Well, I do think it is interesting ground you want to cover. "Late" fantasy is a sub-genre I really enjoy (minus a recent series about a dragon and his soldier I could quite do without, thank you).
J Gregory Keyes' Age of Unreason springs to mind: Newton's Cannon A Calculus of Angels Empire of Unreason The Shadows of God; as does...
...the three or eight books of Neal Stephanson's The Baroque Cycle.
But mostly because they're written over the same era, and the first (which is more fantasy, the latter more historical science fiction) because the title is similar, despite being opposite in meaning.
Pierre Pevel's The Cardinal's Blades is also set during the same period, but is much more an homage to the style of Dumas.
I'll definitely have to get my hands on the Age of Unreason series. I did some reading about it to see what it's about to see if he hadn't beat me to my idea, but his series is quite different. It's alternate history with a focus on magic and metaphysics, rather then socio-politics and history. Also a very different plot.
I've already got copies of The Baroque Cycle, and it's high on my reading list. I also have the first book of this series, and it seems that author is doing something similar to what I want to do in a fantasy work. Ever encounter it before?
Interestingly, one of the major points of that movie was The Magic Goes Away - in this new Enlightenment of coordinates and mathematical proportions and regimented nature, from topiary to scientific nomenclature to urban design… the fantastic, the inexplicable but miraculous, is being pushed inexorably away. In a very real sense this is the story of its last hurrah, before everything gets dull and workaday and timeclocked and efficient.
I hadn't really given The Magic Goes Away trope much thought for this. In many senses, it's fitting for the period, as the rise of Enlightenment thinking takes all the "wonder" and "mystery" out of the world. It's a theme that Terry Gilliam's films have touched on pretty consistently, particularly in the The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. However, the fleeing of magic from the world is a fairly common trope in a lot of literature, and I don't want to retread already covered ground.
It's much like how I want to attack the trope of the individual hero saves the world through the power of his own will. Men do not make history as they please. Although there is room to explore the idea of the magic goes away, in how a changing worldview alters how people perceive magic, from divine to natural - that: "Is the conception of nature and of social relations which underlies Greek imagination and Greek [art] possible when there are self-acting [spinning] mules, railways, locomotives and electric telegraphs? What is a Vulcan compared with
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J Gregory Keyes' Age of Unreason springs to mind:
Newton's Cannon
A Calculus of Angels
Empire of Unreason
The Shadows of God; as does...
...the three or eight books of Neal Stephanson's The Baroque Cycle.
But mostly because they're written over the same era, and the first (which is more fantasy, the latter more historical science fiction) because the title is similar, despite being opposite in meaning.
Pierre Pevel's The Cardinal's Blades is also set during the same period, but is much more an homage to the style of Dumas.
Doug.
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I've already got copies of The Baroque Cycle, and it's high on my reading list. I also have the first book of this series, and it seems that author is doing something similar to what I want to do in a fantasy work. Ever encounter it before?
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And no, I haven't read anything by Juliet McKenna, I don't think.
Doug.
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Oh, yah - big time.
Interestingly, one of the major points of that movie was The Magic Goes Away - in this new Enlightenment of coordinates and mathematical proportions and regimented nature, from topiary to scientific nomenclature to urban design… the fantastic, the inexplicable but miraculous, is being pushed inexorably away. In a very real sense this is the story of its last hurrah, before everything gets dull and workaday and timeclocked and efficient.
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- and that painting would make a GREAT album cover.
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It's much like how I want to attack the trope of the individual hero saves the world through the power of his own will. Men do not make history as they please. Although there is room to explore the idea of the magic goes away, in how a changing worldview alters how people perceive magic, from divine to natural - that: "Is the conception of nature and of social relations which underlies Greek imagination and Greek [art] possible when there are self-acting [spinning] mules, railways, locomotives and electric telegraphs? What is a Vulcan compared with ( ... )
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