From a long bout of abstinence from fantasy novels, I have returned. Today, I am reading The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham. His other series, The Long Price Quartet, didn’t really work with me, since me am dumb fantasy reader.
It’s quite good. His sense of focus doesn’t really jive with mine (which is something I’ll talk about later), but there’s a lot to praise here. I haven’t seen quite as much as I’d like to for purposes of making a solid judgment, but there is one thing I’d like to talk about while it’s still fresh in my mind.
The Dragon’s Path takes place in a world of war and political intrigue, of fighting and carnage and, what I really liked, a world full of all kinds of different races living together. Not always in harmony, mind, but they’re there and they’re raw. It was about the time I saw the first unusual race that it struck me as to just how unusual this was. Races other than human, defined by more than culture. Honest to God alien, weird, scaly, furry, angry, jeweled weirdos walking alongside humanity.
It was then that another question struck me: exactly why did we give up unusual races in fantasy? I guess there’s a few reasons, really.
Some authors are sparse with magic and with creatures in an effort to make them more impactful when they finally do show up. If you think back to the old Conan stories, most of the wizards and sorcerers didn’t do a tremendous lot beyond making people poop themselves or lifting heavy objects as frail old men. And yet, it was pretty intense when that happened, because no one else could do it and no one was really sure what it could do. And, likewise, a hulking lizardman is a lot more scary if there’s only one of him, because you have no idea what he is, exactly, if he doesn’t have a tribe or culture.
But there’s a bigger reason.
The people who accuse fantasy of not being realistic are not exactly wrong and not exactly for the reasons you’re thinking of. “Escapism,” as the word is so often used, usually carries with it the connotation of disingenuousness. It’s not realistic, it’s not accurate and it’s not human. Perhaps in an effort to shed that stereotype, we also shed the magic, the monsters and the races in favor of politics, intrigue and more things that all of us can relate to…like being thrown out a window for discovering a royal incestuous coup.
Who hasn’t that happened to?
I kid, of course.
These practices have worked well for the authors that use them, but I think we might have lost something in our abandonment of fantastic races.
As I said, the people who throw around escapism as equating to disingenuousness are not exactly wrong, but they’re not exactly right, either. When you use fantasy races as cut-and-paste bad guys or nondescript ethereal beings of great wisdom, then yeah, you’re not really creating much beyond cannon fodder and/or plot devices. But when you make a race more than just a name and a war cry, when you apply a culture, an attitude, a struggle and a history, you’re making a commentary on humanity, whether you intended to or not.
I’m not saying that anyone who writes a story in which orcs aren’t all that bad is qualified to give a seminar on race relations, but that story has put an idea out there. It’s made a point that we can accept, refute or apply to our own lives. And when that point is made, when it clicks for the reader, then the conflict from which that point came from is more easy to invest into, making a stronger story.
A strong culture behind an alien race = stronger identity = stronger point = deeper conflict = deeper reader involvement = stronger story.
If you do it right.
And while I make it pretty well known that I don’t really care about worldbuilding, I make an exception when it comes to alien races. The reason being that I loathe when worldbuilding stands segregate from character development. Creating the race and the culture integrates the two. We are closer to the world because we are closer to the race because we are closer to the character of that race. It’s an excellent way of investing the reader in the world without beating him over the head with an epic poem.
And finally…
You remember Star Wars, don’t you? Remember the Tattooine Cantina? Remember seeing all these weird, alien creatures hanging out together? Remember what that felt like?
Wonder.
Awe.
“What the–”
That’s what fantasy is all about.
To me, anyway. It might be something different to you. But then, what do you think? Do you prefer your books bundled with lizardmen or do you prefer a straight-up, no-nonsense human-filled romp?
Tell me.
Tell me everything.
Go read The Dragon’s Path.
Peace.
Dragon’s Path is on my Kindle. 🙂
I recently did read “The Cloud Roads” by Martha Wells, and she DOES have a wide variety of thought-out fantasy races on her created world.
Hah, I was just thinking of the Cloud Roads… but would that be disqualified because that world has no humans whatever?
Michelle Sagara West’s Elantra books – the ones she writes for Luna – have huge amounts of different races… come to think of it a lot of the urban fantasy writers have them, too.
~~~~~~~~~~
I didn’t really think about such this lack before, probably because the recent epic fantasy in the tradition of Jordan, Goodkind, Martin has passed me by. I don’t miss it much either, there are so many other writers for my taste out there – and some write epic fantasy, too ^^ – if not in that style, heh.
In general, female writers serve my needs handily these days, whichever particular version of the genre I want to read.
Worldbuilding, and thinking about cultures definitely provides a commentary on humanity. I flipped through the Kindle version of The Dragon’s Path, which I got two(?) days ago. I loved the story, but I question whether the races are explained well enough as of yet to warrant applause. We’ll just have to wait and see, no?
I think I mentioned this a while back on twitter. Not long ago in my local supermarket I saw a nice promotional card one of the staff had hand written next to Joe Abercrombie’s latest book. It said ‘If you like Bernard Cornwell you will like this!’ BC doesn’t do orcs and goblins (as far as I know) and his books, although seem like fantasy to me, are viewed as historical fantasy because they are set around figures like King Arthur or Alfred the Great. Not going to argue where his book should sit on the bookshelf, but on some levels the promotional card was right and on some levels it was wrong.
I can see why they did it, because both have sword play, battles, grizzly characters, a touch of magic here and there, but it’s not overt lightning bolts and fireballs, and neither authors have alien races. And they want people who wouldn’t normally look at a fantasy book to give JA a try. The cover art helps too, no wizards or orcs and so on. Some people (those who wouldn’t normally read fantasy) will just not look at a fantasy book if it mentions any of that kind of stuff on the cover art or synopsis, which is their loss.
For me, I don’t mind if it’s all humans or if there is a mix, as long as the alien races are well defined. I don’t even mind if they are elves and orcs, as long as the author does something interesting with them and they are not just sage long-lived wispy haired archers who mope about the woods which we had with JRRT.
I’m all for bringing back unusual races, even the folkloric ones such as elves and dwarves, providing the story is offering me something new and not a remix of Lord of the Rings.
Same goes for escapism. As much as I like a lot of the current trend of fantasy-lite fantasy novels, I think there’s plenty of space for a good old, fun, adventure romp.
I’m with you. I like elves, dwarves, and any other weird race an author can think of. Perhaps, it’s because I grew up playing D&D, loved the monstrous compendiums, and wanted to create grippli or wemic PCs.
I get annoyed when I read an author interview where they proudly state that there are no elves and/or dwarves in their books for this reason or that. Which is not to say their stories aren’t wonderful, but there’s the idea of including those races will somehow ruin their stories or debase them.
I don’t think authors who have no particular interest in putting in different races should go out of their way to include a token elf or whatever, but I don’t think it’s tremendously honest to avoid them just because it’s the in thing.
Hey, Sam. Glad you liked the book. 🙂
I have to say I did the thirteen races thing because I thought the sense of walking into the goblin market really was something I couldn’t miss out on. I’m wondering now if I got caught a little by the mundanity of the races to the characters, though. I mean a lithe woman with glowing eyes is a pretty striking image for me, but in the books, the characters see that kind of thing all the time, so I don’t really have them react to it. I’ll have to think about that more.
I did try pretty hard not to have any of the thirteen races map very well on any actual human population specifically because I wanted to avoid having the problem of orcs==arabs (or really whoever else).
I hadn’t meant for race and racism to be central to the stories (apart from this one place a couple books down where it really, really is), but it’s something that people seem to really cotton to.
I would be interested to hear how you feel our sense of focus differs. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what my default foci are. I have the probably unfortunate tendency to think that things I think are nifty *anyone* must think are nifty too.
Hey, Daniel. I’m really enjoying it so far and I have to say, the feeling of that vast and alien world is not at all lost in translation.
It’s a strange thing, the statement. If you make it unintentionally, people tend to read into it, discuss it thoroughly and gain knowledge based on it. But if you come out, as you say, and make it obvious that the Orcs are Arabs, no one has a tremendous amount of interest in it. Possibly because of how close it is to home, people either feel it’s trying too hard or are just uncomfortable talking about it. It might just be a strength that fantasy can tackle this issue by talking about it without talking about it, discussing it without naming it, leaving it open for people to figure it out.
Also, I think allegory undercuts the sense of wonder. If orcs are a strange, inimical, violent race that does the bidding of the Dark Lord, they have a certain mythic resonance. If they’re a way of encoding Arabs, then it’s just a racist screed.
The problem (it seems to me) is that if you leave the interpretation vague enough for the reader to invest the story with their own meanings, you haven’t *discluded* racist interpretations either.
You’re definitely correct. I should probably clarify that I don’t think making allegories as a means of making a point (especially in fantasy) is a really good idea. There are a lot better mediums for that. If you’re beating your audience over the head with what you’re saying, chances are more than a little good that they’ll just not listen. And, as you say, you’re creating with an agenda other than to amaze, so you’re not really serving the story all that well.
Nor am I really suggesting that fantasy is required to step up its game. But I think it does happen. I don’t think a reader looks at how an orc is treated and thinks, “oh my God, I glared at an Arab yesterday.” I do think it gives him another way to look at something he didn’t think to, though.
I grimace away from them for another sort of reason. If it translates into real-world race relations through commentary . . . Well, the biggest problem with that is that there are physical differences among them, sometimes even mental ones. Some races are stronger than others no matter what. Some are smarter no matter what. You can overcome that sometimes but generally it’s still there.
Which is a unnerving comparison to draw to real life, when races there are all sociological construction based on a few more-or-less aesthetic differences.
If it is societal commentary, and you go into something with the assumption that some races are better at, say, leading, or working behind a plow, with a footnote of ‘oh but this can be overcome with time and effort’ . . . Isn’t that a little bit dishonest?
That’s a really good point, I think, and I do think that there’s a certain dishonesty in suggesting that some races are just better at some things than others without ever challenging that concept.
If a human takes leadership and says humans are just better at leading and that’s that, then I think it’s as unnerving as you say it is.
If a human takes leadership and says humans are just better at leading and someone says “why,” then I think that’s an excellent piece of the story.
I agree that it’s a very good point. On the other hand, there’s something to be said in favor of taking the metaphors of our world (“They acted like they were whole different species”) and literalize them (“They were whole different species”). If having dwarfs and elves and goblins all really be just the same underneath it all (or some such formulation) seems to exclude some of the real potentials of the genre.
It’s not what I’m doing with my books, but I would reserve the right to have a genuinely uncanny race in some later project.
In the one fantasy I attempted, I wanted to make witch-hunters have a real reason to fear witchcraft and those that indulged in heresy against the gods. I wanted to give them a reason for being close-minded, brutal bigots, so that I could explore what that mindset might mean for society and religion.
I’m not sure anyone in fantasy has tackled head-on the issues presented for humanity that competing with a truly intelligent race with similar needs would present to any society. Sam slaps it around in the first book, but we are restricted to the perceptions of ‘Adventurers’ and sailors, and they have an interest in working past their differences (making for awesome story along the way)…and to my shame, I have yet to read Black Halo.
Here’s hoping.
Huh. That’s a fairly good point. I tackle their superficial problems, but not the core, survival differences.
That might have to come in the next series.
You did get into it a bit with the dragonman’s visit to the dead village. Very good illustration of how different his people are/were while it also develops the why of his rage and urge to kill or be killed.
I still want to see what would happen to Halflings or a similar small-statured race in a realistic muscle-powered world. And, conversely, how a Halfling society might view the bigger, stronger folk about them. Would they form secret societies, underground railroads, etc? Would they take their revenge in petty thefts, etc? There is a lot to be said there, I think, about how we treat one another, and how the oppressed see themselves in the larger context of a society.
I wonder if – to a certain degree – the alien races became such familiar tropes in fantasy that they were no longer alien. Even leaving aside fantasy-races-as-analogues-of-real-world-cultures, readers are now, well… “racist” against races that don’t even exist. Everyone has a culturally-agreed notion of what elves are even if, like in Tad Williams, they’re gussied up with different names. There’s even a degree of fantastic revisionism with authors like Stan Nicholls, in which the entire series is a response to the reader’s pre-existing prejudices against a mythical race.
That’s why Mr. Abraham’s book sounds so fantastic – he’s broken out of the mould to create a completely new culture (and, apparently, an engrossing one). I think China Miéville does this extraordinarily well too. His alien cultures are completely new, meaning the reader has to interpret & understand them solely with the text itself.
I think I agree with the idea of being racist against elves (and I say this totally knowing what we’re all talking about). People sort of groan and roll their eyes when an elf or elf-substitute comes out as a matter of principle. And yet, as we see in this very commentary, when you change them too much, people still groan and roll their eyes (see: sparkly vampires). No offense, Lood, of course.
In general, I think people are prone to categorize, especially in fantasy. You can look at a shict and say “oh, that’s an elf” at first glance. Then at second glance, you can say, “well, that’s an elf that doesn’t like humans.” Eventually it becomes “that’s an elf that doesn’t really like humans and is driven by a completely paranoid racial creed that dictates their race is the only one that can be standing for them to live in peace and they cite the atrocities committed by the other races as justification for their–”
And then they’re shicts. It takes time.
Hey Sam!
Kyle F. beat me to the sociological disjuncture, so I can merely echo the point. The problem I have with “races” is the term, which often conflates our categories (based on phenotypic traits) with biologically-distinctive species (thus, I use the term species, which I also did in D&D). I think using alien races as commentary on human relations can be dicey, because the comparison really doesn’t match up. It requires some forethought and finesse to do multiple species, I think, unless they really are just local color, designed intentionally as a part of the world without excess metaphorical baggage. Sure you can sometimes create a useful distance for reflection, but too many times I have seen “races” used as ham-handed substitutes for both real secondary-world diversity and for discussing social concerns.
Hmm. How would you feel about the term “breeds” as with dogs? In the books I’m working, ferinstance, there’s a fair amount of crossbreeding possible (though not every combination can breed and some offspring are mules).
But I’m specifically dealing with a scenario in which the races are explicitly human — including the ones with tusks or wings or that live exclusively under water.
But I’m also not trying to make any one-to-one real-world correspondences.
Sometimes trying to be fresh with races can open a whole new can of worms. Look at that women who tried to get fresh with our favourite blood sucking demons of the night, and now every second one of them is an effeminate, depressed teenager who is afraid to love but enjoys a good sparkle in the sunlight.
The standard fantasy creatures are clichéd for a reason. Tried and tested stories throughout the years have cemented the ideas off wood dwelling elves and mining dwarves in our minds. We are comfortable with it, it makes us feel safe. And there is nothing wrong with that, if you like that sort of thing.
If an author takes a risk and tries to reinvent the standard fare, or create new ones, I say good for them. It is up to the author to tell the story in the best way possible. If he needs a murderous breed of pointy eared elves that makes their clothing out of the skin of honest to goodness farmer orcs, who am I to deny him the opportunity? If he convinces us we hail him a hero, laud praises on him and try to get him to marry our daughters. If he fails…
I think the point I’m trying to make while my coffee gets cold is that it doesn’t matter how the author approaches race and race relations in the books. What matters is whether the author manages to convince us that this is the way it SHOULD be.
Man, you can’t really bust out sparkling vampires as an example in a serious debate anymore. I’d argue that that’s not even being fresh, just sort of…tweaking things. It’s not so much a take as it is a footnote.
I don’t even think it’s possible to fail, really. People might not accept it, at first, but there’s a lot of things people don’t accept at first. Gritty fantasy, less than heroic main characters, characters that die unexpectedly and villains that get away with it: these things are all pretty standard now, but who else was shocked when we first saw them put into action? Frequently, these things are rejected at first, but they grow, so long as the author doesn’t stop.
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