Alexandru Constantin notes that not only is much of modern fantasy shallow in substance, but it also posesses no depth of style, rendering it almost unreadable.
Most of all, all three of the books had pedestrian writing that lacked any hint of style. The prose felt like early young adult, middle school grade, nothing fancier than early Animorphs, and the plot and characters felt stolen from a overwritten D&D module.
But to get back twitter and the whole point of this post. I posted about giving up on most fantasy because the writing sucks. People responded, we had some good back and froth, and one friend stated that people tend to never give examples of good writing/prose when complaining about bad writing. So, I’m going to give some quick examples.
I believe that Style is the most important aspect of writing. Style followed by Character, then finally plot, world-building, etc. Style is where the aesthetics of the novel come out. I also prefer adult writing with deeper themes and subtext.
He also recommends Guy Gavriel Kay. I'll have to give his books a try, based on the presented excerpts, after I'm done going back through Gene Wolfe's New Sun and Long Sun books.
Emperorponders reminds us that it's important to watch what people, especially virtue signallers and protestors, do, not what they say.
Remember all the people who have been screaming X is like Hitler or X will be like a Genocide and so on? Excuse me, but where are you now? Stabbing each other for toilet paper? Why, it’s almost as if you didn’t really belief X was the end of the world back then when you said so, but now a somewhat lethal cold is. Hmmm… thinking thinking If a few years ago you tweeted how a certain politician would “kill millions”, “plunge the country into civil war”, “is the antichrist”, or “literal Hitler” yet you didn’t hoard food like a maniac but now you do, what does that say?
If, say, Climate Change was supposed to be an extintion event, but you couldn’t be arsed to not use a car for a few days but now a few thousand dead people have dragged that existential threat to the back burner and now the air has never been cleaner and healthier, what does that say about our REAL beliefs and preferences? Where are all those doctors and psychologists that a few months ago said, with tears in their eyes, that if underage teenagers didn’t immediately get their gender transitions they would kill themselves? Are they killing themselves now? I suspect the answer is no. In fact, expect a lot of sudden de-transitions once the quarantines are lifted.
Speaking of style - Nightwish released a new single from their upcoming album. Aside from the very end, it's more folk than metal.
And if you want some excellent commentary on the art and aesthetic of the Lord of the Rings, a Gene Wolfe essay posted over at John C Wright's - an amazing sytlist himself.
