Having my coffee and writing in a coffee shop this morning. I'm apartment-sitting for a friend of mine. Conveniently, its located right next to a coffee joint *and* what is widely considered Columbus, Ohio's best book store: The Book Loft, a *huge* overstock book store that boasts 32 rooms filled with books. I'll be heading over there after this.
Also, if you haven't noticed, I sketched out a banner. It's amateurish and the letters are crooked. But, I stand by my work! I was inspired by the lettering of *Weird Tales* and tried to emulate it. The wine-snob devil sitting on the wine-barrel: I have to chalk that up to spontaneous inspiration.
Enough biographical preamble!
Here are links to previous posts for your convenience and my self-satisfaction:
Swords and Dark Magic Post 1 Introduction
Swords and Dark Magic Post 2 Analysis of Steven Erikson's "Goats of Glory"
The second story is titled “Tides Elba: A Tale of the Black Company” and written by Glen Cook. I’ve never read anything by Glen Cook. I’m always surprised by how one can never fully consider oneself *well read* in genre literature—there are constantly authors who show up who you’ve never heard about and yet—and yet! Everyone else has. And not only has everyone else heard of this author but this author has a *huge* following and has been writing for many years.
Such was my experience of Glen Cook.
Apparently his *Black Company* stories have been going on for quite some time.
I glanced through a Wikipedia article and read the editors’s description of Glen Cook’s work and found that his *Black Company* stories are related through a series of novels beginning in 1985 and are still going strong today. I find that so fascinating!
For me, sword and sorcery was a proverbial flower of the 60s, 70s, and 80s that died in the 90s in the midst of a resurgence of epic, “non-adventure” based fantasy. But the work of Glen Cook’s—a novum in and of itself—is forcing me to reevaluate this assumption.
I’ve come to the point in my blog where I realize I need something: *a better model for historically narrating fantasy literature.*
It seems most blogs *answer* questions or at least relate useful information, but here is a deviation: *does anyone know of a recent history of fantasy—1970-2011?*
Anyhow, I wander. Back to “Tides Elba” and the Black Company.
Some summary: The story assumes a lot of contextual knowledge about the Black Company, their world, and their situation, and thus gets started quickly—the Black Company Mercenary Army is ordered by their employer to search out a rebel leader by the name of Tides Elba. These orders are delivered to them by a magic-carpet riding sorcerer by the name of the Limper. The members of the company are suspicious of the Limper, having had dealings with him in the past; therefore, they work together to both satisfy their obligations to their employer and to protect the welfare of the company. They do this through conspiratorial, cloak-and-dagger subterfuge. And that’s all I’ll give away.
Let me just say I didn’t care for this story as much as the first one by Steven Erikson. Why? I felt disoriented through this story and it took about 10 pages before I stopped being confused and got a handle on the situation. Wherefore? I have a hunch that I think is an important one that contains within it an useful lesson for genre writers: this story is so invested in the micro-politics of its “secondary world” that someone who is unfamiliar with it *cannot* enjoy it.
But thats not to say this story had *nothing* to endear it to me.
I liked the gruff personalities that populated the world Cook presents to us here. The main character(s) of this story is less a single individual and more the collective of the military company itself (and in this way it is similar in terms of narrative structure to the first story in this anthology, “Goats of Glory”).
But, even though the military collective—the Black Company—subordinates, to some extent, the narrative roles of individual characters in this story, the individuals are nevertheless *individuals.* Furthermore, they are individuals in an *intense* way. This intensity of character is related through some really great dialog, by which I mean natural dialog, dialog skillfully pervaded by idioms of intimacy.
Exercise: Think of one of your favorite “secondary world” fantasy novels. Next, think about the characters and conflicts this novel relates. Try to summarize it in 150 words by stripping it of the details of its secondary world. Here’s a brief example wherein I strip J.R.R. Tolkien’s *The Hobbit* of all its distinguishing characteristics—purge all traces of Middle Earth from it--while retaining the core of its narrative.
The second story is titled “Tides Elba: A Tale of the Black Company” and written by Glen Cook. I’ve never read anything by Glen Cook. I’m always surprised by how one can never fully consider oneself *well read* in genre literature—there are constantly authors who show up who you’ve never heard about and yet—and yet! Everyone else has. And not only has everyone else heard of this author but this author has a *huge* following and has been writing for many years.
Such was my experience of Glen Cook.
Apparently his *Black Company* stories have been going on for quite some time.
I glanced through a Wikipedia article and read the editors’s description of Glen Cook’s work and found that his *Black Company* stories are related through a series of novels beginning in 1985 and are still going strong today. I find that so fascinating!
For me, sword and sorcery was a proverbial flower of the 60s, 70s, and 80s that died in the 90s in the midst of a resurgence of epic, “non-adventure” based fantasy. But the work of Glen Cook’s—a novum in and of itself—is forcing me to reevaluate this assumption.
I’ve come to the point in my blog where I realize I need something: *a better model for historically narrating fantasy literature.*
It seems most blogs *answer* questions or at least relate useful information, but here is a deviation: *does anyone know of a recent history of fantasy—1970-2011?*
Anyhow, I wander. Back to “Tides Elba” and the Black Company.
Some summary: The story assumes a lot of contextual knowledge about the Black Company, their world, and their situation, and thus gets started quickly—the Black Company Mercenary Army is ordered by their employer to search out a rebel leader by the name of Tides Elba. These orders are delivered to them by a magic-carpet riding sorcerer by the name of the Limper. The members of the company are suspicious of the Limper, having had dealings with him in the past; therefore, they work together to both satisfy their obligations to their employer and to protect the welfare of the company. They do this through conspiratorial, cloak-and-dagger subterfuge. And that’s all I’ll give away.
Let me just say I didn’t care for this story as much as the first one by Steven Erikson. Why? I felt disoriented through this story and it took about 10 pages before I stopped being confused and got a handle on the situation. Wherefore? I have a hunch that I think is an important one that contains within it an useful lesson for genre writers: this story is so invested in the micro-politics of its “secondary world” that someone who is unfamiliar with it *cannot* enjoy it.
But thats not to say this story had *nothing* to endear it to me.
I liked the gruff personalities that populated the world Cook presents to us here. The main character(s) of this story is less a single individual and more the collective of the military company itself (and in this way it is similar in terms of narrative structure to the first story in this anthology, “Goats of Glory”).
But, even though the military collective—the Black Company—subordinates, to some extent, the narrative roles of individual characters in this story, the individuals are nevertheless *individuals.* Furthermore, they are individuals in an *intense* way. This intensity of character is related through some really great dialog, by which I mean natural dialog, dialog skillfully pervaded by idioms of intimacy.
Exercise: Think of one of your favorite “secondary world” fantasy novels. Next, think about the characters and conflicts this novel relates. Try to summarize it in 150 words by stripping it of the details of its secondary world. Here’s a brief example wherein I strip J.R.R. Tolkien’s *The Hobbit* of all its distinguishing characteristics—purge all traces of Middle Earth from it--while retaining the core of its narrative.
A story about a young man from a quaint village where nothing happens. He encounters a group of artisans who have been divested of their wealth and who have a plan to get it back. They set out together, have a variety of strange encounters in the wilderness, and at the end of their journey find themselves engaged in a great war after their wealth has been returned to them.
Though the micro-political details of some “secondary world” fantasies are what attracts a lot of readers to these stories, sometimes, I think, the too heavy-handed foregrounding of these details can be alienating and distracting from the core narrative. This is why, I think, more people read J.R.R. Tolkien’s *The Lord of the Rings* and less people read his histories. I think an exercise like this, rather than training us to de-emphasize such details, is a good way to remind us of the importance of plot.
Though the micro-political details of some “secondary world” fantasies are what attracts a lot of readers to these stories, sometimes, I think, the too heavy-handed foregrounding of these details can be alienating and distracting from the core narrative. This is why, I think, more people read J.R.R. Tolkien’s *The Lord of the Rings* and less people read his histories. I think an exercise like this, rather than training us to de-emphasize such details, is a good way to remind us of the importance of plot.
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