InsaneJournal

Quest-fantasy, round two.
My post.



If we want to get really technical about it, every plot is a quest-plot - Dictionary.com says "a search or pursuit made in order to find or obtain something" - because every character in every plot is searching for something, but since we're just talking about the generic definition of "quest" used in fantasy, I really ought to stop this sentence right here.

.... You know, I can think of far more bad quest-plots than I can think of good ones - there's Eddings and quite a lot of Lackey's Valdemar-verse, Robert Jordan's Waste er.. Wheel of Time etc., - whereas I can only think of Tolkien when it comes to doing the whole "group of unlikely heroes band together to save the world" and doing it well. I'm sure there are several others that I can't remember right now, because I tend to avoid quest-fantasy like the plague precisely because so few authors do it well.

* Yeah, countries should only be involved for good reasons, reasons that serve the plot (and by "serve the plot" I mean that the author can't just go "Well, this vitally important plot-element can only happen on the other side of the continent 'cause I say so!"), because otherwise, it all morphs into a travelogue over the author's imaginary country. In Eddings'-verse, it's not only a travelogue, but also a dictionary of gods/goddesses, and a lexicon of his very flawed worldbuilding.

While it isn't a traditional quest-fantasy as such - there's no unlikely band of heroes whose goal from the very outset is to save the world - Walter Moers' The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear ('ware the Wiki-link!) touches on the quest-trope, and it rather rapidly descends into the travelogue-cliché. I do like it, because it stands some traditional concepts of fantasy on its head (humans are minority, non-human races rule the continent where everything takes place, etc., etc.) and some of the writing is very funny, but by the time I close The Thirteen 1/2 Lives... I feel like I know everything there is to know about Zamonia, Moers' world. Like so many generic quest-fantasy novels, it falls into the trap of thinking that this will be the only chance they have of showing off the world they've made, and so they have to cram all of it into one book/one series.

Meandering all over the map means meandering all over the plot as well. It's hard to keep track of character-development and plot-complications when you've got to remember if Generic Fantasy City #345 was near the ocean, or if that was GFC #675. Also, if you haven't spent time thinking about maps and distances and the means of travel, it shows when you drag your heroes all over the map. If they live in Medieval Knight Land (y helo thar, Eddings!), a time-period when most people didn't travel farther than the next village over, and you have your main characters traverse the entire world, it starts to ring a bit false as far as worldbuilding and credibility go.


*I haven't ever read The Ring of Allaire, but it sounds like the author got it all right. That's what always rang a bit hollow with me when it came to Eddings and his prophecies - everyone is destined to be there, and no one ever complains about it; at least, not very much (exception; Kal Zakath, who nearly had to die before he made up his mind). This is what sets Tolkien apart from most of the hacks who try to imitate him; most of them seem to skip reading the scene in the first book, at the Council of Elrond, when every single one of the heroes chooses to go along. Their reasons at the time might not be the most reliable (the Hobbits basically go "because we want to!"), but they grow into it, and they make the choice.

There are far too few choices in fantasy, and quest-fantasy seem to be sticking its fingers in its ears and bellowing "LALALALAICAN'THEARYOOOUUUU!" at the top of its lungs as far as choices are concerned - and I like choices. I believe choices promote character growth and a more natural plot-progression - that is, a plot-progression that feels natural. Throwing around words like "prophecy" and "destiny" and "fate" is starting to feel really stale, and in the books that do, there are far too few people who go "Whoa, hold up! I don't want to!" (I mean, aside from the staple "Why meeeee!?"s. Oh Garion, how I want to slap thee.). I'd like to see what would happen if someone did, you know. Say no, I mean. A no that lasts, and not just one that is waved away by Wise Beard Man at the next info-dump.

* "You have to save the world from Obscure Evil!"
"Really? Why me?"
"'Cause of this really neat-o prophecy I've got stuffed up my sleeve, or memorised."
"Reaallly... So why do we need to do this? What will happen if we don't?"
"We-ell... I wish I knew. I mean, I can't tell you that. Yet. If ever."
"Well, you're certainly a fount of nothing."

I dislike generic quests. The only thing I dislike more than generic quests are vague quests. The characters don't need to come into the story knowing everything there is to know about the world and the bad guys and the evil plot, but you're supposed to spend some of your time explaining what's going on, and why(*See my own addition to the list, below).



*The lack of character-progression is one of the biggest flaws in quest-fantasy. Quest-fantasy is often an offshoot of the bildungsroman, mostly because the main character is usually a young boy who grows up and saves the world at the same time (and usually secures a position as a king, or a knight, or Someone Very Important), but the entire point of the buildungsroman is character-progression. The main character is supposed to change; that's what it's all about. Bad quest-fantasy, however, takes the buildungsroman and keeps the easy bits (young person grows up) and cuts out all the difficult bits (when growing up, you change, for x-reason, and in y-way). Maybe that's why the dragging-around-the-whole-map-look-here's-a-pamphlet-with-all-the-tourist-attractions-thing keeps happening; the authors forget that they could fill the blank spaces in their plot (transition-scenes, wheeee!) with character-growth. So the young hero who goes out into the world and saves it returns to the same place he came from, completely unchanged except for the power to now turn stone into sand by sheer force of smashery. The characters are hollowed out and become flat.


*Which brings me to another thing that annoys me. Most quest-fantasies are home to The Farm Boy Who Is Inexplicably King (GAAARION! *stabstabstab*), one of my most hated fantasy tropes, but also to my second most hated trope; The Wisely Bearded Mentor Man (look at him, he has a long white beard! Clearly he is wise!). We had Gandalf in LOTR, but he doesn't really count - he isn't a cliché, because he's more or less the originator of the cliché; he did it first, and you can bet your bottom dollar that he did it better. Also, Gandalf never withheld information "Because you are not ready for it yet, Oh Farm Boy Hero Who Is Inexplicably King" - when he withheld information, it was either because he didn't think it was important (look, fallibility!), or because he didn't know enough yet, and it's pointless to go spreading things around if you don't know they're real or not (look, logic!).

Most mentor-characters either float around mysteriously and annoy everyone by keeping secrets for secrecy's sake, or they say "Oh, do this, and come back, and I'll tell you everything!" and then the MC does, and when they come back, the mentor-character croaks, but manages to spit out some mysterious riddle, or some vital bit of information just before they die. (The Sword of Truth did this - is it any wonder I gave up after the first book? You've got Clueless Hero!Richard, Hideously Evil Villain, Designated Love Interest!Khalan and Wisely Bearded Mentor Man!Zedd, who manages to deliver a vitally important bit of exposition/info before he dies. My eyes, they are rolling. If they roll any more, they just might pop out.) They also spend an eternity of time dying. Also, no mentor-character is ever female, unless the MC is a girl, in which case they might be - but it's still unlikely.

Mentor-characters have to have wise beards, you see, and girls just can't grow them. Roll Eyes


*One thing that irritated me with Eddings, and continues to irritate me with bad quest fantasy is the random interference by gods and goddesses. The ever-present prophecy is made by one god or the other, and it's never wrong, and whenever the author writes themselves into a corner, the gods are there to pull them out. If the gods are so all-powerful, then what are the people questing for? They're pretty needless, if gods can just reach down and fix things.

And don't give me those things about "Oh, but it's all just a game to the gods!" because if the world ends, that means there won't be people, and I imagine that even if gods aren't dependent on people to exist (like Pterry's gods are), it'd still be pretty boring to be the god of no one. The gods are, as mentioned, often the source of the prophecy as well, and I dislike prophecies very, very much. It eliminates an element of surprise that might otherwise have been there, and takes away a lot of the suspense. Even though a lot of prophecies go on about "Ooooh, listen to the bells of doom and ooooh, if you fail the world will go 'splody!" it's like watching a James Bond movie - you know 007 is going to win, because that's the way it goes. The prophecy is a crutch that eliminates a lot of the basis for character-growth and choices.

I want to see characters go out there because they want to. I want selfishness. I want greed. I want someone going just for the heck of it.

(An aside: this is why I like One Piece - I know it's an anime, and therefore doesn't really relate to the discussion, but it is a quest-plot, and all of it is gloriously selfish and based on characters wanting stuff. Luffy wants to be Pirate King, so he sets out on the ocean - in a barrel, actually, because he can't sail and his boat sinks - to achieve it. Zoro wants to be the strongest swordsman there is, so he throws himself into it and even though there's deliciously emotional backstory to it, he does it mostly because he wants to. Nami wants to draw a map of the world, Usopp wants to be brave, Sanji wants to find a legendary sea, Chopper wants to be a pirate-doctor and find/invent a true panacea, Robin wants to learn the true history of the world, Franky wants to build a ship that's strong enough to sail through all of the Grand Line, the fiercest ocean in the world - it's all want. It's all selfish. And it's wonderful.)



I tend not to read quest-fantasy, as you might have noticed, and the stuff I do read that falls under that heading doesn't conform. George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire characters might all be on one quest or the other (Reclaim the throne! Conquer the continent! Convert people to a particular faith! Defend the land of humans against the forces of snowy death! Return home and avenge the deaths of one's family! Marry a sibling and keep the throne! - yes, those are all different characters, by the way), and there's even a vague prophecy about the red comet in the sky, but no one interprets the comet the same way ("It means that I should become king!" "No, it blesses my quest to be king!" "No, it foretells the return of dragons!" "No, it tells of the triumph of my totally awesome god!" "No, it is an omen of the apocalypse!"), everyone keeps making choices and face the consequences, and no one is really out there to save the world. We do get to see a whole lot of the world Martin has created, but he skips the irrelevant bits, and I never get the feeling that he drags me needlessly through the map.

Steven Erikson's Malazan Books of the Fallen have the corporeal-and-interfering-gods shtick that can be so annoying in quest-fantasy, but people can and do rebel against the gods - and there have been hints that the gods are merely people who have tapped into the right sort of power. One character assumes the role of Trake, the God of War, once Trake has been wounded, and it's mentioned that Trake isn't the first God of War - Erikson's world is in a state of flux, and the gods are not perfect, and people make choices.

I might have mentioned that I like choices.


... Seems like I had more to say than I thought I did, too.