Why I Am Done with Epic Fantasy

I really want to like this genre.

I feel like there is a lot of potential. I mean, who doesn't like unicorns and dragons, witches and sorcerers (that is a hard word to spell), kings and armies. It's like history...WITH MAGIC.

And therein lies the problem. They are like history with magic. Except all the cold, hard reality of history and its grim humanity is removed, and filled with nonsense and wizards with funny hats.

Very few fantasy novels -- high fantasy novels, which take place in a realm separate from our own earth -- are good.

In my limited experience, this is because they are either (a) trying to copy Tolkien or (b) trying to copy George R. R. Martin.

I think one of the books that best illustrates my point is Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. Back in college, this guy I had a crush on lent it to me, so I finished it, even though it was like 800 pages and I hated, hated, hated it. (Oh, the things we do for love.)

It has several stereotypes that are all too prevalent in fantasy these days:

-Pseudo-medieval setting. I mean, some people have done this well, but it's like a rule now. All fantasy must be in the dark ages, and people must wear shitty clothing (literally in some cases), and women must have no rights, and at least 100 pages must be spent describing a caravan's very (very!) slow passage through dangerous lands.

-The inclusion of a "Chosen One". Again, this is up for debate -- Harry Potter and The Matrix both did this well. Possibly because the characters were so reluctant to step up to the plate (although the reluctant hero trope is becoming glaringly prevalent as well). Every fantasy novel must have a hero(ine) with these super special powers, and EVERYONE must stop what they are doing and say, "OH! Look! How special this person is! THEY MUST BE THE ONE WE'RE WAITING FOR." Gee, YA THINK?



-Mary Sues. Mary Sues everywhere. So many of these books are plot driven to the point that the characters have no soul beyond what they contribute to move the plot. "Let's go to this tavern!" they might say, little knowing that frequenting this tavern is the evil bad guy who killed the MC's entire village and is going to taunt/attempt to rape/enrage the MC, and unwittingly provide them direction on their quest. Or, "Oh! Look! A SHINY OBJECT ON THE GROUND!" Will this object be the key to killing their arch-nemesis in the last book? OF COURSE.

-Info dumping is not a viable way of telling the story. I think if you go more than ten pages without a single line of dialogue, you have a problem. And yet, this is far too common in fantasy. It's exciting, creating a world (a whole neeeeew woooooorld), but you shouldn't languish in it. If you're revising your book and you feel bored, your reader is going to feel the same way, except x 100000. Show, not tell.

-Rape. One of the arguments about fantasy novels and rape is that women were totally treated like that back then! In WIZARD'S, rape is overused to the point that literally every single female character (and some males) get raped at some point in the book. There are other ways to show power. There are other ways to portray women overcoming adversity or of punishing strong women (although why would you want to?). I'm really getting sick of fantasy novels where all the bad guys are rapey perverts and all the good guys are chaste, pious virgins. Just stop.

-"The Magical Negro" stereotype. Stop using people of color as deus ex machinas. That is not representation. People try to use the same excuses for racial stereotypes that they do for rape and misogyny ("it was totally like that back then!"). Unless you are actually writing a historical fiction novel, this excuse does not work. There is no reason why your fantasy novel should be all white (unless there actually is a reason for it, and then explain that reason, by Jove!).

There's this great book called The Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell (no relation -- at least, none that I know of) that talks about a lot of the tropes in fantasy novels & mythology. It's really impressive. I read parts of it for my college mythology class and it's amazing how pervasive some of the tropes are.



We've all got that one shitty fantasy novel. I wrote one back in high school that I'll probably never publish because it is SO BAD. It incorporates the "chosen one" stereotype, a prophecy, mysterious objects, long pointless passages describing the characters traveling from one place to the next, Mary Sues and Marty Stus, self-insertion, random gods, insta-love, and pretty much everything that is wrong and horrible with the genre.

I guess what amazes me is how many shitty fantasy novels DO get published, and how many of them are shit. Science-fiction used to be shit, too, but at least it is evolving with the times. Fantasy hasn't really changed all that much -- it's still too white, too male, and too cliche-ridden. And that's not a good thing.