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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 7545465" data-attributes="member: 6704184">I've found my mirror universe doppelganger! I agree with the last sentence, for sure. I also do believe that eloquent use of language to evoke more than what is strictly necessary to understand the work, to elevate the language of the work into a good in itself, while still telling a good tale, is valuable. So, verbosity can be good in itself. Terseness, on the other hand, can't. It is only good when it serves the goals of the author. Nah. It's a good story, as well as depicting an enormously magnificent world. The language itself isn't easy for many readers. Ok. That has absolutely no impact on whether it's a good novel. A novel can be both difficult and good. If we can't agree on that, there is no common ground from which we can really discuss the topic meaningfully. I find the whole "it's more a travelogue than a novel" argument to be completely lacking. I would wager that most people who have read and enjoyed LoTR enjoyed it as a novel. They read it as a book telling a story about characters, and enjoyed it thusly. I think Tigana is in the same league with Tolkien as a great work of art, and I'm willing to entertain the Fionavar Tapestry, even though it is knowingly derivative of LoTR. They're definitely different, though. As a kid, I sobbed when Boromir died, not only because he died so bravely and deserved so much better, but because the whole sequence is so damn hard, and I so quickly became attached to him. The film made it even worse, somehow. Knowing Gandalf would be back made his death mostly painful for the pain of the other characters, but Boromir of Gondor falls, and I cry. Every time. But nothing anyone else has ever written hits me as hard as Tigana. Just, the whole damn thing. Fionavar wrecks me pretty good, too, but not as much. Tigana is equally a great novel, great poetry, and a story that does things that I've never been able to find in any other work in my entire adult life of being a big damn book worm. of course, I read LoTR when I was 12, at the oldest, and read the Silmarillion sometime before starting High School, so certainly my idea of what novels are easy or difficult comes mostly from other people. I don't find LoTR even slightly difficult, unless my ADHD is really hitting me, in which case I can barely keep track of a Dresden novel. Still, I think it's pretty absurd to make difficulty a mark against a work as a novel. No part of a reasonable definition of "good novel" should include "easy", or "difficult/challenging" for that matter! Those qualities just sort good novels in terms of what one is in the mood for, and what some readers will be able to enjoy without putting in extra work. Nothing wrong with those readers, but likewise there is nothing wrong with a novel just because it is challenging.</blockquote>

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