http://www.dystel.com/blog/2016/05/what-im-looking-for-in-fantasy/ Mon, 26 Jun 2017 15:15:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.15 http://www.dystel.com/blog/2016/05/what-im-looking-for-in-fantasy/comment-page-1/#comment-45822 Wed, 25 May 2016 18:28:27 +0000 http://www.dystel.com/?p=12782#comment-45822 Straight-ahead fantasy is something I burned out on way back when, with the exception of obvious masters like Tolkien and the comic fantasy of L. Sprague DeCamp, who was working this angle long before the fantasy field became so crowded it started looking like a ping-pong game at a shoggoth convention. However, I think some of the most innovative work being done these days is some of Rick Riordan’s stuff, which he sticks right smack in the modern world instead of some safely remote never-never land, and even if it’s juvie-catagory, it can start right up and run with a lot of so-called “serious” fantasy. (It’s routinely ghettoized as Intermediate in most bookstores even if the characters are YA-aged, because so many of them are you know, like “boys”, and who takes them seriously) And while we’re wobbling down this odd little side path, I recall one of the best juvie fantasies of about a decade or so ago: The BARTIMEUS TRILOGY by Jonathon Stroud, which was an alternate history set in London where Magic was the high-technology and was narrated firsthand by the ancient and powerful djinn named in the title. However, (for all you world builders out there) it contained a small but in my view almost fatal flaw… Not once, in all Bartimeus’s epic tale of golems, Solomonic Seals, demons, etc., was the word GOD ever mentioned. Excuse me, but if you don’t know any of the Secret, Holy, & Terrible Names of God, how is any of this stuff supposed to work?! Don’t ever try any of this at home, kids!

]]> http://www.dystel.com/blog/2016/05/what-im-looking-for-in-fantasy/comment-page-1/#comment-45819 Wed, 25 May 2016 01:19:15 +0000 http://www.dystel.com/?p=12782#comment-45819 It’s been a long time since I read the Wheel of Time series, but it seems that this kind of description (from what I remember as a prologue) will only work with a distant third-person POV. If this were first person or close third-person, the writer would need a POV character who is poetic enough to think that the “earth rumbled in memory” and would notice that “motes of dust glitter”.

]]> http://www.dystel.com/blog/2016/05/what-im-looking-for-in-fantasy/comment-page-1/#comment-45818 Tue, 24 May 2016 21:23:59 +0000 http://www.dystel.com/?p=12782#comment-45818 I love Anne McCaffrey for world building. I love doing world building for my own SF/F novels. For a brief moment I can be godlike and create my own universe.

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