Adventuring with RPG Fiction: The Wizard's Mask by Ed Greenwood and The Hammer and the Blade by Paul S. Kemp

There’s a specific appeal to rpg fiction that readers can’t find in other genres: stories that are catered to a system readers enjoy (for fantasy rpgs, this means recognizable character classes, areas, and even recurring characters) and hitting a sweet spot of familiarity/nostalgia. The honey of nostalgia is created through recreating the same kind of immersion you get around a tabletop game with friends, and increasingly, remembering the fun when revisiting video game franchises in fiction. Rpg fiction is also regarded as highly commercial, with sales coming readers chasing down familiar characters instead of vaunted “literary value.” However, even the stories that do live up rpg fiction’s less-than-stellar literary reputation still offer readers a fun adventure and lots of action, like the literary equivalent of an Indiana Jones movie.

My own foray into rpg fiction began a little differently—I hadn’t even played a tabletop game and I had played several video games, but none of them would have held my interest enough to read a novel of their franchise. However, the personal impact was immeasurable. My first brush was when I attended a panel at Gen Con 2012 with Susan J. Morris about developing superbadassawesome (emphasis my own) heroes and villains, and I was struck by how freaking cool she was describing her adventures DMing and her appearance (great hair and a giant tattoo of a bee adorning her collarbone). She mentioned her experience in editing and her work on an anthology, and as soon as I got home, I found Realms of the Dead. This was where the real fun began—the stories of various rpg authors taking themes of death and life, with stunning locales like the City of the Dead in Waterdeep and the Moonshae Sea, swept me away more than any of the “straight” fiction and fantasy I had been reading.

Rpg fiction has led me down stranger roads since 2012, with dabbling in Dragonlance and R.A. Salvatore, to “graduating” to the Pathfinder Tales. Since then, I have been part of a handful of tabletop games and most recently have started playing through Pathfinder’s Rise of the Runelords campaign. During Gen Con last year, I attended a few panel that featured James L. Sutter, and enjoyed them enough to pick up Death’s Heretic. I read it during my final semester of my undergrad, on the heels of an early British fiction class. With the infusion of critical theory, Death’s Heretic surprised me by being as much fun to parse as the stories of Hereward the Wake. A hero who starts out as reluctant with an interesting story who goes on a planes-twisting adventure to find the cause behind a high profile murder—but it was the telling that made it rife with interest from allusions to binary oppositions. (One day, I plan on writing a full critical analysis and sending it on to the author to see what he thinks.)

Since I finished Death’s Heretic, things have been a little bumpy with my readings of rpg fiction. I finished Stalking the Beast by Howard Andrew Jones and felt a little…underwhelmed. Last week, I read what appears to be long-time Forgotten Realms writer (and creator of the famed Elminster) Ed Greenwood’s recent conversion to the Pathfinder Tales in The Wizard’s Mask. Immediately after that, as part of my fantasy reading blitz before I move at the end of this month, I took on another long-time Forgotten Realms writer Paul S. Kemp’s stories outside of the Realms, The Hammer and the Blade. Both works were good, but it was a lot of pulpy fun, so by the time this weekend rolled around, I needed some writing books as a palate cleanser.

To follow the spirit of reading Realms of the Dead and Death’s Heretic and my general “let’s be more critical than whether I liked or disliked something”, I took a lot of notes to figure out what Greenwood and Kemp were getting at, and where they succeeded and failed. I’ll tackle The Wizard’s Mask first. Of the two, this story definitely followed the increased action to lesser story ratio, and for the most part, it worked, with only a couple of exceptions.

I had read in previous anthologies, but this was my first time reading one of his novels. Perhaps the slowest moment was at the beginning, when the reader is first introduced to former slave and halfing Tantaerra. After that, it’s a never ending chase as she eludes the guard of the town of Molthune. We get all of Tantaerra’s story up front, and her voice is enjoyable. However, there was juxtaposition between her age and her experience—psychologically, I would have put her at late teenager, and she lacked any physical encumbrance to convince me she wasn’t 16-19. Sometimes her younger mindset works in the story’s favor, such as Tantaerra’s gap-mouthed wonder at the wizard’s temple in Nirmathas.

The other protagonist was Tarram, known for the first half of the book as “The Masked” (eventually, I jokingly changed the moniker to Batman because it was less annoying). He was frustrating as a character because the reader gained nothing in his personal story, and he had little to no development. The reader eventually learns how he came to be “The Masked”, but the explanation didn’t reflect the actions of an actual person. The lack of fully realized characters made the story feel less like an immersive experience and more like the blow-by-blow account of a combat encounter between players and x (whether the variable is men, monsters, or wizards).

When the story failed to show real character growth, there came be an absurd logic to the plot that was reminiscent of Tim O’Brien’s The Things We Carried. Conflicts felt frequent yet meaningless, and even at the resolution of the story, I felt little attachment. For all that, the story wasn’t a difficult read and I could see how it could be adapted to a campaign for a DM with an evocative imagination. I finished it within a couple of days and will probably forget about it a year from now, so perhaps it’s one of the lesser chapters in my rpg reading adventure.

The Hammer and the Blade picks up with a much different tone but a surprisingly similar premise. Egil and Nix are adventuring buddies in the tradition of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, and the story begins with them raiding a tomb. However, their treasure seeking is half-hearted and reluctant—for vague reasons, Nix is determined to “go straight,” which to him means buying a tavern/brothel (known with the hokey wink-wink name of the Slick Tunnel) and becoming an upstanding business owner. For the first three quarters of the book , I thought this was a plot device to initiate the story, but in the last chunk of the book, this original premise is resolved (perhaps not to the best effect…but at least things go better than expected). The characterization blossoms in this story, though, with the sharp-tongued interactions between Egil and Nix and the quiet moments where Nix reflects on his values and Egil prays to his dead god. Even the villain is given expressive character details and strong motivation (although this is arguably one of the flaws of the plot).

The most unsettling effect of The Hammer and the Blade is how the main plot becomes about saving two sisters from sexual abuse that they’ve witnessed (and experienced?) previously. While the sisters are accomplished mind mages, their mental compulsion of Egil and Nix and further magical coercion at the hands of their brother Rakon puts the entire story into question. Are Egil and Nix good men? Did they have any agency for how the plot unfolded? I’m not a fan of psychic magic, so maybe this is my own perception creating a bias. The fact that I’m even asking these questions compromised my enjoyment of the book and even brings up unreliable narration in the partial omniscient narrator. Kemp deals with the question at the end of the book, but his answer isn’t necessarily satisfactory.

Another reason why I think rpg fiction remains so resilient is because of how the stories provide patterns of heroes for readers to recreate in their games and stories. Sometimes it’s a literal copy (Drizzt, anyone?), but often the characters provide inspiration. Even when the novels aren’t the height of writing, the stories are still fun and memories to be savored. I read them for the swashbuckling adventure and because rpg fiction can be a surprising fount of literary themes with the best stories.

I’m returning to my more traditional grimdark reading in the next couple of weeks, so I’m not sure how quickly another review will come. The Emperor’s Blades arriving interrupted my reading of The Wizard’s Mask, but Brian Staveley’s debut is like a wine to be savored and 20 pages here and there are enough to feel sated. The Grim Company by Luke Scull is an unknown for me—I love his tone, but Scull is dealing with some off-putting dark themes. The last, Veil of the Deserters by Jeff Salyards is the second in the Bloodsounder’s Arc, and my reaction to his first book was elation about his protagonist and reservations about the rest of the book. It’ll be happy reading over the next week!

The Assassin Always Rings Twice: An Analysis of Shadow's Son by Jon Sprunk (with an apology)

On this side of my college graduation for my bachelor’s, I have had something of a realization. I was (and continue to be, despite having earned my degree) an insufferable English major. I spent six years scrambling to figure out what I was going to do with my degree, but I knew that I loved and breathed books and literary analysis. I read every assignment and found everything but the most advanced lit classes unchallenging, and I relished every moment of it. Even when there were professors or coursework I disagreed with, I still enjoyed the process of learning and contributing to every discussion. Now that I’m embarking on a Master’s, I have a greater understanding of one of my flaws: I grew arrogant as a student. I was cocky about my understanding of critical theory, the fact that very few of my classmates took our lit classes seriously but I did, and in a lot of ways, I became intellectually lazy. I knew where I could cut corners on certain assignments, where I didn’t have to structure my arguments or understand my implications because minimum effort would earn me a top grade anyways.*

I bring up this up because I felt underwhelmed by my last blog entry,  that I was copping out on true analysis by rehashing the plot. Instead of saying something meaningful, I gave a childish criticism of a book and basically published a half-baked entry. Over the last couple of days, I’ve thought about rewriting my analysis, but have decided that if I do, it will be as a brand new entry. I just want to acknowledge that I understand my own weaknesses as a critic, especially in my parsing of grimdark versus epic fantasy.

In one of my next blog entries, I want to give a broader and more thoughtful analysis of fantasy that’s being published today, and discuss certain trends within the genre. I’d like to acknowledge now that one of my biggest frustrations is how genre labels come across as extremely reductive when you consider works within the labels (we’re not even going to touch on the “canon”). I’ve run into few if any “straight” fantasies where there wasn’t some crossing with another genre (mystery, romance, thriller), and the labels commonly used today fail to consider that kind of diversity. I think I was mistakenly using labels in my last entry to differentiate between fantasy I liked versus what I didn’t like—a mistake I made quite often during my undergraduate years, that’s so canny I don’t even realize I’m doing it sometimes. Although I will discuss this in more detail later, I’d like to finish this point with a leaf out of Derrida’s book: that binary oppositions are conventional (created) to highlight artificial differences, particularly in linguistics, to construct significance. That significance is outside of convention, and I think that, as an English major, that’s something I need to appreciate within my love of fantasy.

On to a happier topic—Shadow’s Son by Jon Sprunk was my reading this week, almost a precursor to our thieves/assassins trend from its publication in 2010. I didn’t hear much about it then, and I think I understand why. Sprunk’s writing style feels unfinished in this novel, and it was difficult to track the protagonist Caim’s growth as a character. It was a book I found myself unwillingly enjoying, because the outbreaks of hokey narrative (mainly through the frequent appearance of clichés) lightened the darkness of Caim without seeming overly silly.

There were lots of fun ideas in Shadow’s Son that if they had been pushed a little further, would have made the book fantastic. Caim has a spirit companion in the form of an attractive woman called Kit, and there’s some hints in the narrative that the love Caim and Kit have might be romantic. Kit is an important character through her significance to Caim and her ability to gain knowledge on people and places where Caim can’t be. The first scene of SS bursts with action and mostly unforced wit by demonstrating Kit’s capabilities, which make up for how she’s incapable of anything else (including but not limited to touching Caim, lifting objects, giving worth advice throughout the entire book). The relationship between Caim and Kit deflates with the introduction of Caim’s genuine love interest, and Kit gets reduced into a literal shade, two dimensions when there had been close to three.

GoodReads reviewers promise that Sprunk’s other novels are much better than SS, but I don’t think I’ll be following up. Beyond Kit’s letdown, the aspect that diminished my enjoyment of SS was Caim’s lack of trajectory. It would take a very fine eye to see any change in Caim as a character from who he was in the beginning through the end, even though Sprunk tried to use the “love changes all” idea with Caim’s relationship to his love interest. Caim in the beginning kills for money, but he takes jobs on people that a modern reader would consider horrible: despots, abusers of power, etc. He sees himself as cold, ruthless, and without remorse: that’s all mostly true. The change that’s meant to be wrought in Caim is that during the narrative, he sacrifices his own well-being for his love interest, but in my reading, he had sacrificed his own well-being before the novel began with his political ideologies. Caim lives in a plain, empty shack, and it was a good symbol for how sparse his character was. I was invested in his backstory for what it was worth, and appreciated how Sprunk highlighted how Caim’s trauma led to his emotional struggles during the narrative.

Caim in the end is largely unchanged from his image in the beginning. He sets up another character on their path to greatness and then disappears into the shadows. I almost wish this story had been told entirely from Josey’s perspective, because in a lot of ways, Caim’s story was actually a frame for hers. Unlike in the great frame narrative of our time, The Great Gatsby, I think this was accidental. Caim does get to claim some personal accomplishments that actually, well…serve everyone else, but he did achieve wiping his out competition, dethroning an oligarchy, and avenge the crime of his childhood. And yet Caim remains unchanged. His stony face was a little too literal—it alienated me as a reader and I struggled to understand what was going on behind his emotionless exterior.

I found Shadow’s Son to be a rather fun narrative, however, the light-beach-read equivalent of fantasy. It was short, so I zoomed through it in a couple of days, and I definitely liked some of the other supporting characters besides Kit. However, more than the fact that I didn’t like it, SS is just not very memorable in the thieves/assassins line of fantasy. Lately I have taken to pretending that the stories I’m reading are roleplaying narratives where I get to be a player, which has helped me be more forgiving of lackluster writing. Hopefully in the later books, Caim became a character I want to play instead of an NPC within his own story.

I just started Ed Greenwood’s The Wizard’s Mask, which seems to be his first novel for Pathfinder Tales. The reviews on GoodReads have eviscerated it, but I’m over 50 pages in and still enjoying the never-ending chase Greenwood is putting his characters through. The characters have a lot of personality and sass, and although they have done some truly outlandish things so far, at least I know I’m back within the realm of fun hack-and-slash rpg fiction. I’m going to a couple of panels at Gen Con this year that Greenwood is serving on, so I can’t wait to hear the thoughts of the creator of Elminster in a month’s time.

*There were factors in my personal life contributing to this, like working a stressful job and a complicated family situation, but I definitely made the choice.

Scope in Epic Fantasy: Thoughts on Riyria Revelations

I first picked up Michael J. Sullivan's Theft of Swords in January, and zoomed through it once I found that the difference between epic and dark fantasy is murky at best. My definition before ToS was that dark fantasy constituted what I had read in the anthology Swords & Dark Magic, a gateway for me to many beloved authors (Glen Cook and Joe Abercrombie, to name my favorites). I formulated a loose definition that dark fantasy needed to handle issues with a gritty but ambiguous tone, wicked humor, and slice and dice combat for flavor and action. It was like dark fantasy had become the fantastic equivalent to the thriller (Bond, James Patterson heroes, etc.).

The problem with any kind of constraints on a genre is that there are inevitably examples outside that definition, and I do believe that if a term or concept is going to be defined, you have to account for those exceptions. Michael J. Sullivan helped take down my own "neat" delineation between epic and dark fantasy. ToS is a combined edition of The Crown Conspiracy and Avempartha, and there is a lot of plot ground to cover. The first half of ToS introduced Hadrian Blackwater and Royce Melbourn, two mercs who make up Riyria (a famed pair within the world), and are set up to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and therefore take the blame for a regicide. The main plot whether or not Hadrian and Royce could clear their names, clean up on another job they had taken, and restore the crown prince to his rightful place. Although other characters vie for attention, and the reader gets other perspectives, Hadrian and Royce are unarguably the protagonists.

The Crown Conspiracy is where Sullivan's writing glowed brilliantly for me, from the introduction and dynamic between Hadrian and Royce, to the initial setup of the plot. All of the characters from the initial story are likable, ambiguous in motive, and in general trying to ram the gears of their machinations over the obstacles around them. Sullivan described the setting deftly, setting a countryside simmering in unrest and with danger around every corner. Having now read Rise of Empire, I realize I appreciated how the scope was narrow, even though at the time of reading it felt monumental. It was set in Melengar, which is said later in the series to be a tiny, even isolated country, but during Conspiracy, Melengar was the jewel all of the characters were competing for.

Conspiracy gave way to Avempartha, which had some of the same fun as reading Conspiracy, but not to the same degree. When Hadrian and Royce travel to a different country and take up official roles within Melengar, I had a creeping feeling that they were losing their way from the original mercs-with-honor role. Having just finished Rise of Empire, I can appreciate how this is probably to show maturation and depth in Riyria. I like Riyria enough to ride through any doubts Hadrian and Royce have about each other and themselves, but I definitely missed the seamless loyalty and fun they had in Conspiracy. Especially RoE, Hadrian and Royce's partner- and friendship began to feel forced. 

Avempartha laid ground for all of the characters (Princess Arista, Thrace, etc.) to get caught up in the fate the world in RoE. Hadrian and Royce get to fight and save people, and it's clear that although they officially work for the king of Melengar, their roles are still unclear. There begin to be lots of weird moments where people and things from Conspiracy catch up to Riyria, like conflicts with the Church (pseudo Catholicism at its best) and the ancient wizard Esrahaddon. Although these elements moved the plot along, I felt like they were distraction or simple obstacles for Riyria to overcome, instead of tenacious ideas that develop even more further into the series.

I could feel in Avempartha, that while I enjoyed it, it definitely wasn't Conspiracy. Having just finished RoE, it felt like those distractions that overwhelmed the plot. RoE focuses far more on developing other characters and subplots than on Riyria themselves, and the partnership between Hadrian and Royce gets strained immensely. By the end of RoE, I was ready to throw in the towel, too. I probably will finish the rest of the Riyria Revelations out of loyalty to Conspiracy. I may not have done the story justice in this post, but there were other aspects of the Riyria Revelations that buzzed in my head.

My first reaction to Conspiracy was that despite the dudes-with-swords photographic cover favored by dark fantasy, the story felt a lot like epic fantasy. Violence was present, yes, but it wasn't graphic in nature. We had dark, cynical, and jaded in Riyria (particularly in Royce), but omnipotent narration kept the darkness from feeling overwhelming or even ever-present as it does in other dark fantasy. Although Hadrian and Royce are technically scoundrels in the sense that they don't earn a conventional living, they're aware of it (especially Hadrian) and unlike in dark fantasy narratives, they don't see this a horrible reflection of society. Instead, the partnership of Royce and Hadrian feels like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead--they constantly exchange jokes and wry asides, and their interactions are flawless. While the plots of the books center around conspiracy, there's a pervasive sense of optimism that proves to be correct, mostly.

So the Riyria Revelations aren't dark fantasy, but it's not your typical epic fantasy fare, either. I came to enjoy how I could get the same action and wicked humor of dark fantasy without having to read about how some dude's intestines decorated the cobblestones after a deft swing of a short sword (and that's a rather mild example). I think part of the reason why I felt dragged down in RoE was the fact that Hadrian and Royce developed more of a pessimistic and bleak outlook, and it just seemed rather foreign to their story. Even though RoE definitely had more swashbuckling adventure, once it left the scope of Melengar, the story seemed to come derailed.

In a recent post on the r/fantasy sub-Reddit, Sullivan talked about how Conspiracy/Theft of Swords was meant to seem simple, so that he could add layers of complexity in the plot as the books went further. For me, it read as more of a transition into more orthodox dark fantasy, particularly in the political themes, mental instability of various characters (not just Modina), and wanton death. The Riyria books are finished and I'm not certain Sullivan will return to them with his new venture into science fiction, but I will miss the unabashed fun of The Crown Conspiracy. I don't know the fates of Hadrian and Royce (although RoE hints several times at a potentially dark ending), but Sullivan at least helped develop respect for contemporary epic fantasy to go alongside my penchant for grimdark.

Strange Tidings

I work in a library shelving books, and this has made for weird variety in my reading--from the latest biography of Ted Williams to Ten Little Indians by Sherman Alexie to too many cookbooks to count. Sometimes the reward of randomness has been great--my cooking definitely reflects that--but it's also taken a hit on my ability to finish books I picked up because I thought I'd enjoy it...but ended up struggling. The last two months have been many dead ends like that, and my GoodReads account is full of books I found too weird to finish.

I mentioned Red Country by Joe Abercrombie a few months ago, and I'm still flailing my way through it. The narrative seems to be trying too hard with conveying the voice and managing the many perspectives instead of moving the plot along, and the graphic imagery when it appears is over nine thousand. Another more recently released dark fantasy, The Barrow by Mark Smylie, started out promising but lost its way. Smylie mentioned in an interview that he used sexuality as horror in The Barrow, and that he likes to find out at what point the horror goes over readers' personal thresholds. My personal take is that the story faded out and none of the characters were interesting or strong enough to keep my attention.

It took David Dalglish's A Dance of Cloaks to take me out of my fantasy rut. The plot moved at a breakneck pace, which suited the story well, and the characters (especially Aaron/Haern) lived and breathed on the pages. The characters had realistic motivations and the kind of determination to gain power and influence that reflects reality. Dalglish said in an interview at the end of the Orbit edition that the world of A Dance of Cloaks is new and relatively clean of magical objects and the history that accompanies them--that translates into the story as giving the characters ultimate agency. I can't wait for the other two books in the series, but I'm pacing myself for now.

This weekend I sailed through Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick, which has me even more convinced I'm stuck in 2011. However, out of the fantasy I've been reading lately, I enjoyed this story the most. I'm always skeptical of the first person voice in adult fantasy, where my experience has been it's difficult to keep the narrative balanced and avoid sounding like young adult. That was never a problem with this story, and Drothe is clever and fascinating. The criminal underbelly of the empire that is the fabric of Drothe's life is an unusual mixture of class, history, and magic, and Drothe starts out as ignorant of the intricate plots as I did. As he uncovers more motivations and information, the stakes become astronomical and the ultimate test becomes if Drothe will stay true to his values or compromise for safety and the people he loves. Unlike in real life, it was wonderful to see the consequences of Drothe's actions, a payoff that's rarely experienced in real life.

My next fantasy adventure is going to be the Orbit edition of Michael J. Sullivan's Riyria Relevations: Rise of Empire. (Between Orbit and Angry Robot, I can't decide which is my favorite publisher.) More thieving! More magic! More blades! After my experiences with Red Country and The Barrow, and my impending move to a different city, I decided to take advantage of my library's excellent resources and reserve 15 books found on Amazon's Recommended lists that started with shopping around on Michael R. Underwood's Shield and Crocus. Look at the cover! A city built on the bones of a titan--I would love to set an rpg in that setting. My copy comes in next week from Barnes & Noble. It's going to be an exciting six weeks of reading.

A Tale of Zombies/The Curious Case of Victorian Snobbery

Sometimes in the reading life, you just get to a point where you're reading a series of incredibly unlike things. My currently reading this reflects a fantasy Western, faux-Victorian travelogue, a British librarian comedy/mystery, and fantasy horror. Maybe unlike topics are not my problem so much as genres in general. Either way, right now I'll be ranting about The Walking Dead: Volume 4 comic and the clash of values in A Natural History of Dragons. Both with a generous amount of love and a possible aside into Sherlock Holmes.

First, The Walking Dead comic, or as this issue is called, "The Heart's Desire". I'm slowly working my way through the series, and I know it's terribly outdated, but it's finally old enough that I can get it from the library without waiting six months. This issue is the best of the ones I have read so far--four out of twenty one or so. I really enjoyed Rick's development as a character and the introduction of Michonne, an element of chaos on top of the already-nutso world of the zombie apocalypse. I was noting that I had read the issue on GoodReads, mainly because I enjoy seeing my personal reading stats and reading what other people had to say about the work. Almost invariably, the top reviews are negative, and the occasional positive review is hidden in the middle of the pack.

It was no different for "The Heart's Desire". I'm struggling to write it off as the negative opinion of the Internet and possible trolls. The comic is genuinely written well--the dialogue sparks, the drawings vivid, and the plot is building to where the reader can feel the ground shaking from all of the suspense. The various accusations included how the female characters are shallow and seemed to think only of sex. I think the detail that's being overlooked here is that all of the characters are two-dimensional and feel symbolic. Notice how they represent various stereotypes, and how those stereotypes are invariably inverted in an interesting and fun manner. The only well-developed character is Rick, and as a reader, I'm fine with that. The graphic novel as a medium is suited to have one fully realized protagonist and part of the fun is recognizing when characters subvert their stereotypes.

I don't watch the show, which I believe may have surpassed this issue. I'm not suggesting my opinion is anymore correct than theirs, but I'm missing the point of the masochistic negative review on GoodReads. I don't mind being critical, but sometimes one of the more innocuous Internet communities can get fairly bloodthirsty. I loved the recognition that as much as the group is trying to maintain order, in a chaotic world that's usually impossible--that revelation was accompanied by a dark mood akin to, "Shit is getting ready to get real." I'm taking a break from the series because of the unfortunate wait at the library, but my thoughts about it are still following me around after two days.

Next, A Natural History of Dragons! My reading of this did take a decidedly negative turn, mainly in the way I hated how the protagonist looked down upon people who she considered to be her social inferiors. It's prejudice so deeply entrenched that she didn't recognize it in herself, even though it kept coming up, which made for some awkward interior monologue. The main character talked down to servants mostly, bullying one into taking her on a hunt for a dragon, then another by almost flat-out refusing to communicate. Isabella's relationship with her second named servant, her lady's maid Dagmira, was more interesting because Dagmira popped up on almost every page. The setting of the story is an alternate Victorian world, which had all of the fun of the wealth of knowledge being discovered that was kept in check by all of the moral stuffiness. I guess Isabella's attitude towards Dagmira was supposed to mirror that of Social Darwinism, but I don't know why we couldn't have left that unsavory bit of history out of it, or even critiqued it. That's a twenty first-century mentality, but the book itself is from 2013! (The paperback, at least.)

I was puzzled as to why this was bothering me so much, particularly as the book struck me as a fluffy Victorian travelogue. The disdainful/disrespectful attitude towards the lower class was also demonstrated by John Watson in the Holmes stories. Watson always had a thinly veiled disapproval of anyone who worked in a blue collar trade or lower. Sherlock himself embraced people of all classes and walks of life, and many of the stories are about his adventures in gleaning information or studying a case while impersonating someone of a lower class. I think the reason it didn't bother me as much with the Holmes stories is because John's prejudice wasn't featured very often, and maybe because John was a man where Isabella was a woman. Victorian women of the middle and upper classes are usually portrayed sympathetically because of their lack of intellectual mobility, etc., so maybe it was my own perceptions that were going off.

Or maybe I felt that Brennan was going so far into the deep end of Victorian mentality that she lost sight of the fact that Isabella became more and more unlikable as the narrative plodded on. (Other complaints: where are the dragons?! The cover and blurb are incredibly misleading.)

Either way, a fun week of reading. I had a fun discussion based on an article from Book Riot, about how to tell loved ones (spouse) that their favorite book sucks. The gist of the article was not tell them at all if you could, and if you couldn't bring yourself to suffocate your own inner snob, to be as nice as possible about it. The article illicited a huge eyeroll from me, because being tactful is a no-brainer, but I don't think critiquing the book is enough to bring damnation from your loved one. I also checked myself because I realized I would never actually be close to anyone who would be super-sensitive about their one favorite book--I can do friendly, yes, but my friends and family are people who read a lot and wouldn't get butthurt (what would we do without the Internet?) over my not liking their favorite book. I'm not sure my loved ones even have a One True Favorite Book. Mine is Catch-22, because the irreverent and acerbic tone fits my general opinion of favorite books.

Beginnings

I'm making this blog as a way of enjoying the life of a bibliophile, from the love of the shape of words, the feel of pages, and most of all, the smell of ink. (You can even buy the smell for ereaders, an interesting phenomenon in itself.) This blog is going to be a platform to talk about the nature of stories and the ways in which we enjoy them, primarily from books. As a departure from my previous blog, Frodo Lives, here I will discuss my ideas about books that seem to overrun much of my life (and I wouldn't have it any different). I'm intending to put my academic training to use and perform literary analysis on the works I read--which you'll see, are not the Great Works of Literature from the Canon of Dead White Men.

My personal tastes in reading run all over the place, which is in part due to my education in academia and my job at a library. I primarily read contemporary fantasy, usually of the epic, dark, or both flavoring. Is the term grimdark still in vogue? It applies to what I enjoy reading the most, from Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, and Lee Battersby variety to Patrick Rothfuss and Miles Cameron, who deal with dark themes but aren't as gleefully cynical as the previous authors named. I'm currently working my way through the Most Valuable Authors list on the r/fantasy sub-Reddit, which is not official but may as well be.

I'm also making a study on the origins of fantasy, mainly to understand how we got from Lord Dunsany to Neil Gaiman and G.R.R. Martin in the last century or so. Tolkien can't be ignored, and I love his works not just because they're excellent stories, but also because he did a lot of groundbreaking in the field of academia I'm eyeing to go into, medieval literature. In particular to illuminate the origins of fantasy, I've found Farah Mendelsohn the most accessible read, so she'll pop up quite a bit as well.

Besides fantasy, I enjoy tackling Viking history and will check out any book on early medieval Icelandic/Norse history I can get my hands on, good or bad. The literature of conquest of England is fascinating and I can't but be enthralled by how much the Vikings influenced English history. Occasionally I read history outside that of ye olde medieval, but not much. Instead of trying to memorize every name of every man/woman who was featured in those stories (Ivar the Boneless aside), I usually try and absorb the most interesting stories and see how whatever impact they had can be related to today, in literature or culture broadly.

I've also been reading a ton more nonfiction over the last couple of years. I love reading about how video games and intellectual discourse intersect, although I can almost hear one of my former professors droning, "There is no call for that kind of analysis." I think video games as a medium are one of the most unappreciated forms of art (RIP Ebert, you fought the good fight but I beg to differ), and so any academic cred they get, I'm checking it out. Another form of nonfiction that I have spent years combing over are books on writing, specifically fantasy, and I love gushing or eviscerating the advice doled out by writing coaches.

Occasionally I dally in mysteries. I love Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce series and Ian Samson's Mobile Library Mysteries. I'm still head over heels for Sherlock Holmes in a nostalgic way--for me, the show has made changes to the original stories that can make them not as easy to enjoy. (Once again, I have the same former professor's voice in my head, "There's nothing intellectually interesting about Sherlock Holmes." I beg to differ!) I love discussing the actual written stories, though, so for anyone who wants to talk about them, fire away.

As part of this blog, I'd like to include a list of the works I'm reading, along with a blurb on my thoughts. The more interesting works will get their own bonafide blog post. Right now I've just started:

1.) The Thirteen Hallows by Michael Scott. Although it can be too easy to categorize genre works like fantasy, to best generalize this book, I'd say: urban fantasy horror. I was very interested in the GoodReads reviews on this book, because many people gave it a low rating because they expected it to be like Scott's YA series. No, children, this is genuine gory fantasy. The premise is that there are Thirteen Hallows of ancient origin that have to be protected from the hands/agents of demons, who are killing off the Keepers of said treasures to unite them and give the demons full access to our world and the yummy cuisine of man. The main storyline follows a woman who has been entrusted with one of the last pieces.
My reaction: I'm only a quarter of the way through this book, and already I have counted four home invasions. We are talking about people or demons going in and savaging you, your possessions, and your family (not necessarily in that order or all at once). It's enough to make me jump at small noises and look over my shoulder constantly, because this book exactly plays on the fear of the safety of the home. I'm not normally a fan of horror, but the story is compelling enough that I'm muscling my way through the gratuitous gore.

2.) A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan and Todd Lockwood. The sequel to this book, Tropic of Serpents, just came out and that finally prodded me into opening this. I have longed wanted to read it, as it follows the adventure of a faux-Victorian lady in her discovery and study of dragons.
My reaction: I love everything about this book, from the first person narration that veers between curious to stuffy, to Lockwood's illustrations and the brown color of the ink. Isabella is likable as a narrator because she doesn't care for the stiff mannerisms of her time--they get in the way of learnin'!--but she's graceful enough to put up with it until she can get back to her dragons.

3.) Red Country by Joe Abercrombie. Another one of those books I've been intending to read for a verrry long time, and am just now getting around to it. I'm not crazy about the US cover, but the UK cover was hellaciously expensive, so US it is. This story follows Shy South and her companion Lamb as they discover that the family farm has been razed and Shy's siblings kidnapped, and thus Shy and Lamb pursue the kidnappers. The plotline of The Searchers is coming to mind, but what I love about Abercrombie is how appearances can be deceiving. This not a Wild West fantasy fulfillment story. I haven't quite figured out what is it yet.
My reaction: As much as I love Cosca's razor sharp wit, especially filtered through Temple's biting view, I'm considering skipping the chapter I'm on just to get to what's going on with Shy and Lamb. Cosca has gone from dangerous to officious, and while the reader never loses sight of how dangerous a company of mercs are, Cosca is beginning to remind me of a used car salesman instead of the rogue I remember from The First Law Trilogy. I'm hoping that's just another one of Abercrombie's tricks again.

Books, books, everywhere! I spend a lot of time reading and shamelessly get books from the library...Thus, why I rarely read books the same year they're released. Sometimes, like in the cases of Scott Lynch and Patrick Rothfuss, I do that on purpose so as to avoid "catching up" when the next book in the series hasn't been released yet.

I genuinely love talking about books of all shapes, sizes, and genres, and so if there's any feedback, fire away. I plan on writing future content for good websites for book lovers (yay, Book Riot!) and fun literary criticism on books I've finished recently. The inspiration for this blog came from A Natural History of Dragons when Isabella discusses being "ink nosed"...I love that expression, and so I modified it to something I identify with. To be ink nosed! What joy there is in it.