Tag: fantasy

after a sum­mer filled with read­ing works con­sid­ered to be fine pieces of lit­er­a­ture, my return to the books i have enjoyed the most, fan­ta­sy nov­els, is bit­ter­sweet. i rel­ish the sto­ries for their enter­tain­ment val­ue, but now they are start­ing to seem a little…juvenile. per­haps this is just due to the books i am read­ing cur­rent­ly, The Ren­shai Chron­i­cles, by Mick­ey Zuck­er Reichert. i have not read any­thing by this author before so per­haps it is just the license she takes with Norse mythol­o­gy in com­bi­na­tion with her vague­ly Dun­geons and Drag­ons sto­ry­lines (i’ve nev­er enjoyed that type of fan­ta­sy). The char­ac­ters are all teenagers and behave exact­ly like teens in regard to affairs of the heart, but when it comes to mak­ing emo­tion­al deci­sions they are ratio­nal as a sophist. it is unnerv­ing, espe­cial­ly since they are all savants and excel in their respec­tive ‘job class’ to bor­row a phrase from D&D, often rival­ing those with decades or cen­turies more expe­ri­ence. it would be a good sto­ry if it weren’t so obvi­ous­ly con­trived. I do not believe this revul­sion will trans­fer to works of gen­uine cre­ative fan­ta­sy that offers philo­soph­i­cal and moral dilem­mas, (LotR, The Recluce Series) or those which offer more than just swords and sor­cery (The Wheel of Time, any­thing by Patri­cia McKil­lip). I am just tired of cook­iecut­ter fan­ta­sy trilo­gies. i need some­thing new.