Sorry for the lack of posts this week, it's been another long week at work. Finals are in progress, so a couple co-workers took the week off. But that's okay, most money for me! At least everyone else is eager for hours, so we're not too desperate.
Anyway, I've been reading the Inheritance Series (Eragon, Eldest... ect.) and I've come to notice a few things that a bunch of fantasy novels seem to share. And I'm not talking about the races of creatures, like elves and dwarves, as those are uniform and not expected to change. I mean small details.
1) If there is a blacksmith, he's a good guy. The more muscles, the better.
2) If there is a large mountain range, they have to have the word Mist in them. Like the Misty Mountains, or the Mountains of Mist.
3) If it starts off with an average person living in a small village tucked into the middle of nowhere, that person is the savior of the world, and that village is actually the ancient site of a once grand and very important city, which almost everyone just conveniently forgot about.
4) A character is going to get married? Better do it before that hoard of monsters come knocking at your door. (which happens to be a small village tucked into the middle of nowhere)
5) If a character needs to know something, they will not only learn it within a month, they will be a master of it, because it's 'just in them'.
Most of these examples stem from three series; Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time, and Inheritance. I'm guessing that Robert Jordan and Christopher Paolini both read Tolkien, and took a lot of examples from him. Not to say that they're bad books (Wheel of Time is still very far up on my favorite books list), but they do tend to follow a predictable path on these five points.
Read it Before you Steal it!
This work by Afyvarra is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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