Thursday, July 2, 2009

Fantasy novels.. What a read

I'm never into serious reading. I love fiction, and of late have taken up fantasy reading too! It was after I became more than a dozen fantasy books old did I realize one very small fact. Read one Fantasy Novel, and you've read them all!

How? lets see..

1. All of them have elves, dwarves, dragons and lots and lots of magic.
2. The hero is always an underperformer who 1. doesnt know what he's supposed to do 2. Is always saved by someone with him until the last opportune moment
3. The directions to the end are given in the beginning by doers of 'good' magic, who never disclose more than is actually necessary
4. The villain is always the one who has dared to step beyond the 'normal' uses of magic
5. Magic always drains the user and tries to twist him into the valley of evil
6. The villain always has the bigger army
7. Everyone walks or rides horses (why cant cars exist in the world of fantasy, i ask you!)
8. You learn atleast a 100 new words from languages that may or may not exist by the time you finish a book. (Wonder how the writer makes all these words up!)
9. Each fight ends with our hero doubting his strengths.
10. The story line is almost always the same. Good Man vs Bad Man, Good man takes up a lesser individual, tells him half of what is required (for the sake of god knows what) and that only this individual can destroy the bad man. This lesser individual has a rag-tag group of co-adventurers out of which 80% die by the end trying to save him. They go in hunt of a magic elixir or device or truth which can destroy the bad man. They destroy the bad man. Throw in a lot of fights, blue fire, red fire, trolls, elves, dwarves, cities.. There.. You have ur fantasy story!

Hmm.. Maybe I'll write a novel soon!


2 comments:

  1. I know a Tolkien devotee who will take umbrage to such generalizations

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  2. very true suvin, ... i just can't get myself to read fantasy novels.. couldn't manage even a few pages of Harry Potter..... :)

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