[After a brisk nap]

Heh. Time for another stupid debate with over-the-top generalizations!

Originally Posted by Jack Allin

Once upon a time, when the genre was still a child, the world was filled with fantasy adventures. From Daventry to Discworld, from Kyrandia to the G.U.E., it was an innocent age of dragons and castles, villains and wizards. The only limit to fantasy was imagination

Fantasy fans often rave about how fantasy gives you so much more freedom than mainstream fiction. Then why is almost all fantasy so incredibly conventional?

It's all some fifth-hand distorted version of medieval Europe, with some dragons or wizards thrown in. Young boy discovers he is the Chosen One. Forces of darkness do their thing. Yawn!

The only limit of fantasy may be your imagination, but judging by most fantasy, that imagination is pretty limited. Keepsake doesn't look like it's going to push these boundaries. (It may still be a great game.) Where's the fantasy that displays real creativity, and doesn't just regurgitate JRR Tolkien?

[SakSquash]

Fantasy = Blah

But that's just me.

[Dasilva]

I agree most Fantasy is cliche', but there are many gret fantasy series' that are futuristic, I love futuristic fantasy like Longest Jouney & Final Fantasy.

[Lucien21]

There is plenty of good fantasy that doesn't follow that crap LOTR book.

GRR Martin- Song of Fire and Ice is fantastic and not an wizard or chosen one in sight.

David Gemmell - More Heroic Fantasy than straight Fantasy but fantastic stuff.

Stephen King - Dark Tower series. Mixes present day and fantasy elements.

There are plenty of others that don't constrain themselves to the LOTR blueprint.

Fantasy isn't limited by the imagination. It's constrained by having to inhabit a world with no technology(usually replaced by magic). Hence the medievel feel of a lot of the books.

Science Fiction is more expansive in its range of only being constrained by your imagination.

The best creativity comes where the lines between fantasy and sci fi become blurred.

[Aj_]

In some ways sci-fi is the new fantasy(both being shit), it breaks down into throwing in uninteresting one-dimensional cliches for the sake of making sci-fi or fantasy(mastubatory if you will). It should never be for the sake of the fantasy or sci-fi elements, but then there are so many examples of this.

[Dasilva]

Every original idea has already been done, I think there arent any original concepts left in this world. Thats just me.

[Lucien21]

Everyones a cynic.

[Karmillo]

I like what Terry Pratchet does with fantasy

[Jazhara7]

Snarky, I suggest you read Garth Nix' "Old Kingdom" series. The books are (in order) "Sabriel", "Lirael", and "Abhorsen". You won't be able to put them down, and I can guarantee you that they are not at all conventional - Garth Nix is a genius!



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[RLacey]

Originally Posted by Lucien21

Stephen King - Dark Tower series. Mixes present day and fantasy elements.

Isn't the first book in that series called The Gunslinger or something? That book seriously could win an award for worst-sex-scenes-in-a-novel...

[squarejawhero]

^agreed. It wasn't Kings best and put me off reading the rest, although I understand it was quite an early book.

[Jazhara7]

Oh, and if nothing else will work for you, why don't you try reading some of the "Chicks in Chainmail" books edited by Esther Friesner? They're fantasy Satire. Everything from Plastic wizardry to Hillary Clinton trying to reform the Valkyries in Valhalla.


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[colpet]

I've recently become more enamored by Fantasy novels. Firstly, I'm a big Tolkien fan, and I'm constantly looking for the next novel that carries me away like the LotR books. So, in some respect, I like the comfort of a predictable good over evil type of epic tale. I thought that the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books (Tad Williams) fit the bill. I also enjoy King Arthur/Merlin stories and the different takes some authors have. Another common theme is the fish out of water story - eg. Thomas Covenant , The Hickory Staff, War of the Flowers. I like reading about a modern day person being dragged into another world.
His Dark Materials trilogy was a more innovative story. I liked the way religion was set on its end.
I guess you could say that most fantasy is derivative of something else; yet somehow the better stories still manage to be different enough to keep me reading the genre.

The best creativity comes where the lines between fantasy and sci fi become blurred

I think the Otherland books (Tad Williams) did this well.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

I need to start reading some Isaac Asimov stuff (no, not the Foundation books, waaaay too long for me right now). I like how he works - sci-fi fantasy with a conscience.

Otherwise fantasy stuff don't interest me at all. Too boring and cliched.

[Ninth]

Originally Posted by colpet

I think the Otherland books (Tad Williams) did this well.

Yep. Very interesting stuff (albeit a bit too long in my opinino; I could have done without a least a book). Thanks again Lucien for recommending this.

I love Fantasy, so of course I disagree with most of what's been said in this thread. And of course, being fantasy doesn't make a book good, or bad, it's mostly a settings for the thing that are being told. A setting that I happen to enjoy immensely.
It's all about being bigger than life. Fantasy brings down some boundaries, and allows me to have a look of a world where everything can be more colorful, more contrasted, and in the end more interesting. It rarely the case, because as with other genres, quality is rare, but when that happens, fantasy takes me much further away from myself than any other genre could. and that is, after all, the reason why I'm reading.

EDIT: If I had only one series to recommend, I would go with A Song of ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin. It's as far away from The Lord of The Ring as a fantasy book can possibly be, it's written beautifully, set in a credible world, full of intrigues (but ones that a human can actually understand, as opposed to the intrigues in Dune ) and has a lot of fascinating characters. It talks about a world where there's no such thing as a hero, or a villain, a world where pretty much everything can and does happen, leading the reader from one emotion to another.
And that's a series I don't hesitate in calling brilliant, which is not the case of almost all the other fantasy books I've read, even some that I love, like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time.

Second to this series is in my opinion the Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb. It's the story of a very young boy that gets himself caught in the plots of the grown-ups. It's told in first person, with such ability that it's almost impossible not to feel deeply for the hero while reading.

[After a brisk nap]

I've read a lot of fantasy ever since childhood. You know: Tolkien, CS Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Ende, Lindgren, Garner, Le Guin, Leiber, Jordan, Feist, Pratchett, Weis & Hickman, Hobb, Gentle, Banks, Maguire, Pullman, Rowling (a tiny bit), White, Wurtz, ... and a bunch of others I can't think of right now. In addition to this I've played fantasy games, watched fantasy movies, read fantasy comics, ... but thankfully never listened to fantasy music.

Some of it is crap, and some of it is pretty good. But whatever the quality, the setting (and they're all more or less the same) is getting incredibly tired by now. Jazhara recommended the "Old Kingdom" series by Garth Nix. This is the blurb from his website:

Sabriel is the daughter of the Mage Abhorsen. Ever since she was a tiny child, she has lived outside the Wall of the Old Kingdom - far away from the uncontrolled power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who won't stay dead. But now her father is missing and Sabriel is called upon to cross back into that world to find him. Leaving the safety of the school she has known as home, Sabriel embarks upon a quest fraught with supernatural dangers, with companions she is unsure of - for nothing is as it seems within the boundary of the Old Kingdom. There she confronts an evil that threatens much more than her life, and comes face to face with her hidden destiny...

SABRIEL is the first book in a breathtaking new trilogy by Garth Nix

I'm sorry to say, Jazhara, that I'm not going to be reading the Old Kingdom series. In fact, if I ever read another book with a synopsis like that, I think my head is going to implode.

It's so depressing. Here's a genre that supposedly allows you to do anything you want, and the only thing anyone wants to do is to write what essentially amounts to Everquest fanfiction.

Sadly, the best fantasy I've read has mostly been for children, when the authors don't mind the genre conventions so much (or possibly the kind of writer who writes children's books is just more imaginative than your average fantasy writer). The Moomins live in a more richly and originally imagined world than most sword and sorcery paperback heroes. Roald Dahl wrote several good fantasy stories. Lewis Carroll's Alice stories are classics. Recently there was Neil Gaiman's Coraline (though that type of story is itself becoming a convention).

It seems to me that the few authors who live up to what fantasy promises aren't fantasy authors at all, but writers like Kafka, Borges, Ballard, or Rushdie, who have thrown off the shackles of realism, and allow their imagination to take them to new territories, not the same old ground that's been covered a hundred times over.

[Jazhara7]

Originally Posted by Snarky

I've read a lot of fantasy ever since childhood. You know: Tolkien, CS Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Ende, Lindgren, Le Guin, Leiber, Jordan, Feist, Pratchett, Weis & Hickman, Hobb, Gentle, Banks, Maguire, Pullman, Rowling (a tiny bit), White, Wurtz, ... and a bunch of others I can't think of right now. In addition to this I've played fantasy games, watched fantasy movies, read fantasy comics, ... but thankfully never listened to fantasy music.

Some of it is crap, and some of it is pretty good. But whatever the quality, the setting (and they're all more or less the same) is getting incredibly tired by now. Jazhara recommended the "Old Kingdom" series by Garth Nix. This is the blurb from his website:

I'm sorry to say, Jazhara, that I'm not going to be reading the Old Kingdom series. In fact, if I ever read another book with a synopsis like that, I think my head is going to implode.

It's so depressing. Here's a genre that supposedly allows you to do anything you want, and the only thing anyone wants to do is to write what essentially amounts to Everquest fanfiction.

Sadly, the best fantasy I've read has mostly been for children, when the authors don't mind the genre conventions so much (or possibly the kind of writer who writes children's books is just more imaginative than your average fantasy writer). The Moomins live in a more richly and originally imagined world than most sword and sorcery paperback heroes. Roald Dahl wrote several good fantasy stories. Lewis Carroll's Alice stories are classics. Recently there was Neil Gaiman's Coraline (though that type of story is itself becoming a convention).

It seems to me that the few authors who live up to what fantasy promises aren't fantasy authors at all, but writers like Kafka, Borges, Ballard, or Rushdie, who have thrown off the shackles or realism, and allow their imagination to take them to new territories, not the same old ground that's been covered a hundred times over.

Um, they're kind of forgetting to mention that she's lived all her life inside Ancelstierre, which does not have magic. In fact, Ancelstierre is a more modern ( complete with cars, machine guns and the like) kingdom. The Old Kingdom in comparison is pretty backwards in sense of technology, because in the presence of magic (I believe of both Free Magic, and Charter Magic) technology stops working. The border troops, for example, are aware of that fact, and wear real metal armour with their modern protection, because they know that in the worst case, machine manufactured things might desintegrate into their compounds. They also carry bladed weapons for one of those scenarios, because you can't be sure that guns will work. The government of Ancelstierre, being located farther south and completely out of reach of the magic influence of the Old Kingdom, does not believe in magic in the Old Kingdom, and say it is superstition.

By the way, Sabriel's school is a perfectly normal boarding school for girls. Nothing magic about that. You could find dozens of those in modern day England.

Don't let the first impression fool you, Snarky. At least try to find out if they maybe have one of the books at your local library, and read some of the book. Then decide if you won't like it.

Charter Magic is a whole story for itself (I want to have a Charter Mark!!!)


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[Stoofa]

Originally Posted by Jazhara7

Snarky, I suggest you read Garth Nix' "Old Kingdom" series. The books are (in order) "Sabriel", "Lirael", and "Abhorsen". You won't be able to put them down, and I can guarantee you that they are not at all conventional - Garth Nix is a genius!

I LOVE those books. I also love Philip Pulman's trilogy. I had a soft spot for YA fiction.

*

Anyway, if someone doesn't like Fantasy they don't like Fantasy. I'm not going to argue. I don't particularly care for Old Westerns or Romance genre books and I wouldn't take too kindly to someone trying to bully me into reading it. Of course, like all fiction, some Fantasy is crap and some is wonderful. You have to separate the wheat from the chafe, but if you don't like wheat to begin with that's useless.

One good thing about reading Fantasy books with doofy cover art is that nobody bothers me on the bus asking what my book's about.

[colpet]

Oooh! Keep the suggestions coming, people. Not that I want to hijack the thread, but I'm interested in seeing some recommendations. PM me if need be.

[After a brisk nap]

Originally Posted by Jazhara7

Um, they're kind of forgetting to mention that she's lived all her life inside Ancelstierre, which does not have magic. In fact, Ancelstierre is a more modern ( complete with cars, machine guns and the like) kingdom. The Old Kingdom in comparison is pretty backwards in sense of technology, because in the presence of magic (I believe of both Free Magic, and Charter Magic) technology stops working. The border troops, for example, are aware of that fact, and wear real metal armour with their modern protection, because they know that in the worst case, machine manufactured things might desintegrate into their compounds. They also carry bladed weapons for one of those scenarios, because you can't be sure that guns will work. The government of Ancelstierre, being located farther south and completely out of reach of the magic influence of the Old Kingdom, does not believe in magic in the Old Kingdom, and say it is superstition.

By the way, Sabriel's school is a perfectly normal boarding school for girls. Nothing magic about that. You could find dozens of those in modern day England.

Don't let the first impression fool you, Snarky. At least try to find out if they maybe have one of the books at your local library, and read some of the book. Then decide if you won't like it.

No offense, Jaz. Your recommendation was simply the first author I hadn't heard of, so I looked him up.

But I can't say your explanation is doing anything to convince me. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm sick of. It might be very good at what it does, but the setup is entirely conventional.

I wasn't really looking for recommendations. Certainly not for traditional, high fantasy or sword-and-sorcery stories. It doesn't give me confidence that the writers I have read out of those mentioned (Philip Pullman, Robin Hobb), are so squarely conservative in their imaginations.

Maybe I just don't like fantasy all that much. My point is that I think I would like it if it lived up to what it promises: a genre where the only limits are your imagination.