Fantasy

I love fanatasy. It is by far my most favorite book genre. The settings are vast and complex mixed with dragons, wizards, total domination and leather. There are never small problems in fantasy and there is no middle ground. A peace treaty can never fix anything, democracy has not yet been invented and war is just another day at the office. Here I describe my love and loathe of some of the common features to any fantasy book.

Geographically , fanatasy worlds consist of one continent and many, many islands. Isalnds are mainly reserved for magical places or prisons you see while the mainland is reserved for pillaging of villages and libraries. The only thing that bothers me with the geographical aspect of fantasy is that the tropics always get left out. Most worlds represent a large Europe or America and thus the landscapes represent this: mountains, woody forests, grasslands and glens. However, there is hardly a fantasy novel that includes a tropical rainforest, monkeys, heat or humidity. Always rain, grand oaks and a conveinient ring of elm trees that offer vital protection from wights.

In fantasy your only option is to walk and the thought of going to another country/town/city/super secret tomb via any other means is perposterous. Let us imagine for a moment that you are the protaganist, against your better judgement your crew decided to travel by horse. BAM! You are immediately a target. There is blood everywhere spewing from random decapitations occurred by both sides and mean men looking to rape or kill you or sell you into slavery. Also there are scouts looking for you, yes you! They know about you from the prophecy. And you know that old dude who found you? Well he totally told someone else about you! So now everyone is on your ass! Damn you for taking that chance on a horse! Once you’ve managed to narrowly escape death, you question this quest and realise how super alone and misunderstood you are. There is always a moment of self-doubt in fantasy. Either the character gets over it and assumes an attitude of resolve or the character is constantly looking for reasurance. “This burden is too heavy! I didn’t ask for it! Blah, blah, blah, weak, blah, not prepared blaaaaah.” This reasurrance is found in the love interest. “I think you’re great, you’re so strong and stuff!” Your love interest is so awesome. The way they move is always super sexy and their eyes, oh their eyes! So dreamy! So intense! Sigh.

I love that in fantasy books the love interest is always ionosphere hot, and the lead character always deems themselves to be subterrainian that is until the love interest spills how they are the most gorgeous/handsome thing ever in the world EVER! This is usually revealed near the end of the novel, or if you find that you’ve bought yourself a fantasy/erotic fiction book this happens right at the beginning so that there can be more time for sex throughout the novel. And the sex, oh the sex! It ranges from the completely bizarre to the ridiculous. I prefer “and they continued into the night.” I don’t need to know the intimates, I would have bought an erotice fiction if I had wanted them. I once had the misfortune to read a book that contained incest sex. Not fun. I don’t want to imagine first cousins doing it, but alas! I didn’t have to imagine, because I was told in such great detail that at times I felt like retching. One word : rimming.

In fantasy there is always a huge build up to the final battle! The battle that will take the tyrant down, that will right all the wrongs, which will appease the gods and make every single person in the world happy. This build up includes the characters that you like, dying and the lead character finding their true power (hooray!). The books that I love, that really stick with me, are the books that have the greatest battle scenes of all time. The characters just kick ass! In those novels, the authors know how to wrap you in and weave you through multiple happenings that lead to the final encounter with finesse. They never fail to dissapoint. Inevitebly there are other books that let you down. For example, the character finds the cure/button/book before the battle even starts or becomes so powerful just in time that nothing needs to happen (sort of like the end of Fable II – one punch!). The same thought always occurs to me, “dude, I just read 1000 pages to find that nothing happens, what the what? It’s not even ironic or poignant, just lame!”