Things I've Noticed: 80% of Fantasy series are pointless

Growing up in the Prairie Provinces of Canada with bad asthma and where winter lasts more than half the year, I spent a lot of time indoors. While the other kids were skiing, skating, and having snowball fights, I spent most of my time doing a lot of reading, and although Horror and SF where my favourites growing up fantasy series definitely had a special place with me.

Both of my parents loved fantasy books, so you could say I have the love of Fantasy in my blood (True fact - my Dad originally wanted to name me Conan - the fact that I ended up with at a career in libraries would have ended me). The Lord of the Rings, Dragonlance, and The Xanth Series were huge favourites of mine, and when I say huge I mean those three series alone took up most of my bookshelves.

Now, just to clarify my complaining, I am not talking about episodic series, where the main characters go on different adventures (Farfhd and the Gray Mouser or Conan the Barbarian). I like these books and many of them are still favourites of mine.

The Fantasy series I really have a problem with are the "Quest" series, which basically cut and paste from other, better books. This quest fiction, wherein some evil takes over a world, and a band of plucky youths my travel the land collecting parts of a fantastic treasure to ultimately defeat the villain is repetitive and pointless (The Sword of Shanara is a complete rip-off of The Lord of the Rings - I liked the rest of the series, but that first book shamelessly steals from Tolkein). Author Neil Gaiman actually calls this cut-and-paste process "plot coupons" and explains it very nicely here.

I think that unless the author actually has a story that MUST be told in more than 10 sequels they should go out and try something new. Heck, I would even be happy if they told other stories in their own world - I'm a huge Terry Pratchett fan, but if you break down his Discworld series into books about each character, the numbers are actually pretty conservative.

In the end, the best fantasy stories can still use the standard plots, but they do it from a new angle, or bend the rules to dazzle the readers (Fables, by Bill Willingham is a wonderful example). As of late my favourite Fantasy books are definitely stand alone ones (Neverwhere), or series that seem to be going somewhere - but in their own unique way (Percy Jackson and the Olympians).

Check out my actual blog at http://wisdomofbookmonkey.blogspot.com

Sorry - still getting a hold of putting links in these posts - the Neil Gaiman explanation can be found at:

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2002/10/several-people-asking-what-i-meant-by.asp

(The Sword of Shanara is a complete rip-off of The Lord of the Rings - I liked the rest of the series, but that first book shamelessly steals from Tolkein). Author Neil Gaiman actually calls this cut-and-paste process "plot coupons"
(sometimes this is done to pay homage to the great authors of the past, and if it is done well it can sometimes work)

An interesting article by Gaiman But it lacks a few things to make it an epic tale.
Popcorn Boy must be a little different than the rest of Clown town residents. He must possess some inner knowledge or some quirk in character that makes him different. It's this quirk and or knowledge that drives him against his will on the quest.

Example;
In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo has a wondering spirit combined with the knowledge of the Ring of power.
This leads him to the mount of Doom to destroy the ring.
The actual quest in to strengthen and prepare him (the reluctant hero) for his ordeal. And the true ordeal is never the obvious one. Again from "TLOTR" (the book not the movie); Frodo returns to the Shire and finds it in ruins. He can not save or restore it! On his quest he lost his "innocence". He now processes the knowledge of good and evil. That's the price he had to pay to save the world.
The next thing the hero needs is a trusted friend . Enter Sam Gamgee. Frodo's faithful servant and friend.
Through all their trails and dangers Sam never losses his innocence or hope.. All he ever talks about is his Gaffer and the Shire. And it's Sam that saves the Shire by using the Elfin soil to make the Shire bloom again.

That's why most fantasy is a waste of time. The authors never read The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

The Hero's Tale, quest or trial has been told and retold a million times. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. :0}

#3 - good point - that special quality that says "I'm a protagonist!" is definitely important, and I love the fact that Frodo actually has a character arc in "TLOTR," something that is sadly lacking in a lot of fantasy series.

I remember reading something about the creation of the Dragonlance series that said when TSR created it, they specifically set out to adapt the world of TLOTR to a role-playing & book tie-in series with just enough of their own stamp on it to prevent actual copyright infringement. TSR was never too bad at assimilating tons of different fantasy and mythical sources. Creativity, though, was perhaps not their strong point.

#5 - I totally agree, I liked that they did make at least one big change - in the original Chronicles trilogy dragons were considered mythical beings which no longer existed - that was kind of cool. But after the first two trilogies, and the origins stories, and the next generation stories, and the new continent, and whatever else they've stuffed into the 50+ Dragonlance books which exist now, I think they lost their way.

80% of almost everything is crap. Why should fantasy series be different?

That's why most fantasy is a waste of time. The authors never read The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell.

Actually, I'd argue the opposite. The reason that most fantasy sucks is that the authors have read The Hero with a Thousand Faces, or worse, they've read one of more of the many writing books derived from it, and they think if you hit all the necessary plot beats, you've got an epic story.

#7 - Yeah I'm a big believer in the 80/20 principle, where 20% of any genre actually makes up 80% of that genre's value and the other 80% is only worth 20% - the trick is definitiely finding the good 20%

#8 - For me, the best stories are the ones that go where you don't expect - as all readers know the rules of how stories are supposed to go, it's those rare ones that deviate from the norm that have the greatest impact. Right now my favourite of that type of book is Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, which started out as a regular zombie apocalypse story but has now been following the survivors for 5 years, something rarely seen in that style of book.

So are 80% of any genre. And the same arguments that you make can be done for any genre that you do not particularly like. And your point is?

If you do not like Quest series, do not read them. I doubt that someone is just throwing them at you and holding you at gunpoint until you read them. I do not like Harlequin-type romance novels and I simply do not read them. But I also do not go around explaining that they are pointless, bad literature or anything else. There are people that read only Quest series, there are people that read only romance novels, there are people that read only non-fiction. It's a big world. Everyone have the right to decide what they call "good literature".

PS: If you think that most of the fantasy is the quest one, you need to read more fantasy.

#10 - Totally valid question What exactly is my point in slandering 4/5ths of what you can currently find on the bookstore shelves in the Fantasy section?

I guess I'm looking for the person to explain why these books resonate with so many people. I read tonnes of fantasy, and although stand-alones are my favourites, I do have some series I like to read. I guess that with all the options available to writers in the genre of Fantasy, I want to know why the quest is the most popular. It's kind of like how comic books are dominated by super-hero stories, although there is much more you can do with the medium.

I did do my best not to call down fans of Quest-based fantasy, but if I offended you I'm sorry, that definitely was not what I was going for.

:) I do not think I had read even one Quest fantasy in the last 5 years - they are not my thing. I was just wondering what's your point :)

Why they resonate? Because they have a goal and it gets achieved at the end. Similar to the computer games -- at least most of my friends that like these books like Quests in games also. And a few classical examples had shown how the genre should be written -- and it had always been easier to follow the already walked-on path than to try a build a new one. I had always thought that LOTR did a disservice to the genre - or the first few authors that started following its plot in different worlds and different items did.

And then some people just want the known thing - they know that they like quests so why bother searching another type of books.

#12 - It's kind of funny, I wrote a similar thing about how I felt the book Dune did a diservice to SF (check it out at http://wisdomofbookmonkey.blogspot.com/2009/08/things-ive-noticed-dune-really-wr... )

and I guess you are right, when people find a style of book they like, there is nothing wrong with staying there. Personally, I like to read all sorts of things, but I always try to choose quality over quantity - If I'm going to read Quest-Fiction, I want it to be the best stuff out there (Right now I'm being told that that is George R.R. Martins "A Song of Ice and Fire" Series).

I think Quest fiction is like any other subgenre: there's good and bad. I agree that Sword of Shannara is the most spectacularly abysmal fantasy in the known universe (and not just because it's a Tolkien rip-off). On the other hand, one of my favourite fantasy series (Prince of the Godborn and its sequels) was described by a reviewer as a routine "collect-all-the-plot-coupons" fantasy, but I still think it's great.

#14 - I totally respect that, I think it is great when people tell me about things they love, as I'm always on the lookout for more stuff. I mean, seriously, the only way I could have got more suggestions of good quest-fantasy titles from my original post, would have been called - Please tell me your favourite Quest-based Fantasy titles! But it just didn't roll of the tongue as well. :)

I have to say that I picked up my first fantasy book about 15 years ago while spending the holidays with my mother, and given a choice between her fantasy books or mills and boon...well I chose the fantasy especially since they were all series based books and I have a tendency to read rather quickly, so I figured I would have enough reading material for my stay.

Most series (I will agree) do follow the same formula, but the suroundings and characters are (obviously) different, and so are the changes that they go through (well for the most part anyway). The first time around I chose The Belgariad series by David Eddings. I really enjoyed these books. Maybe you should give him a try.

Sometimes a series can get tedious, I will agree there, but sometimes stand alone books just don't give you enough of the world you've delved into, I think that is why series books are so popular, people like the characters and want to learn more about them, and it helps if in each book you learn more about a different character.

And really, if you take a good look at the plots of most fantasy series, there's some sort of quest in there. It might not be a save the world from evil quest, but it's still a quest of some kind.

I'm a great fan of triolgies. Most authors can keep a good story going for three books, maybe four. After that they tend to get formulaic.
Don't get me wrong I do have my little favorites that I follow. But even they are not as good after four or five books. I read them because they are like an old well worn recliner. Comfortable.

#13 - how strange that whoever it was said that about A Song of Fire and Ice - I love George Martin's stuff because it isn't quest fantasy (or at least it doesn't seem so to me).