Gateway to the Epics?
In a comment to the previous post, Sean M. writes:
So, I know that there are probably lists out there like this, but is there any long-epic series that a beginner should start with?
I have never really read a long series of fantasy books, but I like the idea of it. I would start with the Wheel of Time series, but just about half of the people I hear mention it say bad things about it.
It's a harder question than you might think, even leaving aside the ethical issue of whether it's a good idea to encourage the reading of long epic series (which many people object to).
The fundamental problem with things like the Wheel of Time or George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is that they're not finished. It's hard to recommend either on the grounds that they might still go completely off the rails (some would argue that Jordan went off the rails about four books ago). I wouldn't want to recommend something that's incomplete.
The other major problem with coming up with a "where to start" recommendation is that the series that were the real gateway drug for this sort of stuff mostly aren't very good. I thought David Eddings's Belgarion was great stuff when I was about twelve, but it doesn't hold up that well. And while I enjoyed it at the time, with a little perspective, you can just about hear the dice rolling in RPG-derived stuff like Raymond Feist's Riftwar and sequels. I even kind of liked Terry Brooks when I first encountered it.
(A further problem is that many of these authors just don't know when to let go, so a reasonable trilogy can be retroactively destroyed by unnecessary sequels.)
The obvious recommendation would probably be The Lord of the Rings, but it's not quite the same thing, despite some similarities. A lot of people who like Tolkien don't like other epic fantasy, while some epic fantasy readers really don't much care for Tolkien. I think this has less to do with the relative quality of the works in question than with the fact that they're not trying to do the same things, but that's a different discussion altogether.
There are also some books that are great if you've read a bunch of epic fantasy before, because they play some interesting games with the format and readers' expectations, but I don't think they'd work as an introduction to the form. Steven Erikson's Malazan books (The first of which is reviewed here) are in this category, as are Gene Wolfe's recent duology (The Knight and The Wizard).
So, I'm left with a bunch of things that sort-of work. Dave Duncan has a couple of series ("A Man of His Word" and "A Handful of Men") that are perfectly competent epic fantasy with all the usual trappings (different races, exploring most of the map, a Dark Lord who needs defeating). Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry is sort of kitchen-sink epic fantasy, with a little bit of everything thrown in. It's got some lovely writing, but it's not entirely coherent. Susan Cooper's "young adult" series The Dark is Rising gets a lot of the flavor, though it's missing some of the elements of classic epic fantasy, and it's YA.
Comments and other suggestions are, of course, welcome. What am I forgetting?
Posted at 8:44 AM | link |