So for some reason last night I was really craving some shoddy B-Fantasy, to the point where I would have been willing to do embarrassing things to get my hands on a Mercedes Lackey...
What's that? B-Fantasy? Oh, it's the same concept as B-movies - formulaic, low production value, flat characters - just with fantasy literature. Basically, what normal people think of when they think of fantasy, with the teenage protagonist who has to save the world from the Dark Lord and runs all over the countryside learning magic and eating stew. Etc.
Anyway, since all I brought with me to my apartment was some beautiful magic realism and some weird children's genre-benders, I was stuck. See, books are like food. Sometimes you want to go out to a fancy restaurant for steak and shrimp alfredo, or whatever you order (that actually sounds really good right now...) and sometimes you just want to heat up some Kraft mac and cheese in the microwave, because that's what you grew up on, and even if as an adult it disgusts you intellectually, and you can't bear to read the list of ingredients, it just tastes so bad, but so good.
But since I didn't have any to read, I started listing and categorizing and researching to try and pin down what makes B-Fantasy B-Fantasy. Because apparently when I want mindless entertainment, I have to analyze it.
I started doing a little research, and here are my findings thus far. Mostly is it some half-assed hypotheses and some Wikipedia trawling, but I intend to reasearch the matter further, I really do.
B-Fantasy was inspired by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (1954), and augmented by LeGuin's Earthsea trilogy (1968). From LOTR we get the epic quest, magical macguffin, underdog hero, and Dark Lord. After Earthsea, the protagonist is allowed to use magic, and magic becomes institutionalized. However, many other aspects of Eathsea, such as the protagonist aging, did not catch on. The first Dungeons and Dragons manual was published in 1974, which codified the Fantasyland setting and rules for the narrative. This I need to look into further, but currently I blame D&D for making every fantasyland need 3races+2 - elf/dwarf/human, and two of the author's own creation; usually one of the extras is evil, and the other is unimportant to the plot. No one besides Tolkien wrote about the elves until D&D! (needs fact-checking)
1977 saw The Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks, and also the Star Wars movie. I try not to mix fantasy and scifi, but Star Wars has the traditional epic narrative wth the whiny hero that all B-Fantasy uses, and is a potential forerunner. Shannara had 3races+2, and all the trappings of LOTR, except instead of quiet little middle-aged hobbit protagonist, it had a dopey teenage male protagonist, likely in reflection of the anticipated audience. It is also serialized; while Tolkien stopped with a trilogy, a prequel, and a manual, if Brooks isn't dead then he's still writing to this day.
Now we come to the 80's, which is the birth of B-Fantasy proper. David Eddings, I kid you not, saw the emerging market and decided to jump on it for the money - literally, created a formula and cranked out books for profit. He ditched the races (though they still remained prevalent elsewhere), instead creating a multiracial and paradoxically racially uniform world of humans (everyone of every race is the same as each other member of the race), and added meddlesome deities. Also, the hero is allowed, in fact required, to use magic. There is also the annoying crossdressing spunky princess love-interest. Like Leia but less badass. Oh, and she hooks up with the teenage protagonist.
1983 - Tamora Pierce sees the spunky crossdressing redhead princess and decides that she needs her own story, thus bringing about the start of feminist fantasy that tries too hard. Also the practice of making fantasyland be America with a medieval veneer, though Eddings hinted at that with Sendaria and I can't believe I remember the name of that country. Hero's homeland, go figure. Also has institutionalized magic (school of magecraft and blah blah), rather than random wizards who just float around organically to make plot things happen. Wizards become working-class.
1984, ten years after the first Dungeons and Dragons manual was published, the Dragonlance series is born. It was based off of a D&D campaign. No, honestly, it was. We have races, we have quests, we have institutionalized magic and meddlesome deities. For the most part, they do ditch the dopey farmboy, replacing him with the naive warrior, who is supposed to be all troubled and dark, but is really just naive and angsty. Also, the focus is more on the quest group than any one hero. It still has very black-and-white morality.
In 1987 Mercedes Lackey published her first book. So here we have feminist fantasy, and clique fantasy. I have to backtrack a little for that. In 1967, Anne McCaffery started the Dragonriders of Pern series. So we have a special clique of people with special powers whose job is basically to be heroes. This solves the problem of how to keep having the same person solve all the problems; it's their job, because they are telepathically linked to a magical critter. Because that totally makes sense.
Now we come to the 90's, which may be the Golden Age of B-Fantasy. Most of these series started in the 80's, but gained momentum throughout the decade and eventually came to dominate the 90's. There was still some very original stuff in the 80's - Kushner's Swordspoint, Diana Wynne Jones's everything, Suzette Hardin Elgin's Ozark Trilogy about a planet that was colonized by the South and people who ride flying Mules (it's good stuff). In 1990, however, Robert Jordan published the first book in The Wheel of Time.
What did WoT do that other books didn't? It's basically the same setup as Eddings' Belgariad. Teenage farmboy whisked away from his home by a wizard, told it is his destiny by birth to save the world from the newly reawakened Dark Lord, oh yeah and he has magic powers. All I can say is that Jordan made it bigger (800 pages per volume, minimum), he made it better (the world at least makes slightly more sense and is more memorable than Eddings'), and he made it with love. He kept writing even when he was dying, because he loved those books so damn much. And I can tell you a hundred things that make the books awful (don't call me on that, please), but I can at least understand why they are so loved.
Lately, however, there has been a mainstream movement away from B-Fantasy. Conflicts have become less idealistic, between the innocent and the Evil, and more political, between the jaded older warriors and the forces of society - kind of like the teenage hero grew up. I won't be able to say much about George R. R. Martin, because I haven't been able to get through more than three chapters, but I think he is the key to this movement. The current generation of writers grew up on B-Fantasy, and are too jaded with it in today's society.
Other books like David Anthony Durham's Acacia (2007) have similar political orientations - I can't talk much about this one either because I ran into the same problem as Martin, though in Durham's case the last straw was not "I don't know which of these characters I'm supposed to care about" (though there was an element of that) and more "That is the stupidest fencing lesson I have ever read." Then there are more direct criticisms such as E.E. Knight's Age of Fire series (2002), which is basically what Wicked did to Oz, only to Dragonlance. Sure, there are still throwbacks like Eragon (2002), but the mainstream voice of fantasy is shifting from a teenage coming-of-age quest to multiperspective stories of human conflict. Though in fact this sort of storytelling started in the 80's as well, with the Mannerpunk movement started by Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint. It did not gain momentum until just recenty, though.
And of course there are all the little splinter genres like Feminist Fantasy, which I touched on a little, and Queer Fantasy (people say that fantasy is really homophobic, but I think that the fantasyland setting actually makes it easier to include gay characters without stigma; again I point to Swordspoint), and I've already ranted about Dragonrider Fantasy, which is actually a subcategory of Animal Companion Fantasy or perhaps as a genre rather than a device, it would fit better under Heroic Clique Fantasy - you have this world where there is this institution of heroes, be they dragonriders or Jedi or what have you, and every book/trilogy is about a different one whose turn it is to save the kingdom/world/continent. Then there's the Supernatural Ensemble, which I'm not sure belongs in fantasy proper - technically its roots are in horror.
But right now, I still just want to read a magic pony story.
Showing posts with label Dragons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dragons. Show all posts
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Saturday, January 28, 2012
The Plague Episode
Have you noticed in series that are longer than trilogies, the authors seemed stumped for that many sub-villains and minor conflicts and will throw in a plague, just to change things up? Generally of a magical cause, and the hero traipses about the countryside some more until he finds the cure, and everything's fine by the time the next book rolls around. Unless there has been a token death in the party. Surprisingly, this is not a trope - there is a "Plague," a "Mystical Plague," and a "Find the Cure," but none are quite what I am talking about here in terms of the episode.
As anyone who has read Albert Camus' The Plague or has a decent knowledge of history (or even current events) is well aware, plagues...don't exactly work like that. People get sick. And they go to the resident witch-doctors, who are stumped, but do the best they can. More people get sick. The town goes into quarantine. Fear. Boredom. More fear. More boredom. Unless you're actually a doctor, but even then finding treatments, cures, and vaccines is really tricky even with modern medical technology.
There is no magical cure, because there is no magical cause. That does not stop people from trying. The Jews got blamed for the Black Death in Europe - partly because they were the only people washing their hands and so weren't getting sick right away. This led to lynchings and hate crimes. After all, what is a hate crime but fear+boredom? Nothing like a crisis to fuel xenophobia.
The miracle cure is pure wish-fulfillment; sickness is an enemy we cannot fight, and we humans don't deal well with helplessness. Even in modern western society, we have flus and cancers - we can take preventative measures, but sometimes not even that is enough. Illness is something universal that has a profound impact on the human psyche - and yet much of modern fantasy literature boils it down to a cure-Macguffin. This happens in part because the plague is a single episode, not the story in itself as Camus made it. It lessens the impact.
Dear fantasy writers, if you are going to write a plague story, read Camus and not any of the following. While Novik is a historian-goddess and has probably read Camus and more, I am still approaching the fourth Temeraire book with caution, as it seems to be that series' plague-episode, and this is usually what Plague Episodes look like:
Plague Episodes in Fantasy Literature:
As anyone who has read Albert Camus' The Plague or has a decent knowledge of history (or even current events) is well aware, plagues...don't exactly work like that. People get sick. And they go to the resident witch-doctors, who are stumped, but do the best they can. More people get sick. The town goes into quarantine. Fear. Boredom. More fear. More boredom. Unless you're actually a doctor, but even then finding treatments, cures, and vaccines is really tricky even with modern medical technology.
There is no magical cure, because there is no magical cause. That does not stop people from trying. The Jews got blamed for the Black Death in Europe - partly because they were the only people washing their hands and so weren't getting sick right away. This led to lynchings and hate crimes. After all, what is a hate crime but fear+boredom? Nothing like a crisis to fuel xenophobia.
The miracle cure is pure wish-fulfillment; sickness is an enemy we cannot fight, and we humans don't deal well with helplessness. Even in modern western society, we have flus and cancers - we can take preventative measures, but sometimes not even that is enough. Illness is something universal that has a profound impact on the human psyche - and yet much of modern fantasy literature boils it down to a cure-Macguffin. This happens in part because the plague is a single episode, not the story in itself as Camus made it. It lessens the impact.
Dear fantasy writers, if you are going to write a plague story, read Camus and not any of the following. While Novik is a historian-goddess and has probably read Camus and more, I am still approaching the fourth Temeraire book with caution, as it seems to be that series' plague-episode, and this is usually what Plague Episodes look like:
Plague Episodes in Fantasy Literature:
Temple of the Winds (Sword of Truth book 4) by Terry Goodkind – a witch releases a magical plague from a box to mess with the hero. The hero and his girlfriend are forced to marry other people in order to cure the plague. It doesn’t really make sense in context. The hero gets the plague in the end, but he gets better. One of the token lesbians dies.
Briar’s Book (Circle of Magic book 4) by Tamora Pierce – a careless witch dumps some magical toxic waste in the sewers, starting a plague. Luckily, the plucky kids notice things that lead the cleverer adults to a cure. They’re healer-mages, so it works. A friend of the main character who only appears in that book dies. The main character mentor gets sick, but he calls her back from the edge of death. It’s a kid’s book. Curiously, this breaks my aforementioned pattern by being the last book in the quartet, but the stories are self-contained and switch viewpoint character for each. Also interesting that there seem to be a lot of book fours. "Four" is a homonym with "Death" in Chinese.
Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods (Underland Chronicles book 3) by Suzanne Collins – yes, that Suzanne Collins. Gregor and his companions go on a quest to find a plague, then find out someone dropped a test tube in a lab where the “good guys” were designing a bioweapon. Gregor’s bat and mother get sick, but neither die (it is Suzanne Collins though; it’s just that she saves the heartbreaking death for the last book). No named characters die of the plague that I recall.
The Lost City of Faar (Pendragon book 2) by D.J. Machale – turns out to actually be a mass poisoning by the villain intending to start a war. Only book two so plot is still formulaic. Secondary character’s parents die, but he’s supposed to be an orphan because of his destiny, so they would have vanished somehow anyway.
The Keep of Fire (The Last Rune book 2) by Mark Anthony – a plague that causes people to burst into flames is affecting both worlds. Hero and companions travel to title location and send the radioactive magical rock that is causing the plague into space, thus ending the plague. It makes sense in context. Main character’s bestie in our world dies, which is sad. Other plot-relevant people get sick and die.
Lady Friday (Keys to the Kingdom book 6) by Garth Nix – embarassingly enough, I don’t really remember. I think the title character was causing the Sleepy Plague, and once she was defeated…there was an extra step in there. It didn’t just go away. Main character’s friend got sick, but got better and rallied the defense in our world and took care of the plague victims.
Salamandastron (Redwall) by Brian Jacques – the inhabitants of Redwall abbey get sick with a mysterious illness, and Thrugg the otter journeys to a mythical mountain to find a mythical flower guarded by a mythical eagle which is the only cure. He finds it of course, and the eagle is nice enough to fly it back for him. It’s Redwall, so there is some token death, though the token death occurs in a different subplot.
Warriors by Erin Hunter – a recurring subplot where it is actually done well. Cats get sick. Sometimes a lot at the same time. Sometimes they die. Sometimes there are herbs. Sometimes the herbs are not enough. No questing for a special cure to a special illness.
Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner – as a joke when people would ask her “What happened next?” she would say “Oh, the next year there was a diphtheria outbreak and they all died.” Which, in a pre-industrial pseudo-medieval society, is not entirely unlikely. Though she did eventually write a sequel that was devoid of a diphtheria outbreak.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Top 5 Best and Worst Books About Dragons
Mostly because I'm bored, and I just found out that Dragon Fate is not even in the library catalogue yet, even though it's been out for over a month.
5 Worst Dragon Books
5. "Joust" by Mercedes Lackey.
It's Mercedes Lackey. What more need be said? Few writers can pull of such cliche, shallow characters, long-winded monologues, or overly detailed, prettified worlds. Worldbuilding details are good, but they should always be plot-relevant and not mere decoration. "Joust" is actually not too bad as far as dragon books go. The dragons do not talk (At least not in the first two books, and I don't see why that would change), and seem to be on a level of very clever animals with slight telepathic tendencies. They are fed a fantasyland drug to keep them tractable, though of course un-drugged dragons that bond with humans as hatchlings perform much better. Really the only problem with this series is that it is by Mercedes Lackey.
4. "Dragonflight" by Donita K. Paul
This is a kid's book, so I can't really complain of the black-and-white morality, although I would...is that Jesus? Why is there a Jesus in a dragon book? Not that there's anything wrong with that necessarily, and kudos for not having a typical vague pantheon, but...the distinction is between a book about religion, a book about religious characters, and religious allegory. The first is acceptable if it asks more questions than it answers (read: The Sparrow), the second if the characters behave like actual religious people and not idiotic fanatics (though there are real ones of those, I suppose. But read: Firethorn) and the third...if you subscribe to the religion and don't want to have your mindset challenged? The Dragonflight series, however, uses religion to support its very simplistic and childlike moral structures. It is a kid's book, I suppose, so I can't really be too hard on it.
3. Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffery
May her soul rest in peace. I never got into the series. I can't remember why; I can't remember many details of what I did read, so I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that the characters and stories were not very memorable. Everything else I have is hearsay; namely, some very problematic portrayals of gender roles and relationships. However, since this book is what started the whole dragonrider craze, I shouldn't be too hard on it. Or maybe I should.
2. "Eragon" - Christopher Paolini
The fifteen year old kid had enough dedication to sit down and write a novel from beginning to end. I'll give him that much credit. I can also list all of his sources: McCaffery, Eddings, Tolkien, and Star Wars. David Eddings is the reason fantasy is shit. No, seriously, he codified if not started all of the needless traditions that the genre bears today, though most writers have the decency to not rip off his dull magic system word for word...Anyway, let's talk about Saphira. For starters, she has no personality. A few of the other characters in the books have some interesting quirks, so I'm going to count that as a fault of the character and not the book in general. Basically, she's only there to make Eragon look cool. Like a motorcycle. But for her, Eragon (not quite an anagram of "Garion") is the whiny little bitch hero typical of the Eddings and Star Wars traditions; can't blame Tolkien for that one - Frodo was middle-aged!
1. Dragonlance - created by Margaret Weis and Terry Hickman
Hoo boy. Where to start? The plots are based off of D&D campaigns. No, really, I'm not making that up. The writing quality varies because there are so many different writers, but the dragons. Ah, the dragons. I don't believe they are actually in a lot of the books. When they are, they are color-coded for your convenience. Shiny dragons are good, rainbow dragons are bad. And they talk, but they don't really do much when they're not being ridden around. The only good part I can see is that since there are so many writers, some have tried to play around with the structure; there's a short story about an awkward misunderstanding with an albino silver dragon, and one where an evil dragon questions his evilness but doesn't actually follow-through (I think he dies, actually...). On the whole, though, for a serial with "Dragon" in the title, they don't really do a whole lot. Only ranks above Eragon because it is written by adults who should know better, but let's face it. They don't.
Now before you start calling me a hater, here are my top 5 good dragon books
5. "Eon: Dragoneye Reborn" - by Allison Goodman
Full review here. If you're too lazy to click on the link, it's about a girl who dresses as a boy in order to get a dragon companion. Which is a horrible plot, so you can imagine my surprise when it didn't quite suck. The setting is randomly Asian, and the dragons are life-draining energy beings rather than scaly kittens. The story isn't exceptional, but it has some good points and on the whole isn't bad.
4. "Dragon's Milk" - by Susan Fletcher
I haven't read these books in forever, so I can't give too many details. It might not be as good as I remember, and if I haven't read it in forever it probably isn't the best thing ever. But since I kept excusing "Dragonflight" for being a kid's book, here's another kid's book for contrast. The story is about a girl who ends up caring for three dragon hatchlings after their mother dies or something. They have to go on the run because people kill dragons in this world. And there are people in difficult situations making difficult choices and facing the consequences, instead of people in difficult situations making difficult choices and having their problems vanish as a reward for making the right choice. I think maybe one of the dragons died, too. Not sure. Kid's books can be pretty dark, you know.
3. The Dragon Quartet - by Marjorie B. Kellogg
This series is just frickin' weird. The first book takes place in medieval Germany, where this girl finds an earth-dragon and goes on this journey with it to find her destiny or something, ends up falling through some kind of time portal where, in the second book, she meets a boy from modern-day Africa who is bonded to a water dragon, and then they go back to medieval Germany for a brief bit and end up in this post-apocalyptic future run by a fire dragon, and the air dragon is really a computer, and the dragons are really transdimensional beings who incarnated at certain points in time in order to save the human race from global warming...or something like that. I should really re-read those. They're just so...weird. And different. See, that is what fantasy is supposed to mean - creating your own unique vision of a world. Not pseudo-medieval whiny farmboy kill the dark lord questing.
2. Age of Fire - by E.E. Knight
Think "Wicked" for Dragonlance. The original book, not the musical. It's a sort of dark reimagining of a familiar world (not Krynn specifically, just the whole freaking genre paradigm). You've got your elves/dwarves/humans/+2, and all kinds of crazy race relations. And you have the dragons. The book is told from the dragon's point of view as hominids try to kill them or enslave them. They end up sort of turning that around and starting a dragon empire and making it very clear that in the dragon/rider relationship, the dragon is boss. The characters are all very interesting, and in the latest (well, next-to-latest) I actually started to feel for them a bit (That poor Copper! - oh yes, it has amazing technicolor dragons, but physical appearance does not correlate with moral alignment), and I really want to read the last one, Dragon Fate.
1. Temeraire - by Naomi Novik
Napoleonic Wars. With dragons. It is awesome. Yes, the dragons tend toward the scaly kitten end of the spectrum, but they are not pastel greeting-card kittens, they are real live animals that poop on your floor. Metaphorically speaking. Actually, they are not animals. They are people, and Novik does well building a subplot of a sort of impending dragon civil rights movement (I'm only about halfway through the series). Also, historical detail. England, Africa, China, Ottoman Empire, Prussia...Holy crap, that woman has done her research. So yes, Temeraire is adorable. He talks (not telepathic, thank the gods). He chose his rider from the egg and loves him oh-so-much. And he is a slave. And seeing him struggle to compromise that with his love for his rider is so...woobifying. Squee.
Yeah. Dragons. You probably think I think too much about dragons. Funny that I don't usually write about dragons. There might be some in my shapeshifter story, but they're not really in the plot. Dragons just seem so overdone and so rarely done well. At the same time, all the possible subversions are already being done (and done well). So for the time being, I remain a dragon appreciater rather than a dragon writer.
5 Worst Dragon Books
5. "Joust" by Mercedes Lackey.
It's Mercedes Lackey. What more need be said? Few writers can pull of such cliche, shallow characters, long-winded monologues, or overly detailed, prettified worlds. Worldbuilding details are good, but they should always be plot-relevant and not mere decoration. "Joust" is actually not too bad as far as dragon books go. The dragons do not talk (At least not in the first two books, and I don't see why that would change), and seem to be on a level of very clever animals with slight telepathic tendencies. They are fed a fantasyland drug to keep them tractable, though of course un-drugged dragons that bond with humans as hatchlings perform much better. Really the only problem with this series is that it is by Mercedes Lackey.
4. "Dragonflight" by Donita K. Paul
This is a kid's book, so I can't really complain of the black-and-white morality, although I would...is that Jesus? Why is there a Jesus in a dragon book? Not that there's anything wrong with that necessarily, and kudos for not having a typical vague pantheon, but...the distinction is between a book about religion, a book about religious characters, and religious allegory. The first is acceptable if it asks more questions than it answers (read: The Sparrow), the second if the characters behave like actual religious people and not idiotic fanatics (though there are real ones of those, I suppose. But read: Firethorn) and the third...if you subscribe to the religion and don't want to have your mindset challenged? The Dragonflight series, however, uses religion to support its very simplistic and childlike moral structures. It is a kid's book, I suppose, so I can't really be too hard on it.
3. Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffery
May her soul rest in peace. I never got into the series. I can't remember why; I can't remember many details of what I did read, so I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that the characters and stories were not very memorable. Everything else I have is hearsay; namely, some very problematic portrayals of gender roles and relationships. However, since this book is what started the whole dragonrider craze, I shouldn't be too hard on it. Or maybe I should.
2. "Eragon" - Christopher Paolini
The fifteen year old kid had enough dedication to sit down and write a novel from beginning to end. I'll give him that much credit. I can also list all of his sources: McCaffery, Eddings, Tolkien, and Star Wars. David Eddings is the reason fantasy is shit. No, seriously, he codified if not started all of the needless traditions that the genre bears today, though most writers have the decency to not rip off his dull magic system word for word...Anyway, let's talk about Saphira. For starters, she has no personality. A few of the other characters in the books have some interesting quirks, so I'm going to count that as a fault of the character and not the book in general. Basically, she's only there to make Eragon look cool. Like a motorcycle. But for her, Eragon (not quite an anagram of "Garion") is the whiny little bitch hero typical of the Eddings and Star Wars traditions; can't blame Tolkien for that one - Frodo was middle-aged!
1. Dragonlance - created by Margaret Weis and Terry Hickman
Hoo boy. Where to start? The plots are based off of D&D campaigns. No, really, I'm not making that up. The writing quality varies because there are so many different writers, but the dragons. Ah, the dragons. I don't believe they are actually in a lot of the books. When they are, they are color-coded for your convenience. Shiny dragons are good, rainbow dragons are bad. And they talk, but they don't really do much when they're not being ridden around. The only good part I can see is that since there are so many writers, some have tried to play around with the structure; there's a short story about an awkward misunderstanding with an albino silver dragon, and one where an evil dragon questions his evilness but doesn't actually follow-through (I think he dies, actually...). On the whole, though, for a serial with "Dragon" in the title, they don't really do a whole lot. Only ranks above Eragon because it is written by adults who should know better, but let's face it. They don't.
Now before you start calling me a hater, here are my top 5 good dragon books
5. "Eon: Dragoneye Reborn" - by Allison Goodman
Full review here. If you're too lazy to click on the link, it's about a girl who dresses as a boy in order to get a dragon companion. Which is a horrible plot, so you can imagine my surprise when it didn't quite suck. The setting is randomly Asian, and the dragons are life-draining energy beings rather than scaly kittens. The story isn't exceptional, but it has some good points and on the whole isn't bad.
4. "Dragon's Milk" - by Susan Fletcher
I haven't read these books in forever, so I can't give too many details. It might not be as good as I remember, and if I haven't read it in forever it probably isn't the best thing ever. But since I kept excusing "Dragonflight" for being a kid's book, here's another kid's book for contrast. The story is about a girl who ends up caring for three dragon hatchlings after their mother dies or something. They have to go on the run because people kill dragons in this world. And there are people in difficult situations making difficult choices and facing the consequences, instead of people in difficult situations making difficult choices and having their problems vanish as a reward for making the right choice. I think maybe one of the dragons died, too. Not sure. Kid's books can be pretty dark, you know.
3. The Dragon Quartet - by Marjorie B. Kellogg
This series is just frickin' weird. The first book takes place in medieval Germany, where this girl finds an earth-dragon and goes on this journey with it to find her destiny or something, ends up falling through some kind of time portal where, in the second book, she meets a boy from modern-day Africa who is bonded to a water dragon, and then they go back to medieval Germany for a brief bit and end up in this post-apocalyptic future run by a fire dragon, and the air dragon is really a computer, and the dragons are really transdimensional beings who incarnated at certain points in time in order to save the human race from global warming...or something like that. I should really re-read those. They're just so...weird. And different. See, that is what fantasy is supposed to mean - creating your own unique vision of a world. Not pseudo-medieval whiny farmboy kill the dark lord questing.
2. Age of Fire - by E.E. Knight
Think "Wicked" for Dragonlance. The original book, not the musical. It's a sort of dark reimagining of a familiar world (not Krynn specifically, just the whole freaking genre paradigm). You've got your elves/dwarves/humans/+2, and all kinds of crazy race relations. And you have the dragons. The book is told from the dragon's point of view as hominids try to kill them or enslave them. They end up sort of turning that around and starting a dragon empire and making it very clear that in the dragon/rider relationship, the dragon is boss. The characters are all very interesting, and in the latest (well, next-to-latest) I actually started to feel for them a bit (That poor Copper! - oh yes, it has amazing technicolor dragons, but physical appearance does not correlate with moral alignment), and I really want to read the last one, Dragon Fate.
1. Temeraire - by Naomi Novik
Napoleonic Wars. With dragons. It is awesome. Yes, the dragons tend toward the scaly kitten end of the spectrum, but they are not pastel greeting-card kittens, they are real live animals that poop on your floor. Metaphorically speaking. Actually, they are not animals. They are people, and Novik does well building a subplot of a sort of impending dragon civil rights movement (I'm only about halfway through the series). Also, historical detail. England, Africa, China, Ottoman Empire, Prussia...Holy crap, that woman has done her research. So yes, Temeraire is adorable. He talks (not telepathic, thank the gods). He chose his rider from the egg and loves him oh-so-much. And he is a slave. And seeing him struggle to compromise that with his love for his rider is so...woobifying. Squee.
Yeah. Dragons. You probably think I think too much about dragons. Funny that I don't usually write about dragons. There might be some in my shapeshifter story, but they're not really in the plot. Dragons just seem so overdone and so rarely done well. At the same time, all the possible subversions are already being done (and done well). So for the time being, I remain a dragon appreciater rather than a dragon writer.
Monday, August 15, 2011
What Not To Read
My latest obsession, it seems, is dragonriders and gender roles. So, in order to make my research complete, I tracked down what might be the only book by a male about dragonriders, that is not a subversion or Eragon: Dragonmaster, by Chris Bunch. It has been most educational.
Things I have learned from two chapters of Bunch:
Things I have learned from two chapters of Bunch:
1. Do not use run-on sentences, they are not, and will never be, your friend. Fragments, only sparingly when effective.
“Somewhere in the crags just above the village, and Hal thought he knew just where from his solitary, but not lonely, hill explorations, the beast had its nest. The nest where dragons had hatched their young for over a century.”
2. Do not overly smeerp. Worldbuilding is your friend, and if you can’t be bothered to think about how your society works, then you should not be writing fantasy.
“Naturally, we told them to go away or we’d call the warder…Tomorrow, before dawn, I’ll ride for the city and hire the best advocate I can…That’ll put a bit of a stave in their wheel.”
Suppose he had written:
“Naturally, we told them to go away or we’d call the police...Tomorrow, before dawn, I’ll drive into the city and hire the best lawyer I can…That’ll put a bit of a wrench in their works.”
Creating a medieval fantasyland is more than just replacing any modern references with period-sounding alternatives (though a toothbrush is still a toothbrush*). Apparently, even in this world where the poor are really oppressed, there is still a sort of justice system that even a poor restaurant owner tavern keeper can call on. Which never comes up again (presumably).
3. Your main character is not an author avatar. Go play a video game for that. Your main character has his (or her) own personality and ambitions. Don’t have them wander around aimlessly until they find plot.
“He’d been offered other steady work in the two years since he’d left the stony mining village, but had never accepted, not sure of the reason.”
The reason? The author needs you to not have any attachments so you can drop everything and chase the plot, whenever it should appear. He also needs you to keep moving so that you eventually find the plot. If you’re going to do that to your character, at least give them a real reason to be a rootless wanderer. It also doubles as character-building.
4. I don’t care how beer is made. The point of the chapter is that Hal gets drunk and tries to ride a dragon. We don’t need digressions into beer-making at the hops-picking harvest festival thingy that is never going to be mentioned again. There’s worldbuilding, and then there’s relevancy.
*A note about toothbrushes in fantasyland: They don’t often exist. Occasionally I have run across a mention of scrubbing teeth with baking soda (once, in 10,000 page series), or “tooth-sticks,” whatever those might be. They do seem rather modern to be in a pseudo-medieval world. However, according to Wikipedia, methods of dental cleaning have been around since 3000 B.C. Some ancient cultures chewed twigs from certain trees, and around the 14th century A.D. toothbrushes with animal-hair bristles were in use in parts of Asia. However, it is most likely that only those of wealth and status would have the luxury for that. Toothbrushes were not mass-produced in Europe until the late 18th century, but the word itself dates from 1690. Interestingly, tooth-brushing did not catch on in the U.S. until after WWII, when soldiers were required to brush their teeth every day.
In other words, if you want your characters to brush their teeth in fantasyland, you can damn well have them brush their teeth. It’s your world. The humble toothbrush does a good job of illustarting how difficult it is to make a convincing fantasyland; you have to consider every aspect of daily life, up to and including brushing one’s teeth.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Dragons Are Ponies For Boys
I just watched about a quarter of "How to Train Your Dragon." Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading the book first. I did keep my expectations prety low, but I had hoped that I would at least be able to recognize the story. I was quite disappointed, because the book showed the book as nasty, selfish creatures that had to be tamed by brute force, as opposed the the love-at-first-sight telepathic bond, and I had hoped that Dreamworks would be able to work with that; that they would like the gruesome and unromanticized view of dragons instead of the ponies. Alas, it was not to be.
No, seriously. Ponies. Dragons have been receiving the same sort of treatment for a long time. They are that beautiful creature who will carry you around and do anything for you because he loves you and you have a telepathic bond.
The funny thing about the dragonrider subgenre is that it is propogated almost solely by women. Yet most of the protagonists are male. It is as though girls are not expected to like dragons, even though the number of female writers in the subgenre begs to differ. Men, on the other hand, write more about dragonslaying than dragonriding.
What does this say about the sexes? Girls are more interested in having relationships, boys are more interested in killing things. So what else is new?
Girls like big scaly flying monsters is new. Girls don't just want oddly proportioned pastel equines. Girls like cool as much as cute. Why is this so hard? Why does this have to be disguised so much that McCaffery's weyrs are exclusively male except for the token chick, Goodman's Eona even has to disguise as a boy to become a dragon-whatever (okay, I haven't actually read that one. You know how I feel about Crossdressing Epics). In Eona's case, anyway, it seems like it should be the other way around.
Apparently, this concept is quite hard to grasp. Well, I guess I'll add "female dragonrider" to my list of ideas for stories I may or may not ever write.
No, seriously. Ponies. Dragons have been receiving the same sort of treatment for a long time. They are that beautiful creature who will carry you around and do anything for you because he loves you and you have a telepathic bond.
The funny thing about the dragonrider subgenre is that it is propogated almost solely by women. Yet most of the protagonists are male. It is as though girls are not expected to like dragons, even though the number of female writers in the subgenre begs to differ. Men, on the other hand, write more about dragonslaying than dragonriding.
What does this say about the sexes? Girls are more interested in having relationships, boys are more interested in killing things. So what else is new?
Girls like big scaly flying monsters is new. Girls don't just want oddly proportioned pastel equines. Girls like cool as much as cute. Why is this so hard? Why does this have to be disguised so much that McCaffery's weyrs are exclusively male except for the token chick, Goodman's Eona even has to disguise as a boy to become a dragon-whatever (okay, I haven't actually read that one. You know how I feel about Crossdressing Epics). In Eona's case, anyway, it seems like it should be the other way around.
Apparently, this concept is quite hard to grasp. Well, I guess I'll add "female dragonrider" to my list of ideas for stories I may or may not ever write.
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