InsaneJournal

Quest-fantasy, take four.
My post. Let's hope IJ's database issues have cleared up.



* Yes! Pilgrims! Everyone forgets about the pilgrims... The only instance (aside from Paladin of Souls, which I haven't read) that I recall of pilgrimage is, in fact, Eddings - but that's only Sparhawk bribing some poor church-goers into going on a fake pilgrimage to some place in Cammoria (Borrata?) so they can be used as a cover. No one else does it. There are some mentions of pilgrims in Steven Erikson's books, but they aren't central to the plot (though he does have a desertful of howling fanatics - but they're done well).

Both Eddings and Lackey have curiously invisible gods. There are repeated mentions of them, and people swear to crazy deities left and right, but aside from a random church (which in the Mage Winds trilogy seem to be used mostly as places to randomly Gate between) here and there, there aren't really that much focus on them. Eddings' basilica gets some limelight, but it's still curiously shapeless. The only mentioned festivals in Eddings'-verse are that winter-thing in B/M (Eras...something?) and the Harvest Festival in Tamuli, neither of which really focus on religion in any visible way. It's strange.

I don't usually advocate the gods-incarnate-trope - because gods tend to be all-powerful, which begs the question why there needs to be human heroes - but if you are going to use it, pay attention to your gods. You've brought them into your imaginary world - now what are you going to do with them?

(We do have to talk about gods - why don't we do that next? I've got some good examples, and I can blather about HoD-verse while I'm at it.)

* I believe it the phenomenon you're referring to is called "floating court". The Japanese Heian Court was a floating court, I think (both in the sense of moving around and in the sense of having no actual inner walls in the palace - it was all paper-and-wood frames that were moved about), and I find it an interesting concept, which isn't explored as much as it should be. The floating courts were a fact - Sweden is covered in old castles that our royal family used to (and still do) move around between; winter and summer palaces, etc. Their summer "palace" is on Öland, I think. And Sweden hasn't always been the most technologically advanced place (Vikings! Yaarrr!).

* I think too many authors (me with them, though I know when to admit failure) think of armies as moving in a single unit, and therefore easy to keep track of. For all its other failings, Paksenarrion actually does a good job of describing how the army in question works - because the FMC is right in the middle of it, as an enlisted mercenary soldier. George RR Martin handles armies pretty well, too, though his focus tends to be political intrigue - Steven Erikson does it remarkably well, what with so many of his characters being soldiers and the main plot of his series being "Whoops, the entire world is at war!)

Eddings touches on the effort it takes to move an army, but only in a glancing sort of way, and Lackey defaults to "A wizard did it!" as soon as she runs into trouble. And everyone seems to forget that war is more than two armies banging on each other with swords and then going home once someone shouts "We won!". Crops are burned, towns and villages are destroyed, people are driven to flee, disease is rampant - but as soon as someone gets up on that throne and declares their victory, some invisible wizard - or god - waves their hand and everything is back to the way it was.

On horseback, walking horselitters, uncomfortable carts/wagons.... What about river-barges and ships? I know the latter obviously can't travel across the mainland (unless they're airships, but most Generic Medieval Fantasy Lands don't have airships - they might be eaten by dragons, or something), but river-barges could at least travel inland along the rivers. I don't know how common it was during medieval times, but people have always used rivers for travel and fishing and fresh-water-resources. Just thought I'd mention it.

Of course, this doesn't mean that traveling in general was any easier.


That is my main problems with prophecies; the fact that they are somehow absolute, and that they can't be misinterpreted. Once written down, they remain for ages and ages and ages, even if what they say is uncomfortable and inconvenient for the people in power at the time, because the force of the prophecy keeps it Right and True. (The one thing Eddings did something interesting with this - Torak's Book, and it's many alterations - he immediately shot himself in the foot by having one unaltered copy left, because anything else would mean complications.)

Human memory is faulty. We like to change our memories - polish and care for the ones we like (and by doing so, looking at them through rose-coloured glasses) and shove the ones we don't like under the carpet and not think about them unless we absolutely have to - because living with the absolute truth is uncomfortable and sometimes even painful, and so I find it interesting (read: really boring and cliché) that prophecies are somehow exempt from this. And, of course, they are Never Ever Wrong, and anyone picked by the prophecy automatically transforms into someone perfectly capable of fulfilling it -


- which brings us back to our beloved Farm Boy Who Is Really A King. I give you, a man or woman who runs a really big farm - take Eddings' Faldor, for example - might be really good at organising and giving orders and handling complaints from underlings and so on, but usually, the Farm Boy Who Is Really A King (from hereon referred to as FB, because that's easier) is just that - a farm boy. Someone who spends his days pulling potatoes out of the dirt, or washing dishes, or herding cows. You don't learn to handle politics like that. You don't learn how to rule a kingdom, or when to make compromises and when to not back down - but don't worry! The prophecy will handle this! It will transform fumbling FB into a glorious prince, and make him a hundred times better*!

(*Yet another thing that irritates me; why is it that farmers and peasants are always portrayed as bumbling and stupid in Generic Quest Fantasy? I know that during medieval times, literacy wasn't wide-spread, but inability to read =/= idiocy. FB is always endlessly happy to throw off the shackles of peasanthood, even if becoming a prince/heir-apparent/king-in-the-making means immediate threat to his life and limb, and a good chance of being a head shorter before the week is out - I dislike the fact that adventure is automatically thought to be superior to security, and that those who choose to remain in a safe place are shrugged off as cowardly, even when they aren't.)

Garion, as mentioned, irritates the censored out of me, because everyone just sort of forgives him his mistakes (caused by his FB-hood), because they're so over-awed by the prophecy. *grumbles*