A Critique of the LotR BOOKS

[Kahuna Burger]

You have to give him credit for making recycling-the-plot a part of the story in the Malloreon, though

The characters have philosophical discussions on the fact!

-Hyp.

Technicly, this puts the "recycling the plot" complaint into the exact same boat as the "divine providence" complaint about tolkien - its not bad writing if its part of the fundemental makeup of his world and the theme of the book. Good for the goose...

To digress slightly, though, the idea in Eddings of competing prophecies, and a prophecy as a force that tries to bring something about rather than merely predicting it stuck with me beyond anything else from those books, and has been incorporated almost wholesale into my ideas of how to use prophecy and "choosen ones" in roleplaying games without running into predestination problems. A prophecy is a plan, not a promise. You have a sacred destiny, but so does the guy you're fighting, so don't get cocky.

Kahuna Burger

 

[Orius]

Eddings has done the same, but I don't think either Eddings' or Jordan's worldviews match up to Tolkien's. Tolkien has an immensely developed history, mythology, geography, cultures, etc that are linked to a remarkable depth by his study and development of language -- a field in which I believe he is unmatched among fiction writers. The Silmarillion, Books of Lost Tales, Book of Unfinished Tales, LotR Appendices, etc are a tremendous amount of additional depth.

I'd say Jordan comes close to Tolkien; his history of the current Age is fairly well developed. Tolkien has more linguistic deveopment and a longer history, but the history tends to focus on the Eldar, Edain, and to a lesser extent the various groups of Northmen and the dwarves.

Jordan's history focuses mainly on the area of the continent where the stories take place, but there's lot of cultural diversity there. Then there's the Aiel, the Sea Folk, and the Seanchans, and Seanchan is hardly monolithic either. So while the last few books have been a little flat, he has built a pretty impressive world.

Eddings is nowhere even close. His cultures are little ore than a bunch of cliched cultural archetypes thrown together, and most members of those cultures all walk, talk and apparently think alike.

 

[Orius]

I reread the Belgariad about once a year, on average, and the Malloreon and the two Sparhawk trilogies about half that often.

The first half of the Belgariad is good. After that, he really drags things out. Part of the problem is that he introduces too many unimportant characters that are somehow tied in with this prophecy, yet do almost nothing.

The Elenium is fairly good, though he pads out parts of it, particularly the second volume, with meaningless crap. The Tamuli could have been good, but it gets dragged down by even more padding, and by Edding's social and political prejudices.

 

[Orius]

Technicly, this puts the "recycling the plot" complaint into the exact same boat as the "divine providence" complaint about tolkien - its not bad writing if its part of the fundemental makeup of his world and the theme of the book. Good for the goose...

No, Eddings takes that bad writing to a huge extreme, they repeat things nearly point-for-point at least a half a dozen times, and then comment on it. Here's a sample passage from any one of the five books of The Mallorean:

Garion: Grandpa, didn't we do this before?
Belgarath: Why you're right, it must be the prophecy!

Even worse then any deux ex machina Tolkien ever used.

 

[Vocenoctum]

No, Eddings takes that bad writing to a huge extreme, they repeat things nearly point-for-point at least a half a dozen times, and then comment on it. Here's a sample passage from any one of the five books of The Mallorean:

Garion: Grandpa, didn't we do this before?
Belgarath: Why you're right, it must be the prophecy!

Even worse then any deux ex machina Tolkien ever used.

It's even worse in Redemption of Althaus.
Besides the fact his "redemption" is more like "indoctrination", if you're held captive long enough, you come around...
They used the same phrases and such over and over. It was so plentiful that I actually stopped seeing them, just skimming over the repetitive dialogue...

I liked the other series (Belgariad, Mallorean, the two Rose's) and The Losers is a great book. The Belgarath & Polgara books were so-so, and Redemption killed it for me.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Took me a while to catch up on this topic, which has been for the most part, a great read (Kudos to the consistent posters who kept things interesting and relatively tidy). But I felt the need to address one (off-topic) thing...

NOBODY'S comments should carry any more weight than anybody else's.

On the internet? Or in real life?

No personal offense intended, but really... that's the biggest load of bunk I've ever heard.

Unfortunately, I seem to hear it every day anymore.

Example, my advisor is a widely published and respected expert in the evolution and development of mammalian brains. Accepting your thesis would mean that the quotes about garlic and tinfoil my aunt pulls out of poorly written health magazines about alzheimer's are as valid as my advisor's opinions on the debatable origins of this disease.

BUNK.

In the absence of hard facts, an informed opinion is 100x as useful and informative as an uninformed one. Expertise and study are ALWAYS an important part of evaluating an opinion. Expertise is fundamentally unimportant to most internet discussion, which generally falls in the realm of "I don't like such and such a book because the characters are STOOO-pid!" But if we wanted to, for example, seriously compare the merits of LotR as an epic in the vein of The Illiad or Beowulf vs as a modern novel, then we need people who understand the significant characteristics and differences of those forms.

 

[barsoomcore]

No personal offense intended, but really... that's the biggest load of bunk I've ever heard.

My point is that informed people can be just as stupid as uninformed people. The fact that a statement is made by somebody with expertise doesn't make it a correct or useful statement.

Not bunk. Just being intelligent.

In the absence of hard facts, an informed opinion is 100x as useful and informative as an uninformed one.

Only if it happens to be correct. An incorrect informed opinion will be 1X as harmful and informative as an incorrect uninformed opinion.

Expertise and study are ALWAYS an important part of evaluating an opinion.

Only in the absence of facts. Expertise and study should be explicitly NOT used to evaluate an opinion which we are capable of determining the truth or usefulness of ourselves.

A class to which I suggest all criticism falls into.

But if we wanted to, for example, seriously compare the merits of LotR as an epic in the vein of The Illiad or Beowulf vs as a modern novel, then we need people who understand the significant characteristics and differences of those forms.

Only to help us come up with ideas, if we were stuck. But I suggest you and I are perfectly capable of comparing said merits -- given enough time to do the research and think things through.

Will Harold Bloom probably have more (and more interesting things to say) about this topic? Yeah, probably. But that doesn't mean that every statement he makes should be accepted as true, or even considered more or less carefully than the statements we make.

I bet if we considered the content of your advisor's statements about Alzheimer's with those of your aunt, the question of which statements were more likely to be true would be clear -- without paying any attention to WHO they originated from.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Took me a while to catch up on this topic, which has been for the most part, a great read (Kudos to the consistent posters who kept things interesting and relatively tidy). But I felt the need to address one (off-topic) thing...


On the internet? Or in real life?

No personal offense intended, but really... that's the biggest load of bunk I've ever heard.

Unfortunately, I seem to hear it every day anymore.

Example, my advisor is a widely published and respected expert in the evolution and development of mammalian brains. Accepting your thesis would mean that the quotes about garlic and tinfoil my aunt pulls out of poorly written health magazines about alzheimer's are as valid as my advisor's opinions on the debatable origins of this disease.

BUNK.

In the absence of hard facts, an informed opinion is 100x as useful and informative as an uninformed one. Expertise and study are ALWAYS an important part of evaluating an opinion. Expertise is fundamentally unimportant to most internet discussion, which generally falls in the realm of "I don't like such and such a book because the characters are STOOO-pid!" But if we wanted to, for example, seriously compare the merits of LotR as an epic in the vein of The Illiad or Beowulf vs as a modern novel, then we need people who understand the significant characteristics and differences of those forms.

And what does that mean to the reader? I couldn't care less how "correct" a book is by literary conventions. If it entertains me it's a good book. If it bores the out of me then it's a crappy book. A lot of classics fall into the crappy book section IMO. Same with movies. Terms of Endearment was a snoozefest of crap. But it's a "classic". Why would I pay any attention to the critics who proclaim this kind of stuff?

 

[barsoomcore]

Why would I pay any attention to the critics who proclaim this kind of stuff?

You might possibly want to note their email address for future sale to porn spammers...

But that's just my opinion. I'm not an EXPERT, I hasten to add.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Perhaps I was a bit strident in stating my case. This topic touches a nerve, as I am constantly exposed to students who don't know anything about anything and yet are sublimely convinced that they're right on all subjects. Sorry.

In any case, I was talking about these various opinions on "literary merit" and such. We are all equally qualified to judge whether we find something fun or entertaining, and someone's "expert" opinion on the merits of a book doesn't suddenly make it succeed or fail to entertain. Some can say that Aragorn lacks a well-realized character arc while others can consider his relatively static nature a better example of a mythic hero (which it certainly is, IMO, though that's not how I prefer my heroes, personally). We can debate until we're blue in the face the apparent "Divine providence" of Frodo stumbling across in the wilderness the only human on the face of Middle Earth who wouldn't even pick up the ring if it were laying on the ground (and furthermore why this guy, who is, by this action, apparently wiser and more virtuous than Aragorn, wouldn't be the ideal choice in a King). And we can all throw around equally valid opinions on such nebulous ideas as the "quality" of the book. But when you get into such areas as trying to decide if LotR should be evaluated as a modern novel, a romantic epic, or a religious epic, I think there's room for informed opinions. And, dare I say it, a scholar in literature is probably more qualified than most of us geeks.