I've never been a fan of fantasy novels. Dragons, magic stones, castles, dungeons, quests, Chosen Ones, magical creatures, rinse, repeat--much of it expressed in phony poetic diction and phony pseudo-archaic language. Come up with weird names for your people and places with extra vowels and lots of apostrophes, invent some compound words like ravenmaple or granitethorn and spell color and clamor the way the English do, as colour and clamour, and suddenly you are writing with poeticality and eloquentness.
But that was before I was diagnosed with cancer three years ago. Suddenly my beloved literary/realistic fiction was too realistic and to my dismay I found myself reluctantly gravitating toward more escapist literature. I read all the Harry Potter books, and as for adult fantasy, I began with Carol Berg and made it through Song of the Beast and her Rai-Kirah and Bridge of D'Arnath trilogies, and I was forced to admit to myself that not all fantasy is formulaic crap.
My husband belongs to an online book-swapping club. Some of his discoveries have been excellent, some have been so laughably bad that he ends up not finishing the book and putting it back into the exchange pool. He found the following passage in a book he recently began reading:
"Her visage, although haunted, was lovely. She appeared to be no less than thirty-four Summers old, yet still as slender as a willow sapling. Her mouth was a rosebud, her hair ebony silk threaded with frost."
Be sure to use the word "visage" if you want to be taken seriously as a fantasy author. Or, even better, use the word "mein" and readers will take you super-seriously.
"Upon her eyelids the whiteness of her skin was brushed with a turquoise tint, as if blue-green blood infused a webwork of veins as fine as gauze, and her lowered lids were like two fragile wings of an Aquamarine Lycaenidae butterfly sealing her eyes." from The Iron Tree, Book One of the Crowthistle Chronicles by Cecelia Dart-Thornton
I'm guessing this one's going back into the pool. Life's too short.
Two similes in a long, purple sentence to describe the turquoise tint of somebody's eyelids. A show of knowledge of lycaenid butterflies. A description so unbearable and pretentious that a previous owner of the book underlined it. I hope it was to mock and not to emulate.
This is why I despise most fantasy, and why I was so delighted by this article, which I found on Io9 today. Lachlan, himself a fantasy writer, nails what I feel is problematic and personally annoying in the fantasy genre. He describes it as "kitsch." Kitsch is Elvis Presley's likeness preserved for the ages on black velvet. Don't even mention it in the same breath as Vermeer's "The Lacemaker." Just as unthinkable would be putting Robert Jordan in the pantheon with J. R. R. Tolkien. Lachlan cites Robert Jordan's overblown prose, noting Jordan calling a young person a "youngling," and Lachlan postulates that any book containing too many words with "ling" in them should immediately send your kitsch alarm screeching. I make an exception for "hatchling," which is actually a biological term, but for the rest, I applaud his courage in pointing out the inherent problems in fantasy writing.
On the positive side, Lachlan mentions some authors who manage to, in his words, "slay the kitsch monster." I am familiar with five of the authors he mentions--Holdstock, Pullman, Martin, Mieville, and Elliott, but so far I have only read Pullman from among these. For breaking with so many fantasy tropes, I would add Carol Berg and the genre-defying Neil Gaiman to Lachlan's list. My daughter has recommended Charles DeLint, best known for urban fantasy, so The Blue Girl is now on my to-read list. Taking magical creatures or objects and placing them in modern settings should infuse some much-needed fresh air into the genre, provided the author actually cares about characterizations and the English language as much as he/she cares for making bank.
I wouldn't call myself a fantasy "convert." I still refuse to read something just because it's got a horse and a cloaked rider on its cover. I will always be picky about characterizations, plot structure, and prose style, but it's good to know that there is quality fantasy out there, because I still find myself in need of escape from time to time. Grateful to have had my horizons broadened, I will make room for Kate Elliott and George R. R. Martin on my shelves.
Edited 10/31 because I'm never satisfied with what I write.
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