What is fresh in fantasy?

[Desdichado]

While it seems to be in fashion on ENWorld to bash Mieville--quite possibly as a knee-jerk reaction to perceived "hype" around his novels--his PSS and The Scar are both very good. I'd recommend checking them out before being influenced by all the negativity.

Seems to me it's in fashion to rave about Mieville as if he's a fantasy Messiah. And I don't think anyone's "bashed" him yet, at least on this thread.

I'm under the impression that modern fantasy authors don't employ demihumans; that's just a Tolkien thing that D&D happens to stick to because it's firmly anchored in the implied setting and game rules. Eddings, Jordan, Gemmell etc. all lack them, but come up with their own races - the only one I can think of with the "standard Tolkien array" is Feist, and his world is ex-RPG anyway. Then again, I'm about a decade out of date fantasy novel-wise, and things may well have changed...

R. A. Salvatore and Terry Brooks are, according to some specious Internet rumor I heard once, the best selling modern fantasy authors. Both of them routinely include a "Tolkienian" array of races.

Beyond the D&D novels, I've read very little of fantasy. The big stuff from Tolkien (Hobbit, LotR, working through Silmarillion), some David Eddings (The Sparhawk stuff), and George R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire).

No offense, but it sounds like you're in a particularly poor situation to recommend what's fresh, then! Most of that is the antithesis of fresh. George R. R. Martin notwithstanding; he's not doing anything really new, but it's not done well very often, at least. I guess that could qualify as fresh.

 

[Desdichado]

eh, sorry. Post cleanup here.

 

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More post cleanup -- move along, nothing to see here...

 

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Bad Joshua Dyal! Multiple posts now all cleaned up.

 

[cathyb]

For inspiration that gets away from traditional high fantasy sub-genres I'd add the following:

Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker series: I got a little tired of it after a while for no particular reason, but it is set in a world with a magic system based on american settler folklore, which I can't recall having seen anywhere else. Also, he wrote a single book called Enchantment which uses russian folklore-based magic pretty successfully.

Lois McMaster Bujold (someone already mentioned her, but I have to second that). She's my all time favorite author with her science fiction books, but her fantasy books also provide something different (Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls for the fantasy theology and Spirit Ring for the renaissance-period take on magic.

Dave Duncan's A Man of his Word series uses the traditional races (although with his own twists and turns) and high magic, but created a magic system that is radically different from any others I've read and does a good job of looking at how it effects the rest of the world. Plus, it's just a damn good read.

 

[buzz]

Orson Scott Card's Tales of Alvin Maker series: I got a little tired of it after a while for no particular reason, but it is set in a world with a magic system based on american settler folklore, which I can't recall having seen anywhere else.

For the life of me, I can't understand why this hasn't been made into an RPG setting. Brilliant stuff, and fraught with adventure possibilities.

 

[Whisper72]

Not sure whether you'd call it 'new' in terms of literary styles, but the books by Glen Cook stand out to me in the sense that there is this gritty realism in it where there is no clearly defined evil or good. Not just the Black Company cycle of books, but especially The Tower of Fear and the Swordbearer are tales that are springing to mind.

It is definately 'different' from most books of High or Low fantasy where the good guys fight evil to save the world or at least some damsel in distress.

 

[Zoatebix]

What's fresh in fantasy? Hip-hop!
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=80017

In all seriousness, there's a lot of untapped older material out there. The Icelandic Sagas are pretty cool, though I've only been to one all-too short quasi-public reading, and I certainly haven't studied them at all, thought I'd like to.

Yeah, I know that Norse myth gets more than it's fair share in fantasy RPing these days, but the Icelandic Sagas in particular have certain aspects in their narrative that would appeal to gamers (NOTE: It's been a while since I trolled this thread, but I think the thread's about looking for new influences). As the Amazon.com quotation from the Library Journal says:

Presenting the adventures of Norse and Viking heroes, the sagas are told with ritual simplicity and a realism that anticipate the modern novel.

Simplicity, realism, and adventures are all good things for RPGs, no? These are stories about more or less ordinary people, not kings or knights and such.

I'll think of something fresher to submit next time, promise!
-z

 

[neg]

Steven Erikson

Steven Brust and Steven Erikson.

Erikson has created a world so packed with characters and history and events and powers that it's impossible to keep track of everything that's happening, but he's such a good writer you just get carried away regardless. I've never before encountered a writer who spent so little time making sure his audience was keeping up; you NEVER get a few pages' worth of exposition to explain "The situation as it is now". The characters all know the situation so they never bother explaining it -- you just have to try and ferret out the clues and figure out what's happening. Fun stuff. And what he's attempting to do, to talk about, is of such breath-taking scope that I'm honestly blown away.

Got to agree with barsoomcore about Steven Erikson. He is a Canadian who has published 5 novels in Britain (part of a 10 book series!) and has a rabid following over there.

Tor books, the publisher I work for, has bought U.S. rights to the entire series and will publish the first book in the series in early June called "Gardens of the Moon".

I finished the first book and I have read the british edition of the second book and this guy is absolutely AMAZING! He is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, which is a grueling program that few writers enter and fewer survive it would seem. If Erikson was not writing Fantasy, he could write literary fiction and hold his own very well.

What I love about Erikson is his vast world and his bit by bit approach of revealing it. Further, he cares little for tags of good and evil, he leaves it for the reader to decide that. And as such you often get to like a few favorite characters throughout his books.

More fascinating is the way Erikson will casually KILL HIS CHARACTERS. Yep, that is right, he kills characters, even important ones, and lots of them. The body count in Gardens of the Moon was very high.

Lastly, I have never had a fantasy writer elicit so much emotion from me as a reader. Most of what one reads in the genre doesn't grab you but is a nice way of escaping for awhile. Erikson pulls things from his audience. He can at turns be funny, dark, he can awe, shock, and repulse. He commands and directs readers emotions with incredilble ease.

I personally feel that Steven Erikson will be a big name in a few years. I think he has the potential to be another Terry Goodkind and Robert Jordan terms of sales. However, I think he is a much better author than either of those two or George R.R. Martin. I predict that everyone will be reading him. I hope people check him out when he publishes in early June.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...f=sr_1_1/002-8899489-9422432?v=glance&s=books

Just, buy the book at a Media Play (at discount when published) or at your friendly neighboorhood independent bookstore, preferrably in the Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, or Nebraska area!

He, to me, is what is fresh in fantasy.

-neg

 

[CrusaderX]

I can't agree that so-called "contemporary fantasy" is fresh. I love Joss Whedon, but Buffy is really just the 90's-female version of the Stan Lee superhero.

Definitely agree. Buffy is fun, but Whedon isn't doing anything that already hasn't been done to death in comics, from Stan Lee's Spider-Man to Chris Claremont's X-Men.

Which is probably why Whedon is now writing comics.