/lit/ - Literature

Anon the Anonymous, the first of his name, the lord of anonymous shitposting realm, slayer of jannies, protector of free speech, generous contributor of (you)s

Fantasy books are capeshit for luddites

For no other reason than I happen to have these three fantasy books currently sitting on my shelf and OP inspired me to check their beginnings. Rate, review & discuss.

Its name had been Galasien once, a city of broad streets and thriving markets, of docks crowded with bright-sailed river craft. The shrines of its gods and heroes, their altars asmoke with incense of offerings, had watched over commerce and statecraft, lords and ladies, workmen and peasant farmers alike, in long and pleasant prosperity.
C.J. Cherryh: Fortress in the Eye of Time (1995)

20th of Henden, 411 AA
Averalaan, the Common

Children were always the worst.
Five years spent cramping knees at the feet of Levec, the most notorious healer on the isle of Averalaan Aramarelas, had drilled into Askeiya a'Narin the fundamental lessons about how to be a healer in the Real World. But although she could now walk past crippled men, injured women, people in pain so great that they hid it behind enough ale to flood a river, she found it hard to bypass the children.
Michelle West: The Broken Crown (1997)

Thunderstorms were common in Sarantium on midsummer nights, sufficiently so to make plausible the oft-repeated tale that the Emperor Apius passed to the god in the midst of a towering storm, with lightning flashing and rolls of thunder besieging the Holy City. Even Pertennius of Eubulus, writing only twenty years after, told the story this way, adding a statue of the Emperor toppling before the bronze gates to the Imperial Precint and an oak tree split asunder just outside the landward walls. Writers of history often seek the dramatic over the truth. It is a failing of the profession.
Guy Gavriel Kay: Sailing to Sarantium (1998)

>>21770479
Is there something else you'd prefer to see? Not shitposting, just curious. I like when authors write alternate histories but it's so easy for them to get carried away in doing so. Some things are better shown than explained.

>>21770479


FIRST PAGE OF EVERY FANTASY DRIVEL EVER.

>>21770712
I hate being introduced to a bunch of characters and places without backup context on them and time spent introducing them

>>21770712
Something like Dark Souls.

>>21770712
I would like not to be bombarded from page one with autistic genealogies, cryptic events, and characters with cringe names. Intricate world-building has had a cancerous influence on the fantasy genre. Everyone has fallen for this meme.

>>21770479
It was cool when Michael Moorcock did it

>>21770657
>the isle of Averalaan Aramarelas
lmao why are they like this? always with the most cringe names imaginable.

Fantasy has to be the worst genre in all of genre fiction. Just filled to the brim with some of the worst shit you could ever read; even the best it has to offer is the same as eating potato chips.
You either read literary fiction, or you don’t bother with fiction at all. End of story.

>world building

>>21770721
THERE was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wastdale, set in a gray old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time. Lily and rose and larkspur bloomed in the borders, and begonias with blossoms big as saucers, red and white and pink and lemon-colour, in the beds before the porch. Climbing roses, honeysuckle, clematis, and the scarlet flame-flower scrambled up the walls. Thick woods were on every side without the garden, with a gap north-eastward opening on the desolate lake and the great fells beyond it: Gable rearing his crag-bound head against the sky from behind the straight clean outline of the Screes.
Cool long shadows stole across the tennis lawn. The air was golden. Doves murmured in the trees; two chaffinches played on the near post of the net; a little water-wagtail scurried along the path. A French window stood open to the garden, showing darkly a dining-room panelled with old oak, its Jacobean table bright with flowers and silver and cut glass and Wedgwood dishes heaped with fruit: greengages, peaches, and green muscat grapes. Lessingham lay back in a hammock-chair watching through the blue smoke of an after-dinner cigar the warm light on the Gloire de Dijon roses that clustered about the bedroom window overhead. He had her hand in his. This was their House.
“Should we finish that chapter of Njal?” she said.
She took the heavy volume with its faded green cover, and read: “He went out on the night of the Lord’s day, when nine weeks were still to winter; he heard a great crash, so that he thought both heaven and earth shook. Then he looked[Pg xii] into the west airt, and he thought he saw thereabouts a ring of fiery hue, and within the ring a man on a gray horse. He passed quickly by him, and rode hard. He had a flaming firebrand in his hand, and he rode so close to him that he could see him plainly. He was black as pitch, and he sung this song with a mighty voice—
Here I ride swift steed,
His flank flecked with rime,
Rain from his mane drips,
Horse mighty for harm;
Flames flare at each end,
Gall glows in the midst,
So fares it with Flosi’s redes
As this flaming brand flies;
And so fares it with Flosi’s redes
As this flaming brand flies.
“Then he thought he hurled the firebrand east towards the fells before him, and such a blaze of fire leapt up to meet it that he could not see the fells for the blaze. It seemed as though that man rode east among the flames and vanished there.


- opening of the worm Ouroboros.

>>21770479
Mine starts with a cold open of the protagonist as a child at her monastery before it burns down--the monastery burning down is mentioned in the blurb on the cover, so the first two chapters are essentially being driven to some degree by that dramatic irony.

I will say that the Bakker managed to hold my interest despite doing exactly what you're making fun of, but it really pissed me off at parts, because as I continued reading I discovered that 90% of it wasn't necessary and he really was just making the text as obtuse as possible with all the proper nouns and unpronounceable names.

When I write fantasy, I focus on a small cast of characters and their interactions and relationships. The little tidbits about the broader world are kept to the side and don't have a ton of impact on their journey. Ironically, I appreciate all these exposition dumps as they've helped me see what not to do.

>One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten. The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse. But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts. No furnace-hearted dragon had pulled down its mighty gates. Ishuäl was the secret refuge of the Kûniüric High Kings, and no one, not even the No-God, could besiege a secret. Months earlier, Anasûrimbor Ganrelka II, High King of Kûniüri, had fled to Ishuäl with the remnants of his household. From the walls, his sentries stared pensively across the dark forests below, their thoughts stricken by memories of burning cities and wailing multitudes. When the wind moaned, they gripped Ishuäl’s uncaring stone, reminded of Sranc horns. They traded breathless reassurances. Had they not eluded their pursuers? Were not the walls of Ishuäl strong? Where else might a man survive the end of the world? The plague claimed the High King first, as was perhaps fitting: Ganrelka had only wept at Ishuäl, raged the way only an Emperor of nothing could rage. The following night the members of his household carried his bier down into the forests. They glimpsed the eyes of wolves reflected in the light of his pyre. They sang no dirges, intoned only a few numb prayers. Before the morning winds could sweep his ashes skyward, the plague had struck two others: Ganrelka’s concubine and her daughter. As though pursuing his bloodline to its thinnest tincture, it assailed more and more members of his household. The sentries upon the walls became fewer, and though they still watched the mountainous horizon, they saw little. The cries of the dying crowded their thoughts with too much horror. Soon even the sentries were no more. The five Knights of Trysë who’d rescued Ganrelka after the catastrophe on the Fields of Eleneöt lay motionless in their beds. The Grand Vizier, his golden robes stained bloody by his bowel, lay sprawled across his sorcerous texts. Ganrelka’s uncle, who’d led the heartbreaking assault on Golgotterath’s gates in the early days of the Apocalypse, hung from a rope in his chambers, slowly twisting in a draft. The Queen stared endlessly across festering sheets.
Kino...

>>21771635
I finished this page and turned off my kindle never to return to this book. Impenetrable drivel. I got through malazan, so I'm no stranger to long works of complex fantasy but this book fucked me off so much right off the bat

>>21771635
lmao this almost reads like satire

First page of every scifi novel
>I checked out with K19 on Aldabaran III, and stepped out through the crummalite hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I cocked the timejector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the Brylls ran swiftly on five legs using their other two to send out crylon vibrations. The pressure was almost unbearable, but I caught the range on my wrist computer through the transparent cysicites. I pressed the trigger. The thin violet glow was icecold against the rust-colored mountains. The Brylls shrank to half an inch long and I worked fast stepping on them with the poltex. But it wasn’t enough. The sudden brightness swung me around and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google5 had told me it wasn’t enough. He was right.

>>21772026
lol true

>>21772026
I feel like this is more how classic American sci fi is

>>21770657
Jesus

>>21772026
That feels mostly like Heinlein Tee Bee Aiche

>>21770479
I actually like this. Got any recommendations? Especially if they have a lot of different creatures like goblins, dwarves, elves and other mythical beings.

>>21773939
b8

>>21773954
Not bait. I love fantasy in general and occasionally I also like to read the kind of fantasy that OP gave an example of. Every couple months or so I’ll just really feel like reading a long fantasy series and I can’t stop thinking about it until I pick one and read it.