What the hell is it that condemns the majority of fantasy trilogies to be 'meh'?

[hawkwing_lb]

So tell me, what is it about trilogies?

I’ve just recently read Robin Hobb’s Shaman’s Crossing: Book 1 of the Soldier Son Trilogy, and, eh.

It’s not bad. Not as in horrendously bounce-it-off-the-wall bad. It has a promising first ten pages, and thereafter moments of great and embarrassing potential. Infrequent moments.

The protagonist, Nevarre, is... dull. There’s no kinder word for it. He is dull and largely passive, and for the vast majority of the book the most interesting stuff appears to be happening to other characters, off screen. The greatest portion of the narrative exists in a vacuum devoid of action, humour, and anything resembling fun.

The first-person POV does not help alleviate Nevarre’s dull stodginess. It makes it worse.

I’m not reading fiction for treatises on restrictive and prejudiced societies, or the proper upbringing and training of soldiers. I’m one of those shallow folk who read it for The Shiny! The Explosions! The Fun! The Interesting Weird People!

Shaman’s Crossing is remarkable empty of shiny, fun, and explosions. It does have some few Weird People, but Nevarre spends most of his time apparently baffled by them. Thus, the Interesting-ness of the Weird is not foregrounded.

Also, the events of the first ten pages do not appear to have much thematic and/or plot relevance to the rest of the book.

Near the end of the book, Nevarre almost dies. And you know what? I didn’t really care.

Scratch that. I really didn’t care.

So: Shaman’s Crossing: one dull, horrendous prologue. It is ‘but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy’, where does that come from? I can’t recall.

I vote for Farce. And you know what? Unless I’m desperate, I won’t be reading it.

There’s too much else of interest for me to waste time on the dull.

(Yeah, I've given up recording the books read this year. Let's just say I lost count, okay?)

Comments

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

now I wanna know -

which fantasy novels kick your ass?

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

What do you mean, kick my ass?

If you mean the ones for which I want-the-time-I-spent-reading-that-Back, Deplorable-Piece-of-Crap!... urg. Robin Hobb's last trilogy, everything by Terry Goodkind after Temple of the Winds, Mercedes Lackey's Owls trilogy, everything I've ever tried to read by Sara Douglas (two trilogies), the horrendous, scarring-for-life Wanderers trilogy by Caiseal Mór (avoid at all costs! Bad!), Raymond E Feist's Krondor trilogy...

...See what I mean about the trilogies?

OTOH, maybe you mean which ones I really, really like...?

I am unfamiliar with idiom from across the Atlantic. It confuses me. :-)

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

If you mean the ones for which I want-the-time-I-spent-reading-that-Back, Deplorable-Piece-of-Crap!

make it the opposite of that, and that's what i mean.

what I noticed about all of the trilogies that you mentioned - where I read those authours works, I didn't like them, either. Lackey is a bit of a disclaimer - I was deeply in love with the Last herald Mage Trilogy, and that's enough to carry me reading about the valdemar world though everything that I've read set in that world in the last few years has been bad - but I keep reading in the hopes thatit will get better.

but douglass and Hobb and goodkind and fiest? bah. mediocre at best - enough to grind the enamel off my teeth at their worst.

I was wondering what you've read that's Really, Really Good. what strikes you as exceptional in fantasy fiction.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Unfortunately mediocre fills the shelves.

Exceptional? Okay. Bearing in mind that my exposure is limited to stuff that comes out of the UK and what I hear enough buzz about to think worth importing from Amazon. :-)

My favourite fantasy of all time is Mary Gentle's massive circa-500K Ash: A Secret History. Battles, explosions, mud, The Really Shiny Weird Talking Pyramids, golems, the coolest framing device in existence ever, politics, screwed-up interpersonal relationships, Interesting! Strange! Compelling! characters, mud, rain, siege, starvation, disease, death, blood, muck, dirt, people-who-hear-voices, Burgundy, Carthage, imperial politics, perpetual night and more battles. (Whee!)

Gentle has an extremely lucid prose style, and an extraordinary touch for details. She's a multiple-postgrad in history, too, which I don't think hurts. In Ash (don't know if you've read it) the main character is probably the most complicated, fully-realised person I've ever read.

I'll go out of my way to add that Gentle's White Crow collection (three novels, two short stories, one cover) is also exceptional, in a different, less layered way. It might have some serious flaws - and at least one of the novels squicked me, pretty much worse than anything else I've read, although that's not necessarily a flaw - but it's a different kind of incredible every time I go back to read it. The kind of book(s) where you taste the dust and feel the sky, if that makes sense. And also because she doesn't shy away from being ruthless at times.

And also. The only word I have for it is Shiny :-).

::gets down book. looks for passage... time passes::

Okay, you'll have to take my word for it, if you haven't read it, because I can't find a passage that I can type in here without wanting to go off and read the book instead of type. :-)

I'm less enthused by her latest, 1632: A Sundial in a Grave, if only because the main character is to me much less compelling. But it's still at the upper rim of Really Good.

Um. Gentle aside, what else strikes me as Exceptional?

Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls. Those are two books that hit me right where I live. Although if they had been written by someone without Bujold's talent for character, they would have been maybe no more than middling-good, so maybe not entirely exceptional.

Matthew Woodring Stover, Heroes Die, though whether that's SF or fantasy is really arguable.

Manda Scott's Boudica books. Marketed more mainstream than fantasy, but it's definitely fantasy.

Alice Borchadt, The Silver Wolf, Night of the Wolf and Dragon Queen. Set in c 8th century Rome, Roman Gaul and Rome under Julius Caesar, and post-Roman Britain, respectively. The world needs more intelligent werewolf stories with Real Scary Bits, popes, lepers, history and women. :-)

Going back a few years, Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry. I can't believe I read it for the first time last month.

Patricia McKillip's The Changeling Sea probably rounds out the Exceptional! category for me. There's other stuff that'll make the cut into Really Good, or maybe Not-Quite-Exceptional, but yeah. Those are the ones that kicked me in the teeth, so to speak, and made me sit up and really take notice. For fantasy, at least. The SF/AU list is shorter, but you asked for fantasy. :-)

(In an aside, I also think I'll add to that category in fantasy this year, if matociquala's Blood and Iron comes anything even close to making me feel the way Hammered et al did. And Gentle has another book out in December :-))