The Role of Luck in Fantasy with Shawna Reppert
Due to the RT Convention and post-convention damage repair (catching up on book four work), I’ve been absent from here again. I’ll be back on track next week, and you may even start seeing me pop back in over at the Confabulator Cafe. Until then, I have something special for you.
Behold! We have another Carina Press/Here Be Magic author as a guest. Straighten your tie, sit up straight, and be charming. Shawna Reppert’s fantasy novel, The Stolen Luck, just came out. It seemed appropriate that she come talk about luck, what with all the gargoyle snot and leprechaun thugs running around here. Make her feel welcome, please!
Luck plays a large part in fantasy and in its deep roots—folk tales and legends. A chance meeting at the crossroads, a stranger at the door, a magic sword, a cloak that when thrown down becomes a raging river that blocks one’s pursuers. Doesn’t this reliance on luck violate the injunction against deus ex machina as a plot device?
Not in the folk tales, and not in well-crafted fantasy.
In folklore, one’s fate flows from one’s actions. In other words, you get what you deserve. Make a stupidly selfish bargain at the crossroads and pay with your soul. (Unless you are clever enough to outwit the devil himself, a whole subgenre of crossroads stories.) You and your descendents may be blessed or cursed forevermore depending on how you treat the stranger at the door. Magic swords and other talismans must be earned either by acts of courage or acts of kindness done without hope of reward. The gods only bestow gifts on those who earn them.
You will find this pattern repeated in modern fantasy. In Tad William’s Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy, the protagonist frees one of the Sithi (an elf-like race) from a woodsman’s trap, creating a debt of honor the repayment of which causes ramifications through to the end of the trilogy. Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit acquires an elven sword and a whole lot of treasure because he dared the discomforts and dangers of Thorin’s quest.
These patterns are so deeply ingrained in our subconscious that we may not consciously recognize them. It wasn’t until I started this blog that I realized some of these patterns moving through my own novel, The Stolen Luck. The friendship my protagonist’s ancestors showed to the elves won them the talisman know as the Dupree Luck. When they failed to support the elves at a time when mortals turned against them and drove them from the Sunlit Lands to the Lands Between, they ceased to deserve the Luck that had been given to them.
Although they didn’t lose the luck until generations after the Dupree’s failure to act and the proximate cause of the loss was a mortal thief, symbols work on a deeper level. On that level, the story question posed by the plot arc could be defined as ‘will James Dupree become worthy of holding the Luck again?’
Pay attention when you’re reading. If you find yourself being bothered by a convenient bit of luck in a poorly written piece, odds are that the good fortune was put there for the convenience of the writer and was not earned by the character in either an actual or symbolic sense. But when you find yourself glowing with happiness when a character gets exactly what they need, most likely the character in some way earned it.
You can argue that real life doesn’t work that way. You’d be right. In real life, evil is often rewarded while the best people can’t seem to catch a break. (I like to believe that justice will come in some cosmic timescale, but that’s just a personal belief.) Readers come to fiction to escape the real world, to spend some time in a space where things do make sense and things do happen for a reason and perhaps to carry forward some hope that maybe, just maybe, on some level the real universe makes sense as well. If I’ve given them that escape and that hope, I’ve done my job as a writer. And if I inspire someone to go out and make their own luck and make the world a better place in the process, I’ve done my job as a human being.
Happy reading and best of luck to you all!
The Stolen Luck
How far will a good man go to save his home and loved ones?
Lord James Dupree must recover his family’s stolen Luck, the elven talisman that has protected the Dupree lands for generations. Without the talisman, the Dupree vineyards are failing and creditors are closing in. The Luck is his only hope of saving his home and his family from poverty and ruin.
Despite his abhorrence of slavery, James wins an elven slave in a game of cards. The slave, Loren, provides the only chance to enter the Lands Between and recover the stolen Luck. Despite James’s assurances and best intentions, Loren does not trust his new master and James finds it all too easy to slip into the role of slave master when Loren defies him.
As the two work together through hardship and danger, James finds himself falling in love with Loren. And when a hidden enemy moves against them, he must choose between his responsibility to his family and his own soul.
Buy it on Amazon, B&N, or directly from Carina Press
Keep in touch with the author:
Website
Twitter: @ShawnaReppert
Amazon Author Page
Facebook
Tumbler
