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China Mieville on Tolkien and Epic/High Fantasy
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<blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1211696" data-attributes="member: 812"><p>Brust: read <em>The Sun, The Moon and the Stars</em>, <em>Agyar</em>, and then work your way through the Vlad Taltos books and the Paarfi romances. The first two Taltos books are good, if not particularly innovative. It's with the third book that things start to turn around. He starts to play around with our expectations of a hero, a protagonist, with the notion of narratorial authority. His command of language and structure goes beyond any writer I'm aware of. </p><p></p><p>A Brust novel is constructed like a real Rolex -- not one of those fakes you used to be able to buy on the streets of Bangkok, where the second hand made a little tick with each motion, but a REAL Rolex, where the second hand sweeps smoothly, silently around the dial in remorseless precision. Michael Ondaatje beats him for sensual poetry, but nobody tops Brust for precise diction and keen phrasing.</p><p></p><p>I don't consider mixing genres to be a substitute for innovation. Gibson was innovative (or at any rate <em>Neuromancer</em> was innovative) because he used a whole new type of language to talk about a whole new set of ideas -- namely, how the interconnectedness of data affected our world. Brust is innovative because again he's brought a new kind of language to bear on a new set of ideas -- largely the question of how to maintain heroism in the face of life's constant mundanity. Which, at the time he started writing was a pretty new idea in fantasy -- interesting that both he and Glen Cook started exploring that at about the same time. Cook just isn't (bless him to pieces) as talented a writer as Brust.</p><p></p><p>Just to blithely sum up three complicated writers in a couple of nice, sound-bitey sentences.</p><p></p><p>Mieville doesn't appear skilled enough a writer, nor imaginative enough a thinker, to do this. Certainly I don't think <em>Perdido</em> did.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="barsoomcore, post: 1211696, member: 812"] Brust: read [i]The Sun, The Moon and the Stars[/i], [i]Agyar[/i], and then work your way through the Vlad Taltos books and the Paarfi romances. The first two Taltos books are good, if not particularly innovative. It's with the third book that things start to turn around. He starts to play around with our expectations of a hero, a protagonist, with the notion of narratorial authority. His command of language and structure goes beyond any writer I'm aware of. A Brust novel is constructed like a real Rolex -- not one of those fakes you used to be able to buy on the streets of Bangkok, where the second hand made a little tick with each motion, but a REAL Rolex, where the second hand sweeps smoothly, silently around the dial in remorseless precision. Michael Ondaatje beats him for sensual poetry, but nobody tops Brust for precise diction and keen phrasing. I don't consider mixing genres to be a substitute for innovation. Gibson was innovative (or at any rate [i]Neuromancer[/i] was innovative) because he used a whole new type of language to talk about a whole new set of ideas -- namely, how the interconnectedness of data affected our world. Brust is innovative because again he's brought a new kind of language to bear on a new set of ideas -- largely the question of how to maintain heroism in the face of life's constant mundanity. Which, at the time he started writing was a pretty new idea in fantasy -- interesting that both he and Glen Cook started exploring that at about the same time. Cook just isn't (bless him to pieces) as talented a writer as Brust. Just to blithely sum up three complicated writers in a couple of nice, sound-bitey sentences. Mieville doesn't appear skilled enough a writer, nor imaginative enough a thinker, to do this. Certainly I don't think [i]Perdido[/i] did. [/QUOTE]
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