly nimble, but they happen to have big hearts and they see the world of Middle Earth through our eyes. Almost every single great fantasy novel of the past fifty years uses Kindness as its fundamental virtue. George R. R. Martin being an outlier, but that said, ASoIF's greatest heroes, Jaime, Tyrion, Jon, and Bran all are quite kind, though it wins them little.<br />
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Knight <b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b>: The Knight's physical attributes are obvious, full-length plate mail, shining armor, penants, chargers, lances, mustaches, beards, doublets, and sigils. He believes that what is lawful is what is right, true, and honorable, and can be quite inflexible. The knight is a militant cleric, though not a true paladin with healing powers of his own, belonging to an order steeped in a militaristic tradition with various ranks, and often believing or serving a single deity.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Lord of the Rings (LOTR Race Cliche): </span></b>this cliche doubles with the Dungeons and Dragons cliche, and there is continued dispute on the provenance of such creatures as elves, dwarves, orcs, hobbits, and goblins. However, the LOTR cliche doesn't come with any of the gaming nonsense, the binding to rules of spell casting, character alignments, etc. The LOTR cliche is also tightly bound to the Dragon Cliche, the Evil God cliche, and the Christ/Christian meme. But, in a sentence, the cliche simply includes the race types common in all modern post-Tolkien fantasy, and all the cliches discussed above and below.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Norse Cliche:</span></b> All modern cultures have a pre-industrial, medieval history, and it is these histories that are most often drawn upon in fantasy. The Norse cliche, is used frequently, most recently in my reviews by Joe Abercrombie in his Shattered Sea books. Think longships, oarslaves, throwing axes, men with beards, cold weather, etc. The gods of course, made popular by Marvel, Thor, Loki, and a <a href="http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Norse_gods_and_goddesses">host of others</a>.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Old Wizard <span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span>: </span></b> The precursor for the old wizards are obvious, Merlin and Gandalf. Men of mystery who are ancient, frequently living hundreds of years. Long robes with arcane symbols, funny hats, staves, long beards and pipes. There is also, in many of these Old Wizard types, a sly sense of humor, likely originating with Gandalf. Their powers depend largely on the world created for them, and more modern Old Wizards tend to have at their command much more immense powers than their older counterparts.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Play within a Play <span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span>: </span></b>a non fantasy cliche, used often in the genre to provide backstory. Either it's a story told around a campfire, a song, or a flashback. Also, like in Hamlet, there is sometimes an aspect that is not merely historical, but meant to shine a crooked light on the current situation.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Second Son <span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span>:</span></b> The Second Son cliche is a medieval favorite, but it contains a lot of variance. Historically, the first son stood to inherit, so the second son was inline to inherit some smaller portion of wealth, Or nothing at all. Of course, given the life expectancy, and the tendency for first sons to die in war, or of a variety of other reasons, second sons frequently inherited. Still, being second best, has been a meme in fantasy novels, and it creates a variety of different character types. An excellent example of both of the most prominent types, The Loyal Son, and the Wicked Son, can be found in the excellent Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. The loyal son, is the one who was taught to be second fiddle to the first son, and embraced the position with great gusto. The loyal son, forced to rule, is either forced to discover new character reserves within, or to wilt beneath the pressure. The wicked son, obviously, attempts rebellion as a sop to his perpetually wounded ego. See also the Evil Brother cliche above.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Shapeshifter </span></b><b style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</b>: This is a pretty obvious cliche. Usually part of the menagerie of a fantastic world, the shapeshifter is generally a monster that can assume various forms to employ deception. Sometimes however, it is used very effectively as a main character trait: druids who can assume the shape of some totem animal, wizards who can turn into eagles, impossibly strong alien races who can transform into dragons (Anomander pu'Rake of the Malazan Book of the Fallen). Though these are variants on the cliche, part of the basis of the cliche involves the distrust one would feel towards something that is not what it appears to be. This entails some aspect of prejudice, particularly for those who do so for deceitful or manipulative ends.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Sisterhood of Magic Cliche/The Coven Cliche:</span></b> As with anything women oriented, this cliche is steeped in an ancient history of sexism that bears thinking about. Just not here. The cliche is simple, women with power gather, and those women form a society with rules, rituals, and history. Sometimes those women are witches, and are hidden, fleeing from persecution: think any book or movie about witch craft. Sometimes those women are sorceresses, and are adjudicators of law and principle, (Aes Sedai, from Wheel of Time, <a href="http://sot.wikia.com/wiki/Kahlan_Amnell">Confessors from The Sword of Truth</a>), and sometimes they are nuns (which is likely another antecedent of the cliche) such as the nuns who take King Arthur's body when he dies. In almost all cases, these cliches are steeped in a world history of sexism against women, even in worlds where they are revered.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Slave to Greatness Cliche:</span></b> Like the Diamond in the Rough Cliche, this cliche relates to someone who is as nothing, who becomes great, surpassing all that stands between him/her and glory. Unlike the Diamond in the Rough Cliche, a slave is so much more downtrodden, moreover slaves, obviously have experienced such horror, ignominy, shame, backbreaking labor, and abuse, that their flowering is much more cathartic (though frequently riddled with pathos). Such characters rise above their enslaved circumstances, but frequently the scars obtained during their time of servitude is impossible to overcome. Some good examples include Raymond Feist's Magician Pug, Yarvi, from Abercrombie's <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.ca/2015/04/half-king-by-joe-abercrombie.html">Half a King</a>, and Kaladin, from Sanderson's <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.ca/2013/04/brandon-sandersons-way-of-kings.html">The Way of Kings</a>.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Sleeping Goddess Cliche: </span></b>The sleeping child is a very common religious theme, here's how it goes, the Earth is actually a dragon, or a titan, who settled down for a nap millions of years ago, and hasn't woken up. One day he shall wake up, and the destruction of the world is assured. I had difficulty tracing the origins of this particular myth. I had thought it was Norse because of a review I read last year, but since then I have been unable to dig it up. That said, it's existence in popular culture is very obvious. For one, Steven Erikson's Malazan epic, is based on the idea of Burn's Sleep. Burn is the being at the center of the earth, and it is she that the Crippled God has poisoned, because he wishes to destroy the world. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers:_Prime">Transformers Prime</a>, the cartoon, has Unicron, the Transformer God of Evil at the center of the Earth. Another good example would be the Hellfire Club of X-men renown. The Hellfire Club worship the Phoenix, who they believe has been dormant in the center of the Earth, and will wake up one day, inhabit a young hot red head and "reform" the planet. In Hayden's Rhapsody trilogy, the F'dor, the demons locked in a gravity well at the center of the Earth, want to wake up the Sleeping Child, in this case an enormous dragon. The dragon will wake up, shed the earth around it, and raze the rest. Sidebar: Googling the "sleeping child/dragon at the center of the earth' was an education on just how crazy the internet is.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Telekinesis Cliche: </span></b> This cliche is misnamed, and I'm happy to change it. Another way to phrase it might be David Edding's "Will and the Word." It is a magic system where all that is needed to cast spells, and to exert magical power is will power. It includes lifting objects and throwing them, often it empowers the user to flight. Telekinesis is in direct opposition to the older and more classical view of magic, which uses spell components, arcane lore, and requires a lot of study and knowledge. Possibly the best example of telekinesis is from the cult Japanese hit, Akira. The character Tetsuo's powers of telekinesis destroys New Tokyo. In modern fantasy Telekinesis is more normal than not, examples abound.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Void/Abyss:</span></b> In recent years, as Dark Fantasy has taken root, and more sophisticated notions of good and evil have become mainstream, the notion of the Void, or the Abyss has grown in use as a fantasy cliche. Evil wears many faces, but ultimately, as St. Augustine put it, "And even when men are plotting to disturb the peace, it is merely to fashion a new peace nearer to the “heart'’ desire; it is not because they dislike peace as such. It is not that they love peace less, but they love their kind of peace more." Modern fantasy has greyed the lines of good and evil so thoroughly that the new evil, is to destroy the world. Not to rule the world, not to commit acts of depravity, but to destroy it because the emptiness of the void is natural state of the universe. There are other notions of the Abyss, of course, Hell, or Hell on Earth, but even so, Hell is rather busy, full of winches, and fires, whips and grinding gears. There is also, from the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088323/">Never Ending Story</a>, the idea of the Nothing, a billowing black mass that devours the world and everyone, good or bad, within it. Another instance might be the end game of Sanderson's Way of Kings Big Bad. The Abyss is a particular kind of bad end, because it doesn't represent greed, corruption, decay, and enslavement. It is the cold void of space, and it is terrifying. Also important to note, Nietzsche's famous quote, When you peer into the void, the void looks into you!<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Welsh Cliche</span></b>: The use of Welsh myths, names in fantasy. That includes Arthurian legends. Naming conventions use extra l's y's and f's in names making them generally unpronounceable to English tongues. Good examples, The Once and Future King, The Chronicles of Prydain, Elizabeth Haydon's Rhapsody Quintet<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">White, The/Good: </span></b> The White Cliche is a term, I've stolen from Stephen King. From the wiki, "The White is the force of good that is led by Gan. The people of the White are allied together to protect the Beams and the Dark Tower from falling and stopping the world from moving on. It is the elemental force that represents wholeness, unity and health. They fight against their counterpart the Outer Dark which is led by the Crimson King." While that is all directly related to Stephen King's worlds (all of his worlds in fact) the point is clear. Good is good. It's in every fight and every fantasy. The White applies even in dark fantasy where moral ambiguity abounds. I could write pages on this cliche.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">World in Decline: </span></b>The World in Decline cliche is another popular sci-fi/fantasy cliche. The entire genre of post-apocalypse fiction uses the cliche as a motivating concept. In fantasy its application is used to explain why the society at hand is perpetually stuck in a non-progress loop, i.e. no technological development or liberalizing social movements. A World in Decline was once great, and shows evidence of a truly majestic, but now dead society. The current inhabitants of which dwell among the ruins. One interesting note about the World in Decline cliche is that a happy ending in a declining world does not necessarily mean that the non-progress loop can or will end. Perhaps because if it did, then it forces the recognition, both for the reader, and the author, that when they close the book and lay it down on the table, they are faced with the realities of what progress portends.<br />
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---- GODSOL, 2016<br />
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Though I did not use this list to create my own, this list of fantasy cliches is an excellent one, and should be viewed as well:<br />
http://silverblade.silverpen.org/content/?page_id=73HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-24538043548905284262016-01-13T02:45:00.002-05:002018-08-23T17:34:30.994-04:00The Wyvern's Spur by Kate Novak and Jeff Grub<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">This was one of the best Forgotten Realms novels yet. Not only did it occur within the standard realms, a fortified town in Cormyr, it had some truly loveable characters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">It was not a complex novel by modern standards, but after the sanctimonious and cliched writing of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Icewind_Dale_Trilogy">Ice Wind Dale trilogy</a> it was a great relief. The novel continues the events of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Azure_Bonds">Curse of the Azure Bonds</a>, popularized by the SSI one of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Azure_Bonds">earliest PC games</a> in history. However it takes as it main character a complete nonentity, as we used to say in the biz an <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NPC">NPC</a>, or non-player-character, a drunk partygoer who mimicked the King and nearly died when Alias tried to kill him. But before we get any further let me state simply and for the record: The Curse of the Wyvern's Spur is a thoroughly enjoyable novel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Character</span></b>: so the harmless partygoer is named </span><a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Giogioni_Wyvernspur" style="color: #222222;">Giogini Wyvernspur</a>, and he's a delight. Foppish and insecure, but undeniably good natured, he returns from the mission that the King sent him on and his apartments in the city suddenly seem too small. He's been bitten by the adventure bug and for the first time in his life he's doing things for himself. His manservant is astonished! When he comes home, he returns just in time to find out that the Wyvernspur family, of which he is the primary heir, has just lost the magical artifact that gave the family it's name. Meanwhile his Uncle, an old but powerful wizard has a very important message for him. The novel is almost written as a mystery novel, which is a nice twist for fantasy, unusual too.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">There are only two other characters of note: and one of them is a mystery. The other is Olive Ruskettle. If you remember Azure Bonds at all, you"ll remember the Halfling bard, Olive Ruskettle, whose desire to create a lasting melody provided the foil for The mystery of the azure bonds and the nature of Alias. In this novel, she finds herself back to her thieving roots, having taken on an apprentice. Her apprentice is Alias! But not really, apparently this area of the realms is chock full of Alias copies. Each a different class, none of whom has any idea of her mysterious parentage or fabricated nature. But back to Olive: she is probably the most interesting Halfling character I've read: in general I find them sort of boring. Like dwarves, they tend to be very one-sided, in the opposite way. They are carefree, disloyal, low level fighters, or thieves. Olive exhibits these tendencies of course, what good a cliche if it's use is completely dissociative. But she also displays real leadership, particularly in Spur, given Giogini's befuddled nature. She seems to have a genuine history if not particularly well explicated, there is a third volume in the series: which if she plays a part will make the Alias trilogy really the Ruskettle Trilogy. Of course there are disappointments, Olive is "spurred" (haha) to help Giogi because of grief over her apprentice's sudden demise, but that grief, though referenced often enough is just not written convincingly. In part because we do not know much about her slain friend: which brings us to the third character of note, the Alias look alike.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">I don't even remember her name, an indication of how soft this part of the story is. Like so many love interests she is a soft amorphous blob, not saccharine, she displays rare moments of pique, but is just not very interesting. That said, this is often true in narrative fiction so maybe it's unrealistic to expect in pulp fantasy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche:</span></b> we've mentioned the <b>Halfling cliche</b>, what's interesting about this is that what really made the Halfling cliche were Tolkien's hobbits. The hobbits of the Shire are really very charming, quaint and amusing details abound them really bring such characters to life. Unfortunately this charm almost never translates to D and D.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The <b>Wyvern cliche</b> is a relatively minor one, possibly not even worth mentioning other than the fact that they are smaller, armless dragons of lower intelligence. They do translate across fantasies, notably Erikson's Malazan epic has a small if memorable place for them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Obviously all the D and D cliches apply. One cliche that sticks out a bit in this book is the magic-user D and D cliche, including: the mechanics of spell book casting, magical properties of spell components, scrolls, memorization etc. It reminds me that aside from historical accuracy (relative accuracy) the main reason for such contrivances was to impose limitations on characters that would otherwise be far too powerful in a game setting. Compare that with the sweeping powers of <a href="http://malazan.wikia.com/wiki/Anomander_Rake">Anomander </a>Rake or Rand al'Thor. The limitations provided an additional layer of strategy. Fighters went forward to cover the firepower of spell casters. Spell casters could exert enormous force on massive monsters or provide a distraction to beleaguered fighters. I still remember the Fall of Pale from Gardens of the Moon and how it shattered my spell casting memes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Another cliche explored in this novel, a more generalized cliche is the <b>Whose Yer Daddy</b> cliche. Given the preponderance of this cliche in literature I'm sure there must be some more technical name, but I can't resist it: who's your daddy? The cliche for children with mysterious parentage. <a href="http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Rand_al'Thor">Rand al 'Thor</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgarion">Garion </a>from the Belgariad. In this case, Giogi's father was a great adventurer whom the Crown relied on for certain dangerous tasks. Of course, Giogi's Aunt Dorath, herself a colorful, if minor character, hides the secret of Giogi's parentage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Which brings us to </span><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness</span></b>. This novel is a tightly polished miniature puzzle and all of the pieces fit together extremely well. It has drama, love, high magic, the undead,and best of all a genuine warmth and sense of humor. It is self contained and there is no sense that the third novel in the Alias series will have anything to do with Giogi (more's the pity.). We did learn a bit more about the Realms, about the nation of Cormyr. King Azoun, part of a long running dynasty is a relatively fair ruler. There is an interesting form of patronage at work: successful adventurers can be given land and title as governors of the land though they are not granted nobility and the title does not pass through the family line, unless the governor marries into the local nobility. One nice thing about the story is that since it stays in the same locality a few nice details have time to come about.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">So, on the whole, this is a decent novel and might even be with a reread a few years from now. High praise indeed for a Forgotten Realms novel.</span>HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-69860612639267453642015-10-05T00:48:00.002-04:002018-08-23T17:24:04.327-04:00Halfling's Gem by R. A. Salvatore<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Given the empire of Forgotten Realms fiction that R.A. Salvatore has put upon this earth (nearly 22 novels), you'd think the first three novels of his would be classics. Forbes did a great interview <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/03/05/a-conversation-with-r-a-salvatore-part-one-the-last-threshold-forgotten-realms-and-dungeons-dragons/">with the author</a>, and in it Salvatore gives us a plausible reason for this:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 17.6px; line-height: 24.64px;">“You don’t have to start at the beginning,” he tells me. “Contrast that with George Martin or Robert Jordan and the way they did their series. You couldn’t pick up the sixth book of Wheel of Time and read it, I don’t think, if you hadn’t read the first five. With the Drizzt books you could pick up the 6th book, the 10th book, the 15th book, the 20th book. It’s more like Sherlock Holmes or James Bond.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Of course, that is the very definition of pulp fiction, and why Martin and Jordan are hailed as serious authors who shook up the world of fantasy fiction.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Halfling's Gem was an atrocious train wreck that I barely feel deserves a review. Not as bad perhaps as Spellfire, but up there.</span><br />
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<span class="il" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Halfling</span><span 12.8000001907349px="" arial="" font-size:="" quot="" sans-serif="">'s </span><span class="il" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Gem</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"> concludes the Icewind Dale Trilogy. The plot continues the drama between the Calishite assassin Artemis Entieri and the dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden, as they fight over possession of a </span><span class="il" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Halfling</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"> thief. Also appearing for the first time, the man who put the price on the </span><span class="il" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">halfling</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">'s head, Pasha Pook.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/10/104912/3309063-artemis+entreri+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/10/104912/3309063-artemis+entreri+cover.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artemis Entreri</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">The plot ... is ok. Where this book repeatedly fails is in the juvenile level of the text. Juvenile isn't quite correct because even teen literature is often more nuanced.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Character: </span></b><span il="" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Halfling</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"> characters get the worst treatment. At least Douglas Niles and Kate Novak used female dwarves and </span><span class="il" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">halflings</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">. The D and D rules made these characters pretty limited but creating an interesting back story could have at least made Bruenor more palatable. So SPOILER: Bruenor is assumed dead at the start of the novel having ridden a flaming dragon into the abyss. And a neat part of the book is the discovery and fight through the abandoned city, but for whatever reason Salvatore spoils the surprise for his characters and has the all knowing and all powerful Drizzt realize long before the reveal that Bruenor may yet live. Salvatore had a chance for his characters to explore the very real emotions of raw grief, and he shied away from it to point out, yet again, how cool Drizzt is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><a href="http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/38192771/images/1424459857360.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/38192771/images/1424459857360.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Wulfgar is also pretty terrible. We discussed in my <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-blade-itself-by-joe-abercrombie.html">review of The Blade Itself </a>the <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-blade-itself-by-joe-abercrombie.html">Barbarian</a> cliche. Wulfgar is that cliche, no twist, no subtlety, if you wanted to describe the Barbarian cliche in one word, that word is Wulfgar. The emotions that Wulfgar feels are simple: love, anger and grief. About as skin deep as you can imagine. Grief is not the mere absence of that which is held dear, it is the cacophony of successive failures, missed opportunities and piercingly poignant memories replayed continually within a mind unwilling or incapable of stopping itself.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">I guess what I'm saying is that Salvatore keeps telling us when he should be showing us. A classic writing criticism. This was 20 years ago, I'm hopeful that Salvatore's technique has been honed by 20+ books.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Last, we have Drizzt, in the second novel in the trilogy we learned that he felt his meeting with Entrieri to be a fateful one. That there was a strange connection through skill of arms with the assassin. While this morbid curiosity might have added a dimension to Drizzt's personality, it fails as Drizzt is forced to utter trite truism after trite truism. It's sad because I've begun to suspect that Drizzt is actually a fairly deep character. For example Drizzt is offered a magic mask that makes him white. And he uses it because people fear the drow. But he comes to quite enjoy the anonymity and access the mask allows him. The notion of "passing" is an extremely loaded one for African Americans and its place in this banal fantasy novel is notable. Another moment has Drizzt stealing a kiss from the unconscious Cattie-Brie. A kiss which is never addressed again. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">As a general rule: </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">If you were to strike every single line of dialog from the book, it would be immeasurably improved.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche: </span></b><span style="color: #222222;">all the usual <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/Dungeons%20and%20Dragons"><b>D and D cliches</b></a> apply, so I won't waste any time but to list them: Dwarves, </span></span><span class="il" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">halflings</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">, elves, <b>Dungeons and Dragon's Race Cliche</b>, <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Barbarian"><b>barbarian</b></a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Some new ones include <b>The Kidnapping, the Middle East and the Thieves Guild</b>. The Kidnapping is pretty self explanatory: it's a common fiction cliche, helpless child/girl/</span><span class="il" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Halfling</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"> taken by force on a long journey, vengeful heroes hot on the trail, always close, but never quite catching until the final pages. One difference here is that the Heroes give up catching the assassin fairly early on and simply make for the final destination. One famous example of the Kidnapping motif would be from <a href="http://www.henneth-annun.net/events_view.cfm?evid=636">Tolkien's Two Towers when Pippin and Merry get taken by the Orcs.</a></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Agrabah, or Calimport by Disney</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">The <b>Middle East cliche</b> is a common one as well, Calimport is clearly a middle eastern city, and it's denizens, though magical (</span><span class="il" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">halflings</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">, humans and wererats follow the same dress and speech patterns. This type of Orientalism would be offensive to some, but the point of the cliche is to save time and space. Calling to mind a westerner's idea of a 1300th century Middle Eastern city provides leagues of description without straining the readers imagination. As I get older, and my anthropologist wife teaches me to be more sensitive to and less tolerant of micro aggressions that form the undercurrent to overt racism, I begin to wonder about such tropes, and I begin to understand why so many authors have attempted to create whole new worlds, absent of these cliches.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://static-8.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/images/57143-1-1427059112.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://static-8.nexusmods.com/15/mods/110/images/57143-1-1427059112.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The internets are loaded down with Skyrim images. Best I could come up with.</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">The<b> Thieves Guild</b> cliche is an incredibly common one in fantasy. One the one hand it gives voice to a real world occurrence in a fantasy world, that of organized crime, and on the other hand, it speaks to the shadow economy that likewise exists in every city and state, the sale of untaxable, untrackable, and unregulated goods. One thing that the Thieves Guild cliche does frequently in fantasy, however, is to neuter the more dangerous and pyschopathic elements of such a community. To Salvatore's credit, his thieves guild is pretty despicable. Pasha Pook the crime boss of Calimsport runs the guild with the aid of three henchmen, a dark wizard (fairly servile, as evil wizards go) the deadly assassin Entrieri, and a runaway pack of were-rats. Though the subplot in <b><i>Halfling's Gem</i></b> of trouble in Pasha Pook's organization is never really explored or prevailed upon in any major way, it does give voice to the fact that such an organization would be almost impossible to govern. But If you're looking for fantasy mafia stories to thrill and awe you, leave <b><i>Halfling's Gem</i></b> on the penny shelf, and pick up <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lies-Locke-Lamora-Gentleman-Bastards-ebook/dp/B000JMKNJ2">Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastard</a> trilogy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="http://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/245444/wererat_by_satibalzane-d595emq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://cdn.obsidianportal.com/assets/245444/wererat_by_satibalzane-d595emq.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness:</span></b><span style="color: #222222;"> Sadly, I think <b><i>Halfling's Gem</i></b> is not the end of this pitiful story. As the action closes and the heroes sail away righteous and victorious, we know a larger battle is on the horizon as the dwarves of clan Battle Hammer are massing to retake the mines of Bruenor's father. Still, this story does wrap up the unexplained nature of the halfling's powers and the mystery of how he obtained his magical gem. It also sheds further light on several new areas of the Realms.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">As I become more home in the world of the Realms, I see that there is very little overlap or common knowledge. Virtually none of the stories I've read or reviewed so far even occur within the same thirty year period. While, this excites me on some level to know that the breadth of the history of this place is huge, it also feels sloppy and haphazard in the retelling. I have attempted to follow the date of publication for these books rather than take a timeline version of the books approach. I chose that route because I want to see the vision of the realms as its actual creation was occurring, not as a second-guessed, revised version. However, this choice has lead to some frustration on my part. Right now the only common element is Elminster, and he's kind of crotchety and fallible for an <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/search/label/Old%20Wizard%20Cliche">Old Wizard</a> type. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">On the whole, I'd say feel free to skip the Icewind Dale Trilogy.</span></span></span>HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-75404746892008575442015-08-02T23:22:00.001-04:002018-08-23T15:33:26.416-04:00The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316387312/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0316387312&linkCode=as2&tag=ravingl-20&linkId=bb98da507681b2e2e8d6b158bde23c58" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&MarketPlace=US&ASIN=0316387312&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL250_&tag=ravingl-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=ravingl-20&l=am2&o=1&a=0316387312" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><b style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><span style="color: #38761d;">The Blade Itself</span></b><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"> is a phenomenal fantasy novel, blending elements of </span><a 12.8000001907349px="" arial="" font-family:="" font-size:="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conan_the_Barbarian" sans-serif="">Conan the Barbarian</a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><span style="color: #222222;">, </span><a href="http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/japeriod.html" style="color: #222222;">Jane Austen's </a>19th Century English romanticism/ victorianism, and a </span><a href="http://glen-cook-fan-site.blogspot.ca/2009/05/glen-cooks-style-of-writing.html">Glen Cook style of magic and majesty</a><span style="color: #222222;">. As you know I reviewed Abercrombie's </span><a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.ca/2015/04/half-king-by-joe-abercrombie.html" style="color: #222222;">Half a King recently</a>. I was nonplussed, the novel was entertaining but not what I'd been promised. My biggest complaint by far was the lack of detail. I wanted the novel to be 200 pages longer. Weighing in at over 500 pages, <b>The Blade Itself</b> is exactly what the doctor ordered. The level of detail is majestic. Characters are never simply speaking, they are talking while trimming blisters, emptying the chamber pot, or suffering terrible indigestion. It's mundane details like these that really make a novel come alive. So once again, I must eat crow: Abercrombie is everything I was lead to believe and if you like epic fantasy with a dry touch of humor this book is a must read.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/01/8c/00/018c00598de7bd9f299ae2c73ecc555e.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/01/8c/00/018c00598de7bd9f299ae2c73ecc555e.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Logen Nine Fingers, Found on Cuded.com</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Characters:</span></b> the characters in the Blade Itself are excellently drawn. The Barbarian, Logen Nine Fingers is constantly surprising us with his sensitivity, intelligence and laconic wit. Each narrator in the book has one or two modus operandi phrases, a technique used very effectively by Abercrombie to create very distinct individuals. In Logen's case, the lines are "I'm still alive!" And "you have to be realistic about these things." The first is shouted at the top of his lung, or muttered quietly after every violent encounter, not in some balls to the wall defiant war cry, but an honest to goodness, joi de vivre. Unusual and greatly endearing for a barbarian known throughout the land in bloody song and story. The second phrase is muttered frequently in resigned acceptance of the most horrendous if fates, whether he's dangling from a cliff or running from twenty armed men.
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<span arial="" quot="" sans-serif=""><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Inquisitor Exempt Sand den Glokta is a beautifully written character. And a fantastically original one. How many ex-playboy, swordsman, dandies, tortured for six years and turned crippled at <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://orig00.deviantart.net/5a50/f/2012/055/9/c/inquisition_by_sir_heartsalot-d4quy9v.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://orig00.deviantart.net/5a50/f/2012/055/9/c/inquisition_by_sir_heartsalot-d4quy9v.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inquisitor Glokta by Sirheartsalot Deviant Art</td></tr>
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the age of thirty do you see in fiction, fantasy or otherwise. Add to that the fact that the man has turned his experiences in the dungeons of the Empire into a new career and now tortures people for a living. Think about how fucked up that is. And yet you still like him. Really. It's not just pitty, it is his wit and hatred of his entire society that makes him such an enjoyable character. His words: Why am I doing this? Uttered every day when he sees his arch enemy: the stairs. And: "body found floating in the bay..." That said, as a raging liberal, and a generally caring individual, torture scenes are particularly trying for me to read. I don't question Abercrombie for his use of these scenes, afterall, "you have to be realistic about these things," and Abercrombie makes it dreadfully apparent that the tortured will sign anything to end the torment. Still, the scenes can be extremely discomfiting, so reader beware.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">And then there is Jezal. A nobleman of the worst variety, a young man training for the Contest, a yearly fencing event that eager gentlemen throughout the Union engage in because winning brings fame and place within Union society. Hating Jezal is a given, even at the novels' end after (SPOILER: ) falling in love with a commoner, he still thinks the common soldier is beneath his notice. Still this classicism is so British that it adds a marvelous layer of reality to the novel. While kings and peasants are the bread and butter of fantasy, it is a rare novel that doesn't use some sort of diamond in the rough trope allowing the commoner to advance within society without facing the scorn of his betters. We like Jezal too, though it is unclear, aside from playing <a href="http://janeausten.wikia.com/wiki/Fitzwilliam_Darcy">Mr. Darcy</a>, what role he has in the action packed saga about to unfold.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b>Cliche:</b> First there is <b>The Barbarian</b>. Logen is a man of the north. A common cliche in fantasy, most popularly used in Game of Thrones, as the peoples who live beyond the wall. Savage, scarred, filthy, wearing skins and uneducated. Think the Goths and the Visigoths and you won't be far off. Conan the Barbarian as envisioned by Howard is also probably the seminal work of Barbarian fiction. Steven Erikson, as I've linked to before, has a <a href="http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-problem-of-karsa-orlong-by-steven.html">neat essay</a> on the concept of the Barbarian in fantasy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Next there is the </span><b style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Old Wizard</b> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_old_man" style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">cliche</a><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">: represented by the First of the Magi Bayaz. While Bayaz has no long grey beard or pointy hat, he does have the arrogance and the long lifespan of those who practice the art. Of course, Abercrombie puts his own twist to the cliche. Bayaz looks like a blacksmith and so far, no lightning bolts or fireballs. I won't spoil the magic for you, but it's there, and it's tastefully done. There is something off-putting about Bayaz. Something vaguely distasteful, almost disingenuous about Bayaz. Like he doesn't believe his own platitudes. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Another new cliche for us is the </span><b style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">First Law cliche</b><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">. There is often something tongue and cheek about the First Law cliche, perhaps because speaking directly to the reader requires a deft touch, else it sound ham fisted and trite. It is a set of laws or principles which govern the system of magic, or other secretive or cliquish gathering. Here the First law is that it is forbidden to touch the Other Side or speak with devils. The first law doesn't have much significance in this volume, though the second does, "it is forbidden to eat the flesh of humans." Other fine examples of the First Law cliche exist in the Wheel of Time, both in the repeated catechism against the Shadow, or in the <a href="http://library.tarvalon.net/index.php?title=The_One_Power">rules for embracing the Source.</a> It's a cliche, that done well, adds a sense of realism to the world, after all we do live in a world of laws and too often fantasy novels dispense with such mundanities.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">The <b>Middlemarche </b>cliche. I've already mentioned it a bit, in my reference to Austen's Pride & Prejudice (the <a href="http://prideandprejudice05.blogspot.com/">Pride and Prejudice Cliche</a> just doesn't work as well) the use of very classic forms of British class structure to inform the world. it's important to note that Abercrombie is British and as such has an implicit advantage over his Canadian and American contemporaries. In general I believe Erikson to be the leader of modern fantasy, but in this small aspect Erikson falls behind. Abercrombie's Jezal is so spot on detailing English snobbery it hurts.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b>The Evil Empire </b>cliche and <b>Migrating Other</b> cliche: one thing I rather like about the First Law books and The Blade itself is that it has already painted two or three epic baddies who have nothing to do with the book's actual plot. This frees up the narrator to focus on the here and now while still allowing the book to expand into a series. I always hated the Wizard's First Law Books because the first two seemed like stand alone novels and the epic that emerged was appended to the first story with scotch tape. Not so here, we already have a variety of enemies and none of them are really central to any of the main characters. The Evil Empire cliche is often steeped in<a href="http://www.critical-theory.com/game-thrones-white-liberals-orientalist-wetdream/"> Orientalism, a West versus East,</a> narrative. And while this is another racist element of fantasy as a genre, it remains, even today a pretty effective one: China and the Middle East remain bogeymen to most people and are great political fodder for applying motivational fear.<i> In the Blade Itself </i>we learn relatively little about the Empire. It is vast, it has a magical cadre of sorcerers known as Eaters, and it has a new, young emperor looking to earn his chops.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Then there is the King Beyond the Wall, a Mance Rayder type of baddy who is a Northman sweeping down to ravage the soft middle countries of the Union. This cliche is somewhat tired given the current popularity of Game of Thrones.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.zbrushcentral.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=331477" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://www.zbrushcentral.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=331477" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">a Shanka, by rynomyte at Zbrushcentral</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Last, there is a new cliche: the <b>Migrating Other</b>. History is a <a href="http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm">patina of competing movements</a> of men, tribes coming north or south in droves and driving the current inhabitants further inland. The Migrating Other is the bad guy, even though he in turn flees another bad guy displacing him. In fantasy however, the Migrating Other can frequently be a race of non men, orcs or in this case the Flat Tops. Sanderson uses the Migrating Other cliche in the Way of Kings to describe the enemy with which the Kingdom is trapped in aimless and endless war. The cliche by itself, though realistic enough, is generally not enough for fantasy. But, overpopulation, displacement, and finding food and resources simply does not provide the clear moral imperative that fantasy so often requires. So when used it's usually used in tandem with other cliches or as Abercrombie explains in the final pages (SPOILER) it is a race created by magic to serve as an army of destruction.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness:</span></b>Abercrombie has created a fully believable world with genuine, detailed characters. He also excels at the honourable mention: that writing technique in which a few lines of detailed text provides volumes of exposition. His listing of court lords and ladies is an excellent example of this. Though the Court has almost a non existent presence in the book, it still feels replete with characters that are differentiated, complete and ready to be picked up and exploited should the author need them. There's nothing more amateur hour then having a character added at the end to provide necessary information to end the story. Also quite compelling its the idea of the Old Empire. A great civilization destroyed by a war between magi, that has spent the following centuries in perpetual strife.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/wot/images/4/44/Manetheren.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20100411202532" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/wot/images/4/44/Manetheren.JPG/revision/latest?cb=20100411202532" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The fall of Manetheran, gorgeous, not sure whose image</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">The world feels completely fleshed out, easily a dozen nations are described or mentioned, though only three are relevant. Politics and trade seems real and even modern. As a fantasist with an interest in economics I was thrilled to see some discussion within the text of the economic relationships between provinces, the financing of the war with the Empire, a union bashing autocrat, and even discussion of crown and union debts.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">Another delightful detail was in the small physical ticks the characters have: for example Logen Nine Fingers trims his blisters next to the fire, Marshal Burr has a weak stomach that causes him to burp unfortunately. These are the sort of details that really make a story sing.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">But to top it all off. And I saw a reviewer (Mark Monday) on Goodreads mention this, the book is a truly funny read. It's dark humor, true enough, but the book is laugh out loud funny! Even my wife commented on my laughing while reading!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.8000001907349px;">So, please give Abercrombie another chance, and my hats off to this new bright star in the realms of fantasy.</span></span></span>HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-7249212773075176512015-05-29T15:38:00.002-04:002015-05-29T15:38:43.621-04:00Waterdeep, by a different Richard Awlinson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXXqtlXEV_STYWPUzB54sIVEQdrafBGF32Z03R_2MlcVTgKnWRxsuEnkW52wzAJHalrE3VpofZW7OLP0fSECXDRuAQmrQSZXe5zVg7-uGcdYLahANSTc5Wp0ZRbJsxcqdLWATayNxpO8Ie/s1600/Waterdeep+Cvr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXXqtlXEV_STYWPUzB54sIVEQdrafBGF32Z03R_2MlcVTgKnWRxsuEnkW52wzAJHalrE3VpofZW7OLP0fSECXDRuAQmrQSZXe5zVg7-uGcdYLahANSTc5Wp0ZRbJsxcqdLWATayNxpO8Ie/s320/Waterdeep+Cvr.jpg" width="191" /></a></div>
So <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterdeep">Waterdeep</a> is the last novel in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avatar_Series">Avatar Trilogy</a>, though the story picks up again in two more later volumes. Interesting side note: Richard Awlinson is a pen name for two separate men. Why? I don't know, the Forgotten Realms Wiki is silent on this issue. That said, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Troy-Denning/e/B000APEJ6G">Troy Denning</a>, the author of this one did a fine job of finishing the series.<br />
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Waterdeep takes the remaining members of the Company of the Lynx, from the city of Tantras to the mega city of Waterdeep. It says something that I can't even find Tantras on the map. The journey is long, and given the chaos of the Realms during the so called Time of Troubles, difficult. Of course, in fantasy, the <b><span style="color: red;">Quest </span></b>cliche is 90% of the story, so it's not surprising. The Time of Troubles, you recall, was initiated by the theft of the Tablets of Fate, and the expulsion of the gods from their astral plane to the mortal realm. Midnight, Her lover, Kellemvor, and the cleric Adon, search for the second Tablet of Fate, which they hope to return to Ao, the over god of the Realms, and so end the Time of Troubles.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6BSThbbpKyjYVZc4AZ11XO59qkhRKA6veEoIuq3xjyu0G9knU8KN-noSiGbvcGVAUvC5w4-H7maAk8XwFRlEdBxdBu5Ot0Ph85Z-H1ESr6j5epnrUD0YnMGs4UTHHyzpNmYzF1IVa7frT/s1600/Avatar_Wars__Cyric__colored_by_Johndowson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6BSThbbpKyjYVZc4AZ11XO59qkhRKA6veEoIuq3xjyu0G9knU8KN-noSiGbvcGVAUvC5w4-H7maAk8XwFRlEdBxdBu5Ot0Ph85Z-H1ESr6j5epnrUD0YnMGs4UTHHyzpNmYzF1IVa7frT/s320/Avatar_Wars__Cyric__colored_by_Johndowson.jpg" width="226" /></a><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Character</span></b>: The characters remain startlingly satisfying in this third installment. I can tell you, I'm a third of the way through the Halfling's Gem, and I'm sick to death of <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Drizzt_Do%27Urden">Drizzt</a>, Wulfgar, etc. but Midnight, Kellemvor, Adon, and Cyric are excellent characters. Let me start with Cyric. In Tantras, we saw Cyric take a darker turn, becoming a minion, though a freelancer, to the dark god Bane. And while he was a cold mother fucker, you got the sense that Midnight's faith in him would be rewarded. SPOILER: it's not. Cyric becomes a truly awful human being in this novel. He slays a village full of halflings with women and children, he cuts the throat of another hanging from a rope. He slays an innkeeper, sole survivor of a zombie attack, mere minutes after the poor man gives him food and beverage from his ruined livelihood. Why? Because he simply does not care, and because people irk him.<br />
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Adon also continues to grow, becoming the group's leader. And while his faith in Sune is completely lost, by the story's end, his faith is yet restored. Though not in Sune, the goddess of beauty. Kellemvor, the group's former leader has made catastrophic decision after decision. Having had his curse removed in Tantras, he keeps leaping to the aid of defenseless citizens. While laudable, he's not the sharpest tool in the shed, and he's forgotten that at least three gods have been trying to track them down and kill them. After falling into half a dozen ambushes with his bull headed attempts, his confidence is finally assailed.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The exciting conclusion of Waterdeep</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span></b>: Midnight is perhaps the biggest cliche of the entire series. She's just rather generic as a female character: she loves Kellemvor, but is furious with him for not trusting Cyric, and they spend half the novel fighting over it. She is strong, but uninteresting for the most part, and her history is left entirely unexplored. What's worse is that she is, completely wrong in her faith, only enforcing an unpleasant gender stereotype. Another character cliche is in Adon's character. <b><span style="color: red;">The Faithless Priest</span></b>, is a half decent cliche and Adon's inner struggle, and his ultimate belief in humanism as a faith, is (Spoiler!) only made more interesting when Midnight ascends to god hood. He becomes her High Priest, and but as Midnight is no longer merely mortal, is it still humanism? Which brings forth another cliche: <b><span style="color: red;">Ascension</span></b>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://pre08.deviantart.net/882c/th/pre/i/2015/124/3/c/avatarwars_the_tablets_of_fate_by_johndowson-d1toihs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://pre08.deviantart.net/882c/th/pre/i/2015/124/3/c/avatarwars_the_tablets_of_fate_by_johndowson-d1toihs.jpg" height="320" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tablets of Fate, Johndowson</td></tr>
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I've talked about <b><span style="color: red;">Ascension </span></b>before in all of my Erikson, Malazan Book of the Fallen, reviews. (Spoilers!) At the end of Waterdeep, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Forgotten_Realms_deities">Mystra, Bane, Bhaal, and Mykrul,</a> the gods of magic, strife, murder, and death, have all been killed. Quite a coup for the forces of light. Except Forgotten Realms doesn't really work that way, even Evil isn't really all that evil, and good is pretty tedious and ineffectual. The over god, Ao, appoints two mortals to become gods and take up the balance. This idea of men becoming Gods, is an old one, but for a former philosophy student, it is gobsmacking. That said, the idea of godhood here, as elsewhere, is really quite petty. Nonetheless, Ascension is a neat concept, and I always enjoy seeing it play out.<br />
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The last cliche I'll mention, is <b><span style="color: red;">The Balance Cliche</span></b>. Need I say more? Evil is always trying to usurp good, and good, when evil is struck down, becomes corrupt, greedy, and ultimately, because men are awful, evil. It's tiresome, but it does allow fantasy to keep going as a genre. One of the neat things about the Wheel of a time was that it dealt with this concept directly: Lews Therin Telamon, the Dragon, was reborn in a new vessel every thousand years or so, to fight the Dark One in a different battle. I'm sure non fantasists would find that tiresome. But what can I say, I find it thrilling. The chance, as Rand al'Thor discovers at the end, to try again.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Why do we live again? Lews Therin asked, suddenly. His voice was crisp and distinct.</blockquote>
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Yes, Rand said, pleading. Tell me. Why?</blockquote>
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Maybe … Lews Therin said, shockingly lucid, not a hint of madness to him. He spoke softly, reverently. Why? Could it be … Maybe it’s so that we can have a <a href="http://peopleofthedragon.tumblr.com/post/61491706862/why-do-we-live-again-lews-therin-asked">second chance</a>.</blockquote>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness</span></b>: so I'd been looking forward to Waterdeep for some time, because I thought it would tell me about the largest city in all of Faerun. And I was not disappointed. Ok, well, slightly disappointed. They don't get to Waterdeep until the very end, and so even though the detail is there, it was tantalizingly thin. What did we learn? Waterdeep is governed by a benign group of lords and protectors, most of whom remain secret. The city is reportedly democratic, but how you can have democracy with secret rulers is ... Ok ... Well, I guess realistic. We learn some about the Watch, and how defense of the city is maintained. We also learn a bit about the Archmagus, Blackstaff, who, with Elminster's aid, attempts to help the heroes defeat Mykrul the god of the dead. We also learn street names! I love details like that, and they are so often overlooked.<br />
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So, I've found my first big inconsistency in the Realms. Douglas Niles made Bhaal out to be a powerhouse of a god. And so, you'd think, in the Avatar series, where Bhaal is brought to life, you'd at least find some of the same attributes. But no. He may be the god of murder, but in point of fact, he really is the Patron of Assassins. Which is really quite different from the Moonwell corrupting, Druid slaying Bhaal of the Moonshae series. Keep in mind that none of these books or series follow a timeline. They're all out of whack, but given that Bhaal kicks it after this installment, it seems unlikely to be resolved. The Forgotten Realms wiki touches briefly on the matter, but it is not entirely <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Bhaal">believable</a>. <br />
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Waterdeep is a pretty good Forgotten Realms novel. We got to meet some important characters, names we will be seeing again, and we did get the origin story of at least two new gods. But, it is still 80s-90s fantasy, and it just doesn't compare to what we've come to expect. That said, it was a page turner, and worth a read if you've gotten to the end of Tantras and are wondering if you'd like to continue.<br />
<br />HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-90194569310045933502015-05-03T22:49:00.000-04:002015-05-03T22:49:31.877-04:00Tantras by Richard Awlinson<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix6JrnXQtJqGxPAjBI90gpWvmCeJLNGYTd1TzVzEdNc0C2pGfIIQqKzgGAkH3VID_iJcE4taSo09QKqeUGNLo9ASPulUY1stBzk09tiAk6xrlNu9ZHAa42FDYDQtyOjA4on2CGR5TcJKae/s1600/Tantras+cvr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix6JrnXQtJqGxPAjBI90gpWvmCeJLNGYTd1TzVzEdNc0C2pGfIIQqKzgGAkH3VID_iJcE4taSo09QKqeUGNLo9ASPulUY1stBzk09tiAk6xrlNu9ZHAa42FDYDQtyOjA4on2CGR5TcJKae/s1600/Tantras+cvr.jpg" height="320" width="195" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This scene never takes place</td></tr>
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So <b><i>Tantras </i></b>marks book two in <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Avatar_series">Awlinson's Avatar serie</a>s. The book has a great beginning, a boring and confusing middle, and a fun finish. If you're into going back into the history of the Realms, Tantras is worth a read. I should note that Awlinson is a pen name, and that this marks the last book in the Avatar trilogy that is written by Scott Ciencin. That's right, Waterdeep the last book in the trilogy is written by another dude under the same pen name. WTF?<br />
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As I have done in the past with books in a series, I will skip my usual rubric for critique and simply comment on more general aspects, namely character, plot and setting. Beware, this review is replete with spoilers.<br />
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I was very impressed with the first book in this series, <b><i>Shadowdale</i></b>. (Note that all of my adjectives, "impressed," "unusual," "great," are meant to be relative to what was being produced during this period of 1980s game world fantasy fiction.) The main characters were complex with unusually detailed backgrounds.<br />
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First there is Kellemvor with his nasty, giant cat breaks free of his chest in the most disgusting manner, curse. There is Cyric, the Zhentish thief, seeking freedom from his past. There is Adon, a playboy cleric, who suffers a disfiguring scar and abruptly becomes a morose, useless, foot dragging, minor warrior. And of course, the least developed, the female lead, Midnight. Whose past we know very little about, but at the same time is the center of a love triangle between Kellemvor and Cyric.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK1xRQ7FTcZOC5Ih7UIE338FvuTHiIcv1nawwNNZo8gVhti2JNMMD05cBD0V5Lx5o5w05MUPOYyLFvDSR2pMczaZvjVE9zCu5Ui2X-yNWin6CdzsAoMrwNwjCSxsCt-nzHxaxiWNB0G-f6/s1600/Avatar_Wars__Kelemvor__colored_by_Johndowson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK1xRQ7FTcZOC5Ih7UIE338FvuTHiIcv1nawwNNZo8gVhti2JNMMD05cBD0V5Lx5o5w05MUPOYyLFvDSR2pMczaZvjVE9zCu5Ui2X-yNWin6CdzsAoMrwNwjCSxsCt-nzHxaxiWNB0G-f6/s1600/Avatar_Wars__Kelemvor__colored_by_Johndowson.jpg" height="320" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kellemvor</td></tr>
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All four characters figure heavily in Book 2. And some drastic changes occur. I've been waiting for some crossover between the different Forgotten Realms novels, and by this time, about ten books into the world of Faerun, I'm beginning to see some. Ed Greenwood, in <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Spellfire_(novel)"><b><i>Spellfire</i></b></a>, described all the characters in <a href="http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Shadowdale">Shadowdale </a>in such idyllic terms of brotherhood that the place seemed a lot like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfGpVcdqeS0">Monty Python's version of Camelot</a>, "it's a silly place." Awlinson's Shadowdale takes a much darker turn. When Elminster is trapped in a demon realm at the end of the first book, he is assumed dead, and The Lord of Shadowdale, Mourngrym, holds a show trial in which Midnight and Adon are condemned to execution. Many of Greenwood's characters are given a third dimension in the first half of this book.<br />
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Which leads me to wonder about the dark turn that Cyric takes. the Zhentish thief decides to free Midnight from prison the night before the execution. And in so doing, he kills four guards in cold blood. This begins the transformation of the sarcastic, cynical thief into something far darker. Cyril's transformation is excellently done, his frustration with Adon, and his futile affection for Midnight turning him into something far worse than he might have been. That said, the crimes he commits in freeing Midnight seem mitigated to me by the fact that it's a lot easier to kill guards then to render them unconscious. Moreover it was his friends, wrongly accused and falsely tried, whose lives were at stake. That said, by the end of Tantris, Cyric is clearly in Neutral Evil category.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cyric</td></tr>
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Meanwhile, Kellemvor, who was falling in love with Midnight, leaves her to her fate, and even leads a search party to return the trio to the gibbet. Kellemvor's character is rather straightforward, he wants to be good, but his curse doesn't allow him to do any good deeds. That said, in <b><i>Tantras</i></b>, he allows himself to be duped frequently. At first I was quite bothered by this, but upon further examination, I think it actually quite subtle. As a mercenary whose curse requires him to be paid for services rendered, he has become unusually good at accepting jobs that allow him to do a decent thing or two, while still getting his reward. This type of quandary would, of course, make for a very pliable character, someone who could easily justify a complete change of heart.<br />
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Adon spends the novel becoming useful again. In the Avatar series, clerics have lost their powers unless they are literally standing right next to the avatar of their god. So Adon had already lost his abilities to heal and cast other priestly spells. But when he lost his face, his overwhelming self-pity destroyed the boyish self-confidence he displayed in <b><i>Shadowdale</i></b>. While the priest loses his faith, he does gain a measure of self esteem by the end of <b><i>Tantris</i></b>.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Darth Krayt, but to my mind a good representation of Bane</td></tr>
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No discussion of characters would be complete without the only other character worth noting, Bane the God of Strife and Tyranny. The God of Strife is a complete idiot. This is a major flaw in these novels to date. So, it stands to reason that the God of Strife would be fairly petty. But gods have to be more than simply humans with massive powers. Though Awlinson made a few efforts in that direction in Shadowdale, by Tantras, the god is a mewling, cantankerous moron, careening from one disaster to the next.<br />
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I have made no study of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Forgotten_Realms_deities">pantheon of the Forgotten Realms</a>. But so far I am not impressed. We have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bane_(Forgotten_Realms)">Bane</a>, we have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhaal">Bhaal</a>, we have Mykrul, all evil gods, but none save Bhaal seem particularly nasty. But, SPOILER, given that Bane doesn't make it past this novel the gods of evil do not seem particularly strong, or pernicious.<br />
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Finally, the whole reason for my continued self debasement of reading these Forgotten Realms novels is to learn about the fascinating world of <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/planet/torilmap/">Faerun</a>. I've shown the map before, and it is HUGE. After ten novels I'm pleased to say that we still haven't explored more than an eighth of it, at best.<br />
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But what do we learn? Shadowdale is but one dale of many, all vying for control of a few areas. Scardale is one such town, an area garrisoned by troops from a loose federation of city states. We learn that Tantras is a city state that primarily worships the god of duty, Torm. Of course, Torm doesn't seem to make it either, so I think at least one of Greenwood's characters is out of an occupation. No natural wonders like there are in some of the other books, like the Icewind Dale series and it's troll infested marshlands. That said, since the day of Arrival, when all the gods were forced to assume mortal forms, major effed up crap has been happening across the realms. Like trees coming alive and spawning undead wax monkeys, or hot mists rising from nowhere and boiling people alive, or troops of trees marching to war. And Awlinson has come up with some truly horrific encounters, something that adds a great deal of fun to the novel, and allows him to break with the fairly limited selection of Dungeon and Dragons monsters.<br />
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Overall, Tantras is a good romp. And hopefully Bane will stay good and dead, as he was a particularly laughable villain.HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-71243467192538517772015-04-16T23:36:00.001-04:002018-08-22T14:28:34.344-04:00Half a King by Joe Abercrombie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This was my first <a href="http://www.joeabercrombie.com/">Abercrombie </a>novel, though he is the author of the best-selling First Law trilogy. Abercrombie came highly recommended to me, not by my peer group, of whom there are precious few fantasists, but by a <a href="http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.ca/2014/11/the-problem-of-karsa-orlong-by-steven.html">blog post by Steven Erikson</a> who mentioned the author in passing. Then, of course, the book jacket has <a href="http://www.georgerrmartin.com/">George R. R. Martin</a> praising the book as well. Now, Martin is a fame whore, so that could mean anything. But the man is obviously super intelligent, certainly enough to know his name means something, and that he ought not to abuse it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The cover isn't much. A book in the new style, I suppose to reach out to other markets. Those swords and sorcery covers of the 80s and 90s are a dying breed. While sleek, for all the inventiveness and relevancy of the cover art, the book could have been self published! I should note that more recent copies have rectified this oversight. The modern way to market fantasy novels appears to be with heavily stylized images on stark unicolour backgrounds. It's a damn shame given the high quality of illustration out there today. If the 80s had <a href="http://deviantart.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">deviantart.com</a> publishers would have been peeing their pants.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Which leads me, finally, to a substantive critique. I found this book enjoyable, and certainly page turning. But, also very hard to read. The prose isn't difficult. In fact it's the very opposite. <a href="http://augustwainwright.com/how-to-write-better-according-to-ernest-hemingway/">It's almost Hemmingway sparse</a>. After having completed a reread of Erikson's <span class="aBn" data-term="goog_434003157" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dashed; border-bottom-width: 1px; position: relative; top: -2px; z-index: 0;" tabindex="0"><span class="aQJ" style="position: relative; top: 2px; z-index: -1;">Midnight</span></span> Tides, I found the prose rather simplistic. But, it was also hard to read because it seemed almost grammatically incorrect. Now, even a casual glance at my writing on this site would indicate that I am not a stickler for the rules of grammar. As a former actor, I tend to write as I speak, or as I hear the words in my mind. So my prose is commatastic!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Abercrombie's prose is distinctly lacking in commas. I'm not saying he's wrong, or that the staff at Del Rey is either, just that I was frequently thrown for a loop by some of the descriptive sentences. This is my major criticism of Half a King, there was something off-putting about the writing for me. I think it is likely a matter of taste. Let me say simply, it is nothing like Erikson's.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That said, the story was <a href="http://www.nerdophiles.com/2014/11/05/half-a-king-is-a-decent-enough-young-adult-fantasy-from-joe-abercrombie/">decent</a>. Not sweeping, like Jordan, Erikson, or Martin, but certainly a bonafide world sparsely but deftly described.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Maester, from ASoIF</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Character: </span></b>our main character is a teenage boy named Yarvi, the perspective from which the entire story is told. There is no switching of narratives, as there frequently is in epic fantasy. The novel is the start of at least a </span><a href="http://www.joeabercrombie.com/books/half-a-king/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">trilogy</a>, according to Abernathy's website. Yarvi starts off the novel a true anti-hero, a thirdson, a sniveling, cowardly, deformed wretch slated to become a king's counselor, a Minister, much like the Maesters of George R.R. Martin's world (Academics sworn to serve their king, yet members of a larger enlightened circle of scholars.). Yarvi is proud of his achievements and excited to take the final test. But The day before he sets sail for the capital city he finds out that his elder brother and father are slain. At first blush the novel seems a <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.ca/search/label/Coming%20of%20Age"><b>Coming of Age</b></a> type where an enlightened king gains the respect of his people and leads them to greatness. However, to Abernathy's credit, this is NOT the direction the novel takes. SPOILER: The boy ends up a rowing slave on a merchant galley. END SPOILER. Yarvi's character development is decent and believable, and the <b>Slave to Greatness</b> cliche is used quite effectively here in his growth from boy to man. Yarvi's companions are interesting and each is given a decent character sketch, though the best minor character is killed off before story's end. But none are worth mentioning, telling. Half a King would have benefited immensely from an additional two hundred pages. That would have given the sub-characters real time to grow. In common fiction, brevity is highly laudable. In epic fantasy, this really isn't so, and I feel disappointed that I will never learn more about them.</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliches: </span></b> I've already mentioned a few of them. The most obvious is the <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.ca/search/label/Coming%20of%20Age"><b>Coming of Age</b></a> cliche. Yarvi is a boy, weak, with little or no confidence in his ability to lead, and by story's end he is a leader and a man capable of killing in cold blood. The <b>Second Son</b> cliche is a new one for this blog. It's the idea that in a medieval kingdom, the first son becomes the heir to the throne, and the second is a spare, often sent to the priesthood. Second Sons are not taught to rule, though though they are taught the same princely arts that first sons are. As usual with my naming convention, I do not exclude daughters, though certainly it was a rare medieval kingdom that passed leadership onto women. The <b>Advisor Cliche</b>, that of the trusted advisor taught at a central university, or passing certain certification tests, and then assuming a position as a hand of the king. The <b><a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.ca/search/label/Slave%20to%20Greatness">Slave to Greatness</a></b> cliche: where a person spends some time in the annealing fires of misery that only slavery can teach. Inevitably, the hero escapes slavery and his derring-do, righteous rage, and astounding humility astonish the local nobility. One interesting note: when Yarvi escapes slavery, he does not abolish or make slavery more palatable in any way. In fact, he seems to give a mental shrug and say "someone has to row the boat." That's a nice touch, certainly realistic, I suspect. The Shattered Sea has much in common with the <b>Norse medieval cliche</b>. Not so much the series of gods, or the serpentine dragon called the <a href="https://chasseursdetenebres.wordpress.com/tag/nidhogg/">Nidhogg</a>, but the idea of a warrior culture thriving in cold weather, crossing the sea with longships and raiding the neighboring kingdoms. All in all, I'd say the novel's use of cliche was effective, and this is one example where the cliche speaks a thousand words. By using these cliche's Abercrombie is able to write a slightly shorter novel.<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Niddhogg, definitely not in this novel</td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Which leads us to </span><b><span style="color: #274e13;">completeness</span></b>: the Norse cliche gives the world a binding ambiance for the setting of the Shattered Sea, without delving into the complex relationships that must exist between the various kingdoms. But the novel is billed by it's own advertising as a thriller of betrayal. Several of these betrayals were startling, several were indeed quite obvious. Some of these betrayals were made obvious by the lack of explanation occurring in the novel's set up. The king and his brother were killed, and since everyone says its an ambush by a rival kingdom, the main character does too. But the story's narrator is Yarvi, a scholar, who should be asking these questions for us. He does, once, question the whole "who really killed my father and brother" thing, but only once and the question is ignored thereafter. But in the last ten pages you find out that in Yarvi's secret life, when he's not rowing, starving, freezing, or wheedling himself out of a sticky situation, he has thought about these things extensively and come up with a cruel, cold plan for revenge. Nonetheless, it seems an obvious and unfortunate fail on Abercrombie's part. Rowing is tough work, and being chained night and day to a bench with an oar would make some higher thinking difficult, but he seems to accomplish enough whinging during this time to make it seem more like an oversight.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">One last note on the subject. SPOILER: Given that this book is the first of a trio, it is difficult to say where the next two novels will go. This can be a good thing, if the groundwork for what comes was layed properly. What mysteries remain: who are the Elves? What is god, is he the shattered version post elf Apocalypse, or The One God of the High King? The High King is characterized as a silly, vain, weak-willed ruler. If so, who is pulling his strings? Yarvi has relinquished his kingship to his other Uncle, who after a 15 plus year absence happily marries the widowed Queen, his moms. Will Yarvi ever be King? The a rule of law says no, when a man becomes one of these advisor types he relinquishes his title. But of course, there are always those who would change that. What about Yarvi's almost-girlfriend, will she prove a reoccurring character. Or now that Yarvi is sworn to celibacy will she become irrelevant. (Why these scholars are sworn to celibacy is beyond me. Having been around academics for over a decade I can tell you they are anything but!)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Clearly there is much to go forward with, but what there is not at this point is a <b>Big Bad</b>, nor a coming <b>Apocalypse</b>. Unless its the concept of one currency. The old Queen was beginning a plan to stamp her own currency and to proliferate it throughout her economic sphere as the only currency. As a Queen who "minted" money for her kingdom, it's not inconceivable that she could have the clout to do so. And, I must say, as an economic blogger, this would indeed be a sequel worth writing about.</span></div>
. HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-91534867484654902182015-03-23T10:18:00.001-04:002018-08-22T14:10:11.306-04:00Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, and indeed the <a href="http://www.dlnexus.com/">DragonLance Saga</a> was one of those formational books in my career as a fantasist. The timing was apocryphal, <a href="http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?10618-1980-s-Fantasy">80s fantasy was proliferating</a>, and the fantasy section of <a href="http://andrewliptak.com/2010/01/14/rip-waldenbooks/">Waldenbooks </a>(remember them?) was expanding from four shelves to an entire section.<br />
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But the writing was still in its infancy, it was a simpler time in fantasy. Which is not to say that there weren't complex characters or narratives, merely that the expectation was merely swords and sorcery, not quality. Just about anything with a sword or dragon could qualify back then.<br />
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I say all of this because <a href="http://www.tor.com/">Tor </a>has commenced its own <a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/03/the-dragonlance-chronicles-reread-dragons-of-autumn-twilight-chapters-3-and-4">DragonLance reread</a>, and both bloggers, Jared and Muvesh, point out the text is simplistic and rife with cliche. They're not wrong, but they started their reread with the creme de la creme. I started my reread with the dreck that is the first five novels of the Forgotten Realms books.<br />
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The Tor bloggers also point out what I have mentioned in my Forgotten Realm reviews, namely that these novels are limited by the fantasy rules of Dungeons & Dragons. Jared and Muvesh come from two different backgrounds, Jared obviously played the game <a href="http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/03/the-dragonlance-chronicles-reread-dragons-of-autumn-twilight-chapters-3-and-4#comments">"way to roll a 1 beardy!"</a>, and Muvesh came to the novels fresh, having grown up far far away from the kitsch of American consumerism in the 80s.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx6c3PequaNXOGj995Yz7yJSW-T6FK-gqkYrDeD8H9-1XuyyqPM8z9O6AX_qRTPv6gG3yC6TVteIcs7jIl9XwSteb_rmzqwXKuhQce0qL9eLHtkQR0f-8rubJTKnJuRzJDTA06r-VsUmuf/s1600/2nd-edition-players-handbook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx6c3PequaNXOGj995Yz7yJSW-T6FK-gqkYrDeD8H9-1XuyyqPM8z9O6AX_qRTPv6gG3yC6TVteIcs7jIl9XwSteb_rmzqwXKuhQce0qL9eLHtkQR0f-8rubJTKnJuRzJDTA06r-VsUmuf/s1600/2nd-edition-players-handbook.jpg" width="243" /></a>I actually purchased the DragonLance module for the D&D world, intending to Dungeon Master it for my friends. Unfortunately, my friends "grew up" before I did, and so I never got the chance. But I've actually seen the stats for the story's heroes. If you recall, or if you were born after 1985, the stats were rolled with a six-sided die. That I even had to qualify the number of sides for you is pretty indicative of the type of geek I'm talking about. All of this to say, the highest number you could get, at least in the original rules, was 18. The better your stats, the better your character's chance of hitting, dodging, casting spells, attracting followers, etc. All of this was rolled into those first computer games, D&D and 4-bit Heroes of Might and Magic. Except for the fact that the game developers learned pretty quickly that if the same number of missed swings continued in battle, they would kill their market pretty quickly.<br />
<br />
I bring this up because I remember being slightly puzzled by how low the stats of all the DragonLance Heroes had actually been, except for Raistlin whose intelligence was a stunning 17. As a young teen none of us wanted our heroes to be ordinary, so we gamed our dice until we came up with a number we felt comfortable with. The Realms computer game Baldur's Gate came up with a clever way of bypassing this, let the computer roll your stats, and then get a few flex points to tailor your character as you wish. Point is, the Heroes of the Lance were rather ordinary.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYHY3Iac1l8Yg6zC4qJKg-kA21kTFsE2x5e7FEysV96JrGnMP1fo762MIxdnd-KB95bwjVL5IGtAn5fY-xPLZyq2ceh8EKaSwiNOI9HJ32u-B_jEaK3vVXD7Lhru-xdETUEblV55VF_QdA/s1600/Bladurs-Gate-II.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYHY3Iac1l8Yg6zC4qJKg-kA21kTFsE2x5e7FEysV96JrGnMP1fo762MIxdnd-KB95bwjVL5IGtAn5fY-xPLZyq2ceh8EKaSwiNOI9HJ32u-B_jEaK3vVXD7Lhru-xdETUEblV55VF_QdA/s1600/Bladurs-Gate-II.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Anyway, Dragons of Autumn Twilight was published before even the first Realms book came out, so there was some real trailblazing here.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Character: </span></b>Tanis, Raistlin, Caramon, Sturm, Flint and Tas. Need I say more? The figurehead, the leader, <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7w_s0FpXx31NaA0ORIkzv-SsXKit6zHGIDzBZcLlKtsrm74GD55sIHVTasI06tpY4hwBiIj2t-8Z4ApbZQ5LUMSr34pVmd4V9JuUEkeARZdqUGj89Rbcy9PTDPNhHf2-X4eOLZ4o0fWXf/s1600/tanisfires.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7w_s0FpXx31NaA0ORIkzv-SsXKit6zHGIDzBZcLlKtsrm74GD55sIHVTasI06tpY4hwBiIj2t-8Z4ApbZQ5LUMSr34pVmd4V9JuUEkeARZdqUGj89Rbcy9PTDPNhHf2-X4eOLZ4o0fWXf/s1600/tanisfires.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
and the character we all loved unequivocally, was Tanis Half-Elf. The product of rape, a dichotomy of elf and human, long and short lived, noble and peasant, lustful and pure, courageous but filled with self doubt and inner torment. And a love triangle! In Jared's reread week #2, he points out that DragonLancers fall into two categories, Raistlin or Tanis fans. If this is true, then I confess I am probably a Tanis fan. Though I do love the character of Raistlin, his all-consuming thirst for power was less interesting to me then the painfully torn personal anguish that Tanis felt. In retrospect though, the writing of Tanis' inner torment is of a lower quality then that of Raistlin's. That said, Tanis is the story's main hero, its leader, and there is just more detail regarding his thoughts and feelings.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyVbwv6iCIF7W6nvCC5VAXlmUY6OQBfnVT5vqsamtRyYqmZ1VY1xN_gwpaqonejPvoH5JogGhxIxyBtTfH0YiAMmY2KfuZE8rhWoVMSiFLB_8lXknaUsqXC0IKk1SVpcAzkX1fUsy_siUl/s1600/lance19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyVbwv6iCIF7W6nvCC5VAXlmUY6OQBfnVT5vqsamtRyYqmZ1VY1xN_gwpaqonejPvoH5JogGhxIxyBtTfH0YiAMmY2KfuZE8rhWoVMSiFLB_8lXknaUsqXC0IKk1SVpcAzkX1fUsy_siUl/s1600/lance19.jpg" width="184" /></a>The Twins, Raistlin and Caramon, darkness and light, Mage and warrior, ambition and loyalty. These two were so beloved that Weiss and Hickman wrote an entirely different series for them! I recall an interview with Margaret Weiss where she told us that Raistlin was her favorite character. The dynamic of the Twins told us so much of human nature. The desire to protect and help our lesser brother, as the warrior Caramon so often did with Raist. The desire to be free from physical constraint and independent, as Raistlin personified. And ambition, oh, so much about ambition. And it's converse. Caramon's greatest desire, his most fundamental ambition is to make lots of babies with Tika Waylan, and live on a farm with his kooky brother as one big family. In stark contrast to Raistlin, who would one day challenge a god with his magic, not to vanquish her evil, but to consume and supplant it!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5NX9k5R1zMmjjOYt9QfskWgnIFf03keSGqBFZrkSVoIM3_qHjSbJY4BhR0tjTPGn5EVqeTuvkcKW8cR3wcsRVrkyjU2E59wqZslpq1U9NJGg1v-zsl6QcgIns4pUE02iojUusO3TrvEQT/s1600/DeathSturm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5NX9k5R1zMmjjOYt9QfskWgnIFf03keSGqBFZrkSVoIM3_qHjSbJY4BhR0tjTPGn5EVqeTuvkcKW8cR3wcsRVrkyjU2E59wqZslpq1U9NJGg1v-zsl6QcgIns4pUE02iojUusO3TrvEQT/s1600/DeathSturm.jpg" width="320" /></a>Then we had Sturm, himself a conundrum. A boy aspiring to the past glories of knighthood. Trying to live the code, My Honour is my Life, yet knowing that he was no knight in truth, and the organization he worshiped, the Solamnic Knights had grown petty and powerless. As a teen, it was Sturm who captured my imagination. I had the Death of Sturm, that famous<a href="http://larryelmore.com/death-of-sturm/art"> Larry Elmore painting,</a> taped to my college dorm room wall. His courage and his sacrifice were symbolic to me of all that men were meant to be. On my reread, I realize now that Sturm was also incredibly angry and intolerant. Something <br />
that probably appealed to me then.<br />
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Then there were Flint and Tas, the crusty dwarf and the irascible kender. As a side note, I learned last month that in those early days, T<a href="http://sacnoths.blogspot.ca/2008/11/brief-history-of-tolkien-rpgs.html">SR the owner of Dungeons & Dragons</a> was involved in a number of disputes with the the owner of the Tolkien merchandising, one <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0951763/">Saul Zaentz</a>. Possession of the term Hobbit was one of them, and by 1978 per Sacnoth's Scriptorium the most obvious terms, Ent, Hobbit, Nazgul, etc. were gone from the franchises. TSR compensated in a variety of ways, creating Halflings and Gnomes in the Forgotten Realms, Kender, Gully Dwarves, and Gnomes in the DragonLance series. While all dwarves seem to assume fairly typical clichéd attributes, and Flint is no exception, the splinter races of Hobbit take on a variety of different tropes. Gnomes are tiny but ingenious and industrious, Gully dwarves are filthy, uneducated and the lowest caste, and kender are the fun loving scamps of the tiny person world. Tas was one of these, and it's the relationship between these two that grants Flint a life beyond mere Dwarf cliches. To be sure, even Flint's fury at the kender's antics is fairly cliched, but the Death of Flint still brings tears to my eyes.<br />
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There are others, great loves and great heroes, but these are the essential Heroes Party. Itself a cliche, a group of five or six heroes who compliment each other's skill sets and agree to quest together.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0MEQ8oM_qP5tCI7aD-HUhA-A36c1HQhJ-oV8ItQrtfjOEAPlGGLpU9IZjdLpOt5b4goMQsjtB5hYSmk2TSt-8B2QslN0oJZGnSuTbNRwvOCvb999JZz6n7h5takrV5qaH5qtGVPx19ew-/s1600/save-vs-total-party-kill-header@2x.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0MEQ8oM_qP5tCI7aD-HUhA-A36c1HQhJ-oV8ItQrtfjOEAPlGGLpU9IZjdLpOt5b4goMQsjtB5hYSmk2TSt-8B2QslN0oJZGnSuTbNRwvOCvb999JZz6n7h5takrV5qaH5qtGVPx19ew-/s1600/save-vs-total-party-kill-header@2x.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Cx16i2yHs3-idU9Ra7ovUcqp-Pr4vfll1wGvbtcDAITa_uyA2NcJU2omrN5Tc7kY3uzDqlDAG2PhMt42tieP_V0tfQly3qX8Enkw7cCnFtC-Qb4vG0abvBwkmD8fpoD0qrJIr_XKb1Gp/s1600/raisedead.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Cx16i2yHs3-idU9Ra7ovUcqp-Pr4vfll1wGvbtcDAITa_uyA2NcJU2omrN5Tc7kY3uzDqlDAG2PhMt42tieP_V0tfQly3qX8Enkw7cCnFtC-Qb4vG0abvBwkmD8fpoD0qrJIr_XKb1Gp/s1600/raisedead.jpg" /></a><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span></b>: Where to begin? Let's skip the obvious ones. Dungeons and Dragons was all about cliche. In fact, the original rules didn't even have a Dwarf class, the Dwarf was simply a fighter, the Elf, simply an Archer. I mentioned one above, the Heroes Party cliche. I note this because the cliche has certainly changed over time. In the D&D world, the characters were very failable, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_party_kill">your heroes died all the time</a>. You could get them resurrected without too much trouble, but only if someone in your party survived and was able to haul your keister back. To wit, the parties were larger. You could have as many as seven or eight people to a party. More with a good DM. Parties are smaller these days, and videogames blazed that particular trail, parties are typically three now, with more characters waiting in the background.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2014/289/3/1/laurana_and_tanis_by_autumn_sacura-d831kya.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://fc04.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2014/289/3/1/laurana_and_tanis_by_autumn_sacura-d831kya.jpg" height="320" width="252"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fan art, tried to find all three together. by Autumn-Sacura</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I mentioned the Love Triangle earlier, a cliche but not one native to fantasy. Tanis grew up in love with an elf maid, a princess of his people. She loved him back with childlike naivety. But Tanis left because Elves are intolerant to the extreme, big on social purity. And though humans are no better, human society is much less structured than the that of the long-lived elves. And his other lover is a human woman who isn't even "good!"<br />
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Which calls to mind another D&D creation, the Character Alignment Cliche. So when creating your character you had to choose two of six attributes, one from a set of three. Good, Neutral, Evil, Chaotic, Neutral, Lawful. For a great <a href="http://www.easydamus.com/alignment.html">listing of character of alignments in D&D click here</a>. Why bother you ask? Well, despite the massive amounts of rules, D&D attempted to create real story telling. Which necessitated real characters, which necessitated real thought. Choosing an alignment was a way of thinking about your character. In effect, it made the game more fun. "I will kill this murderer!" says the Paladin, "because I am the arbiter of justice, and because the rule of law says that this man must die!" "I'm sorry," says the ex-soldier now adventurer, who continues "Though he is guilty of murder, he is also deserving of kindness. He murdered only to protect his kin!" Part of what made the Party system so interesting was that you had to have your six or seven heroes all get along together! You don't see this cliche too often anymore.<br />
<br />
As the Tor blog pointed out, the book begins in an Inn, a symbolic setting for the Dungeons & Dragons meme. And the Inn certainly manifests itself often enough in fantasy to warrant its own cliche. the jovial innkeeper, warm fire, large bosomed barmaids. Or it's the Evil Inn cousin, think shifty innkeeper, slatterns, and nefarious doings in the corner. But in Dragons, it's the Inn of the Last Home, where friends gather to eat Otik's famous potatoes and flirt with the luscious Tika Waylan. And so the epic starts as Friends gather after a long absence.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness: </span></b>I talk sometimes about scope, and in this simple thematic device, that of old friends meeting, the book establishes a complicated history from page one. Why did the friends part? Where did they go? Why are some together, and some separate? Were there mixed feelings, old dramas, triumphs of old? What about that sensation we've all had about life: that the past is dead, never to be felt again. That you can't go home, and that memory is always different then what was. I actually can't think of another fantasy book that begins quite this way. The Eddings' Belgariad had old friends meeting up along the road, but off hand that's it. For all it's tropism in the Dungeon & Dragons world, it is fairly novel.<br />
<br />
"Dragons" suffers from a very obvious and perfectly explainable completeness issue: much is purposely left unexplained. The back story to the characters is only alluded to within the trilogy. Other authors were contracted to pick up the yarn and finish these quests. This was frustrating in the 80s, as the other authors were never as strong as Weiss & Hickman. In some cases entire chapters seem to be left out. That said, Dragons was a pretty thick book for back then. Particularly given that the average "game module book" probably ran about 250 pages. It might well be that some of the missing content was merely cut for size.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.oocities.org/area51/vault/1501/LancePics/FlintKing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://www.oocities.org/area51/vault/1501/LancePics/FlintKing.jpg" height="264" width="320"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flint the King, what Flint did during his 5 year trip</td></tr>
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There are a few interesting points I wish to make here. In almost all fantasy genres of the 80s and early 90s, the basic baddy, the foot soldier of evil was more or less incomprehensible, the other, alien and bestial (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29">orcs</a>, trollocs, demons. Not so in DragonLance. Hobgoblins and Draconians are fully sentient, frequently speak the common tongue, and are sometimes even playable races within the games. So when, in that first chapter of Dragons, Tanis and Flint have a conversation with Fewmaster Toede (a hobgoblin comic-relief villain) it's almost shocking. Usually when orcs appear, swords are drawn, and orc blood rains black from the heavens. There is no discussion, no capacity for empathy. It's just kind of a neat thing. For all that Jordan advanced the genre, the only conversation he ever had with a Trolloc was one where it was being tortured for information, or attempting to trick its human target.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://db4sgowjqfwig.cloudfront.net/images/1165004/Toede.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://db4sgowjqfwig.cloudfront.net/images/1165004/Toede.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fewmaster Toede, almost all of these images are Elmore originals</td></tr>
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Last, what Dragons lacks in completeness, the game module, the other books in the series, and the other books in DragonLance as a whole compliment and fill utterly. Though the book itself seems riddled with holes, you can rest assured that everything is explainable with reference to some rule in the Player's Handbook or in the lore of the series, or even in the fanverse that has, in the intervening years given these books a completely new life.<br />
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Having completed my reread of the first novel, I still love the Heroes of the Lance. My admiration for Weiss and Hickman remains, though it is tempered by the amazing writing of what the future of fantasy would soon hold.HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4119097634726679123.post-73158736941094697212015-02-18T13:40:00.002-05:002018-08-22T14:03:03.407-04:00The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih0S_IwI7fmYeoDSqw4s0FYcvcpNyq4YmHJ4ed5fTC6g1wU1XmiV398tT4qmCxNnnQJeO3fQ-HBC65uS-el9UdQfiJbjHhiu_YQ-oMSdstiq70j6U-sSdeZUc7iqWT4auG-hC9BXhNZoI_/s1600/Notw+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih0S_IwI7fmYeoDSqw4s0FYcvcpNyq4YmHJ4ed5fTC6g1wU1XmiV398tT4qmCxNnnQJeO3fQ-HBC65uS-el9UdQfiJbjHhiu_YQ-oMSdstiq70j6U-sSdeZUc7iqWT4auG-hC9BXhNZoI_/s1600/Notw+cover.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Weird cover clearly designed to attract non geeks</td></tr>
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Name-Wind-Kingkiller-Chronicle-ebook/dp/B0010SKUYM">The Name of the Wind</a> is a novel that came to me highly reviewed by several what I would call, junior faculty members of the fantasy intelligentsia, meaning those who dabble, or have only recently expressed a burgeoning interest in fantasy. In other words: less geeky than I. In addition, the Onion AV Club gave the novel the raviest review of all, "THE NAME OF THE WIND is quite simply the best fantasy novel of the past 10 years, although attaching a genre qualification threatens to damn it with faint praise. Say instead that THE NAME OF THE WIND is one of the best stories told in any medium in a decade." This from <a href="http://www.patrickrothfuss.com/content/reviews.asp">Rothfuss own website</a>. To those who recommended the novel to me, I can't thank you enough. I'm always looking for a good read. That said, I think the AV Club is singularly heavy handed with its praise, or, <a href="http://www.avclub.com/review/patrick-rothfuss-ithe-name-of-the-windi-3527">let's just say</a>,<a href="http://www.avclub.com/review/patrick-rothfuss-ithe-wise-mans-feari-53274"> flat out wrong</a>. Weirdly, in the review of the first book, the reviewer seemingly got some important elements of the plot just slightly wrong, which makes me wonder about whether or not she even read it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLuoS82flNfvUuvHisT6m3NfZMK0Grwu2g3T7gaiEvalMS0sNNIwW0ijPm3gLm4w0ImkCHdCfnvIcbVDQJA4palbrFX9gZOXtWRCpfNx7KkQudNqXUF4J0Wn9VYOPvFt-X0zgNHNUcdAQg/s1600/Young_Kvothe.png.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLuoS82flNfvUuvHisT6m3NfZMK0Grwu2g3T7gaiEvalMS0sNNIwW0ijPm3gLm4w0ImkCHdCfnvIcbVDQJA4palbrFX9gZOXtWRCpfNx7KkQudNqXUF4J0Wn9VYOPvFt-X0zgNHNUcdAQg/s1600/Young_Kvothe.png.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I think this is fan art, but whose? beautiful!</td></tr>
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As usual, with new author breakouts, I confess to turning an uncomfortable shade of chartreuse. Of course, I look at it and say, "I could do better." But in this case, I can also say that the fantasy genre of the past 20 years is roundly the equal of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Name_of_the_Wind">The KingKiller Chronicle.</a> If not, frankly, superior. I don't want to be a downer. It is good. It was just really unfortunately hyped.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #38761d;">Character: </span></b>One of the triumphs of The Name of the Wind, is that there are some excellent characters. However, I am of two minds about the main character. On the one hand I find him to be interesting, and humorous. On the other hand, I find his extreme youth to be difficult to relate to, and I sometimes feel like his character has some major contradictions. The framework for NotW is that a famous scribe named Chronicler has found Kvothe the Bloodless, a man of infamous repute, working as an innkeeper in a flyspeck town. He tells Chronicler that he will need three full days to tell his story. So Book One, marks the end of Day One, and so it goes. He then proceeds to tell his entire life story. My problem with Kvothe is that the man in the inn seems to be so completely different from the boy we see growing up. While this is intentional, I do not find it convincing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYC4Py-pKbNmWhxxkK2ARfLGGdGZQ_LZvmJq7dEY3s9sArnQ10peleWN3Kl92FZXXoRfM0xNwwNj5Jqb4HITypvibF3tGq7Gq4S9EOUk0cLIoTN4HL6amVtDIncI5EtTzOn1JI7USXHbaj/s1600/Kvothe+Lute.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYC4Py-pKbNmWhxxkK2ARfLGGdGZQ_LZvmJq7dEY3s9sArnQ10peleWN3Kl92FZXXoRfM0xNwwNj5Jqb4HITypvibF3tGq7Gq4S9EOUk0cLIoTN4HL6amVtDIncI5EtTzOn1JI7USXHbaj/s1600/Kvothe+Lute.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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One of the things that the critics laud about NotW is that main character is an anti-hero, because his adventuring life ends in ignominy and despair. This is not as uncommon in fantasy as the reviewers seem to believe, but the innkeeper, Kote (he changed his name by two letters for anonymity) is particularly maudlin as compared to the rather flamboyant youth that Rothfuss describes. This is the heart of the story, how a flamboyant boy/actor/musician type, becomes a weary, hardened, and embittered killer. But so what? The Coming of Age cliche frequently ends in the Loss of Innocence cliche.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ_YrgJ2gM71NIbQ9C5BEflh3QYffJFQRZFqTWzn0UxYQV3S4T2QA3sdcFo0T9oWpQKaLoaobWKokIcmZXZ2gsUw-N8yCShZ2vC3tcgsbkNLS4TkX9PnluKXQ7oYV4LNVWsK8YBFtozuaW/s1600/Kvoth+pipes+by+rohanelf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ_YrgJ2gM71NIbQ9C5BEflh3QYffJFQRZFqTWzn0UxYQV3S4T2QA3sdcFo0T9oWpQKaLoaobWKokIcmZXZ2gsUw-N8yCShZ2vC3tcgsbkNLS4TkX9PnluKXQ7oYV4LNVWsK8YBFtozuaW/s1600/Kvoth+pipes+by+rohanelf.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Smart lady with the watermark. rohanelf, nice work!</td></tr>
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That said there are a lot of wonderful characters. I, too am in love with the love interest, the mysterious Denna (though their verbal sparring grows tiresome, "I think of you like the dew on a daisy petal at dusk." (not a quote, just an example)). I am also quite fond of the other students at the Arcanum, Kvothe's friends at the University. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/nameofthewind/images/c/c8/Denna.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111128145746" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/nameofthewind/images/c/c8/Denna.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111128145746" height="224" width="320"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Denna, unattributed</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Cliche</span></b>: As I discussed in my post on <a href="http://darkgodslight.blogspot.com/2014/06/rhapsody-by-elizabeth-haydon.html">Elizabeth Hayden's Rhapsody</a>, NotW draws from many popular cliches. The first and most obvious is that of the <b>Bard</b>. Kvothe is an <a href="http://kingkiller.wikia.com/wiki/Edema_Ruh">Edema Ruh,</a> which is a cliche of it's own, the Traveling People (so named by Jordan's Tu'athan, who traveled in large wagons). The Ruh however are players, actors and musicians too, but largely actors. This is an interesting thing because many of the classic fantasy novels, including the Wheel of Time, eschew acting troupes as crass and foolish. I honestly don't know what the historical basis for this would be, other than that a solo act is easier to pick up and move, and that since it lacks the bells and whistles of theatre, requires a larger imaginative investment. Regardless Kvothe, for the most part fits the stereotype. He's brash, he's colorful, and dramatic, and magical. He is not particularly adept with women, but hey, he's only 15.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/wot/images/0/0b/Traveling_People.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100326052554" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/wot/images/0/0b/Traveling_People.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100326052554"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jordan's Traveling People</td></tr>
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Another cliche might be <b>The University</b>. This is not too common a cliche in fantasy, but it certainly exists, as it does elsewhere in literature. Though the opening pages of the book stress that Kvothe's time at the university is limited, it certainly seems to follow a year per year formula that the Harry Potter saga followed. That said, it is a wonderful and useful cliche and adds a fair amount of depth to the medieval/renaissance world that birthed the concept of higher learning.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Hogwarts_model_studio_tour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Hogwarts_model_studio_tour.jpg" height="213" width="320"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Real Hogwarts</td></tr>
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And along with the University Cliche, comes the <b>City Cliche</b>. I imagine that this is the difference between authors who have dwelt in a major metropolitan area, and those that live in the sticks, or even in large sized towns. This is another great and rare fantasy cliche. After having lived in NYC for over a decade, I can tell you hundreds of details about the city that prove just how diverse and unusual each neighborhood. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://p.gr-assets.com/540x540/fit/hostedimages/1380373969/727820.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://p.gr-assets.com/540x540/fit/hostedimages/1380373969/727820.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The city of Camorr</td></tr>
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Too often in fantasy, large cities are simply background to travelers passing through, and possibly getting mugged. The idea is simple, in the midst of this fantasy world is a massive, sprawling city: the center of government, commerce, learning, music and art. And a central part of this cliche is that the city is described as any normal city would be, with various quarters and districts, specializations and peoples of many nationalities and backgrounds. Again, it adds a degree of realism that is very much missing in many fantasy epics. Some examples from other worlds. The Gentleman Bastard's city of Camorr, modeled off of medieval Venice. Also, Darujhistan from the Malazan Book of the Fallen. Jordan's cities each had its own character, and there were dozens of cities in which the characters spent time, but detail at this level was rarely provided.<br />
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I said in my last post that I wouldn't bother with this in the future, but I think a note must be made on the Name of the Wind's magic system. Much time is spent describing this system called <a href="http://kingkiller.wikia.com/wiki/Sympathy">Sympathy</a>, and it is pretty neat overall, described in the link above as pseudoscientific energy manipulation. Overlapped with it however, seems to be various other magics, The Power of Names cliche for one (hence the book's title), the power of demons, and the mysterious powers of the arch-enemy, the Chandrian.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/nameofthewind/images/1/10/Chandrian_by_sir_heartsalot-d4tckm7.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121125032232" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/nameofthewind/images/1/10/Chandrian_by_sir_heartsalot-d4tckm7.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121125032232" height="320" width="196"></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kvothe and the Chandrian, by sir-hearts-a-lot</td></tr>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;">Completeness</span></b>: So... you get the sense that the world is indeed a large place, but so much of this first book takes place in one city that it can be easily forgotten. That said, the denizens of the city are quite diverse, and Kvothe's family of friends are all foreigners. Also, his people, the Adema Ruh, are traveling performers, and that in itself is suggestive of a wide scope. More than anything, though the book is written believably enough that even though the world itself seems somewhat hazy at the end of this first book, you trust the author to make amends for this in later books. I'd say it stands up.<br />
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However, there do seem to be plot holes, and this is a major flaw in the book as far as I am concerned. The most obvious, and previously alluded to is the Szcherezade aspect of the story, in which Kvoth tells his story in three days. By the end of the first story he's barely 17. If the next book does a full four years (which it doesn't, he'd just barely be 21. Leaving our embittered assassin killer bard a bare 25. I'm sorry, you don't have the right to be bitter at 25.<br />
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There are others too: Rothfuss has a habit of telling stories within stories. I love a good flashback, but when a flashback goes forty or fifty pages of a 350 page novel, and then gets interrupted to tell a 20 page parable within the middle of said flashback, enough is enough. For another intelligent review of NotW, read <a href="https://benjobooks.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/review-the-name-of-the-wind-by-patrick-rothfuss/">Benjo's Books review</a>.<br />
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At the end of the first book we are left with many questions. This might be genius at work, maybe he's setting us up. I'd like to believe that, but I just can't. To me it seems too much like the TV show Lost. Which was pretty much <a href="http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6099973/unanswered-lost-questions">Lost after its first season</a>.HammClovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04991226150243464888noreply@blogger.com2