| Sep. 7th, 2009 @ 08:22 pm Fantasy epics rated on how much they rip off Tolkien |
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There are several supposedly high fantasy epics series that I remembered as vaguely Tolkien-esque, but always used to get muddled and forever put off reading because I
couldn't remember which ones were supposed to be any good. Now I've a fair idea, and will now rate them on how much they rip off Tolkien.
In no particular order:
(1) George Martin: "Song of Ice and Fire: Game of Thrones" 3/10. I recently read the first two of these after really loving his Stories/Novels Armageddon Rag, Aces Wild, and Hedge Knight. (He also wrote Windhaven and the Havilan Tuff series.) I thought they were really good, and like Tolkien only in being (a) good (b) epic world changing events (c) the list of twenty previous kings being relevant to the country (d) long (e) having "R R" as his middle initials. However, it is (α) not a quest novel (β) doesn't have an implacable opaque Force of Evil as the antagonist (γ) has actual characters who make decisions based on actual emotions.
(2) David Eddings. "Belgariad: Pawn of Prophecy" 7/10. I've not read these, so I'm kind of guessing at the score. However, I have the impression (which may or may not be correct) that they're coming-of-age quest narratives which are endlessly recycled into each book, and a good introduction to fantasy, but not worth it if you've read a lot of fantasy before.
(3) Terry Brooks. "Sword of Shannara". 8/10. Elves. Magic swords. Despoiled home village of protagonist. Blah-de-blah-de-blah. I've not read it, but at least one person when I said "You know, that book that's ACTUALLY a Tolkien rip-off" said, "oh, you mean Brooks?"
(4) Raymond E. Feist. "Magician". 10/10. Dude, this is only saved from scoring 11 because you very sensibly, after ripping off half of it from Tolkien, ripped the other half off the less-well-known The empire of the petal throne. (And seriously, what exactly is NOT less well known than Tolkien? Harry Potter?) I thought the other half was quite original, until I discovered, on wikipedia, it was also ripped off. That doesn't mean the book is bad, some friends definitely enjoyed it (and I still have a mild curiousity to know what happened in-story to cause these universes to bud). But seriously, if you name your ripped off elvish races in Sindarin that is not subtle.
(5) David Gemmel. ?/10. Don't know anything but the name.
(6) Robert Jordan. (2/10) Endless endless endless endless series with more and more and more and more and more characters who whine and whine and whine about gender relations. About half is quite good. The first bit is a Tolkien-rip off, but quite well done, and most of the rest's flaws are not that.
(7) Stephen R. Donaldson. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. (0/10) As far as I can tell, these don't have anything to do with Tolkien at all, they're just not any good. Based on the first thirty pages of the first one, I will over-generalise the experience into "ten books of Thomas Covenant whining about having leprosy, or not having leprosy, or no-one liking him". I can be depressed on my own, thanks. I didn't find reading this added measurably to the experience. The other duology Mordant's Need has some interesting ideas, but suffers similarly from whining. His short stories are very good, you should read those. They are a bit grim read back-to-back, but many are very good individually.
And now, I'll include a very brief reminder for a variety of other fantasy series which mostly don't rip off Tolkien appreciably more than any other member of the fantasy genre, but at one time or another I had trouble remembering which they were. (This is not a very hard criterion, and excludes many notably good and bad books. Eg. whether you like Asimov or not, most people know he's "the one with the prolific 60s sci-fi" or "the one with the robots and pschohistory" without me telling you.)
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