What makes for great fantasy?

[Brian G Turner]

No, really - and I don't mean the simple answer of "plot and character".

What exactly and in particular were moments you considered to be great, or at least accomplished, in any fantasy books you've read, that made you feel the genre was justified?

I'm baiting for details and discussion here...

 

[Survivor]

The confrontation with God. The moment when a character has to question the meaning behind the universe he lives in, and transcends the paper morality of a straw god.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Do you have any examples, though?

 

[Survivor]

Well there are the books of the EarthSea trilogy. Ged first has to overcome his own lust for power, and learn that to a mage, power is not greatness. Then he has to overcome his fear of the Dark Ones, and learn that he is himself. Then there is Tenar, she faces this in a much more classic fashion, which is part of why The Tombs of Atuan was more accessible than A Wizard of EarthSea. And in The Farthest Shore Ged and Arren confront the idea of false immortality v. genuine life, a classic overthrowing of a straw god.

Even though I don't love everything LeGuin has ever written, her EarthSea trilogy is great fantasy.

Even not great fantasy has to have the confrontation with God, because when you confront a straw god, in rejecting the notion that it is God, you have to confront the question of what is God. And fantasy is full of confrontations with straw gods.

 

[Brian G Turner]

LeGuin is pretty famous for utilising intellectual themes, though (or it's the impression I'm under).

As for the rest, though - I'm not sure what you're relating to. Are you including writers such as Feist and Eddings in as setting up straw gods for deconstruction?

 

[Survivor]

Hey, you're the one that asked what made great fantasy. Eddings certainly has the confrontation with a straw god...though I would have to say his fantasy is far below greatness. Jordon also has the confrontation with God (and with the straw god), though of course he is not great either.

Tolkien has the confrontation with God, but of course he was a Catholic who devised a suspiciously Catholic version of Iluvatar and so forth. Card also does the confrontation with God, and his only really great fantasy, Hart's Hope, is really deep in some ways, particularly the confrontation with the straw gods. Just a warning on Hart's Hope it is the kind of book that English Lit. types are always trying to write (and fail miserably at for reasons that Card often explains to his fans), and may be a bit inaccessable (just a wee bit). And of course the really great fantasies are obviously about God and Satan, but they're all in Classic languages

 

[dwndrgn]

Great fantasy to me is a story that pulls you so far in that you are tensed up when a fight breaks out, depressed when things start looking grim, and smiling at whatever in the story that makes you smile. If the person on the couch next to you is wondering why you are smiling, laughing, or yelling at the book, or ticked off because the bad guys won their round.

If you are actively participating in the story - feeling what the protagonist feels - it is a good fantasy.

 

[nemesis]

A great story must affect the reader. What great fantasy must do is create a specific illusion and ensure it holds. That is in basic terms as any story crafts illusions. The point about fantasy is that is generally crafts a specific type of illusion involving specific themes such as heroes and monsters. Neither of which interests me really and so I read little.

 

[Arch]

Great fantasy really sucks you in. Everything is made to feel so real that you forget that it's all made-up. Or even you think it could be based on a true story.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I guess that's true for any story.

 

[littlemissattitude]

I think one of the things that is necessary for fantasy to be great is that it be set in an environment that can be believed. I don't mean that it necessarily has to be realistic as in identical to the mundane world we live in every day. I can be that. Some of my favorite fantasy takes place in very nearly what we know as the real world. But it can also be as different from our mundane world as the author wants it to be, as long as he or she can write it so that I believe it, can feel it, can imagine being in it.

Two examples:

Tim Powers has written some wonderful urban fantasy that takes place in our world pretty much exactly as is. Well, the characters can do things that most of us probably can't do, and that is what makes the fantasy. But the actual settings are almost photographically realistic. One of his books, Earthquake Weather is set partially in an area just a few blocks from where I used to live. Because I know the area, I know exactly how well he described the area (street names, intersections, and such) is a completely realistic way. I could actually picture the places as I read the book. This in no way made it harder for me to accept the fantasy aspects of the story; in fact, it probably made it easier for me to do so.

On the other hand, Stephen R. Donaldson's two Thomas Covenant trilogies are set in a world quite unlike our own in many ways. However, he wrote the environment of that world so well that it provided the only case of my actually dreaming I was inside the environment he had created for his books. I was able to get so involved in reading those books, in part, because the environment the story took place in felt to real to me.

 

[Tranquilmind]

For me the thing that separates the wheat from
the chaff in fantasy is if the universe has sufficient background information, history, complex cultures, etc. That goes for all sorts of fantasy, it be in litterature, games, comics and so on. This of course is only the backbone requirement and when it comes to actually writing a book there are lots of other things that are needed for success.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Hi Tranquilmind, and welcome to the chronicles-network!

Certainly world building helps with the reality - but do most people care for a substative self-supporting reality in what they read?

 

[dwndrgn]

Absolutely - otherwise you are looking through a window watching a woman bend down, straighten up, bend down, straighten up...without being able to see that she is planting seeds in a garden and that by her feet are her children and that they all look hungry...
You can't see the whole picture without the world-building. That is one of the reasons I don't read too many short stories - they sort of pop out of nothingness and flash and then go right back into nothingness.

 

[BAYLOR]

Great is a fantasy story in which you loose yourself in the universe and characters created by the writer.

 

[Elventine]

For me there are a couple of things that really makes a fantasy for me. Depth of meaning has to be tops of the list. I love it when an author really uses the medium of the genre and the freeing of earthly prejudices to explore and talk about different topics. Or just for fun, I love it when they explore the more philosophical side of things like in Anne Rice's The Interview with the Vampire.

The second important thing would have to be a world that is believable. I don't mean like in the way that a lot of these more modern urban fantasy/fantasy series these days. I am talking about when an author creates a world that is believable and is consistent in the use of it's own internal rules.

Characters! Characters have to be on this list. They are such an important part part of the story telling that having a flat or unlikable character just does not do a story any justice.

Another thing is the prose! I like it when the language is a part of the world and it creates a feel and image of the world and characters.

 

[nixie]

To be sucked into an alternate reality were the wondrous is the norm. If I can be so engrossed the world around me disappears the only thing that is real is the picture in my head, painted by the words i read.

Ten years ago I would have said fantastical creatures, sword and sorcery. Now a lot of fantasy I read doesn't feature the traditional themes. It has grown and expanded and has little magic and very few elves. It doesn't matter as long as I can get lost in a book.

 

[AmberEyes]

Depth of worldbuilding is definitely a major one for me. The hobbit was the first fantasy I read and I got hooked, going on to read LotR, other Tolkien books, then on to David Eddings and Raymond Feist in my teens. At some point I read the Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks and I remember thinking that felt a bit like a LotR fanfic. i just missed the weight that lies behind Tolkien's words with the amount of worldbuilding. Obviously he's in a class of his own for world-building, but many other fantasy authors do seem to demonstrate that amount of love and thought behind their works.

Characters are now another one. Not sure if they count as fantasy strictly, but Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series involve a post WWII nurse accidentally going back in time to the 1700s and being forced to marry a young highlander. She ends up falling in love with him and they go through a lot involving certain events in history. the plotline is good but what makes her stories come to life are the incredible characters. They are written so well they feel real, their love story in the first one remains a strong thread through the following books, but their relationship is so real . It's hard to describe but I haven't yet read a book where the characters feel that realistic. Where I laugh with them, cry with them, laugh at them and yell at them (yes out loud, and yes, cue weird looks!).