Category Archive for ‘opinion’ rss

The Death of Books

August 30th, 2011 • 33 Comments

Thanks to Chris Wooding for bringing my attention to an excellent and carefully researched article by Lloyd Shepherd over at The Guardian, written in response to the endless doomsaying about the imminent demise of publishing, which pretty much reflects my own much less carefully researched feelings.

Namely that – despite the big trouble in the area of dedicated Brick and Mortar stores that have left Waterstones as pretty much the only big player in the UK and Barnes and Noble in a similar position in the US – there are still a lot more paper books being sold than you might think.  That – despite understandable but in my humble opinion overstated  fears of piracy – as e-readers become mainstream the legitimate e-book market continues to rapidly expand.  That – despite the fact advances are trending downwards overall and it’s never been easy to make big bucks from writing – there’s still, and probably always will be, a good living to be made from good fiction – or even my fiction – and that edgy fantasy ain’t a bad place to be right at the moment, as it happens.

Business is probably going to get tougher.  Margins will get tighter.  Certainly in retail I suspect there will be blood and perhaps some serious redistribution in the medium term.  But I think paper books will be with us as a significant part of the market for some time to come.  And if publishers can learn the lessons of the music industry and see e-books as an opportunity rather than a threat (which many are well on the way to doing), sort out the pricing and the frustrating rights issues, offer products that make use of the unique advantages of e-readers rather than simply emulating the paper versions, and ensure that the majority of readers are willing to pay a fair price for their e-books, the future don’t look so bad to me.

Cheer up.  It might never happen…

As a related addendum, I get a lot of emails these days from folks complaining that they want to give me money but can’t, since they live in Australia, or Dubai, or somewhere else that isn’t the UK or US and therefore are blocked from legitimately paying for and downloading an ebook of mine.  Which seems insane to them.  And kind of is.  I feel your pain, believe me.  I’d really much rather you were paying for that ebook as well, and I continue to agitate as strongly as possible for my books to be available in every language, format, size, scent and colour imaginable.  However, the gears of publishing law grind with excruciating slowness, and ebook rights are still inextricably bound up with paper rights with publishers fiercely guarding territorial borders that should mean nothing to the frontier-less internet.  So it may be a while before all this gets sorted to everyone’s satisfaction.  I remain confident it will be.  Until then, might I suggest you order a hardcover, and get it helicoptered out to you in the jungles of Borneo, or wherever it is you may be?

Authority, Heroism, and Linking

April 27th, 2011 • 23 Comments

Occasionally ideas come to me.  Diamond-edged insights into the nature of fantasy and the role of my own work within it.  Often in response to negative reviews about my work, as it happens…

But not very often.  Which is why it becomes necessary for me to link to other people’s.  In this case, BC Woods has an interesting essay up about Authority, Moral Absolutism and Heroism in Fantasy, with particular focus on the works of Goodkind, Sanderson, Pratchett, Martin, and some Abercrombie guy:

“The moral problems in Abercrombie’s and Martin’s work are the same as before: What is right? And who decides what is right?  Only in these works, no obvious answer presents itself at the end of the narrative and no signs or portents appear to hint one way or another.  This leaves us only with human authority … There is a lesson here, but it is not one of trust but of skepticism. These works (I would say indirectly) promote a worldview in which it is necessary to challenge and question those in power … rulership in Abercrombie and Martin’s work, as in our own world, in no way implies a divine mandate. Not only is supreme Authority absent, but all human authority is suspect.”

A fair assessment, I’d say.  I guess all literature (if I may be so bold as to place my sword-based rantings under that umbrella) reflects the times in which it’s written.  Probably that’s even more true of SF and Fantasy than of books set in our own world and time.  Nothing more dated than past visions of the future, after all.  For me, that skeptical vision of power is a reaction against the moral simplicity I’d seen in the epic fantasy I’d read as a kid, written in the aftermath of the world wars and during the cold war, in which the goodly wizard has everyone’s best interests at heart and the lost heir to the throne always ushers in a new age of monarchist glory once the big bad has been shuffled off and he’s regained his rightful throne.  Few doubts about which is the right side there, or what is the proper order of things.  Perhaps it was ever thus, really, but these days motives seem always murkier, right and wrong much harder to pin down.  Doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as right and wrong – that would be nihilism, after all, and we know how we all feel about that...

Bankrupt Nihilism

February 15th, 2011 • 226 Comments

Those of you who’ve followed this blog for a while (I am reasonably confident there are at least two) will be aware that at times in the past I’ve picked up and examined negative criticisms from around the web, but always in a positive and respectful way (ahem), using them as a springboard for a deeper understanding of my own work (ahem), keen, always, to engage with critics in meaningful discourse.  I must confess that I’ve become jaded of late, though.  The internet brimmeth over with stuff, and after a while it all starts to look the same.  I just don’t feel the slings and arrows like I used to.  Which is why I am deeply grateful that Leo Grin has jerked me from my self-satisfied stupour with his searing indictment of modern fantasy over at BigHollywood.  He sure is unhappy about something…

“The mere trappings of the genre do nothing for me … when placed into the hands of writers clearly bored with the classic mythic undertones of the genre, and who try to shake things up with what can best be described as postmodern blasphemies against our mythic heritage.”

It’s a very simple argument he advances, really.  A kind of literary battle of good against evil, you might say.  On one side are the towering mythic geniuses of Tolkien and Howard, who wrote “in blood and lighting” according to Leo, although presumably on extremely hardwearing paper.  On the other side are, well, me, Steve Erikson, Michael Swanwick, and Matthew Woodring Stover, apparently.  I’ve never met those guys, or read any of their work, I must admit.  But that doesn’t mean they’re not down here with me in the evil postmodern myth-destruction bunker.  It’s a big old bunker we’ve got, and there’s lots of us down here.  Though I’m not entirely sure who.  

I’m a little suspicious, I must say, of any argument that lumps Tolkien and Howard together as one thing, although Leo has made the photos of them in his piece point towards each other in a very complimentary fashion.  I think of them as polar opposites in many ways, and the originators (or at least key practitioners) of, to some extent, opposed traditions within sword-based fantasy.  Tolkien, the father of high fantasy, Howard the father of low.  Howard’s work, written by a man who died at thirty, tends to the short and pulpy (as you’d expect from stories written for pulp magazines).  Tolkien’s work, published on the whole when he was advanced in years, is very long and literary (as you’d expect from a professor of English).  Tolkien is more focused on setting, I’d say, Howard on character.  Leo’s point is that they both celebrate a moral simplicity, a triumph of heroism, but I see that too as a massive over-simplification.  Howard celebrates the individual, is deeply cynical (could one even say nihilistic) about civilisation.  Tolkien seems broadly to celebrate order, structure, duty and tradition.  And I celebrate, well …

“Think of a Lord of the Rings where, after stringing you along for thousands of pages, all of the hobbits end up dying of cancer contracted by their proximity to the Ring, Aragorn is revealed to be a buffoonish puppet-king of no honor and false might, and Gandalf no sooner celebrates the defeat of Sauron than he executes a long-held plot to become the new Dark Lord of Middle-earth, and you have some idea of what to expect should you descend into Abercrombie’s jaded literary sewer.”

That sounds … kind of interesting to me, actually, but I dimly percieve that Leo doesn’t like it.  Your mileage may vary, of course.  But why all the fury, Leo?  Relax.  Pour yourself a drink.  Admire your unrivalled collection of Frank Frazetta prints for a while.  Wrestle the old blood pressure down.  When an old building is demolished to make way for a new, I can see the cause of upset.  Hey, depending what’s lost and what’s gained, I might be upset myself.  Let’s all take a look at the plans together and see if we can work something out.  But books don’t work that way.  If I choose to write my own take on fantasy, what gets destroyed?  What loss are we bewailing here?  If the mere notion of moral ambiguity, explicit violence and some swearing chills your very soul, I daresay you can still find something on the shelves with “the elevated prose poetry, mythopoeic subcreation, and thematic richness that only the best fantasy achieves” as Leo has it.  You want Tolkien and Howard?  I’ve got a very handsome leather bound Complete Conan and I’m reasonably sure Lord of the Rings is still in print.  Something newer?  There are still plenty of established authors very succesfully writing very traditional stuff, if that’s your bag, and many more authors of what might be called these days a somewhat more YA-ish bent (absolutely no disrespect intended) writing interesting work without swearing or graphic sex and violence.  I wish the best of luck to them and their readers.  Many of their readers, after all, will be my readers too.  And I think that’s the key point here.  This argument is so cartoonishly simplistic.  There just aren’t two neatly defined camps in this.

“The other side thinks that their stuff is, at long last, turning the genre into something more original, thoughtful, and ultimately palatable to intelligent, mature audiences.”

We’re on sides, now?  No one told me about sides.  What are the sides?  Of what?  And on which side am I?  I love Tolkien, after all.  I’d like to be on his side.  Grew up with The Hobbit.  Read Lord of the Rings every year.  I’m a great admirer of his.  Without Tolkien there’d be no fantasy as we know it, and certainly no First Law.  When it comes to an epic tale with moral clarity set in a supremely realised fantasy world, he pretty much knocked it out of the park.  But that means there’s not much point in my writing it again, is there?  Forgive me for saying so, but it feels as if folk have been writing Lord of the Rings again for a while now, and I think we could probably, you know, stop.  Howard’s less of a personal influence for me, except at distant second hand through the film Conan the Barbarian, D&D and so forth, but there’s no doubting his tremendous influence on the genre, and I’m a big fan of some of the guys who picked up the sword & sorcery baton from him, like Fritz Leiber.  Hell, I’d like to be on Howard’s side too.  Can I be on his … oh.  Apparently I’m on the other side:

“bored middle-class creatives (almost all of them college-educated liberals) living lives devoid of any greater purpose inevitably reach out for anything deemed sacred by the conservatives populating any artistic field. They co-opt the language, the plots, the characters, the cliches, the marketing, and proceed to deconstruct it all like a mad doctor performing an autopsy. Then, using cynicism, profanity, scatology, dark humor, and nihilism, they put it back together into a Frankenstein’s monster designed to shock, outrage, offend, and dishearten. In the case of the fantasy genre, the result is a mockery and defilement of the mythopoeic splendor that true artists like Tolkien and Howard willed into being with their life’s blood.”

I’m in the bored middle class, college educated liberal creative camp, apparently.  Unlike Tolkien, who would have had no truck with that middle-class educated creative crap.  He was the son of a bank manager and the Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Merton college, with a fistful of honorary degrees and fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature, by the way.  This adverserial picture of the world just doesn’t seem, to me, to stand up to the most casual scrutiny.  In the words of Mr. Pink, “fuck sides, man, what we need is a little solidarity here.”  To me, it’s not really about politics, and it’s got nothing to do with sides, just various writers coming at a genre with their own set of unique concerns, influences, interests.  Why must it be steak OR chicken?  Can I not enjoy both?  Can I not think the two compliment and improve one another?  Can I not even think that a solid diet of steak, however much I may enjoy it, may become dull and boring, and long for chicken to explode upon my jaded palet?  Hell, let’s go mad and add vegetables too!  Where’s the harm in a varied diet?  If rocket’s worthless, the fad will soon be over, we can all go back to lettuce.  Don’t like something?  Eat something else.  And why be so upset about what other people choose to eat? 

“Soiling the building blocks and well-known tropes of our treasured modern myths is no different than other artists taking a crucifix and dipping it in urine, covering it in ants, or smearing it with feces. In the end, it’s just another small, pathetic chapter in the decades-long slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing.”

It’s so shrill.  So absurdly over-the-top and apocalyptic.  Surely the hallmark of western civilzation is variety, richness, experimentation.  If we all settled for repeating the same-old we’d still be stuck in the dark ages, no?  We’d certainly have no Tolkien and Howard, who were bold enough to try to do new things with established forms, cook up new combinations of influences with their own stamp.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?  I don’t honestly see myself as nihilistic, really.  Cynical, for sure.  Surprising, I’d hope.  Occasionally filthy, no doubt.  Bankrupt, certainly not, thank you, baths in my literary sewer are in great demand as my new four book deal certifies.  But it’s got nothing to do with tearing anything down, and certainly not with suicidal self-loathing.  I see myself as working within a form.  Experimenting with the same stuff Tolkien and Howard pioneered.  Tweaking, commenting, examining, hopefully in the sort of way that Sergio Leone does with John Ford, and Clint Eastwood does with Sergio Leone.  That’s how genre works, no?  Darkness, despair, and lack of moral clarity in fantasy isn’t even anything radical.  Look at Lovecraft.  Look at Howard, for that matter.  Look at Tolkien’s Silmarillion.  Neither is filth and grime a new development.  Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, anyone?  But shiny and simple had long been in the commercial ascendant.  A correction was bound to come.  Grit, slime and moral ambiguity seem popular now.  Probably the pendulum will swing back (if it ever really swung away).  What’s the big deal?  Let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend, and all that jazz.  My favourite quote from Leo, to be found in the comments, on The First Law:

“That’s not realism, it’s nihilism, and it’s poison to both the reader’s mind and culture.”

I can only scratch my head at the insidious power I appear to have amassed.  Whether or not my own work is nihilism seems to me very arguable, but poison to the reader’s mind and culture?  Really?  If you feel your mind and culture might collapse under the weight of a surprising ending involving an unpleasant wizard, a rubbish king and a couple of swear words, it seems to me you really need to dig them some deeper foundations. 

Incidentally, Adam Whitehead gives his own take on some of the issues here, and SF writer John C. Wright seizes the overwrought football of Leo’s argument and runs it into the end-zone of strangeness on his blog:

“It is my judgment, shared of many ancients, that there are certain proper emotional reactions and relatins one ought to have, and improper ones one ought not. A child raised to curse and despise his parents, trample the crusifix, burn the flag, abhor kittens and Christmas scenes and motherhood but adore torture porn and satanism and deformity, that child’s tastes are objectively perverse and false-to-facts. He has been trained to spew his mother’s milk and drink venom. Fair to him is foul, and foul is fair. In the same way that to say A is not-A is an offense against logic, to hate the lovely and love the hateful is an offense against aesthetics, a disconnection from reality … the literati (or, to be precise, anti-literati) make inroads into the realm of elfland itself, to erect the smog and graffito of their beloved Mordor.”

Okaaay.  I’m stepping away now.  I’ve gone on far too long and now I’ve got Stover AND Swanwick on the phone demanding I get back to the bunker to plot the downfall of western civilisation.  Load the kitten-powered zepellins with defaced Christmas scenes and set course for elfland!  Mwa ha ha haaaaaah, fools!  We’re coming for your myths!

Oh, and usual comments about comments apply.  Let’s keep this clean and respectful please, people.

EDIT: I have returned to my computer after a day away and see there’s been all kinds of interest in this post.  Apologies to those first-timers whose comments have not been moderated until now.  I try to keep a light touch on moderation, but some are sailing close to the wind.  A couple I’ve had to strike for overstepping the mark, as I see it.  Peter Collinson, your comment was fascinating and highly perceptive but, I would say, a touch too inflammatory for this particular forum.  I encourage you all to comment in future, though.  Some specific fallout:

I may find John C. Wright’s views outlandish but he takes it in good part and shows dignity and a sense of humour in his reply, so kudos for that.  Perhaps, to paraphrase his own comment, I am allowed to find the blog insane without necessarily doubting the mental health of the blogger…

Further discussion at Black Gate, at Ominvoracious, from author Scott Bakker (who I daresay might be down here in the bunker somewhere), of the lack of female authors in all this at Floor to Ceiling Books, of … something relating to it … from the inimitable BC Woods, and that’s just scratching the surface…

FURTHER EDIT: A lot of comments dwell on the politics, which is inevitable I guess as Leo made that a centrepiece of his argument.  I’ve let pretty much everything stand that isn’t beyond the pale, but for my own part I’d rather this did not descend into a partisan slagging match.  As I’ve said above, I don’t see this as a political issue, and I feel that Leo’s assertion that “new” and “old” fantasy are utterly separate camps, and further that one camp is fundamentally of a different politics, or level of education, or class to the other is the most utterly bogus part of a bogus argument.  Likewise there’s a fair bit of ad hominem about.  It is the internet.  But it doesn’t help.  Let’s keep it calm going forward, please.

The Valley of Osrung

November 27th, 2010 • 23 Comments

Having acquired an axe for the foreground, the next element we needed in our cover for The Heroes was the background.  The all-important map.

I seem to have acquired a reputation in fantasy circles as some kind of anti-map guy.  Occasionally I’ll read posts here or there about how much I hate maps, as though maps are a paramilitary organisation you’re either with or against, a holy cause you must support or oppose.  Probably it’s because there’s no map in The First Law, like you usually get in that there epic fantasy stuff.  But my position on maps is actually a lot more nuanced than all that.

Because I love me a good map, I do.  Man, I love them.  I used to spend hours poring over maps of Middle Earth, and the Dragonlance World, and Middenheim, and Titan, and Harn, and, and, and…  The bits of the roleplaying supplements with the maps in were always my favourite bits.  And I used to spend hours imitating them.  Sat there happily with my A2 pad and my coloured pencils, scratching unconvincing fantasy lands from my imagination, shading all the mountains, doing every tree in the forests, getting the river-lines oh-so curly-wurly.  Then I’d get really irritated with when I started doing the lettering and it came out all wrong and I had to put tipex on and ruin the whole thing.  Happy days.  When I visit the Vatican (which I do as often as my busy schedule will allow, of course) it’s bollocks to the Sistine Chapel, you’ll find me in the Gallery of Maps, with my nose an inch from the plaster and a big grin on my face.  Yes, indeed, I love me a good map.  And perhaps it’s because I love me a good map so much, that I hate me a shit map so much.

I don’t want it to be there just because it’s expected to be there, like the ill-fitting uniform on a draftee who’d far rather be at home.  I love maps that are useful, relevant, executed with artistic skill and used in inventive ways to enhance the whole feel of a book.  I don’t love maps that are pointless, ill thought-out and lazy in conception and execution, sitting limp and helpless on a fly-leaf.

Anyway, The Heroes, as you may well know by now, is the story of a single battle, the vast majority of the action taking place in one valley over three days.  A good understanding of the geography, and the positions of the units when the action gets underway, is pretty important.  It therefore occurred early on that a useful thing to have would be a map of said valley, very small scale compared to the world-spanning parchments you often see in epic fantasy.  It furthermore occurred that it would be good to update it at the start of each part of the book (so each day of the battle) with the positions of the units involved in the fighting – a convention probably very familiar to wargamers and readers of military history but not necessarily fantasy novels (although the overlap may well not be small, I will concede).

We may talk later on about the addition of the units, but first of all we needed to get a version of the battlefield without any units on it.  That’d come in the first part since, er, before the battle starts the units aren’t there yet, but it would also be modified for the later maps.  My own effort at the valley without units looked a little something like this:

Hard to improve on that artistically, you would have thought, right?  But map-meister Dave Senior took it away and, to his credit, was able to add a couple of minor stylistic touches:

Did you spot the difference?  That’s right, the names are in black on his map, on mine they’re in red.  Seriously, though, we were totally blown away by the richness and level of detail, and also by the sense of place he’d created, which I thought was spot on, without my having really specified it in any great detail.  The fields, the herds of sheep, the ripples in the ground were all things he took initiative on, but seemed totally fitting.  It actually helped me get a better sense of place when I was going back through and working on some of the settings and descriptions.  A couple of details to add that are relevant in the story, a couple of tweaks here and there, and he inked that version to produce this one:

Which probably looks pretty similar from a distance, but believe me, you go close up on that bad boy, you can smell the detail.  Have a look at the marshes.  Have a look at the forests.  Have a look at the buildings in Osrung.  You can actually see the mill-house and the guard towers, the little town square.  Look at the dry stone walls around The Heroes.  You can see the individual rocks.  Now that’s a map.

What is Sword and Sorcery Anyway?

July 21st, 2010 • 6 Comments

SF Signal’s latest Mind Meld feature asks the question, “what is your definition of Sword and Sorcery?” of thirteen writers and editors, all involved with the recently released S&S anthology Swords and Dark Magic.  They include such luminaries as Michael Moorcock, Steve Erikson, Garth Nix, Scott Lynch, Lou Anders, and that there Joe Abercrombie bloke….

The New Sword and Sorcery

January 14th, 2010 • 34 Comments


The cover for Swords and Dark Magic, an anthology in which I’ve got a story coming out in June next year. You’ll note the sub-title, “The New Sword and Sorcery”. The editors – Lou Anders (who publishes the First Law in the US, among many other things) and Jonathan Strahan – perceived something of a new flourishing of sword and sorcery of late, or perhaps an ascendance of sword and sorcery influences within chunky fantasy, and so they decided to produce an anthology that aimed to present in one volume stories from some of the established masters of the subgenre with some from the newer pipsqueaks and impostors such as myself. Looking at the writers involved (Steven Erikson, Glen Cook, Gene Wolfe, James Enge, C.J. Cherryh, K. J. Parker, Garth Nix, Michael Moorcock, Tim Lebbon, Robert Silverberg, Greg Keyes, Michael Shea, Scott Lynch, Tanith Lee, Caitlin R Kiernan, Bill Willingham, and some idiot called Joe Abercrombie) it would seem they’ve succeeded admirably.

I’m delighted to have a story included in such heavyweight company, of course, but it begs a question that I’ve been thinking about a little bit ever since. Not as much as, “ow, my neck hurts,” or, “man, my house is cold,” but a bit.

Do I write Sword and Sorcery?

Well do I, punk? When I started writing, I probably wouldn’t have said so. I’d have said I write important mainstream literary books that plumb the depths of the human condition, and just so happen to include a few wizards, a magic tower or two, and a whole lot of swords. A ha ha! Of course I wouldn’t have said that, that would’ve been absurd. I’d have said I write epic fantasy. Important epic fantasy that plumbs the depth of the human condition.

The fantasy that I read growing up – those books that I’d consider my early influences – are really much more from the epic school. The grandaddy himself, of course, and the wellspring from which the subgenre flows – David Eddings. But also the writers from that great tradition of core 80s epic fantasy who were so influenced by him, like Weiss and Hickman, Michael Scott Rohan and JRR Tolkein. Le Guin’s Earthsea was another, though I always saw that as being somehow in a slightly different category – maybe because they were so much shorter and more focused, or maybe because they had such a distinct feel. The only guy I really read who one would say is in the tradition of sword and sorcery was Michael Moorcock – mainly Elric and Corum – but, on the whole, no doubt, when it came to my fantasy I liked it epic. That feeling was only cemented when later, in the 90s, after I’d largely stopped reading fantasy, I came upon George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones and was blown away by seeing a lot of things I felt had been missing from the genre so surprisingly and ruthlessly expressed.

So (and prepare yourself to cringe) up until I started taking my own writing seriously, until after The Blade Itself was published, even, I’d never read any Howard (though I frequently watched Conan the Barbarian as a boy). I’d never read any Fritz Leiber (though my Dad had some of his scifi on the special scifi shelf, the one down behind the sofa). I’d never even heard of Jack Vance. Oh, the horror.

Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar stories featuring swashbuckling rogues Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser (which I thoroughly advise you to read because in the main they’re still hugely enjoyable) epitomise Sword and Sorcery for me. They were written over a few decades, but the earlier ones are roughly contemporary with Lord of the Rings, and reading them now they feel like the road not travelled by commercial fantasy in the 80s and early 90s. In a sense (and within the confines of being adventure stories within a medievalish setting featuring magic and swords) they are the opposite of Tolkien. Vivid, murky, self-serving characters in brief, focused, small-scale stories in decidedly seedy, smelly, lawless, gritty settings – what might be called ‘low’ fantasy rather than ‘high’. Character and action are emphasised over rigorous worldbuilding. Above all they have a sense of humour, a sense of fun, a sense of not taking it all too seriously.

It feels to me now as if Sword and Sorcery was on the heavy retreat in the eighties, at least in significant written form, crushed under an avalanche of Tolkien-cloning world-build-a-thons and moral absolutes in big, chunky, epic form (though I daresay it was still flourishing in dank and seedy corners unknown to the front of the bookstore). But where it was hugely influential, I now realise, was in the development of Role Playing Games. Short, focused stories about small groups of seedy, wisecracking characters out for themselves were custom made for the format. Adventures and campaigns of that type are vastly easier to run than epic confrontations of good against evil with casts of thousands. Having read Vance, Lieber and Howard now I can see their thumbprints are all over Dungeons and Dragons, and of course the influence of Dungeons and Dragons on roleplaying, both of the dice and paper variety and later of the computerised variety, is profound.

It’s interesting (albeit probably not terribly surprising) that so many fantasy authors were role-players in their day. Looking at that list above I know that Scott Lynch published supplements in his time, and Steven Erikson’s world is based on one developed for role-playing. I’d be shocked if a lot of the other contributors didn’t have a few strange-looking dice at the back of a cupboard somewhere. Now I’d imagine most of them have long been familiar with writers like Howard and Leiber, but for me the Sword and Sorcery came circuitously, via roleplaying games, fused with Tolkien and the epic stuff he inspired, and led (seasoned by thousands of other non-fantasy book, film, and gaming influences) to the bastard offspring which is my work. Looking at what I produce now (and especially at Best Served Cold), I feel it has as much in common, at heart, with Leiber as it does with Tolkien.

So do I write Sword and Sorcery? Yeah, I guess, kinda. The New Sword and Sorcery, maybe?

People Suck, War is Bad, and the World is a Bottomless Shithole

September 20th, 2009 • 90 Comments

An interesting negative review of Best Served Cold from Elizabeth Vail at Green Man Review got me thinking a little bit t’other day, not only because it’s quite amusingly snarky, but also because it seems to coalesce some criticisms of the book I’ve seen a few times, and also hints at some interesting attitudes to what a fantasy story (and maybe just any story) should or should not contain to be successful.

SPOILERS, SPOILERS, SPOILERS. There may well be spoilers ahead, so those who haven’t read Best Served Cold, I strongly advise you to purchase at least one copy immediately and read it (possibly, as Elizabeth suggests, with prozac and a teddy bear to hand, though probably not a copy of the Sound of Music, for its deeply unpleasant subtext of the rise of nazism may tip you over the edge) before returning. Let us begin at the beginning (roughly):

“The twist? Instead of making this an exciting tale of adventure and discovery and colourful world building — let’s make it nauseatingly violent, overwhelmingly bleak, relentlessly depressing, while coming this close to being utterly pointless.”

Youch. It’s a pretty bleak book, sure, but I’m not sure it’s quite so unrelentingly horrendous as she makes out. Still, even if it is – and ignoring the eye-searing (for me, at least) adjectives of nauseatingly, overwhelmingly, and relentlessly – is (the presumably) much preferable “exciting tale of adventure and discovery and colourful world building” fundamentally superior to a violent, depressing and bleak book. In what way is Best Served Cold utterly pointless?

“his novel is hampered by a lack of thematic conclusion. There’s too much build-up for too little narrative payoff. There is no point to his story of vengeance. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, because Best Served Cold is nothing but one big, long tunnel that comes to a dead stop at one end. Characters do not improve, and ultimately they do not change.”

I’d argue that some of the characters do change. Shivers undergoes a radical transformation. I mean it’s for the WORSE, but why is that objectively inferior to a change for the better, from the standpoint of whether a book is worthwhile or not?

“While the world of Styria experiences upheaval, it quickly settles back into bloody-mindedness again. Hope glimmers only to be snuffed out.”

Again, I’d say there are significant glimmers of hope within the context of it being a pretty dark story about some pretty dark characters – there’s every sign that Monza is a lot less ruthless than she pretends to be, and that she’ll make a much better ruler than what Styria has had so far – but even if not, why can hope glimmering only to be snuffed out not be a thematic conclusion? Why is that an inadequate narrative payoff? Why can that not be “the point”?

It interests me, this apparent distaste for a world that is as dark and messy at the end of the story as it was at the beginning. Epic fantasy is full of climactic battles with massive and enduring consequences, of epoch-making events and struggles after which nothing will ever be the same. It’s full of lasting victory and purposeful sacrifice. Experience seems to indicate the real world doesn’t particularly work that way. Great conflicts rarely change the world, and often carry within them the seeds of the next conflict. The Thirty Years war depopulated swathes of Germany and changed virtually nothing, even politically. The Napoleonic wars killed a lot of people and shifted a lot of big hats around, but one could hardly say Europe did not settle back into bloody-mindedness thereafter. The First World War led to the Second, the Second to the Cold War, and the ending of that ushered in a glorious era of peace, love, and an end to fear, right? Er… Well at least relations between the West and Russia are improving, right? Er… Hope constantly glimmers only to be snuffed out, it’s the normal cycle of life. Every victory is touted as the last, great one, and it never is. “An end to boom and bust.” Er… “Peace in our times.” Er… The declaration of victory and freedom in Iraq, let alone Afghanistan, proved to be a little premature. Sooner or later hope glimmers again. The world moves forward by tiny degrees. Clearly we are a lot better off in all kinds of ways than we were in a state of pre-Roman barbarism, but, you know, it takes a long time and progress, such as it is, seems always to be very painful. I don’t see reflecting that in a work of fantasy as overwhelmingly cynical, I see it as relatively realistic, and standing in contrast – by no means with all of epic fantasy – but with a lot of pretty schmaltzy stuff that has been and still is out there. Why should a cynical message be so unpalatable in a fantasy book?

Far from there being no point to the story, it seems to me that Vail got the point very thoroughly, she just really didn’t like the point, which is a slightly different argument. But let us continue…

“By novel’s end, Monza learns (surprise, surprise) that People Suck, War is Bad, and the World is a Bottomless Shithole. Oh, but maybe also that Revenge is Bad, too. A ridiculously tiny step in the character development of one person is the reward for more than six hundred pages of callous murder”

Again, perhaps I’m reading this wrong, but the implication seems to be that “the reward” for getting to the end of a story should be measured in the improvement of the characters, in what they learn. A little bit like the assessment of a government programme for the rehabilitation of offenders. How many prisoners became productive members of society? Hurrah! How many re-offended? Booo! I’ve put in my work by reading the book, now I want it payed off! I demand the world and characters be a better place, or at least a changed place!

Now again, I’m not saying she’s wrong and the book’s ace, or anything (you know I’d never do that), this isn’t intended to be a criticism of Vail or her well-written and considered review (cause you know I’m not like that), I’m just pondering here, because they’re criticisms I’ve seen from other people in other places and in other forms. Why should change in the characters, let alone improvement, be a requirement? Classic Epic Fantasy, again, is full of neat stories of growth and change. The coward who leanrs to be a hero. The weakling who finds his strength. The farmboy who becomes a king. The man of violence redeemed through love. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about. Is there something fundamentally superior or more satisfying about characters who change and improve to ones that don’t change, fail to change, change by tiny degrees, backslide to their original pitiful selves or simply get a lot worse? To me those options all seem equally, if not more, truthful than the option of neat improvement. Of course, any of those can be done well or badly, something can work for a reader or not, be hamfisted, rubbish, or crap, but she seems, in fact, to say that I’m not totally crap:

“as for his protagonist, Monza is a vivid character. She’s single-minded on vengeance without being underdeveloped, and mouths her “morals are for suckers” mantras even though it’s obvious she cares a lot more than other people think. This is part of what makes it so frustrating how little she learns from her experience.”

So she’s a good character, and that makes her refusal to change and learn just *so* frustrating. In this case, it would appear, the better the characters are, the worse the book becomes…

Is it a type of complaint you’d get outside of epic fantasy circles? (and forgive my ludicrously overblown examples drawn from the best the literary and televisual world have to offer) Would folks cuss The Great Gatsby because some of its characters are un
able to change or improve themselves? Are even doomed by it? Would folks cuss LA Confidential because Elroy’s LA is as dark and cynical at the end of the book as it is at the start? Is The Wire reduced because its central theme is that the world is grim and corrupt and its very, very difficult to change it? I don’t know, maybe they would. Maybe that’s why a lot more people watch CSI: Miami than The Wire.

One more time, I’m not criticising this particular review. I actually think it’s a pretty good review, and there are plenty of reasons why lots of people don’t like the book. Too long, too violent, too dark, too unsympathic, and so on. No one’s ever wrong about their own opinion, and there’s nothing wrong either with a preference for smoothly developing characters or worlds transformed for the better. The massive preponderance of stories of that type seem to indicate that it’s a pretty common preference. I’m by no means immune to it myself either – I found the bleakness of No Country for Old Men, its deliberate refusal to provide narrative payoff, and the fact that its central villain could kill with utter impunity, pretty hard to swallow. I’m just wondering how widespread this is – a distaste for the ragged and unchanging, especially when it’s also dark and unpleasant, and whether it’s something more common in epic fantasy than outside it.

“If fans of the First Law trilogy insist on reading this novel, this reviewer would like to suggest they take the necessary precautions. Remove all razors, painkillers, and lengths of rope from your house. Keep Prozac close to hand, along with a teddy bear and a copy of The Sound of Music. Maybe even a dog-eared copy of The Lord of the Rings, where the good guys actually win once in a while.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, by all means, but don’t the good guys nearly always win in everything? Are a couple of books in which – not even the bad guys win, necessarily, but the line between bad and good is kind of hazy and we’re not really sure who won – really so unpalatable you need to keep a happy ending on hand to wash away the hideous taste of cynicism?

Answers on a postcard, and remember, I don’t want to be affirmed, here, nor scorn heaped upon Ms. Vail’s head. I’m interested in discussing it…

EDIT: As an amusing postscript to this, Best Served Cold was just one-starred by an irate punter on amazon complaining that, “There was even a happy ending! Also, it wasn’t as gritty as the First Law.” Truly, you can please some of the people some of the time…

Am I Genre Enough?

July 23rd, 2008 • 23 Comments

By heavens, the entire blog-o-verse has been ON FIRE with discussion of my reading habits and I didn’t even realise until just now!

Well, perhaps I’m being a touch over-dramatic (what, me?) Not the entire blog-o-verse, just a couple of bits of it. And not really on fire, just smouldering very slightly. And not really MY reading habits, David Bilsborough’s.

But my name has been mentioned, and it’s been a while since I offended anyone with my ignorance on genre issues, so I thought I’d try and flog a few more copies of my books for kindling. There are a few discussions around relating to the question of – “should writers of fantasy also be readers of fantasy? Or perhaps even fans of fantasy?” The story so far…

BILSBOROUGH, I WILL DESTROY YOU!!!!

You sure about all that?

Let’s all think carefully about this, shall we?

Here’s what we think.

And us.

Fair enough, but BILSBOROUGH, I WILL STILL DESTROY YOU!!!!

I think we can agree that if David Bilsborough’s aim was to win friends in the internet fantasy community then his comments were misjudged. I have a feeling that might not have been his aim. I actually have a kind of wierd respect for his loopy honesty. A bit like the respect one might feel watching a man set his head on fire for a laugh. Anyway, for better or worse, I am one of these writers of fantasy who say they don’t really read much fantasy (these days, at least), and so can’t help feeling implicated in the debate. I thought I’d take a run at explaining what I’ve read, why I don’t read fantasy now, and why, furthermore, I don’t think it’s that important that I should. I’m not offended. I’m not on some kind of self-justifying rant. That’s just so not me. I’m just exploring the issues. Some background then…

Am I a fantasy fan? I guess it all depends on your definition. Certainly, as a kid I was hugely into Tolkien and read the Lord of the Rings every year. I loved Wizard of Earthsea too, some Lloyd Alexander, some Michael Moorcock. As well as a whole load of other fiction, poetry, and blah, blah, blah. I was massively into dice-based RPGs as a boy and a pasty youth with dodgy hair, read White Dwarf a lot, devoured vast quantities of supplements for such games, wrote a few adventures of my own – D&D;, MERP, and Warhammer mostly (still rate the Warhammer world and campaigns very highly). I read a lot of fantasy in the 80s as well, though now I realise it was mostly of a pretty commercial epic-fantasy-series type: Eddings, Dragonlance, Guy Gavriel Kay’s Summer Tree, Michael Scott Rohan’s Winter of the World, and many more I’ve forgotten, I’m sure, as well as a fair bit of classic sci-fi from my Dad’s collection with the groovy 70s covers. But more literary stuff like Vance, Leiber, Gene Wolfe and so on I was totally unaware of the existence of, if I’m honest. I don’t feel I was part of fandom, as it were, no community, to speak of, to turn me on to things, apart from the five or six guys I played RPGs with, who were about as clueless of the broad field of fantasy as me, I guess.

Some time around 20 I pretty much stopped reading fantasy. Moved away from home and the old RPG group went their separate ways. No huge decision to cast it aside in disgust – in fact I never stopped turning over some of my own ideas for an epic fantasy that would eventually become the germs of The First Law – but I just got into other things. Street Fighter II, mainly. In the seven or eight years following, up to the point I started seriously trying to write my own stuff, the only fantasy I read was Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire (the first three books, at that time), which had a pretty strong effect on me, as I’ve mentioned before. I got much more into reading non-fiction, history in particular, as well as still a whole range of general fiction from classics to contemporary stuff.

Now, once I was getting near finishing a first draft of my first book, it did occur to me that it might be a good idea to get a vague sense of the state of the market. So I asked, in one of those bookshops they used to have, about what was big in fantasy these days, and I got given: Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time (read the first three, nice enough, but my world was not rocked), R.A. Salvatore’s The Demon Awakens (didn’t work for me), and Steven Erikson’s Memories of Ice (realised it was half way through a series, resolved to get the first one, got totally sidetracked as always). I must confess that, when going through the process of gathering rejections, I did worry that my stuff might be a bit too dark, a bit too off-beat, a bit too violent and sweary for the market. Unbeknownst to me, since Martin the market had shifted to leave me firmly in the commercial middle ground. Since being published, I have of course taken some interest in what else is out there. I’ve read a few things my publisher have passed my way. I’ve peered into a fair few others to get a notion of the kind of styles some folks are writing in, but it’s a fact I can’t deny that I don’t read much fantasy these days. I’m not proud of it, that’s true, but I’m not ashamed either.

I guess the bottom line is that I’m relatively well-versed in fantasy of a certain rather limited type and a certain rather limited era, but I’m by no means steeped in the broad sweep of the genre. I’m sure some fantasy readers would look at the influences I’ve spoken of and say, “wow, that stuff’s all really old and, like, kinda … hokey.” To that I can only shrug my shoulders and say, “well, the proof’s in the pudding, and my pudding is FRAKKING ACE” [warning - depends on who you ask, actual pudding may differ from pudding advertised].

Or perhaps I would shrug my shoulders and say, “well, the genre may be packed with interesting, adult work of the last dozen years and, indeed, before. But one can’t pretend that it isn’t still bestrid by Tolkien in the popular consciousness, more than ever since the films. Plus everyone’s still well aware of all that old stuff even if they’re pretending no one does it any more, and on the borders of the genre and beyond, popular culture is still riddled with a slightly cheesy impression of fantasy involving elves, dwarves, magic swords, and etc. which is further reinforced by millions and millions and millions of people playing fantasy MMORPGs which (often) are based on a slightly cheesy impression of fantasy.”

Or I might shrug and say, “there’s still loads of folks for whom fantasy stopped in 1989 and just want David Eddings with much bitchier characters occasionally shitting themselves. I fill that hole.” So am I fan of fantasy? Certainly there’s a lot I love about the genre, and it all depends on your definition, but there seems to be a bit of an implication of unquestioning love about the word ‘fan’, of blindness to any shortcoming or chance of development, maybe? I recently read a bit of an interview with Jacqueline Carey that I could literally have written myself, if I was a better writer:

“For my part, I grew up reading fantasy and loving the sheer escapism and the sense of wonder it evoked; and yet, as I grew older, I found myself craving fantasy that was a little more grounded in plausible reality, a little m
ore visceral, possessed of a bit more intellectual substance and an adult emotional sensibility. I wanted work that made me think and feel in addition to entertaining me. I suspect that’s true of others, too. Like many writers, I write the books I want to read. Thankfully, it seems there’s a large audience that feels the same way that we do.”

It certainly do. Where was I? Ah, yes.

Part of the problem I have with the whole notion of being “a fan of the genre,” or having “contempt for the genre,” or “a rejection of the genre itself,” is that implicit in the phrases seems to be the idea that fantasy is a huge homogenous blob that you’re either for or against, and that there’s a sharp line between us, defending fortress fantasy to the death, and them, in the dangerous mainstream. “Do not cross the fence after dark, my boy, there be dragons. They hate us out there beyond the fence. Stay here in the village, and marry your sister. Stay here forever.” I’m grandstanding of course, but, you know, is this your first time here? I see that there’s sometimes a value in simplifying, saying a reader, or a writer, or a book is one thing or the other, but I’m just not sure the world is really like that. I would imagine that pretty much everyone who reads at all will have read some fantasy at some point – Tolkien or Lewis, Rowling or Pullman, if we can count those last two as fantasy since things are much hazier in YA land. Similarly there will be many readers who dip into the fantastic here or there, or did at one time but have got out of the habit, or never used to but do now. Not fans, per se, just, you know, readers. Furthermore, even those (I think relatively few) who would consider themselves die-hard fans and read little else will all have different tastes and profiles of reading. Some might dig new wierd. Some might hate it but love epic with a passion. Some might like the paranormal romance, with the crop tops and the back tattoos. Or ye olde schoole classicks of ye genre. Pass me another Dunsany, my boy, this one’s gone out. My point is, there’s no fixed profile for what qualifies you as in or out, as knowing enough or not. No one’s read everything. For my part as a writer, I’ll take every reader I can get without prejudice. Die hard epic fantasy fan? You’re in. Read Dragonlance once? You’re in too. I’m here by mistake, can’t read? Pull up a chair.

Where was I again? Ah yes.

So why don’t I read much fantasy now? Well, you may be horrified to learn that I don’t read that much at all these days, and what I do read is mostly non-fiction, because a lot of the time I used to spend reading – train journeys, morning commutes and so on – I now spend writing, or at least revising my own work. I find reading fiction can be a bit distracting from the writing, and that’s especially true of my own genre – other people’s work draws me in a certain direction, dilutes my own voice a bit, and since I’ve constantly got deadlines I don’t want to miss I lack downtime where I might catch up with this or that. Purely my personal experience. But mostly I don’t read fantasy just because, well, I kind of like what I’ve produced with the ingredients I’ve already got, and don’t particularly feel the need to change the formula. Maybe in time I will, but at the moment, for why? It’s also worth noting that there are all kinds of places you can find ideas outside of books. TV and film are full of great writing. Computer games less so, but plenty of ideas still. And then there’s, you know, life. Nothing wrong with adding a sprinkling of newer, edgier stuff from outside a genre or even a given medium to the tried and tested classics within it to produce the familiar with a twist. In fact I’d argue that approach can lead to some of the most impressive work. Not mine, of course. But Unforgiven, anyone? James Ellroy? Tarantino?

Ultimately, there are as many approaches to writing fantasy (or anything else) as there are authors. Everyone’s going to have their own balance of influences, books and otherwise, their own styles and voices, themes and concerns. Many writers of fantasy are most definitely big fans – GRRM and Scott Lynch spring to mind from my own experience – but still very clearly have their own approach. Others aren’t necessarily fans. My perception is that Richard Morgan, for example, has an approach to fantasy not dissimilar to mine – a range of fantasy influences from way back when accompanied by a whole battery of his own concerns and style refined in writing SF. It hasn’t stopped him writing what I think is a very original and interesting fantasy novel. I guess my point is you can be a fan and write derivative shit or brilliantly original magic with a unique voice. You can be more of an outsider and effortlessly fuse the familiar with ingenious outside influences, or, again, write derivative shit. To be fair, that’s what most people polled seem to say on this issue. The proof is all in the pudding. I guess my feeling would be similar to the one I have towards worldbuilding. My taste, as a writer, is toward a light hand on the world, but this being (supposedly) the genre of infinite ideas, there is ample room for other approaches, and god bless those who do the opposite well.

There does seem to be a frequently expressed opinion that you need to read a certain amount within the genre so you know the form, and avoid repeating the already overdone, and I can see where they’re coming from, but to me that seems to miss the fundamental point that the first feature of a good writer is that they should have some individuality of voice, style, approach that is unique to them, and that renders any character or situation, be they ne’er so hackneyed, new and interesting (at least for some readers, nothing works for everyone, you know). Others seem to feel a more personal sense of slight, that not reading their genre somehow constitutes an offence. Perhaps I’m straw-manning now, but as far as somehow having contempt for the genre goes, the implication that by not reading it religiously you’re somehow standing sneering to one side or whining at the letterbox of the mainstream to be let in, well, if I hated epic fantasies it would have been a pretty strange decision to spend three years of my life writing one with no guarantee I’d ever make a single penny out of it.

Take that, you straw bastard! Now who’s tough?

Innovative-ni-ness

July 7th, 2008 • 14 Comments

As though Publisher’s Weekly’s review had burst an internet dam, or were a necromancer invoking the restless corpses of the web community, or were a great king of yore calling his shining cohorts to battle (work with me here), a spate of First Law-related activity this past week.

Like Sergio Leone, whom I try to imitate in all things, let us begin with the good, and work our way steadily towards the ugly, though this time, alas, without the comic talents of Eli Wallach. A review of Last Argument of Kings from Paul at the rather nicely designed and fearsomely titled Blood of the muse (I like it, literary, but violent):

“Last Argument of Kings is the best fantasy novel released so far in 2008 … Abercrombie brings the trilogy to a rousing and very satisfying conclusion, peppering the novel with incredible battles, grim humor, and many unforeseen twists … the characters become even more nuanced and complex, fighting hard against the reader’s expectations of them. It is as though a new light has been shined upon them, making for stunning transformations.”

He awards me 94 out of 100. Have at you now! It’s like 94 fingers in the eye for the doubters. John D. Borra has also been reading LAoK at Flowers from the Rubble, and he thought:

“The concluding book of The First Law trilogy could not have been more exhilaratingly, subversively, compulsively delightful. A tired old genre, populated either by the doddering remnants of formerly great writers, or sadly bereft of truly inspired creators, is suddenly fresh again.”

Fresh, inspired, and delightful? Oh, don’t! Oh, stop! I’m blushing! My face is on fire! Alright, carry on. What do you think of when you picture readers of epic fantasy? My guess is that would vary, but it is extremely unlikely to be this. At all. But the world is jam-packed with surprises, folks, because vintage pin-up model Fleur de Guerre (nom de plume?) has apparently been tearing through the filth, betrayal and carnage that is Last Argument of Kings. No, really, I’m not making this up. My imagination is nothing like that powerful:

“Anyway, suffice to say it is an absolutely cracking read. It’s a fantastically well-written series, and the characters are so … full of character! They have both good and bad sides, and unlike some books, there were no character chapters that I wanted to (or *gasp* did!) skip through. The battle scenes were particularly epic, and suitably bloody. My only niggle is the ending!”

Bah! Dah! We’ll forget that last sentence ever happened, shall we? Ably assisted by an overview of the entire trilogy from Australian webzine The Specusphere (although does it have a nationality if it’s on the web? A question for another day…):

“In The First Law, UK fantasy writer Joe Abercrombie has produced one of the most impressive first trilogies ever to hit the market. It is remarkable not only because of its brilliantly complex plot and characters, but also because of its fearless investigation of the dark labyrinths of the human condition. Here be no dragons, and hardly a mage or a McGuffin is in sight, either. Instead, we have a blood, sweat and tears tale of the first water … If you like your fantasy harsh and gritty, can stand a great deal of death and destruction, and if you don’t want everything tied up in neat packages with “happy ever after” stamped on them, you must read this trilogy.”

See? See? They liked the ending! “But Joe!” I hear you cry, “if your admirers span the entire gamut of persons from vintage pin-ups to … Australians, from where oh where will the dodgy reviews that we all love so much appear?” Ah, from none other than sometime-absent but long-established internet reviewer Gabe Chouinard, who has some thought-provoking issues with the level of originality displayed in The Blade Itself:

“For all the talk of innovation, The Blade Itself is still generic epic fantasy. While it is a rousing good read, for me it is also a disposable read; the genre equivalent of a few hours spent watching television.”

As disposable as time spent watching The Wire, Deadwood, The Sopranos or Battlestar Galactica? Wasted hours indeed, I hang my head in shame…

“In hindsight, I find it difficult to distinguish Abercrombie’s characters from other generic epic fantasy characters. Logen Ninefingers could as easily have been the equally-reluctant berserker Barek from David Eddings’ Belgariad sequence. Bayaz could just as easily have been any number of mysterious mage figures; making him bald and sarcastic does not make him unique.”

Now Gabe’s only read the first book, and I’d be interested to see what he made of the whole series. I think if The First Law has any insights to offer it’s as a whole. The Blade Itself was always intended to introduce the characters, to set the scene, but also to firmly anchor the trilogy as being part of a familiar brand of epic fantasy in which readers might think they could guess all the outcomes, such that, as the series then later ingeniously flips those notions on their heads and reveals the characters to be other than expected, readers are double shocked and amazed, squealing with delight at the cleverness of the merry dance on which they have been so entertainingly led.

Or perhaps not. It don’t work for everyone, that’s for sure. But I’d argue the number of people disappointed, dismayed, or even utterly crushed by the ending would seem to support the idea that it’s not entirely formulaic. Still, having been underwhelmed by book one, Gabe might well not have the patience for two more doorstoppers. That’s fine. And even if he did, he might well consider the whole approach ill-advised, ineffective, or even mildly ham-fisted. Certainly he found the first book ‘entirely undistinctive’, and is forced to meditate on the shortcomings of the critical community these days:

“And so I wonder… what is it that compels reviewers to laud The Blade Itself as innovative, ground-breaking, and all the rest? I believe reviewers are responding to the surface gloss of The Blade Itself, which is foolhardy. Bloody fights, sarcasm, the “gritty” addition of a few fucks and shits and damns… these are a mere veneer of coolness, not signs of real innovation. And so, when some reviewers use books like Abercrombie’s to suggest that epic fantasy has, at last, “grown up”, I find myself cringing in dismay.”

Exactly what people respond to or not in a book is an area of some fascination for me, as you can imagine. I think the single biggest lesson I’ve learned since getting into the game (writing, not prostitution) is that the difference in the ways different readers look at a text, the differences in what they expect, what they want, what they value, in every area, are unimaginably vast. But my impression is, when people do respond well to my stuff (the aforementioned John D. Borra above being not untypical), what they find original is the relatively small twists on the familiar, though growing as the series progresses, the sense of humour with which it’s delivered, the relatively unpretentious style from the extremely pretentious
author, the vivid characters and the emphasis on those characters rather than the world. What you might call relatively basic virtues, really.

I disagree that those things constitute surface gloss, necessarily, that all depends what you’re looking for. I disagree also that something needs to be wildly innovative in order to offer something that a lot of readers will find fresh and interesting. Honestly, I think unique-ness can sometimes be a bit over-rated. Much beloved of critics, but perhaps not so much of the great body of readers. You can be unique and still be, for want of a better word, shit. A man with an arse for a face is unique, but I don’t know that I’d want to be him. To write an appealing story, I think you need to balance the original with the familiar, and for me, quite small nuances of style and approach can be enough to make some familiar components fascinating all over again, especially if they’re components much beloved of the readers in question. Familiarity might repel some readers, but I think it draws far more in, providing you don’t get stodgy and boring (don’t you dare even think it), creates expectations and allows you to pull tricks that would be impossible on much less familiar ground.

So I’m not sure I’d ever claim that my stuff is particularly groundbreaking, beyond being my own particular take on the classic fantasy trilogy, emphasising my own concerns and trying to be as honest and realistic as possible. To quote myself from an interview, which you’ll be surprised to hear I kind of love doing:

“I’d like to think of what I’m doing as standing in relation to Lord of the Rings (and the classic epic fantasy that’s been strongly influenced by Tolkien) in the same way as – if I can use a cumbersome extended metaphor – Unforgiven stands in relation to High Noon. A slantwise look at the cliches of the form from a more modern, cynical, realistic perspective, perhaps even a bit of a satirical riff on the form at times, but first and foremost a strong example of the form. I hope that I’ve got something to say about the ways that good and evil, power and violence are traditionally represented in fantasy, but at the same time I hope that above all what I’ve written is a cracking fantasy tale, and can be enjoyed purely on that level.”

Man, that Abercrombie can turn a phrase. And so when Gabe says, in order to sweeten the bitter pill of criticism:

“Abercrombie has a slick, active style that aids in propelling the reader along. Everything about The Blade Itself is crisp; the dialogue is excellent, the pacing is excellent, the characterization is excellent. In truth, while reading The Blade Itself I enjoyed myself.”

I think I probably find most of the praise I’d ever want. In the end, if given the choice, I much prefer things that are good, to things that are original. Both would be best, for sure, but hey…

Either one’s something.

Ye Olde Middle Booke Syndrome

April 24th, 2008 • 15 Comments

Too long has it been, good friends, since I girded my loins (whatever that means), unsheathed my mighty blade, bestrid my charger, and rode forth from my shining citadel to do righteous battle against the forces of evil. Well, not evil in the strictest sense, perhaps, but people who criticise me, anyway, which is the closest thing to pure evil abroad in the world today, in my book. What’s that you say? Yours too? Ah, you stand among the righteous! Let me now, then, strike a blow for noble souls everywhere by letting fall like the hammer of God my well-deserved wrath upon those who had anything but the most sycophantic praise for my middle book, Before They are Hanged.

There are, of course, many sensible, intelligent, cultured, and attractive people out there who love The Blade Itself and its sequel unreservedly as though ’twere their own flesh. There are, believe it or not, a couple of neanderthal losers who hated the first book and hence got no further, but, really, who cares what they think?

But there are also some enigmas. Some human riddles. Folks who evidently missed the point the first time round, but got it the next time. Still more bizarre, plenty who loved the first book but were less impressed with the second. I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not enough to simply scream, “insanity!” and call for the brain doctors, for I’m reasonably sure that at least some of these people function in real life almost as normal individuals. We need to find out what’s going on here, for it may be possible that some among them can be saved.

An accusation often used in these somewhat disappointed-sounding reviews is that of “middle book syndrome”. What is this syndrome, and wherefore comes it? Does it turn your brain spongey, like Creutzveldt-Jakob Syndrome? Is it something terrible but that can be survived with the proper treatment, like Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome? Might it even burn a hole straight through the earth, like The China Syndrome?

My dictionary which I use to look up words that I don’t know what I may seem right cleverer than others defines a syndrome as: “any combination of signs and symptoms that are indicative of a disease or disorder.” What, then, are the observed symptoms of Middle Book Syndrome? In particular, from my point of view, what symptoms of malaise does Before They are Hanged exhibit?

I must admit I’ve always been surprised by the diagnosis, because I felt myself that Before They are Hanged was a big improvement pretty much across the board (not that the first book isn’t fantastic, of course, if you haven’t bought it you really should, it’ll change your life etc.) I feel on re-reading that I’m happier with the prose in the second book, in general, though a couple of scenes I’d tinker with now. The pace seems much faster, much more directed, I like the way the different plots inter-relate, peak at different moments or at the same time. It all feels much more fluid to me than the first book, where I was still working out a lot about the characters, the story, and just how to do it. That and simply, with a lot of the setup of characters and settings done, I felt free to get into the story more thoroughly, explore some of the relationships between the characters, broaden the scale to some bigger events, some bigger set-piece battles and adventures and so on. My Mum agrees, incidentally, and she’s always right.

I mean to say, was I not crowned most improved writer of 2007 by Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, with a soaring increase in my scores from a miserable 7.5/10 for The Blade Itself to a resplendent 7.5/10 for Before They are Hanged? Did Publisher’s Weekly not consider my first book “a muddled sword and sorcery … marred by repetitive writing and an excess of torture and pain” but my second a “grim and vivid sequel that transcends its middle volume status … suffused with a rich understanding of human darkness and light”?

Well is it better or isn’t it? Can I not get just one straight answer? Let us see…

Robert, of Fantasy Book Critic, though undoubtedly liking the series, definitely detected a whiff of the dreaded syndrome about Before They are Hanged. He still loves the characters, but he thought the plot had somewhat run out of steam:

“Unfortunately, Before They Are Hanged did not impress me as much and largely that’s a result of being a middle volume. In other words, not much happens … Thankfully the characterization was even stronger than it was last time, so even though the story was disappointing, I still had a blast … [the characters] are unquestionably the strength of the novel – and the trilogy as a whole so far – but the lackluster plot kept me from enjoying the sequel as much as I did The Blade Itself.”

So it was a lack of action, or perhaps of resolution, that was the problem? The middle book of a trilogy contains neither the excitement of new beginnings, or the satisfaction of closure, it’s … the other bit. But in this era of 7, 10, 12 volume mega-sequences, does that mean we are doomed to 5, 8, 10 sub-par linking tomes? Perhaps, perhaps it does, alac the heavy day. But what’s this? Larry of Wotmania fame, had the opposite reaction. He thought the plotting in Hanged was much improved but had problems with the characterisation:

“The choppiness of the first book has been smoothed out and the action develops nicely. There are scenes full of great dramatic tension, but ultimately the uneven characterization and the over-reliance upon cynical takes on stock characters makes for a story whose promise remains somewhat unfulfilled.”

The characters, are the problem, then? Familiarity breeds contempt, and so forth. They’ve got worse, or at least, not better, and therefore stale? John Enzinas, at SFSite, certainly detected such a ‘going off’:

“The world history is fascinating and the descriptions of both the settings and the fights are wonderful. The characters, however, are limp and listless, like vegetables left too long in the fridge. They’ve lost the crispness and freshness they had when we first saw them … It’s clearly a bridging book, meant to get the characters in position for the final act, and this it does admirably. I just wish that the author had taken a little bit more time with it and maintained the level of craft that he managed with his first book.”

Curse my lack of craft! My characters too long in the salad drawer, damn them! But then Monsters and Critics , unmoved by the first book, appear to say the exact opposite, focusing their pleasurable surprise on my wonderfully improved characterisation:

“Where many of the characters in the first book seemed stiff and contrived, here they become dynamic, well-developed personalities struggling to survive the trials of the day … If Abercrombie continues this pattern of improvement, he will undoubtedly become a major voice in the fantasy genre.”

So it’s a problem with characters, or plotting, or possibly a bit of both, or the pace is too fast, or too slow, or maybe there is no problem and I’m way better than I used to be, cos the first book was rubbish. Hmmm. Certainly the specific symptoms of the syndrome are difficult to get a handle on. I’m being unfair, of course, because who said critics have to agree with each other? But from my point of view some consensus would be interesting, perhaps even educational, and hey, i
t’s a blog, who said I have to be fair? Let us delve further, then. Siobhan Carroll at Strange Horizons very much liked the first book, but had a different take on mild disappointment with the second:

“Before They Are Hanged lacks the polish of Abercrombie’s previous novel, The Blade Itself. That book mixed the pared-down prose of hard-boiled detective fiction with the epic scope of a George R. R. Martin fantasy in a plot that steered refreshingly clear of most of the usual fantasy conventions. Now that Abercrombie is further into his trilogy, however, the familiar beats of an epic fantasy series are beginning to emerge.”

This I can kind of understand. I think a lot of readers prefer the second book because the plot in the first is, you know, kind of vague and uncertain (I’d say mysterious), and in the second becomes a bit more clear, easier to follow. Perhaps they’re worried initially that the lack of a clear plot might mean, you know, that there’s no plot at all. Perhaps at the same time this focusing, and the surface (alright, more than surface) simliarities to classic tales of epic fantasy in the second book are the very things that distance other kinds of reader, the ones that precisely liked that unfamiliar, amorphous quality in the first. Is it all a question of taste, then, like every bloody other thing in reading/writing? Or is there more to this middle book syndrome? I think Ken at Neth Space might have come closest to the heart of the problem:

“Abercrombie plays with common fantasy tropes (all-knowing wizard, barbarian from the north, stuck-up nobleman, etc.) – he uses many of them, yet does so with a biting, satirical edge and seems to revel in taking the story in unexpected directions. Before They Are Hanged does all this (and more), but since this is the second book of the trilogy, the novelty of the approach has worn off. With the novelty gone, things almost become tiresome in places … my impression at the moment is that Before They Are Hanged suffers a bit from the middle book syndrome.”

That thing that every author has, no matter how derivative their work, that individuality of style, of approach, of concerns or ideas, the thing that makes them new and interesting (hopefully), that novelty, well, that, alas, will almost always wear off to a degree. We might still love it, but it will never hit us quite the same as it did the first time. I guess that’s the reason why I still love Game of Thrones more than the rest of Martin’s series, despite admitting there’s bigger, better, bolder stuff in the later books. When he does the things he’s so good at doing, I’m never going to be as shocked, as moved, as impressed as I was the first time.

Perhaps that’s the difficulty at the heart of middle book syndrome. An author’s books may get better, but they may well not get better enough…?