Today I went out and did something I've been dying to do for a long time ... I bought some books. :)
My expectations of modern fantasy have been beaten and battered so miserably since university that for a long time, I'd just stopped buying them - almost all my fantasy reading has been online (as you lot know ;). The only things I bought were non-fiction. (Like 'The Tyrannicide Brief' by Geoffrey Robertson - wonderful book. Though now that I type that, I get this weird feeling of deja-vu like I've mentioned it before ... ignore me if I have.)
I don't think I'm a terribly picky reader. I demand only one thing from my books - I want to care what happens to the people I'm reading about. There isn't much I won't forgive, even more conventional plots where Knight Slays Dragon or Prince Rescues Princess, if I actually FEEL FOR and BELIEVE IN said knights, princes and princesses. I don't even have to like them, damn it! A frame for sympathy is usually enough!
But nooo, all I could ever find were sulky, limp-wristed girls and supposed dark hero loner tough-guys who spent inordinately teenage-girlish periods of time musing over and getting in touch with their feelings.
What happened to the golden age, I ask you? When did 'adult fantasy' start to imply pure start-to-finish angst, as opposed to meaningful emotional highs and lows? When did all the pretentious wording creep in? When did writers forget about friends and family to go with all the lovers? Where are the Arthurs and Launcelots, the Eowyns and Eilonwys, the Raistlins and Caramons, the Sparhawks and Kaltens? Where have all the real people gone?
I now seem to have that song 'Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?' stuck in my head. Serves me right.
Anyway, the books I bought were The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (since I've seen Panth recommend it about the place), His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (since I've heard it recommended ... somewhere, and because it's children's fantasy, which is usually better :P), and The Summoner by Gail Martin (which I've heard nothing about, but I felt like a leap of faith). I am determined to get back into the fantasy genre again. As a popular FBI agent once said, I Want To Believe.
Okay, he didn't say it. It was on a poster in his office. Don't get picky with me.
This has been an extremely random rant. We now return you to your regular Sunday programming, gentles all ;)