Hello, Fluffsters! Happy Saturday!

I hope your weekend is going well.

Good news! I have the rest of The List for you! (Who knew I could spend three days on a list, right?) Well, I hope you enjoy the remaining points.

5) Something new and/or original. This was one of the areas where Dragon Champion did an excellent job. The entire book was told from the perspective of… the dragon. That particular perspective was fun! I wouldn’t have thought about how dragons view the world. But E.E. Knight did. And he presented it in a wonderful way. The Dresden Files’ particular take on the interaction between magic and nonmagic is also a lot of fun, and is a very fresh perspective. Summer Knight (from the Dresden Files) presents an “enchanting” perspective of fairy hierarchy, for example. It’s fun.

That’s also part of the reason why I did not like the book “Eragon.” Ok, so it was amusing to see all the different places that the book seemed to steal from. (Star Wars knock off, anyone? No? Well how about Lord of the Rings? Dragonriders of Pern? And that magic looked suspiciously identical to the magic system from The Belgariad…)

As another example of originality, Wrede pulls it off in her Enchanted Forest Chronicles. I mean, seriously- a princess volunteering to be a dragon’s princess, and being bored with normal princess-y things? It’s enchantingly new.

6) Consistency of Magic. This is actually more of a subset of point 4. But it’s important enough to get its own point. It annoys me to no end when fantasy stories (be it written or televised) ignores rules. Especially when there are designated rules, not a designated “there are no rules.”

To again use Eddings as an example, he incorporates a few different types of magic in order to provide consistency. But even so, there are distinct differences. And each category of magic is extremely consistent. The primary type — sorcery — works through “the Will and the Word.” (You gather your Will, and release it with any sort of word that somehow relates in your mind.) The one thing that is absolutely impossible is to will something into nonexistence- it breaks the absolute rule, and therefore backfires.

These rules of magic are followed scrupulously throughout Eddings’s series in that universe. The consistency helps make The Belgariad excellent fiction.

Well, that’s about all I can think of for right now. I hope you have an excellent rest of your weekend!

Hi again, Fluffsters!

Sorry for leaving you off after only two points yesterday. But I’m feeling lazy, and there’s enough here for multiple posts, so I may as well. (Aren’t I nice like that?)

Anywho. On to more of what makes excellent fantasy stories!

3) Good plot. This also is clearly important. That’s part of why some of Lewis’s Narnia series are better than others. Lewis has wonderfully consistent characters, but not all of his plots are as strong. That’s also part of why Dragon Champion wasn’t bad. The plot was there. Something happened. That’s also, as I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons why Sorcery & Cecelia wasn’t fantastic.

Granted, plot consistency and neatness is preferred. But even then, it’s not always entirely necessary. Real life, after all, isn’t always the most coherent.

4) “Real” setting. What I mean by this, is that the setting feels real, or like it could be real. There seem to be rules that are followed, like with the real world. Even if the rule is “there are no rules”, it’s consistent. Of course, it’s a lot better to have consistent rules, not lack thereof. Rich details are very helpful for this. Eddings is one of the masters of this. The cultures in his books are fantastic. The Arends, for example, (from the Belgariad) are very… impulsive. Any Arend you meet in the series is not going to be particularly brilliant, but will be brave to a fault. At one point, he describes one of the sub-groups of Arends as, without too much persuasion, likely being willing to declare war on a rising tide. (Or something along those lines.) Again, it was quite consistent, and quite delightful.

And once again, I’m going to leave you after only two sub-points. I hope you don’t mind.

Tomorrow will have the final installment of the list, though, (at least of what I have so far!) so come back tomorrow! I hope you have a great Friday!

Hi, Fluffsters! Happy Thursday!

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m a bit of a fantasy fanatic. There are few things better than curling up with a good fantasy novel. (Except possibly for curling up with a good fantasy novel and a mug of hot cocoa on a stormy night, under a nice fuzzy blanket.)

The trouble, of course, is finding a truly excellent novel. There are lots of fun books out there. Some of them are fantasy. But some fantasy books are not that great. Unfortunately.

But good fantasy, oh, that’s highly addictive. Excellent fantasy novels can transport you to a different world or time period for a while. They spark the imagination.

There are a few things that all good fantasy novels have in common.

1) They need to be not-poorly written. That’s pretty obvious… And the better written they are, the more likely they are to be good books. C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series and J. R. R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings, for example, are two examples of well written fantasy. They also have other good things going for them, which contributes to the serieses being good fantasy.

2) Strong characters. At the very least, the characters need to be believable and consistent. This will potentially make or break the story. Inconsistent characters are just confusing and detract strongly from a story. Some books, however, can be completely saved by strong characters. Now, that’s not to say that characters can’t change or grow. On the contrary, they almost need to. But the characters should do so naturally, for the setting.

The book “Sorcery and Cecelia”, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, for example, was a delightful work of fantasy. It didn’t have too much of a plot, but it had great characters. It was actually kindof like a Jane Austen book, but set in a fantasy world. It was really fun. Its lack of plot made it good, not excellent.

As an alternative, Dragon Champion (by E. E. Knight) did not completely succeed at this. Don’t get me wrong- it was a fun book. But from what I remember (it’s been a bit since I’ve read this book) some of the characters were not entirely consistent. That detracted from the tale. Especially since I remember there being some inconsistencies with the main character. (Again, don’t ask me for specifics.)

Well, I’m going to pause here for right now. Tune in tomorrow for the next part of what makes excellent fantasy!