Monday, October 27, 2008

Why I hate fantasy books

This book Brisingr has convinced me never to read a fantasy book again. I really hate how the plot follows the same formulaic plot somewhat like the hero quest. Actually I don't really like the idea of a formula to a book, even the hero quest. It makes books very predicatble and with the fact that the protagonist is ALWAYS perfectly moral which means that as i have stated in my past post the hero always finds the ideal solution to a problem that works out best for everybody (even some times the antagonist) so you always know what is going to happen in the end. Sometimes they are able to keep you interested and hae some unpredictablility like in Harry Potter where they kill a major character in most of the books at the end of the series so your always guessing who is going to die even if Harry still emerges triumphant. Harry Potter is the only example of a fantasy book that I still like because they make all the characters so much a part of who Harry is that when one of them dies it feels like part of Harry and the series dies as well. Another thing that I dont like about fantasy novels is that you don't really care about the characters because they have no depth (again i believe Harry Potter is exempt from this problem somewhat). In Brisingr i really wouldn't care if halfway through the novel Eragon caught fire and died and the Antagonist won the war, this is because they make him such a perfect character that the reader cannot connect to him. Though I must admit if Eragon's cousin Roran died I would be mildly pissed off because he had character depth.
Beyond the typical problems with fantasy novels and their formulaic plots is the actual idea of a fantasy novel. I like things to be set in the real world not some crazy offshoot of midieval life with dragons and magic. This just seems like things that distract from the plot without really adding much more. So much of the stuff simply seems to be for the "WOW" factor like if a little kid said "Its like knights in shining armor only they have dragons instead of horses and the ride them and fight on them!". That doesnt really change the novel in many fantasy books you could easily replace the word dragon with the word horse and the phrase breathed fire upon with ran over, and the book woud be virtually unchanged in its plot. I do understand that these books are written for children and I should view them as that but even as a child I was bored by these formulaic plots and predictability of fantasy/sci-fi books but I couldnt find a way to put that into words.

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