Warts and all...

In the spirit of what I think could be a very interesting--and hopefully not at all vitriolic --discussion, I propose the following:

Discuss one or more things you consider to be weaknesses or bad points of novels (or novel series) that you otherwise really like.

I'm actually fascinated in seeing what people come up with. I'll throw in some of my own after things get rolling. (If things get rolling, and enough people care to prevent this thread from dying a sad, lonely death.)

"I'll be your Huckleberry"

I think JRRT did a fine job with adapting the folklore, legends, myths and epic poetry with which he was so familiar into his own story in novel form...

But I think he also failed to escape one of epic poetry's flaws: pacing. Some portions of the LotR saga mimic the older forms so well, they drag just like those older forms.

I'm gonna disagree to an extent with Dan on this one. I leek the pacing of the Nordic Sagas and enjoyed the Silmarillion much more than the LOTR precisely it was like a Saga. In the Sagas things happen more like real life.

I find such forms very refreshing from the modern obsession with quick, tight, formulaic, there must be a big explosion or a calculated something every "X" number of seconds or scenes. Modern writing is in my opinion far to "calculating,", far too "calculated" and far too impatient and artificially and unrealistically structured.

I think this comes from modern people's obsession with films and television where everything solved in an hour and life itself (or big chunks of it) is compressed to a two hour film. And that can lead to some awful exciting writing, taking that view of story-telling, but it also leads to an artificial view of storytelling and a contrived view of viewing life. So, depending on what I'm reading, I like long night watches and periods of time in my book where you can't really guess what is gonna happen til you get there, and you might not get there until you've hiked the whole hundred miles. Then again I like the Russian writers too.


On the other hand, and although it doesn't make me stop reading it, one American who I think has mastered the "Wandering around Saga" is GRR Martin. He is often an extremely good writer, sometimes he is excellent. But two things bother me about some of his writings.

First all his characters are more like modern people than from the age I or he envisions them arising. Except Dany (in some respects). But that's okay, I understand. Martin is writing for modern audiences who think that everyone from every age of history has had their outlook on life, a cynical and sort of hopeless one, their mode of speech and so forth and so on. So he wants to appeal to us, but he still does so by writing in modern characters (for the most part) into settings and time periods that would not have produced modern people. Or even semi-modern people.

Secondly his stories go nowhere. He has mastered the Saga, and Eddas style of "wandering around" but he actually never goes anywhere. He just keeps wandering around endlessly with no real point or end. I don't really mean to compare him to Tolkien, and he shouldn't be (I've heard a lot of people draw comparisons, but really, I don't see how they are similar except in the most general of ways), but the LOTR had a point. There was a purpose and a goal to the story and to what the characters were actually trying to achieve. The good characters and the bad characters.

A lot of characters in Martin's books want the Iron Throne. But none of them seem to have any idea why (other than power) and tradition (that's what you're supposed to want), or what to do with it once they get it. They just want it but couldn't really tell ya why, what they will do with it, or what the point of it all would be. Again, a lot like the viewpoint of modern life to me. Do things, but don't know why, or where you're going, or what it means. You just do things because that's what ya do. But there is no good or high or noble end for most of them. (Maybe that's not true of Dany.) But most of them are consumed with that typical modern outlook of "it is better to be complex and complicated and self-absorbed" than have a real point to your life. Which to me is more of the same old tiresome same old tiresome.

I like his books. They are often well written, the characters are sometimes fascinating even if pointless, the stories interesting, sometimes he borders on High Art or even creates some liens of it, but his books never really go anywhere. They just sort of wander around without any real purpose to them.

So instead of ending up Epic Fantasy his books end up being a "wander around the frontiers of modern life without knowing where you're going or why." I call that "Fantasy Modernity" (or fantasy post-modernity or post-post-new modernity or whatever the current en vogue terminology of the moment du jour is) rather than Epic Fantasy.

Again, I like his books. I just wish they had a point to them, or actually went somewhere.

There Mouse. That oughtta get ya a few arguments and exchanges.
(Though that's not why I wrote what I said. I meant every word.)

Steig Larsen's Millennium trilogy. Great books that shift nicely between a few genres, but jeez - does every woman in existence want to bed the author avatar/lead male character?

In the Sagas things happen more like real life.

Click to expand...

Not really- if everyone spent 20 minutes reciting their ancestry when being introduced, I believe we'd have more homicides.

Or to put it a different way, I find that LotR, like some of its source material, spends too much time on prose that does not forward the plot, but instead shows us only the depth of thought JRRT put into his creation. In the epics, this kind of detail- while somewhat boring to me- was functional. Among other things, it showed how characters connected to the world in which the listeners existed; it told people who to care about and why.

In LotR, since the world is entirely fictional, that kind of detail is emulationary gilding. It is the author mimicking the form because he can, not because it makes the story better.

Once you've read one fantasy book, you've read them all.

That's why I love GRRM so much. He gave me a fantasy novel that I could really get into without groaning over the same old same old.

That and the writing. I read the first couple of pages of a book and decide then and there whether or not I will continue. What grabs me isn't the story, you can't really do that in a few pages. What grabs me is the writing.

I think there are far too many writers out there who aren't true writers. They slam out page after page but none of it is really art. Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, these people wrote poetry on the page, not just a spewed bunch of words. In this day and age, anyone with enough will can pump out a novel and call themselves a writer, but it takes genuine skill and a mastery of ones craft to be an artist.

This is why I've stopped even trying to find good authors. Everything I pick up is just crap on a page. I can write crap on a page. Why would I want to pay to read something I could write?

if everyone spent 20 minutes reciting their ancestry when being introduced, I believe we'd have more homicides.

Click to expand...

That line was so good Dan I was gonna give ya experience points. But alas, according to the site, I've spared you too many already. But ya made me laugh.

But what I meant in this case was that they were more like real life in that totally unexpected things come up out of the blue, and often the characters are obviously not involved in formulaic plot contrivances, but in things they had in no way expected or anticipated. That is in events that did not advance the plot at all but that told you a lot about how life is often filled with the totally unexpected, even the weird, the bizarre, and the disturbing.

I think there are far too many writers out there who aren't true writers. They slam out page after page but none of it is really art. Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, these people wrote poetry on the page, not just a spewed bunch of words. In this day and age, anyone with enough will can pump out a novel and call themselves a writer, but it takes genuine skill and a mastery of ones craft to be an artist.

Click to expand...

I'll sure agree with ya there. Not always but often enough Martin is a superb writer. He's way ahead of most modern fantasy writers, but in some respects he's way ahead of most modern writers.


Now for something completely different. As much as I like to read Robert Parker, and the cases he writes about, and as good and Hemingwayesque as his writing is, if any Dick or Policemen shot as many people as the characters in his books do, then they'd either be dead or in jail. He was a superb writer I thought, but his characters shot an awful lot of people without anyone ever really coming down on em. You might could get away with that in Rwanada, but you couldn't in Boston, or in Paradise. So that bothers me.

And one last thing. Batman, kill the Joker and Black Mask. Superman, kill Lex Luthor and Darkseid. Spiderman, kill the Kingpin and Green Goblin. They aren't just criminals, they are mass murderers and serial killers and terrorists. You say you wanna protect and defend the innocent? No you don't. Or you'd kill the men who make a practice of repeatedly and unrepentantly murdering the innocent.

Every innocent some idiot butcher slaughtered because you lacked the guts to kill them (especially after it became blatantly obvious they kill and destroy habitually), well, that blood sits at your feet.

Sure it's just comic books, but it churns my guts that comic book writers and comic book superheroes care more about the lives of a Joker than they do about the lives of the past, present, and future victims of a Joker or some other "super-criminal."

No "super-criminal" (what an oxymoron) is worth anywhere near his own weight in innocent blood and homemade gunpowder. So whack em already and save everybody else from having to dig more mass graves. Just the one will do.

David Weber. I really like some of his stuff (mostly the Starfire books), but one glaring weakness is his love of "Mary Sue's". Sometimes he keeps it in check, other times...ouch. This is the main reason I never finished Off Armageddon Reef or any of his Honor Harrington books. Out of the Dark suffered from another weakness - his use of deus ex machina resolutions to situations. The good news is that these weaknesses don't appear in every book, at least not so much that I can't enjoy a number of his works.

Timothy Zahn. I love almost everything he has written. That said, I'm disappointed that he has moved away from hard sci-fi to focus more on "lite" sci-fi. It's still science fiction (as opposed to science fantasy), but more and more the science takes a back seat to everything else. Some of his early short stories are fascinating for the science itself, with the characters and story almost as a bonus. Of course, I understand - the man has to make a living and really, how many buyers want a story about black holes, electron shells, and so forth? Oh well...

Jack Chalker, of Well World fame. Good, inventive stuff in his works. But man does he love his body swapping/morphing/sex change stories. I think I've read exactly one book by him that does not involve anyone changing bodies and/or gender. (Though the ending was weak, I'm tempted to use that book as an adventure idea...)

Ann McCaffery, Dragonriders of Pern series. Tends to write the same book, over and over, whether it's Pern, Freedom, brainships, Acorna. That said, I still enjoy the first Dragonriders books, especially the Harper Hall series.

Jack7 said:

And one last thing. Batman, kill the Joker and Black Mask. Superman, kill Lex Luthor and Darkseid. Spiderman, kill the Kingpin and Green Goblin. They aren't just criminals, they are mass murderers and serial killers and terrorists. You say you wanna protect and defend the innocent? No you don't. Or you'd kill the men who make a practice of repeatedly and unrepentantly murdering the innocent.

Click to expand...

That's long been my pet peeve about so-called Super Heroes.

But to the question. I love David Weber's Honor Harrington series, but he has a tendency to screw up his science. On big things. Forex: The normal space drive he uses for his space ships would actually work in exactly the opposite way that he describes. (Assuming that it would work at all, of course, but we'll give him that one.)

Edit: Croesus posted while I was writing. I disagree that David Weber's characters are Mary Sue's. They do have many of the trappings, but they are also much more defined/driven, IMHO. (And they often go through hell if they're around long enough, unlike the typical MS.)

But what I meant in this case was that they were more like real life in that totally unexpected things come up out of the blue, and often the characters are obviously not involved in formulaic plot contrivances, but in things they had in no way expected or anticipated. That is in events that did not advance the plot at all but that told you a lot about how life is often filled with the totally unexpected, even the weird, the bizarre, and the disturbing.

Click to expand...

A lot of the stuff in Sagas is no less fomulaic than what you find in novels. Its just a different formula.

I love LotR. I just think JRRT took his emulation of his inspirations too far.

Look at it this way: one of the major ingredients in Rock & Roll is the Blues. Many of the forms & progressions of the Blues are still present today's R&R releases.

But when you hear a blues-rock guitarist simply ape Robert Johnson, its a turn-off. The best of the blues-rock guitarists bring something new to the sonic landscape beyond mere recycling of 100 year old song structures.