The epic fantasy genre is one I have had a hard time letting myself get into. I read (and yes, enjoyed) Lord of the Rings, because I had to read half the trilogy for my honors freshman English course, and because I figured I might as well finish once the movies started coming out, and because it's essentially the epic fantasy that started them all. And I have no problem with tongue-in-cheek fantasy authors, like Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman. But for the most part, the standard hero-rises-from-humble-beginnings-and-saves-the-world books are hard for me to swallow.Still, as a child I loved fantasies, and still quite enjoy fantasies written for children and young adults. I devoured Harry Potter in my twenties, and when I was younger, I loved C.S. Lewis and Brian Jaques and Robin McKinley. My favorite book of all time was The Island and The Ring, by Laura Stevenson, which had magic and a brave heroine and an evil Lord and forces of good and evil, or chaos and order - all the makings of a standard epic fantasy. Books like these drew me into a world, and when they ended, they left me craving more. Closing one of these books meant not just leaving behind the characters, but leaving behind the whole world that they inhabited.
My friend Brady finally convinced me that, if I was ever going to try to dip my toe into fantasy, Brandon Sanderson (an up and coming fantasy author and, incidentally, BYU graduate) would be worth my time. Over winter break, I finished the first book in his Mistborn trilogy, and this summer when I found myself once again with ample reading time, I polished off Well of Ascencion and Hero of Ages. Quickly. Because what I found was that reading these books brought me back to my childhood when reading meant getting lost in a good story.
It's not that I never get lost in a good story anymore. I do, all the time. But this was sort of different - I got lost in the story and the characters and the mythology and the world itself. I found the third book surprisingly satisfying. It tied together things in the previous two books that I didn't even realize could come together, introduced interesting philosophical and moral and even religious questions, and concluded in such a way that I felt perfectly satisfied - I wished the story could go on longer because I enjoyed it, but I felt like everything had been told that needed to be told, and no more.
I honestly can't say I was converted to the fantasy genre. I wouldn't be above giving it another try someday, but I was content with my little foray and will now step back into my own reading comfort zone. But it was a really good story. I had a lot of fun reading it, and I was invested in it, and I'd be willing to recommend it to other people who either like fantasy or are willing to give it a try.
2 comments:
I don't read many fantasy novels either but I do love Connie Willis though I would call her novels "fantasy light."
I'd add another children's fantasy series to your short list that we all loved when you were children -- the Tripod series.
I did not like the last book of this series at all, but it may have been some product of really bad editing, or just a huge mistake in printing. Editing mistakes were all over the place, and the book had two different last chapters with two different endings.
I tend to prefer fantasy novels and that's where most of my reading is done. I really should branch out more out of my comfort zone.
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