Why are the blurbs on fantasy novels so god-awful?

[nikolai]

Why? I was in a bookshop today and they're all dire. It seems like the publishing companies are using a random generator or something. You can't tell one book apart from any of the others, it seems like most of them have identical plots or back stories. Yuck.

nikolai.

 

[Pants]

It's even worse when you read the book in question and the blurb barely resembles the plot of the book. Winter's heart and Crossroads of Twilight, I'm looking at you here

 

[Viking Bastard]

Of course, one of the problems is that the story of so many
fantasy novels ARE identical.

 

[Mark]

Winter's heart and Crossroads of Twilight, I'm looking at you here

Haven't read those but I do get a kick out of you calling them on the carpet...

(Nice sig. Make sure you're at the next Chicago gameday!)

 

[tetsujin28]

Because most fantasy novels are God-awful. It's hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

 

[Dark Jezter]

A useful term popped up a few years ago on Usenet: "Elf Opera" is used to describe those generic LOTR-ripoff fantasy novels that line the shelves of any bookstore.

 

[takyris]

Because most fantasy novels are God-awful. It's hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Sturgeon's Law, Tetsuijin. Singling out fantasy novels as somehow worse than, say, the mystery market, the hard SF market, the military SF market, the the thriller market, or any other genre is a tad unfair.

As a (fantasy) writer, I'm trying hard to stay current, so once a month or so, I head into Borders and pick a book at random (well, semi-at-random -- I aim for the first book, if it's part of a series, and if everyone who got quoted on the back is another author I've already tried and hated, I'm usually confident that it's not going to be to my taste). I have some hits, and I have some misses. There's some great fiction out there languishing at about knee-level on the shelf because Jordan's publicity department paid Borders to give Jordan's stuff a full shelf with cover-out (as opposed to spine-out) placement.

Not saying that Jordan's pub department is bad -- if I had that kind of money, I'd make sure that Borders and Barnes & Noble had my (published at some point in this hypothetical future) books cover-out with giant neon signs flashing around them. But the market is possibly slightly just a little bit more interesting these days than your post would lead one to believe. If you like fantasy as a genre but can't find anything good, you should consider exploring some new authors.

If you don't like fantasy as a genre, then you're really sort of in the wrong thread/forum/website.

 

[Tonguez]

If you don't like fantasy as a genre, then you're really sort of in the wrong thread/forum/website.

Well I agree with some of your points (especially about Jordan vs those small authors whose books get lost in the bargain bin) , I do have to agree partially with Tetsuijin - I use to read fantasy voraciously but personally haven't read that much 'modern' fantasy that all that much tickles my fancy and so have generally tuirned to reading 'Historic Novels' and Discworld.

Maybe my taste have changed, or maybe like Viking Bastard suggests - the plots of so many fantasy novels are so similar that its hard to tell them apart anymore...

 

[Berandor]

This is no special fantasy problem. I have read a lot of books - even succesful books - where I couldn't really understand how that specific author got published, seeing that he just delivered generic fare, nothing new, nothing especially good, just boring.

 

[JoeBlank]

As a (fantasy) writer, I'm trying hard to stay current, so once a month or so, I head into Borders and pick a book at random (well, semi-at-random -- I aim for the first book, if it's part of a series, and if everyone who got quoted on the back is another author I've already tried and hated, I'm usually confident that it's not going to be to my taste).

Sounds like the EN World Book Club would serve you well. We are currently reading Tigana, by Guy Gavriel Kay.

See links in sig.