Writerly and Readerly Things

[kriadydragon]

Being a writer (or maybe an adult?) makes you notice a lot more about what you read. I'm currently into (or tying to be into) this book that I last read when I was in middle school but never finished (because I was in middle school and bored easily). And it would be a pretty good book if A) it didn't go on and on and on and... *ten minutes later* ... and on about the setting, the scenery, the wizard's blue piercing gaze and scarred hands and the female lead's boniness and scarred hands and both of them being totally awesome and B) if the male lead, the character who I find the most interesting and likable, didn't feel so much like he's just there to observe the other characters and point out their eye-color, scarring and awesomeness.

It's one of Barbara Hambley's works but must be her earliest of earliest because I know she is waaay better than that. I hate to compare the story to a fanfic but it really is like reading one - too much flowery language, lots of very particular character focus, the wizard is a total Marty Stu and the female lead (who has no personality what so ever) is on her way to becoming a Mary Sue. One character getting ever-so-slightly sidelined for another character is a major pet peeve of mine, and that's kind of what's happening with my favorite character. He does something smart but rather get praised for it, he gets reprimanded for something else. He's constantly on a learning curve, but the rest of the characters aren't. We see, through his eyes, how much the female lead as grown and become tough and cool despite being this wispy, bony thing (yes, she's bony, I get it, please, book, stop bringing it up every other paragraph!), but the lead female barely notices the lead male unless she absolutely has to. I've yet to see how much the lead male has changed beyond him having found love and an ability to use magic, and it's becoming irksome. I mean, the least that can be pointed out was that he lost some weight (because, I think at this point, he should be just as wispy and bony as the female lead) and that he has blisters on his feet or something.

I think if it wasn't for the lead male and my desire to actually finish the dang thing, I'd have set the book aside once again. Of course, now that I've complained, the book will probably end up proving me wrong (it's a trilogy and I'm currently heading into book two). But I would be ecstatic if that were the case.

Comments

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

Key wording for me:

too much flowery language

and

Mary Sue

Not long ago I tried to read something and could not believe how much flowery language the writer had thrown in
I mean come on..........
To say it was suffocating would be putting it mildly
I remember when I discovered ff, as a result of my infatuation with Aragorn and Legolas in LOTR, the site stated:
NO SLASH and NO MARY SUE
I was such a newbie then that I had to contact the owner and ask her
Excuse me, but what is slash and Mary Sue??
She was very nice about it and I was thankful when I read what it was, that the site did not permit it
BTW it was a whump site with bells and whistles.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I pin it on everyone trying to emulate Tolkein, something I was somewhat guilty of with my book own Amrin the Dreamer. In fact I think it's part and parcel to the evolution of a fantasy writer, especially those into sword and sorcery fantasy. Problem is, it's created a mountain of really dull and obnoxious fantasies. It's hard to find a fantasy novel that isn't all flowery language, massive info-dumps and politics.

[black-raven135.livejournal.com]

I did not find that on that LOTR ff site...........
I wish I could remember the title of that book I tried to read
It was so unbelievable. It was almost like he had accessed a synonym dictionary to write his story.
I tried very hard to move on, but just could not.
I found myself yelling JUST GET TO THE BOTTOMLINE at him.
:D

[sholio]

Over-describing and infodumping is one of the biggest failings of a lot of fantasy, I find. It's gotten to where I almost can't read most fantasy novels because they never seem to get anywhere; they're too busy describing and explaining, explaining and describing, in overly flowery, fancy language - I just want a STORY!

I've actually never been able to get into most of Hambly's fantasy novels - which surprised me, then, that I enjoyed the dragonslayer book as much as I did (I read it recently after you'd said you liked it - the one with the black dragon - and I really liked it). I absolutely adore her historical fiction, and I loved her historical fantasy (Bride of the Rat God and the vampire novels) when I read them years ago ... not sure how they'd hold up for me now, but I really liked them at the time. Her straight-up fantasy novels, though, with wizards and magic and such, I've always found kind of blah.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I blame Tolkein and everyone trying to write like him ;) As I said to Sharpes_Hussey, it's almost a must that anyone into fantasy try to write their own Tolkein-esque story. My first book, though not the usual man-elf-dwarf knock of, was heavily Tolkein influenced. But, seriously, fantasy writers need to expand their horizons. One of the things I loved about Ursula K. LeGuinn's stories was that the writing was gorgeous without being wordy, and it was it's own story without being a Tolkein knock-off.

I was really surprised that this was a Hambly book. It's just so... novice compared to her Dragonsbane books. I don't often say this, but I honestly think I could write better than these books. I think we all could write better than these books. It's not that they're horrible or anything - they're not - but it's one of those things where a lot of potential has been massively glossed over. there's so much I keep expecting the characters to do, feel, say and it never happens.

[swanpride.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends on what the writer wants. Ie the works of David Eddings are full of cardboard characters. Each one has one trait which defines him and which is typical for his origin. But it works in this case just fine.

I recently read (or tried to read) a fantasy roman, mostly because I liked the beginning. It was beautiful written, very poetic. But the writer set out to disprove all the typical fantasy tropes...and that didn't work for me at all, because it was so forced. Like he confirmed the cliches by trying to avoid them (if that makes any sense). I gave up somewhere in the middle.

I actually don't think that you didn't finish the book because you got bored easily, but because it wasn't written in a way that appealed to you. I had a phase in which I read lots of fantasy, but I only keept the books I read more than once...it was surprisingly few.

[kriadydragon.livejournal.com]

I think, with these books, they were either Hambly's earliest works or an indulgence. The flatness of the characters doesn't bother me as much as how much the author keeps putting two of the characters on a pedestal without doing the same courtesy for the lead male character.

The wordiness definitely turned me off when I read them in middle school. That young, with my vocabulary still somewhat limited, reading it was like slogging through a muddy swamp. I had a hard time keeping up with it and finally just gave up.