Tag-Archive for » Fantasy «
I’ve been on a Labyrinth bender for the past few days (no excuses, David Bowie is just one giant bucket of crotch monster sex) and it’s got me thinking on the concept of living in a fantasy world. In the movie Sarah, a fifteen-year-old girl, is firmly planted in her own fantasies and I believe that any adult looking at that would question her on some level, be it her maturity, her mental stability or whatever. Within the context of the movie, she appears to have a firm grasp between fantasy and reality and if you read the novelization (which I was lucky to obtain many moons ago, yay for eBay!), it further explains that this fantasy world desire is fueled by her want to become an actress.
But is living in a fantasy world all that bad?
I take a look at my own life, at 26, and while I don’t play dress-up in the park, I would think the stories that I write, plus the dreams I give myself, would have me in flighty school right next to Sarah. Where’s my Goblin King, dammit? But is this really so bad? Because I write this fantastical stuff about fairies and other worlds and gateways and such, does that really make me flighty? Does it make me yearn to live in another world entirely (is Jareth involved?)? Does it somehow make me less mature or push me further into my hermit status?
I guess what I’m asking is, what is wrong with living in a fantasy world? If your feet are planted firmly on the ground, what’s wrong with walking around with your head in the clouds? What’s wrong with escape? Am I immature because I day dream of worlds not my own or write stories where dogs turn into pedantic shitheads? I like having fantasies and I really don’t see myself growing out of them any time soon. I like to pretend I can escape. I’m sure a psychologist would see me as having unrealistic expectations and attempt to medicate me in some way. But I’m not seeing Hoggle pissing in my hedges and I’ve never been bitten by a fairy (yet) so . . . what’s the big deal?
Let me have my dreams, man. I like them too much to give up.
Narnia . . where owls are wise, where some of the giants like to snack on humans, where a prince is put under an evil spell . . . and where the adventure begins.
Eustace and Jill escape from the bullies at school through a strange door in the wall, which, for once, is unlocked. It leads to the open moor . . . or does it? Once again Aslan has a task for the children, and Narnia needs them. Through dangers untold and caverns deep and dark, they pursue the quest that brings them face to face with the evil Witch. She must be defeated if Prince Rillian is to be saved.
Redemption! Yeah, this one was good. Still not as good as THAHB but definitely much better than PC and VotDT combined. Aslan kept himself to a minimum and the children were thoroughly tortured by the elements, giants, another witch and a slew of other things. Fun!
My inner feminist reared her ugly head at the whole “witch is the snake that corrupts man” homage but I just kept thinking that it was of the times. Biblical references. Calm down. Still, the insinuation irked me. As is Lewis’s ability to let women stand by and let men do all the fighting. *breathe*
Anyway, this fairy tale was much more fleshed out, no deus ex machina that I can remember and I really enjoyed it. I saw the issue with the giants at the first mention of “they’d love to have you for the Autumn Harvest” but that’s really the only thing I saw in advance. I’m not one of those perceptive people that sees things like that. At least, I don’t actively look. So if I see something like that, I think I’m being beaten over the head with it. But that’s just me.
The thing with reviewing series, unless there’s a big dip in writing style or some drastic change, the reviews start to get redundant unless I focus on the story itself and even then it’s either I liked it or I didn’t. So, I’m pretty short on things to say aside from “go read nao.” Oh, I cried at the end. Very sad. I was hoping the old friends would see each other one last time. And the very end, back at the school, a little strange and a touch contrived but it was so minor I really didn’t mind. Loved the underground world. That was probably my favorite part.
And just how many movies of the series have been made? I’ve only ever seen previews for LWW and PC but according to that cover, TSC’s been made and when I was looking for cover images, I saw movie stills as well. Is this what happens when you don’t have cable for years at a time?
Narnia . . . the land between the lamp-post and the castle of Cair Paravel, where animals talk, where magical things happen . . . and where the adventure begins.
Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are returning to boarding school when they are summoned from the dreary train station (by Susan’s own magic horn) to return to the land of Narnia – the land where they had ruled as kings and queens and where their help is desperately needed.
Don’t get me wrong. I liked this book. I really did. But compared to the others I just found it kind of lackluster and a little unfocused. The book is called Prince Caspian but the emphasis didn’t seem to be on him; it was on the children and how they saved the day. I was expecting something a long the lines of the life and times of Prince Caspian, or something like that. The history that we do get of him is passively told for a couple of chapters (which was interesting nonetheless) and everything else was about the re-emergence of Old Narnia.
Prince Caspian was definitely more of a secondary character than the focus of the book. It almost seemed that he was just fodder for another adventure for the children which was kind of irritating. I was sad at the end, however, when we’re told that Peter and Susan were getting too old to travel back and forth between the real world and Narnia. Very Peter Pan moment right there.
Overall I guess I wasn’t as impressed with this one as I was with the others. It is a little disheartening to go into something thinking you’re getting one thing and get something else. Like I said, it wasn’t bad by any means. It’s still a fantastic story but I think the power of a title comes into play here. If the title of the book is Prince Caspian, I expect him to be the main focus of the story, not a secondary plot line.
I’m having issues finding a synopsis for just this book instead of the entire series and the book I have is a three-in-one so that’s not all that helpful either. So I’ll try and sum this one up for you.
Tal has bound himself to Milla, and vise versa, in order to get himself back to the castle. In exchange for his safe return, he must get Milla a sunstone in order for her to take it back to the Icecarls. Getting back into the castle, since Tal hasn’t heard of anyone actually doing it, proves much more difficult than climbing up a mountain. He’s pushed to the physical and mental limits that even he didn’t know he had, not to mention he starts to question his own standing in life. When Tal and Milla are captured by henchmen of Sushin, Tal’s mortal enemy for unknown reasons, he has to figure a way out of the mess he’s in and help Milla because it is his fault, after all, that she ended up trapped in his world and incarcerated in the Hall of Nightmares.
I have to say, this one is much better than the first, not only in writing style but in exposition as well. I think it had a lot to do with it shifting back and forth between Tal being someplace foreign and Milla being someplace foreign so there’s a lot more explanation going on which helps to develop the story in my head a little better. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its moments of ‘what is that?’ because it just gives you a name without a basis for comparison, but it’s quelled a lot.
I still consider myself very new to the whole fantasy genre and even newbier to the young adult world since it just sprang itself upon me one day. With that being said, I am blissfully unaware of overused cliches in both genres and ignorant of them all at the same time. I don’t risk too much “influencing” at this point since I haven’t read much of either. No chance of subconscious story inserting there. But I also don’t really know the trends of the market, what’s been seen too many times and what I should spin to make it original. When I say, ‘of course I think my work is original, I haven’t read anything like it,’ well duh. I haven’t because I don’t even need to broach the toes to count the novels I have.
So, when I read the young adult top 25 list of overused cliches, I was pretty much free and clear until I got to number two: best friends with red hair. Figures, right? I can’t do one of the lesser used cliches, I need to go for the big guns right off the bat. Of course it was purely coincidental but I certainly did a *headdesk* when I saw that. Although I think I might have violated number twenty-three: a token black friend amongst a group of white friends, usually female. While my South Fair guy is, well, a guy, I never thought of him as the “token” black guy, especially with other cultures already made known in the story. The thing is, with how malleable my story is already (the red-head has already been shunted into secondary character land pre-post), I wouldn’t be surprised if it morphed again (and again, and again . . .).
Of course, it can’t be said that any of those listed elements are particularly bad and will render your story automatically rejected, they’re just predominant and should you use one of those elements, make sure to put a nice little topsy turvey spin on it to make it stand out from the crowd. Considering Kristin’s post is relatively recent (not backlogged for two years like the rest I’ve been referencing), I want to say it’s still relevant to today’s market and it’s just something to be aware of.
It’s like with vampires; it’s not that no one wants to see any more blood-suckers in novels, it’s just that the character’s been rubbed raw from redundant overuse and it’s going to take a mighty spark of originality to get any interest in it.
The bottom line is to write whatever it is you want to write. Writing for the market is always a bad thing, especially with how quickly it can change. But being aware of the pitfalls and pot holes on the path to landing an agent (or publisher) are always good things to know.
