Sword and Sorcery and Stuff: Fantasy Series Passing Muster or Just Rank

1. The Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb

Verdict: Passes Muster

Books 1-3 (The Farseer Trilogy) and 7-9 (The Tawny Man Trilogy) follow the life and trials of FitzChivalry Farseer and those in his sphere. Books 4-6 (The Liveship Traders Trilogy) take place in the same world and feature cameos by familiar characters but focus on an entirely different plot. For this reason, I followed the advice of the person who recommended the books and read them in the order I mentioned them above and would suggest you do the same. This series features some familiar archetypes – the bastard son of a prince is raised a social outcast, but grows into some fantastical powers and goes on to encounter mystical mountain people, tricksters, and alluring women. What makes this series a bit different from the standard Tolkein-clones is the addition of some less common elements thrown into the mix. The powers that Fitz weilds are not heralded as prestigious power, and they actually serve to make him more of an outcast. The mountain people here are not dwarves, but a race that isn’t so easily pigeonholed and labeled. Add to this some androgyny, zombies, and dragons with more issues than the San Diego Comic-Con. The only hangup I have with this series is a bit of a doozy. I found myself wondering when anything good was going to happen to Fitz. Ultimately though, I’m glad it ended the way it did. I won’t spoil it and tell you if it’s happy or not, but I do recommend it.

2. The Magician by Raymond E. Feist

Verdict: Rank

Here we have the tale of Pug (yes, Pug), another bastard son of another prince who lives a rough life and travels to distant lands. Dwarves live in the mountains. Fair elves live in the woods and war with their dark cousins. Pirates sail the seas and sometimes, they’re basically good guys who just have misunderstood free spirits. Pug does go where lots of other fantasy heroes don’t, to another planet that can only be reached by magic portals, but once he’s there, ho hum. My biggest problem with these books is the women. I think Feist must only have ever known one woman, because there’s only really one woman in the book. Sometimes she’s the Elf Queen. Sometimes, she’s the battle-hardened warrior maiden. Sometimes she’s the slave girl who faithfully waits years and years for her true love, with no clue as to when or if he will return. All of the women belong in refrigerators, since they only exist to provide angst or support to the men. While reading, I found myself thinking of Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale and how the women’s names simply label them by their association to the men they belong to. We might as well call the women in Feist’s series Pug’s Wife, Tomas’s Elf, Arutha’s Princess, and so on, because that’s really all they are – paper dolls with no personalities.

After four books, I still hadn’t found anything in this series that I hadn’t already found better-done somewhere else. I can understand why a teenage boy might like these books, maybe, but I’ve never been a teenage boy so I can’t say for sure.

3. The Heralds of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey

Verdict: Passes Muster, Mostly

This really isn’t one series, so much as a dozen or so series all set in one world in such a way that the characters have sometimes heard of each other, met each other, or read legends about each other in storybooks. This is one of the most eclectically fantastical series I’ve encountered, as Lackey brings together gryphons, soul-mates, dark magic, shamanism, psychic abilities, and the list goes on. The bulk of the books center on the Heralds, a corps of warriors who have been chosen by their dead predecessors whose souls have been reincarnated and have taken the form of white horses. This is only one of the many ways Lackey uses her characters to explore the concept of the soul. In this universe, sexual orientation is even determined by how a soul is incarnated. If the souls of two soul mates are born into bodies of the same sex, those people will likely be homosexual, in order to increase the chances of ending up together, get it? Other places souls end up via various means – hawks, sharing the mind of an evil sorceror, magical swords, avatars of gods. The gods, by the way, are tangible and involved in the lives of those who worship them.

As for the magic, there is a scientific and yet artistic method to it. If you read the books according to the timeline and not in order of publication (as I did until I’d read everything that was out, and then read as they came out), you’ll begin with pre-history, continue through a sort of magical apocalypse, and then see the world rebuild itself and continue on as the beginning fades from memory. You might expect that with such a huge set of books, there might be some hit and miss, and you’d be right. Some books and even some trilogies feel more thought-out and heartfelt, while others seem to lack in substance. Overall, I enjoy my trips to Valdemar and the rest of its world, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t classify it as comfort food and sometimes nothing but sugar-coated fluff.

4. The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind

Verdict: Got Rank In Its Old Age

I’m mad at Terry Goodkind. Have you seen the size of these books? Each one is a cinderblock, and I read the first 7 and the prequel novella before I grudgingly abandoned the mental sunk costs and gave up. For the first 6 books, we follow the adventures of Richard Rahl who is, guess what! The bastard son of royalty, but he doesn’t know it for a while. There’s a lot about the series that kept me reading all those hundreds of pages, for example the new slants on magic, its sources, and uses in the universe. There are new and interesting races of people, and Richard is put to some pretty devious trials. Still, by the time I gave up, I’d decided his love interest, Kahlan, who showed promise as a dynamic character in her own right at first, ultimately just belongs in a refrigerator. The same is true for the main character in book 7. We’ve never heard of her before, but Goodkind thought it would be a good idea to abandon the characters we’ve come to know over the previous 6 books and wait until the very end to tell us why we should care. Unfortunately, by that point, I didn’t anymore. I obviously can’t comment about the ending, but if anyone feels compelled to defend the series, send me an email and tell me how it ends while you’re at it.

5. The Deverry Cycle by Katharine Kerr

Verdict: To Be Determined

When I started reading this series, the 9th book, The Red Wyvern, had just come out. The cycle is divided into four acts, and held my interest for all of the first three. I cared about the characters, liked the mix of Tolkein-style fantasy, various world mythologies, modern mysticism, and pure imagination. This is another series where no magic is off limits. Sure, the dwarves live in mountain caves like you’d expect them to, but then again, some of them don’t, and where they do live is pretty cool. The languages, mythologies, and histories are so complete as to almost make you wonder if Kerr has really visited these places and is reporting on real races she encountered there. Luckily, there are very helpful maps, tables, and glossaries to get you through until you get used to it all.

The series centers mostly on Nevyn, who was a legitmate prince (for once) who screws a bunch of people over in his youth, vows to the gods he’d never rest until he made it right, and spends the next 5 centuries or so trying to do just that as those people are reincarnated. There is a present-day plotline with the incarnations of the characters that we become the most familiar with and think of as the “real them.”

Up until the beginning of the 4th act, I was willing to let Kerr slide on a few annoying things. All handsome men are “well over six feet tall.” Everyone has “raven-dark hair” and “cornflower blue eyes.” Yawn. We waited six years between the end of the 3rd act and the beginning of the 4th, while the author suffered some health issues, and though she bounced back, there’s just something missing from these newer books. I’m still reading because I feel like I ought to give her some latitude for sticking it out and seeing this thing through despite her illness. At this point, though, I’m just ready for it to be over. I don’t know if this is the ending she planned all along, if she thought the books would keep going, or if she was recently struck with inspiration, but I’m worried that after all this time, the fifteenth and final book is going to leave us with a rushed and sloppy ending. There have been too many new characters and plot elements introduced in what was supposed to be the wrap-up, and I’m concerned that it looks like there are to be yet more new territories and people coming in at the end.

I want The Silver Mage, which is due out next week to give me closure and satisfaction after the way I became so invested in its world, but I’m not holding my breath.

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