Fantasy from A to Z – Page 2 – One Thousand And One Parsecs

Fantasy from A to Z: Q is for Quests

What is your quest in life? What is your driving goal, the thing that gets you up in the morning? What do you hope to accomplish before you go the way of all the Earth and depart this mortal coil?

Quests are huge in fantasy literature, because they resonate so much with our own lives. Most of us are not just merely existing, drifting aimlessly from one life event to another—or, if we are, there is something deep within us that yearns for greater meaning and purpose in our lives. Quest stories give us that sense of meaning and purpose.

I asked Grok to define “quest” in the context of fantasy literature, and this is what it told me:

In fantasy literature, a quest is a narrative framework where a protagonist or group embarks on a challenging journey to achieve a specific goal, often involving adventure, trials, and personal growth.

Grok then gave me a list of five things that all quest stories typically include:

a clear objective,
a journey,
challenges and trials,
some kind of character transformation, and
some kind of symbolic meaning.

One of the best-known examples of this is Frodo’s quest in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which is actually a subversion of the traditional quest story, because instead of seeking to acquire the object of the quest (in this case, the ring of power), Frodo is seeking to destroy it.

The objective is to take the ring to Mount Doom and drop it into the lava, because that is the only place where it can be destroyed.

The journey takes Frodo far from his home in the Shire, across nearly the whole length of Middle Earth to the desolate lands of Mordor, where the Dark Lord is gathering his forces.

Frodo faces all sorts of challenges and trials, from the attack of the ringwraiths at Weathertop to the near-death experience with Shelob the spider. But perhaps the greatest challenge comes from the ring itself, which is constantly tempting him to submit to the Dark Lord’s will.

The story transforms Frodo so completely that by the end, he finds that he cannot return to his former life in the Shire. He leaves Middle Earth for the Grey Havens and sails with the last of the elves to the Undying Realms beyond the western sea.

As for symbolic meaning, the whole book is rife with it, from Gandalf as the Christ figure to the ring as a metaphor for the temptation of absolute power.

But what does an epic story like this have to do with us? How and why does a quest story like this one resonate so deeply with us? After all, very few of us have been attacked by giant spiders, or had a murderous experience with a ghost-like entity from beyond the veil. So why do we resonate with the idea of a quest?

I can only speak to my own experience, but this is how my own life has resembled something of a quest:

My objective, ever since my college days, has been to make it as a professional fiction writer.

The journey has been more of an internal one than an external one, though I have traveled a bit for conventions and the like. I also spent a year teaching English overseas, not only to make ends meet, but to gain the sort of life experience that I thought would lead to better writing. In fact, I’ve taken a lot of odd jobs along the way, all of which have given me experiences that I’ve later drawn on.

As for challenges and trials, it’s been an extremely difficult road, because the vast majority of aspiring writers never manage to make a living at it. I’ve made just about every mistake that it’s possible to make (except writing porn—though some people would argue that not writing porn is the greater mistake). Overall, I can say that pursuing this writing career has been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my life.

Has it transformed me? Yes, it has—and I know this because one of the major things that attracted me to my wife was my passion for writing, and the diligence with which I have pursued it. If I’d taken the path of least resistance instead of pursuing this difficult quest, I probably would have ended up as a morbidly overweight slob, addicted to porn and video games—in other words, the kind of person my wife would have never given a second glance.

As for symbolic meaning, I’ll say this: when my first child was born and I held her in my arms for the first time, I had the distinct impression that “this is her story now.” As a writer, I’ve pored over lots of writing advice, and one of the best pieces of advice I’ve received is to remember that every character is a hero in their own story. So when I had this powerful experience of holding my child for the first time, is it any surprise that one of the lessons I’d learned from my quest to become a professional writer helped me to understand the deeper meaning of that moment?

Those are some of the ways that quest stories resonate with me. I’m sure it will be different in your own life, but the main points are likely all there—which is why the quest story has become such a powerful archetype.

Of course, not all fantasy books involve a quest of some kind. In recent years, “cozy fantasy” has become something of a thing, where the story is less of a quest than a low stakes, slice-of-life sort of tale. Perhaps the most successful example of this is Travis Baldree’s Legend and Lattes.

Why do those stories resonate so much? Frankly, I think it’s because so many of my fellow Millennials feel like they have failed to launch. We came of age during the Great Recession and the Global Financial Collapse, saddled with way too much student loan debt. With all of the bankruptcies, mass layoffs, hiring freezes, and delayed retirements, many of us struggled to find meaningful work. As a consequence, many of us were forced to move back in with our parents and put off major life decisions like buying a home, getting married, and starting a family. Far too many of us have sadly put off those decisions indefinitely. And things haven’t gotten much better in the decades since. Indeed, our Boomer parents have the dubious distinction of being the only generation in American history to enjoy more prosperity than every generation before and since.

But I do think that is changing with the rising generation. There are a few key ways in which Zoomers are the diametric opposites of Millennials, and one of them has to do with this hunger for stories about quests. Just compare Epic: The Musical to Legends and Lattes. The contrast is stark. So as Zoomers come into their own, I think this subgenre of cozy fantasy is going to fade. It may stick around for a while, but I don’t think it’s going to be more than a tiny niche.

After all, what is your driving goal in life? What is your own personal quest?

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Fantasy from A to Z: P is for Prayer

What would fantasy be without religion? Probably much the same as us, when we don’t have religion: aimless, drifting, and lost.

Religion is more than just a useful aspect of worldbuilding. It’s something that lies at the very core of what makes us human—and thus, it’s something that any story needs to at least touch on if it is to be meaningful or important. Most likely, it won’t be meaningful at all unless the religious aspect is incorporated deeply within its bones.

But what is religion? For our purposes, religion is how we, as humans, relate to the powers that are higher than ourselves. It’s not about painting a cross on your cover, or a star of David, or a crescent, or an omh, or whatever else. It’s about how we act in regards to the cosmic and the transcendent. It’s about how we understand how to orient ourselves in this vast and terrifying universe, and find our own place within it.

I grew up in a time when religion was one of those taboo subjects that you never brought up in polite society. Politics, religion, and sex were all taboo like that. Granted, those taboos were already beginning to fray by the time I was old enough to hold an uninformed opinion on any of that, but even in the 90s, the post-war liberal consensus still held.

What was the post-war liberal consensus? It was the set of rules and norms that we all (or those of us in polite society, at least) agreed to live by, after the tumultuous catastrophe of the World Wars. From 1914 to 1945, more than a hundred Europeans died from political causes—and that was just in Europe. For thirty long years, the whole world was drowned in blood.

The wars ended with the invention of the world’s most devastating superweapon, which for the first time in the history of this planet gave us the power to literally annihilate our own species. So at the end of all that, our grandparents felt a very strong need to keep those weapons from ever being used again. Hence, they developed the post-war liberal consensus.

The greatest value of the post-war liberal consensus was tolerance—but they didn’t think of that as a value in itself. The idea was that instead of elevating the values of any one group over another, they would create a world where everyone tolerated each other. Everyone could keep their own culture and religion, along with their own unique (and often contradictory) cultural and religious values, so long as they didn’t try to impose those values on anyone else.

The trouble with that, of course, is that tolerance itself is a value. Which means that in order to maintain the post-war consensus, they had to be intolerant toward any culture or religion that threatened it. Which meant that they had to push their globalism and multiculturalism on everyone, superseding all of their own cultural and religious values. This gave rise to the global urban monoculture, which ultimately gave us the clown world we now live in. Which is currently falling apart.

Religion should not be off-limits, especially for good storytelling. At the same time, that doesn’t mean that stories should bash you over the head and try to convert you to whatever church the author happens to belong to. Indeed, some of the most religious stories aren’t about any particular church or creed at all.

An example of this is Epic: The Musical. Beyond the old Greek mythology that runs through the story, the religious view is that the universe is utterly unpredictable, the gods (or higher powers) are arbitrary and capricious, and that the ends (getting home to Penelope) always justify the means. Indeed, any means that aren’t justified by the ends are immoral and wrong. Ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves. How do we sleep? Next to our wives.

Those aren’t the religious views that I subscribe to, but those are deeply religious views. How? Because they show us how we stand in relation to powers that are higher than ourselves. In the 19th century, it became fashionable to throw out religion, and reverence man himself as the highest power in the universe. Where did that get us? It gave us the 31 years that killed 100 million Europeans and drowned the whole world in blood.

G.K. Chesterton said: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” Now, more than ever, the world needs religion.

Of course, one of the nice things about writing fiction is that you can explore all sorts of religious ideas that may or may not have a direct counterpart in our world. Indeed, that’s part of what makes fantasy so rich. Tolkien created a whole race (the elves) that is bound by magic and immortality to this earth, contrasting with us humans, who are “strangers in a strange land.” In fact, Tolkien’s entire oeuvre is rich with religious elements, not just in the worldbuilding and the mythology, but in the Christian symbology—and he does it so subtly and so deeply that it draws you into his world, rather than kicking you out. It’s all in service to the story.

There’s a reason why the best stories in the world are in the Bible (and most of those are in the Book of Genesis). Which is one of the reasons why I’m drawing on the life of King David for the fantasy epic that I’m currently writing (The Soulbound King). But I’m also drawing on symbology and mythology as well, to make sure the religious elements aren’t just skin-deep. There is so much fascinating tree-related symbolism within the Jewish/Christian tradition. So much rich and wonderful stuff to draw on for creating a fantasy world.

Don’t be afraid to play with religion in your own fantasy stories. After all, on the deepest level, creativity itself is something of a religious act.

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Fantasy from A to Z: N is for Noblebright

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

While the quote comes from Warhammer 40k, a science fiction franchise, it very soon became applied to the “darker and edgier” fantasy that started coming out in the 80s and 90s. Indeed, the quote itself spawned the term “grimdark” for a fantasy subgenre that became very popular in the 00s, with the rise of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire and subsequent Game of Thrones TV series.

Grimdark combines the scope and feel of epic fantasy with the savagery and moral greyness of sword & sorcery, ramping up the violence and savagery to levels that would have made even Robert E. Howard blush. It often features twists that subvert the old fantasy tropes, such as killing off the “chosen one” hero who would typically be the protagonist, or presenting a horrifying dystopia of a world that is the utter antithesis of an escapist fantasy.

In part, I think the grimdark phenomenon was a reaction to the Tolkien formula that dominated fantasy for so long. After J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings became wildly popular, his publishers tried to replicate that success by explicitly creating a formula that they wanted their writers to follow. This resulted in a bunch of Tolkien clones, such as Terry Brooks’s Shannara series and David Edding’s Belgariad series. For a couple of decades, these dominated the fantasy shelves, until writers began to revolt, and their books began to take off. After all, Game of Thrones was originally published in 1996.

But while there’s some truth to that theory, I don’t think it’s sufficient to explain the rise of grimdark. After all, Stephen R. Donaldson was rebelling against the Tolkien formula back in the 70s, and while his Thomas Covenant books were quite successful, they didn’t spawn a new subgenre (though arguably, they paved the way for later writers like Martin and Abercrombie). Instead, I think there’s something generational about the grimdark subgenre—that it’s the sort of thing that only could have arisen in the 90s and 00s, because of how the generational cycle works.

I wrote a lengthy blog post about this, which remains one of my more popular posts. My basic thesis is that the fantasy genre goes through generational cycles just like history goes through generational cycles. In its simplest form, the cycle looks something like this:

Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.

During the hard times, we tend to resonate more with stories that feature grim characters and dark fantasy worlds—hence, the rise of grimdark. But during the good times, we tend to resonate more with noble characters and bright fantasy worlds.

(It’s a little more complicated than that, of course. The fantasy cycle is offset just a little, since we tend to resonate less with darker stories as we become exhausted from living in a darker world. Indeed, the yearning for the next phase of the cycle drives us to tell more hopeful stories, which in turn drive us to build a more hopeful world. But to read the full analysis, go check out my original post.)

So what is noblebright fantasy, then? It’s basically the antithesis of grimdark—a backlash against the backlash. And while it hasn’t yet manifested as a distinct subgenre, with a George R.R. Martin or a Joe Abercrombie to champion it, I think it’s only a matter of time before we see an author who rides this cultural wave to massive literary success. And as soon as that happens, I think we’ll have a much better idea of what “noblebright” actually is.

In other words, noblebright fantasy is currently in the process of being born—and after it has emerged fully formed into the world, it will probably take a different name. Indeed, “noblebright” as a term is itself merely a knee-jerk reaction to “grimdark.” To subvert the original Warhammer 40k quote:

In the Noble Brightness of the far future, there is only HIGH ADVENTURE!”

Currently, there are only a handful of writers who are explicitly labeling their books as “noblebright fantasy.” I am not one of them, though I suspect that my books (and my readers) have a lot of overlap. As it exists right now, noblebright is characterized by heroic quests and the triumph of good over evil, with an emphasis on hope, virtue, and making a positive difference in the world. It’s also very common for these authors to include Christian themes, though from what I can tell, the books aren’t explicitly religious.

While I haven’t yet joined the pioneers of this budding new subgenre, I expect that I will in the not-too-distant future. I’m currently working on an epic fantasy trilogy based loosely on the life of King David, which features many of these noblebright tropes and themes. But it’s going to be a while before I release the first book, since I want to publish the books of the first trilogy all within a month of each other. Since these books are going to fall in the 150k to 200k word range, a lot of things can change between now and then. Perhaps the term “noblebright” will have been abandoned, with people looking down on it as a passing fad of the early 20s.

But I don’t think the broader trend toward brighter, more hopeful fantasy is going to reverse course anytime soon. In fact, I think it’s generational. Whether or not it takes the name “noblebright,” I think that we’re going to see a new subgenre of fantasy emerge very soon. It’s starting right now as a backlash to grimdark, but as the wave crests and it begins to gain some staying power, I expect that it will stop defining itself by the thing it opposes and start to define itself in a more independent way.

I’m really hoping to catch this wave, and I think that my Soulbound King series has some real potential to do so. But whether or not I catch it, I know that this is the kind of stuff I like to write, and I hope to be able to write it for a long time to come.

Fantasy from A to Z: M is for Magic

Magic! What would fantasy be without it? About the same place as science fiction if you took out the science. Speculative fiction is all about the sense of wonder that it makes you feel, and the main way that fantasy does that is through magic.

In Brandon Sanderson’s writing class (which he has generously made available to the public, by videotaping and podcasting his lectures), Sanderson divides magic into two broad types: hard magic and soft magic. And while some fantasy readers take issue with the way that Sanderson leans more toward hard magic in his own books, the division he draws between hard and soft magic is still quite useful.

Soft magic is the kind of magic that isn’t fully explained, and is mostly left up to the reader’s imagination. Magical things happen, and we don’t know how or why, but it helps to instill a feeling that the world is vast and wondrous. As such, soft magic is primarily used as a way to enhance the setting.

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, a good example of this is the elves. We know that they are immortal and that they are far more glorious than most other races, but we never really know the full extent of their capabilities. Gandalf is another example of this. Just what was he doing with the Balrog, and how did defeating that ancient beast in a marathon spelunking-hiking-wrestling match? Who knows!

And that’s the biggest criticism of soft magic: if you don’t know how the magic works, how do you know that the heroes won’t just pull a rabbit out of their hat to save them at the last possible moment? Or summon the eagles, which amounts to the same thing. For that matter, if the eagles are so awesome, why don’t the heroes just fly on their backs all the way to Mount Doom? I mean, can you believe what it would have been like if they had to walk the entire way? Somebody might have died!

Hard magic, on the other hand, is the kind of magic where everything is explained. It’s not just magic, but a whole magic system, which operates by rules in the same way that our physical universe works according to rules. In essence, it is the fantasy inverse of Clarke’s third law, where any sufficiently explained magic is indistinguishable from science. The reader might not know all of the rules, but the writer does, and he drops enough hints throughout to make the reader confident that there are rules.

In Lord of the Rings, a good example of hard magic is the ring of power itself. What does it do? It makes you invisible if you put it on (though it makes you shine like a beacon to Sauron and his ringwraiths), and it tempts you with false promises of power, with the goal of leading you back into the clutches of Sauron. If Sauron ever gets the ring, it’s game over, because he will regain all of his powers. Oh, and it also stretches out your lifespan, at the cost of your quality of life (and quite possibly your sanity).

Because we know the rules the govern the magic of the one ring, we aren’t upset when Tolkien uses that magic to advance the plot of the book. Indeed, that is the biggest strength of hard magic: that it can be used in all sorts of interesting and creative ways to advance the plot.

“But hold on!” the advocates of soft magic will say. “If you reduce your magic into a fancy plot device, it kills the sense of wonder that comes with the best magic systems.” After all, there’s a reason why Tom Bombadil is in the book. There are two big things that happen when the hobbits make their detour to his house: first, Tom Bombadil puts on the ring and shows that it has absolutely no effect on him; and second, when Frodo puts on the ring and goes invisible, Tom Bombadil demonstrates that he can still see Frodo.

It’s subtle, but it’s there—and believe it or not, it’s there for a reason. By demonstrating that there are higher or more powerful forces that can supersede the laws of magic surrounding the one ring, Tolkien preserves that sense of vastness and wonder that more rules-based magic systems tend to lose.

There is a rejoinder to that point, however. When hard magic is done well, it creates its own sense of wonder, more akin to what we feel when we’re playing a good video game. It’s the wonder that comes from imagining what it would be like to exercise the kind of magical powers that we see the characters exercise. Brandon Sanderson is a master of this, and my favorite example is from his novella The Emperor’s Soul. By the end of that book, I couldn’t help but daydream what I would do if I had my own set of soulstamps. One of them would make me an awesome writer, the other an awesome marketer, and the third an awesome publisher. How cool would that be? (Okay, maybe you have to be an indie author yourself to fully get it… but still!)

As you can probably guess, though, the best fantasy novels feature a blend of hard and soft magic—and Sanderson says as much in his lectures. There’s a reason why he draws from Lord of the Rings for examples of each, much as I’ve done here. And ultimately, it’s less of a binary and more of a spectrum. The important thing is to know when to lean more toward the soft side, and when to lean more to the hard side. The best authors can play to the strengths of both to capture that magical sense of wonder that makes fantasy such a pleasure to read.

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Fantasy from A to Z: L is for Love

What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me…)

Seriously, though, what counts as “love” in fantasy these days? The romantasy subgenre is taking the field by storm, but much of it seems to be outright pornography, at least to me. Back when Twilight was all the rage, I at least understood the romantic angle, even if I didn’t particularly care for it. But now, there’s all this stuff about mate-bonding, consent/non-consent, something called “the omega-verse,” and a weird hierarchy of various forms of bestiality that I frankly cannot follow at all.

I should take a few steps back, and perhaps abandon romantasy altogether. I’m sure there are plenty of non-pornographic books in that subgenre—in fact, I’m fairly certain that one of my old college friends, Charlie Holmberg, was a pioneer in it. Everything of hers that I’ve read is pretty good, and also quite understandable, even to a dopey guy like me.

Outside of romantasy (and paranormal romance, which it appears that romantasy has more or less cannibalized), the love stories are pretty straightforward. Epic fantasy in particular tends to have at least a couple of romantic subplots in every book—which makes sense, considering how expansive the subgenre is trying to be. After all, if you’re writing a story where the world itself is a major character, you’ve got to have at least a few good love stories in there too.

But as the internet has continued to spawn narrower and narrower niches and subcultures, all existing in their own little subcultures, things on the extremes have gotten… weird. And as the gender divide appears to be widening with each subsequent generation, especially in areas like politics and culture, it’s beginning to seem like we aren’t even speaking the same language, even when it comes to something as basic and essential as love.

Now, male-coded romances are pretty easy to understand (though I could be biased… I am a man, after all). It starts with a boy who really wants a girl. Like, really, really, really wants a girl. He likes her so much, he spends the whole book trying to get her—and by the end, he either wins her, or he realizes that he doesn’t actually want her, he wants this other girl he met along the way. If things get spicy, it’s all very straightforward and everyone generally has a good time. If there are issues with rape or non-consent, those are generally separate from the romantic subplot

And often, male-coded romances don’t even include much spicy content at all. Even Robert E. Howard’s original Conan the Barbarian stories were pretty mild, in terms of spiciness. Yes, there was usually a scantily-clad female love interest, described in such a way as to increase Howard’s chances of getting his story featured on the magazine cover (and thus earning double the pay). But when it came to the actual, you know, kissing and stuff, Howard never went into graphic detail. The most he would do was hide behind euphemisms like “he crushed her in his arms.” All of the ejaculations in his stories were saidisms—as in, “look out!” he ejaculated, waving his hands wildly (and you would be shocked how often he used “ejaculated” as a saidism—seriously, I think there’s at least one in every classic Conan story).

(Side note: just because Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories were pretty mild on the spiciness scale, that does not mean that subsequent authors kept it mild. Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp tended to keep it more in the vein of the original, but Robert Jordan’s Conan was… let’s just say, it was too much for me.)

And it used to be that female-coded romances were pretty simple, too. An ordinary, boring girl somehow finds herself the object of attraction between two incredibly powerful (and incredibly sexy) men from the other side of fairy, who are positively obsessed with her. However will she choose between them both? Oh, look—now they’re fighting each other to determine which one gets her. Stop fighting, you sexy fairy men! But seriously, however will she choose?

Somewhere along the line, that morphed into a thing called “reverse-harem,” which (as I understand it) is where the girl throws up her hands and decides that she can’t possibly choose between them, so she chooses them all. Which meant, of course, that the love triangles quickly turned into love dodecahedrons—since if you’re going to have a harem, you might as well fill it up with as many sexy fair men as you can.

And then somehow, things got really weird—and also, really toxic. According to Malcolm and Simone Collins (who know more about this subject than I do), some of the more toxic behaviors that romantasy normalizes include:

Fated or “mate-bond” relationships that override consent,
Extreme male possessiveness portrayed as genuine love,
Drugging and public humiliation portrayed as romantic tension,
Huge age and maturity gaps between partners,
Serial betrayal framed as female empowerment and playing hard-to-get,
Intentional miscommunication, with heroines refusing to talk through their problems—again, often framed as female empowerment,
Violence rebranded as safety, since the love interest will never really hurt the heroine,
Wish-fulfilment with serial partners, often framed as a justification for serial betrayal mentioned above, and
Lazy trope stacking (eg “rich-fey-boyfriend,” scent/marking, etc) without confronting the darker implications of coercive and non-consenting relationships.

Sadly, it seems that all of these toxic aspects of romantasy are reflections of the current state of modern dating and relationships. For example, in a world of online dating where ghosting and fading is all-too common, serial betrayal is a bit of a power fantasy, as is wish-fulfillment with serial partners, since if “true love” doesn’t work out, there’s always another one just a swipe away. Similarly, because women who have taken multiple sexual partners find it difficult to pair-bond with any of the later ones, the concept of “mate-bonding” may have arisen as a way to recapture that lost sense of bonding that comes with the “first time.”

Call me old fashioned or out of touch, but I preferred it when things were simpler, and the traditional boundaries around sex and relationships were still very much in force. There’s something charming about the love stories that were written before birth control and the sexual revolution, where men had to woo their women and get them to say “I do” before any of the bedroom gymnastics became a factor. Of course, I’m totally biased, because my wife and I both have a “body count” of exactly one.

I think romantic love is one of the greatest things in the world. I think that sex is also a wonderful and a beautiful thing, especially when it is used to fulfill its primary purpose: to facilitate lifelong pair-bonding between a man and a woman. In my experience, this is an even more important purpose of sex than procreation, though of course that is a very important (and very fulfilling) secondary purpose.

I don’t read or write romantasy, so you won’t find any of those tropes in my books. You will find a lot of romantic love, though, especially in my sea mage cycle books. Rescuer’s Reward is probably the closest thing I’ve written to a straight up romance, at least in the fantasy genre. The Widow’s Child also has a strong romantic subplot, though it goes a little further than fade-to-black. And of course, the Soulbond King books are going to have a lot of romance, since the magic system requires a man and a woman to become bonded in love in order to unlock their unique magical powers. Those books are going to be a lot of fun to write.

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Fantasy from A to Z: K is for Kings

Why are kings and kingdoms so common in fantasy?

Part of it has to do with the genre’s nostalgic yearning for a distant past. One way of understanding the modern era is to see it as an unending series of political revolutions that have spread like a slow-moving contagion from one part of the world to another.

It started with the English Civil War, then died down for a while until it manifested in the American Revolutionary War, which resulted in the creation of the United States. After that, it spread to France, leading to the French Revolution and a very messy tug-of-war between the Republicans and the Monarchists, ultimately leading to the permanent end of the French monarchy.

Then we had the aborted revolutions of 1848, which ultimately gave us Karl Marx and Socialism, the Bolivarian revolutions in Latin America, the American Civil War, which culturally was something of an echo of the old English Civil War (with the Cavaliers in the south and the Puritan Roundheads in the north), and ultimately the Bolshevik Revolution which gave us global communism, etc etc.

I won’t belabor the point (though if you want to hear a good podcast that covers all this stuff, check out Revolutions by Mike Duncan). The point is that the modern era has basically been one long series of very messy wars to depose the old medieval kings and emperors. Today, the only monarchies that survive are either constitutional monarchies that no longer exercise direct political power (for example, King Charles of the United Kingdom), or else they are strange aberrations that only exist because of unique regional history and economic circumstances (for example, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, whose dynasty depends almost entirely on the country’s oil reserves).

Fantasy is all about hearkening back to a romantic view of the premodern past, even if that past never existed. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that most fantasy—especially classic fantasy—tends to feature kings and kingdoms. Never mind that historically, many medieval kings were almost totally beholden to their dukes, especially in the time before gunpowder, when the dukes could just hole up in their castles and openly defy their kings. That’s why Europe has so many medieval castles.

Of course, some fantasy like George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire does a really good job of capturing the complex dynamics of feudal politics. A lot of the old sword & sorcery also plays around with those kinds of medieval political tensions, balancing the nostalgic aspect of fantasy with the savagery of backstabbing courtiers and brutal hand-to-hand combat. Robert E. Howard’s classic Conan the Barbarian stories are a great example of this, with Conan ultimately rising to become King of Aquilonia.

Both grimdark and sword & sorcery embrace the medieval savagery—indeed, it’s a large part of the nostalgic yearning. Other subgenres play down the savagery, either by making the king a distant power, or by making the world out to be a lightly-populated wilderness. Lord of the Rings is a good example of both, though it still defaults to feudal monarchy as the majority political system.

Is there a subconscious yearning for old-fashioned monarchy that fantasy quietly fulfills? Perhaps, but I don’t think so. If kings and kingdoms are the default system of government in most fantasy novels, I think that’s because it was the default for much of the medieval era. In books like Game of Thrones where the political intrigue is a key aspect of the story, you get into the more complicated aspects of feudal politics, but that’s not necessarily a requirement.

Personally, I enjoy fantasy with a little bit of medieval-style political intrigue, though most grimdark tends to overdo it. I did really enjoy Larry Correia’s Saga of the Forgotten Warrior, though (no spoilers please—I haven’t yet read the last book!) Robert E. Howard hits the sweet spot, I think, with a world so wild and savage that no king has managed to subdue it, and even a barbarian can rise to become a king.

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Fantasy from A to Z: J is for Jesters

Fantasy, for all its dragons and destiny, is often a very serious genre. Life and death, good and evil, wars and rumors of wars—these are just a few of the more serious subjects we often find in fantasy. But a good story needs to strike a variety of notes beside the somber ones. The darker the tale, the more important the laughter becomes.

Soldiers have known this for ages. Marines are famous for their gallows humor—twisted, irreverent, often completely inappropriate jokes that somehow manage to be hilarious precisely because of how bleak the surrounding circumstances are. In war, laughter can be a survival mechanism, a pressure valve, and a glue that bonds brothers together. If you can laugh with someone in the trenches, you’re probably going to trust them when the bullets start flying.

Fantasy, like war, often deals with high stakes and harsh realities. Armies march. Cities burn. Heroes fall. The world trembles on the edge of the abyss. But if the characters never laugh—if they can’t crack a smile even once—then something essential has been lost. Without humor, darkness becomes unbearable. With it, we can find the strength to endure.

Terry Pratchett understood this. His Discworld novels are farcical, yes, but they are also deeply wise. He made fun of everything—kings, wizards, police, journalists, Death himself—but always with a nod to the things that make us human. As a result, his stories are full of heart, even when they deal with some surprisingly dark and existential subjects—such as Death himself.

In fantasy, humor can take many forms. Sometimes it’s wordplay or irony. Sometimes it’s a running gag or a sarcastic sidekick. Sometimes, it’s directed primarily at the reader, such as William Goldman’s masterful narration of The Princess Bride. Other times, it flows from the characters in their interactions with each other. With Terry Pratchett, it often was both.

It can be done poorly, of course. In fact, humor is often one of the hardest things to pull off well. Few people take their craft more seriously than comedians (which itself is kind of hilarious, if you stop to think about it). To further complicate matters, the humorous elements in a good fantasy novel are often subtle and invisible, burning off just enough tension to let the story breathe. Anything more than that is liable to pull the reader out of the story, by drawing too much attention to the joke.

It can be a difficult thing to balance. But when it’s done well, it can make for a very entertaining tale. And when balanced with all the other elements of a good story, humor can make the emotional highs higher and the emotional lows lower. Which makes it a very powerful thing.

I don’t know how good I am at writing humor, but I try to sprinkle in enough of it to make my stories entertaining. My humor is often situational: for example, in The Call of the Tide, Samuel is a mage who can only exercise magic by never cutting his hair. That led to some mildly hilarious situations, such as birds trying to nest on his head at the most awkward of times. I also try to let it flow from the characters themselves. In Bloodfire Legacy, Corin often speaks with a sarcastic edge that flows from his experience growing up on the streets. This makes him a good foil for the somber ghost of Lord Arion, who was murdered in the first chapter of the book and now haunts him.

There’s a time to take things seriously, but there’s also a time to laugh and lighten up. And ultimately, if a story doesn’t entertain you, it’s not going to do much else. The best fantasy books have an element of humor, even if it’s subtle. After all, laughter is one of the most essential things that makes us human.

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Fantasy from A to Z: I is for Immortality

Immortality is one of those fantasy tropes that shows up everywhere once you start looking for it. Vampires, elves, gods, liches, ancient dragons hoarding gold through the centuries—we’re fascinated by the idea of beings that can’t die. Sometimes they’re terrifying, sometimes noble, sometimes weary and wise. But always, they strike a chord.

Why? Because they brush up against one of our deepest human anxieties: death.

Death is one of those universal aspects of the human experience. Everybody dies. And compared to the lifespan of things like mountains, or forests, or stars, the human lifespan is remarkably short and fleeting. Some of us live a long and a full life, and are ready to go when the time comes, but many of us are not. Tragedy can strike us at any time. No one knows when the reaper will come for them.

This is why, in fantasy fiction, immortality often comes wrapped in awe and mystery. It’s a mark of otherworldliness, a symbol of something beyond the ordinary cycles of birth and death. Sometimes it’s a gift. Sometimes it’s a curse. Often, it’s a little bit of both.

Personally, my favorite fantasy author who captured this complexity is J.R.R. Tolkien. His elves are perhaps the most iconic immortal race in all of fantasy. They don’t age or grow frail. They don’t die of disease. They are not eternal in the divine sense, but their lives are bound to the life of the world. When they are slain, their spirits travel to the Halls of Mandos, where they can eventually be re-embodied. But they are still bound to the world. They don’t pass beyond it. They don’t get to move on.

That’s the heart of their tragedy.

Elves in Tolkien’s legendarium aren’t happy fairytale creatures dancing in the moonlight. They are ancient beings with long memories, deep sorrows, and wounds that don’t always heal. They remember battles and betrayals that happened millennia ago. They carry the weight of history like a cloak that can never be removed. And for all their beauty and wisdom, they are fading. Slowly, subtly, inevitably. Their time is passing, and they know it.

In contrast, humans are mortal and thus are not subject to this curse. As Tolkien writes in The Silmarillion:

“And the Doom of Men, that they should depart, was at first a gift of Ilúvatar. It became a grief to them only because coming under the shadow of Morgoth it seemed to them that they were surrounded by a great darkness, of which they grew afraid.”

That’s a remarkable insight. Mortality, which we so often view as a curse, was originally a gift. The elves envy us not because we die, but because we get to leave. To move beyond the world. To have an end.

And yet, we don’t often treat it like a gift. In fact, we go to absurd lengths to avoid it.

You don’t have to look far to see that our obsession with immortality isn’t limited to fantasy stories. In Silicon Valley and other corners of the tech world, there’s a growing movement of wealthy futurists who are pouring money into the dream of defeating death. Some want to reverse aging at the cellular level. Some are working on brain-uploading technology, convinced they can digitize the human soul. Others are experimenting with biological “enhancements,” anti-aging therapies, or even transfusions from younger people in an effort to extend their lifespans.

This hunger for immortality is as old as the Epic of Gilgamesh, but today it wears a lab coat and calls itself “biohacking.” The names have changed, but the impulse remains the same. We want to stay. To cling to life. To hold onto what we have, no matter the cost.

But is that really such a noble goal?

Fantasy offers us a counterpoint. Again and again, stories show that immortality comes at a price. Vampires lose their humanity. Liches surrender their souls. Gods become detached from the world of mortals. Even the elves, for all their grace, are caught in a long decline.

Immortality often brings with it a kind of existential exhaustion. Without death, there is no closure. Without loss, there is no growth. Without time running out, nothing truly matters.

Mortality, by contrast, sharpens everything. Because we are mortal, our choices matter. Because time is a scarce resource—indeed, perhaps the only resource in our world that is truly scarce—our relationships carry weight. Because we will one day die, every act of love, courage, sacrifice, or faith becomes immeasurably precious.

And that’s something that fantasy, at its best, understands better than any philosophical treatise or TED Talk ever could. Again, Tolkien writes:

“But the sons of Men die indeed, and leave the world; wherefore they are called the Guests, or the Strangers. Death is their fate, the gift of Ilúvatar, which as Time wears even the Powers shall envy.”

The elves call us guests. Strangers. Not because we are lesser, but because we do not belong to the world in the same way they do. We are pilgrims passing through this world—strangers in a strange land. Our road leads elsewhere, and that elsewhere—whatever lies beyond the circles of the world—is part of the hope that makes us human.

In my own fantasy, I like to play with this idea. My characters all live in the Mortal Realm, but there is an Immortal Realm that lies beyond the bounds of their current existence, and the veil that separates the two can sometimes grow quite thin. In The Sword Keeper, there is a Void between the two realms that Tamuna must cross in order to confront the evil that afflicts her world, and to find the lost spirit of her father. In Bloodfire Legacy, when Lord Arion is assassinated in the first chapter, he temporarily gives up the indescribable glory of the Immortal Realm in order to linger as a ghost and help guide his orphaned daughter.

All of these characters are bound, in time, to pass from this Mortal Realm, but that isn’t a curse—it’s a gift. There is far more to this life than the bounds of our material existence. There are more things in heaven and in earth than we can comprehend with our mortal understanding.

In the end, fantasy doesn’t just explore our fear of death. It teaches us how to find meaning in the brief time we’re given. So the next time you read about some deathless sorcerer or ageless elf queen, remember: you have something they never will. An ending, and a beginning. A home beyond this world. A story that can reach its conclusion.

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Fantasy from A to Z: H is for Heroes

When David Gemmell, my favorite fantasy author, broke into the field in the 1980s, his books were considered to be part of the “heroic fantasy” subgenre. If the two major divisions of fantasy were epic fantasy (sometimes also known as “high fantasy”) and sword & sorcery (sometimes known as “low fantasy”), heroic fantasy was very much in the sword & sorcery vein. Then the stars of George R.R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie began to rise, and heroic fantasy gave way to what we now know as “grimdark.”

On a superficial level, both grimdark and heroic fantasy appear to have much in common. Both subgenres tend to feature morally gray characters, worlds that are dark and brutal, and a great deal of graphic violence. George R.R. Martin is famous for killing off his characters, and David Gemmell likewise tends to kill off about half of his starting characters in every book.

But if you spend enough time with both subgenres to get past the superficialities, you’ll see that they are totally different—and in some key ways, diametrically opposed. Not all grimdark descends into total nihilism, but much of it unfortunately does. But heroic fantasy is defined by the fact that it is not utterly nihilistic. Which isn’t to say that all heroes are noble and bright—gray morality is still very much a trope of the subgenre—but the very fact that heroes exist is enough to keep heroic fantasy from delving too deep into nihilism.

This is why I love practically everything that David Gemmell has written, but I couldn’t get past the first book in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. I acknowledge that Martin is a brilliant and gifted writer. There were parts of A Game of Thrones where I felt more immersed in Martin’s fantasy world than in almost any other book I’d read. But by the end of the book, I hated all of the characters and was rooting for Danaerys to come with her dragons and burn them all to cinders (which was apparently the plan all along, if season 8 of the show followed Martin’s outline).

The thing is, George R.R. Martin is obsessed with the idea of victimhood. All of the characters in A Song of Ice and Fire are either victims or victimizers, or both. That is, apparently, the most interesting aspect that Martin finds about them. Which explains why his series did so well in the 00s and the 10s, when intersectionality was on the rise and critical theory came to dominate so many aspects of our culture. In any other time, Martin’s obsession with victimhood would not have gained such a following—which explains why it took him nearly five decades to hit his big break.

But where Martin is obsessed with victimhood, Gemmell was obsessed with heroism. He had a penchant for taking the most despicable and morally bankrupt characters, putting them in circumstances that demanded something more of them, and showing them rise to the occasion, making a heel-face turn and becoming the hero that the story demanded. It’s so immensely satisfying for me, every single time. Even the villains will sometimes turn into heroes by the end—though when they don’t, you can always expect them to have creative and satisfying deaths. No “creative subversion” of reader expectations there!

For Gemmell, there’s nothing very complicated about being a hero. There’s no list of defining characteristics or attributes. There’s also nothing particularly complex that a character has to do. For Gemmell, a hero is simply a person who does something heroic. Nothing more, and nothing less.

At this point, I’d usually give examples, but since all of them are spoilers, all I can say is go and read David Gemmell’s books! Some of the best heel-face turns are in Winter Warriors and Hero in the Shadows. I also really loved the protagonist’s redemption in The Swords of Night and Day. And of course, if you really want a great example of an unlikely hero, read Morningstar. That’s basically the whole plot of the book.

Like Gemmell, I prefer to write stories with heroes rather than anti-heroes. My Sea Mage Cycle books are generally more light on violence than a typical Gemmell book, but in The Widow’s Child and The Winds of Desolation, I put the main characters into some tough circumstances that forced them to step up and play the part. Same with The Sword Keeper, my first fantasy novel. And of course, with the Soulbond King books that I’m currently writing, where the main character is patterned after King David, there will be lots of opportunities for him to do heroic things, even if he is a more complicated character.

Heroes are so important to me that I honestly cannot read any fantasy book that doesn’t have one. When I look back on all of the big-name fantasy books that I’ve DNFed, that honestly is the major defining factor. Fortunately, the fantasy genre is full of excellent heroes—and with the way trends are shifting, I think we are going to see a lot more of them soon.

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Fantasy from A to Z: G is for Gemmell

I love Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien, but my favorite fantasy writer of all time is David Gemmell.

David Gemmell had a rough life. He was born and raised in a lower-class region of the UK to a single mother and an absent father. According to his bio, he was kicked out of school for setting up a “gambling syndicate” on the playground, whatever that’s supposed to mean, and eventually came to support himself by becoming a bouncer. Looking for something a little more stable, he eventually became a writer for the local newspaper, though from what I understand he was ultimately fired from that job as well.

His fiction writing career began when he went to get some nagging ache checked out by a doctor, and learned that he had terminal cancer. They estimated that he had only months to live, and scheduled a follow-up visit about two weeks later to find out exactly how much time he had left. Stunned, he decided to chase his childhood dream of writing a fantasy novel, and Legend was the result.

Legend is an absolute masterpiece, not because the prose is perfect or the story is totally original or the worldbuilding is super deep, but because it has so much heart. It poses a question that Gemmell found extremely urgent: what is it that makes life worth living? And then, unlike many more flowery and pretentious novels, it answers the question with raw, direct honesty: the thing that makes life worth living is to give it up for a worthy cause.

The story follows a cast of unlikely characters who are all drawn to a hopeless siege that everyone knows will ultimately result in defeat. The Khan has united the tribes and amassed an army of half a million soldiers, but to invade the southern kingdom he must lead them through a narrow pass that is held by an ancient fortress. However, the fortress is woefully understaffed, with only ten thousand defenders, most of whom are untrained farmers. Everyone who goes to fight there knows that they will die.

The story is about why they decide to fight anyway. There’s the proud daughter of the ailing duke commanding the fortress, who fights to preserve her family’s honor. There’s the cowardly berserker who never really wanted to get drawn into the siege, but stays to protect the girl. There’s the Temple of the Thirty, an ancient order of warrior monks who train relentlessly in the martial arts so that when the time comes to fight in the defining conflict of the age, they are ready to fight for the good, the true, and the beautiful. And there is Druss the Legend, an aging warrior who has wandered the land and single-handedly turned the tides of battles, but now fears growing old and senile, and desires more than anything else to go out of this life on his own two feet with his battle-ax in hand.

David Gemmell wrote this novel in the two weeks between his first appointment with the doctor and the second. But when he went back in, the oncologist informed him that the first test was actually a false positive, and that he had no cancer at all. Stunned for a second time, Gemmell took a critical look at the novel he’d written and stuffed it in his trunk, convinced that it wasn’t very good. After all, who was he to think that he could write a novel?

The story would have ended there, except that a friend of his found out about it, asked to read it, and was so impressed by it that he urged David Gemmell to send it off to a publisher. After a lot of nagging, Gemmell eventually decided to humor his friend, and the book became a massive bestseller over in the UK. David Gemmell went on to write some two dozen fantasy novels, all of them in the same vein as Legend, and they are absolutely fantastic.

I still remember the sinking feeling in my heart when I read the last book in the Drenai Saga, and realized that there wouldn’t be any more. And I also remember the way my mind was blown when I realized that all of Gemmell’s novels are interconnected in an interdimensional “cosmere” of sorts, with a handful of recurring characters who travel across worlds. Yes, he was doing the Sanderson Cosmere thing before Brandon Sanderson published his first book (and unlike Sanderson, he kept it as a genuine easter egg and never advertised it).

I’ve collected nearly all of Gemmell’s books, including the crime thrillers he originally published under a secret pen name, and both of the graphic novels that go for a couple hundred bucks. Most of his books I own in mass-market paperback, though I still hope to acquire a signed first-edition hardback copy of Legend. But I’m still dragging my feet to read them all, because it really is an awful feeling when you get to the end of your favorite author’s ouvre and realize that’s all there will ever be.

David Gemmell died in the 00s, in the same way that I hope to die: sitting at his keyboard, writing the last book in his final book series. His wife later finished it. From what I understand, he actually did die of cancer, so maybe there was something to that original mis-diagnosis that kick-started his writing career. Can you imagine how different things would be if that had never happened? I don’t even want to think about it. David Gemmell’s books are amazing, and the world is so much richer because of them. If David Gemmell’s books are new to you, you’re in for a real treat!

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