books, etc.

[pellucid]

After vaguely intending to get my hands on these books, following chaila43's rec, and going so far as to endeavor to buy them, only to discover that the middle book is out of print and thus a bit difficult to find (though apparently you can get a copy from Kirstein herself!), I've finally remembered that my local library branch is quite excellent at sci fi

Comments

[pellucid]

I don't know that I have an opinion about fantasy, per se, and that's an interesting way to think of it. I've typically really loved the fantasy I've read, but I've not read very much, and most of it has been really classic stuff, skewed to the children's books end of things: Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Earthsea, etc. And I admit I have a bit of an instinctive "meh, dragons" thing when I hear about fantasy series, for instance, even though all of the above are among my favorite books.

I guess with fantasy, as with sci fi, it's a matter of what the genre is trying to do. Both are genres that are not that interesting to me if they're just being all "dragons!" or "space!" for their own sake--but then again, they're almost never doing that, because the point of these genres is that by stripping off the bounds of mimetic realism, you can say a lot of things you couldn't say (at least in the same way) in realistic fiction. And one of my favorite narrative set-ups--deeply flawed yet generally well-intentioned people faced with untenable choices have to act anyway--is extremely common in these genres, so that's a plus.

But I am curious why authors choose to change certain things and not others, particularly when a fantasy world is supposed to have historical connections. If you're changing everything else, why insist on keeping gender or race relations like they were in 1100, for the sake of historical accuracy? Etc. In Le Guin's Earthsea series, for instance, part of the point is that the dark-skinned people are the people through whom the narrative is focalized, the people with the normative civilization, etc., and the light-skinned people are the scary barbarians. That, to me, is an example of what you might as well do if you're writing fantasy.

Anyway, it is a genre I think I'd like to read more of, just so I have more of a standing to have an opinion about it. As for GoT, I think I will give the series a try (the TV series; I don't think I'll read the books unless I really get into the TV series), if for nothing else than to have an informed opinion of my own. But...yeah. I'm not that hopeful, just knowing my own preferences.