Non Tolkienesque Fantasy

[deer of the dawn]

Lord of the Rings being the ur-Fantasy, I really don't care all that much for imitations. The world doesn't need more elves and dwarves, we need something fresh. That's part of why SRD's writings appeal, isn't it?

Can anyone recommend Elf-free Fantasy books?

Here are a couple I would recommend (Can't seem to remember more at this point, which says something):

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Black, Red, and White by Ted Dekker (although White did not end the series satisfactorily IMHO)
[/i]

[wayfriend]

One of my favorites is the Riddlemaster trilogy. No elves. No small people either.

[CovenantJr]

The Earthsea books by Ursula Le Guin. Wizards but no elves/dwarves/whatever.
Albion by John Grant. Little known but interesting. John Grant has quite a dreamlike way of telling stories, and that appeals to me. Nothing very ordinary in this.
Viriconium by M. John Harrison. I never actually finished these stories, but they're interesting and quite unique. I particularly enjoyed the grimly surreal early parts.

[Brinn]

Try anything by China Mieville.

George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire.

Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek.

Bakker's Prince of Nothing Series.

Erickson's Tales of the Malazan.

[Krazy Kat]

If you havn't read the T.H.White series, Once and Future King, it's very good. Although I've only read, The Sword and the Stone, and The Book of Merlyn.

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson is also a terrific read. Yes I know...it has elves - lots of them. But they are very differant from Tolkienkind - very differant.

I must read that C.S.Lewis book again.

[danlo]

Try Zindell's Ea Cycle: The Lightstone, Lord of Lies, Black Jade and The Diamond Warriors. Another series that has very cool/very unlike Tolkien's elves is Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series.

[lucimay]

its actually called The Malazan Book of the Fallen. steven erikson.
highly recommend. highly.
but only if you think you'd like epic military fantasy

[Holsety]

Though I like the malazan books, I think the tiste could be considered more elven than most fantasy series. (tall longlived otherworldly magical light-dark-factional emo). That's not to say that the tiste aren't fresh or interesting in their way, but I suspect they intentionally mirror elves in some respect.

But if you are looking for something that is somewhat different from tolkien in general (even if there are vaguely elven races) then the Malazan series may do you just fine.

A few other un-tolkien works of fantasy you should consider checking out:
-Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell (there are probably elves in here along with the fairies, but these are all pre-tolkien magical creaturesr).
-Gormenghast
-I think mostly anything by China Mieville will prove to be fantasy, less the elves, less a whole lot of other things you'd expect from fantasy. A good book to start with him would be Perdido St. Station.
-The Worm Ouroboros (the author was IIRC in the "inklings" circle that Tolkien was also a member of) was written at least a decade before the lord of the rings. There are "pixies", "fairies", "demons", and "witches", but really these are just titles for the various nations (all of them are plain old humans). It shares some real similarities with tolkien (a few heroes go on a quest across kingdoms) some false similarities (ring is a prominent symbol in both but for very different reasons: see SRD) and some undeniable differences (tolkien favors peaceful idyllic farm life, whlie eddison favors the short-lived glory-seeking life of the warrior).

It's old enough to be in the public domain, so you can check it out at sacred-texts.com/ring/two/index.htm for free and then decide to buy if you want (or even read the whole thing online for free).

Do the chronicles of amber have elves in them?

[danlo]

I can't remember any elf - like things in the Amber books...

Re: Eddison - Not really, he was already published and met with them at least once.

The Inklings was an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford, England, for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. Its most regular members (many of them academics at the University) included J. R. R. "Tollers" Tolkien, C. S. "Jack" Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Christopher Tolkien (J. R. R. Tolkien's son), Warren "Warnie" Lewis (C. S. Lewis's elder brother), Roger Lancelyn Green, Adam Fox, Hugo Dyson, R. A. "Humphrey" Havard, J. A. W. Bennett, Lord David Cecil, and Nevill Coghill. Other less frequent attenders at their meetings included Percy Bates, Charles Leslie Wrenn, Colin Hardie, James Dundas-Grant, Jon Fromke, John Wain, R. B. McCallum, Gervase Mathew, and C. E. Stevens. The author E. R. Eddison also met the group at the invitation of C. S. Lewis.

[Zarathustra]

For all the imitations, no one ever did Elves and Dwarves as well as Tolkien. I think that's the main problem, not the fact that there are imitations, but that no one tries to do anything new with them.

[Holsety]

@Danlo: Thanks for the correction. That makes more sense anyway, Eddison didn't really seem like the type to hang with em anyway (or at least, Ouroboros' characters wouldn't be a good match for Middle Earth's - I dunno about the Zimavia trilogy or Eddison himself).

[Loredoctor]

For all the imitations, no one ever did Elves and Dwarves as well as Tolkien. I think that's the main problem, not the fact that there are imitations, but that no one tries to do anything new with them.

I agree with you to a point. But largely the problem is that the 'literary' market is flooded with Tolkein clones; it's not very imaginative to use elves, dwarves and orcs all the time. Why not invent new races?

Even if someone has done something new with elves or dwarves, you may as well argue that unless the point was that their use was the point (as in, a commentary about fantasy-writing tropes or the genre) you probably should have just invented a new fantasy race.

[Avatar]

Thing is, if the elves, dwarves, orcs etc. are archtypal races, it's probably quite hard to come up with something new. And even if it is technically new, we're still predisposed to think in those terms.

Someone upthread mentioned Erikson's Tiste...Oh, it was Holsety...and I agree...they do put me in mind of Elves. Great races, but the Elf meme is so strongly imbedded that we see them even where they technically aren't.

Even in SRD's writing, who hasn't thought briefly of the Woodhelvinin as elves and the stonedownors as dwarf-types? Tolkien did his work too well. *shrug* In fact, those particular memes are pre-Tolkien...afterall, he got them from already existing "mythologies."

--A

[Loredoctor]

Thing is, if the elves, dwarves, orcs etc. are archtypal races, it's probably quite hard to come up with something new. And even if it is technically new, we're still predisposed to think in those terms.
--A

There are some writers who try and have interesting fantasy settings. You don't need elves, dwarves and orcs to be in every fantasy book - that's just silly. But it almost happens. One could argue that Dune and Star Wars are just as important to sci-fi as Tolkein's work is to fantasy, yet it seems that largely sci-fi is independent of falling on archetypal elements.

As for coming up with something new, well George R.R. Martin is a classic example of not even trying to replace 'elven archetype' with 'elven archetype x'. Heck, even his excellent book Fevre Dream does not even explicitly state there are vampires in it, when he has things which may be haemovores.

Being original is hard, which is an indication that there are novel and exciting ideas for fantasy to explore. However, falling on unoriginal archetypes is a sign of a poor or lazy imagination.

[Avatar]

You don't need elves, dwarves and orcs to be in every fantasy book...

I agree. And there is certainly plenty of fantasy that doesn't use them. But then, those fantasies tend to be exclusively human-populated. It's when we add other races into them that those memes start showing through.

And it's not always a sign of poor or lazy writing...Feist is a good example. He has elves and dwarves and trolls, and makes no pretence that they are anything else. He uses them honestly, and, IMO, very well.

Using something like Martin's haemovores, even non-explicitly, is still a reliance on the vampire meme which is instantly recognisable, and therefore arguably unoriginal.

So I don't think the simple presence of races reminiscent of other ideas neccessarily impacts the quality of the work. It can of course, but it's not inevitable.

--A

[Loredoctor]

And it's not always a sign of poor or lazy writing...Feist is a good example. He has elves and dwarves and trolls, and makes no pretence that they are anything else. He uses them honestly, and, IMO, very well.

No, it's not always a sign. However, the exception is not the norm (to use an obvious phrase).

Using something like Martin's haemovores, even non-explicitly, is still a reliance on the vampire meme which is instantly recognisable, and therefore arguably unoriginal.

My error; I called them that because I did not want to refer to them as vampires when, as far as I can recall, Martin never has them refer to themselves as such. Given that the purpose of the book was to explore vampires in the Mississippi with steamboats, I'd say that calling it unoriginal is unfair. Or to be more accurate, it 'was kind of the point'. A lot fails to do that; the theme is never explicit about the use of fantasy archetypes.

So I don't think the simple presence of races reminiscent of other ideas neccessarily impacts the quality of the work. It can of course, but it's not inevitable.

--A

Agreed. But when you have the standard plot of save the world from x, weak thematic structure and symbolism, any use of archetypes merely serves to be the 'final nail in the coffin'. I have in the past overlooked the use of elves etc in fantasy, if the story is great.

[Holsety]

This is kind of off-the-top-of-my-head and I hope it doesn't come across as too preachy or too assuming, or simply a bunch of gabbledygook.

I think the reason why these races fall into these archetypes is that those archetypes fulfill useful roles in stories. Orcs make good grunt-villains with little depth, elves are good at being wise and nature-friendly but somewhat detached friends of man. Every time an author introduces a race, it must be for a reason - why, after all, introduce a new race when another faction of humanity will do well enough? As a result, there must be characteristics that separates the race wholly from humanity. Though the important, psychological attributes (in the case of elves, some common important attributes are detachment from the mortal world, nostalgia for a golden age long-gone, and a certain amount of arrogance towards humans) may not be universal in the race - I guess Arwen, marrying Aragorn, is an example - the physical attributes which explain them (long life, enhanced abilities in magic and athletics, spiritual kinship with natural world) are far more universal. Moreover, members of the race who defy the status quo are almost always doing so consciously, and are acting in spite of their instincts - Arwen, for instance, knows that her husband will die long before her, right?

It's no wonder that such basic ideas are used in Tolkien and reused by others, since a more "ancient" race makes a good balance for the human traits we love to hear about so much (short-lived but hot-blooded, carrying infinite potential despite a relatively miniscule existence). But, because elves are so widely recognized in the fantasy genre, physical attributes which the author doesn't necessarily need (long hair, pointy ears, general physical prettiness) are carried over along with it, either because the author is using elves for a particular reason without knowing why (falling into Tolkien's pattern) or they recognize what elves instinctively mean to readers and want to make sure they leave the necessary signs for us. Or perhaps they recognize they are writing in-genre and want to continue the traditions which they love most about the genre. To each his or her own, if you ask me.

*shrug*

Someone upthread mentioned Erikson's Tiste...Oh, it was Holsety...and I agree...they do put me in mind of Elves. Great races, but the Elf meme is so strongly imbedded that we see them even where they technically aren't.

I don't think that the tiste being vaguely similar to elves is a mistake. I know I've seen Erikson talk (in interviews) about Karsa Orlong, one of his most notable characters, as a response to the stereotypical fantasy and D&D barbarian. I am almost sure that the tiste were used to explore the elves in a similar way to a certain extent; the effect of longevity, the longing for their old and distant home (see: voyage across the sea in Tolkien), and the loss of purpose are probably the most important themes of the tiste andii. Even though they most immediately seem like dark elves, I think the andii are really most like our typical "high" elves in this sense.

Anyway, if the elf meme is so strongly embedded that readers will recognize it everywhere, it should also be true that writers will recognize it. So even if a "response" to tradition wasn't intended at the start, it might be impossible to avoid one entirely.

(note: in the Malazan series, dark is an embodiment of order - in that sense, although they're aligned with an "element" - darkness - which people typically recognize as chaotic and evil, the andii represent the "high" elves, who are typically on the side of the good, orderly gods in any fantasy pantheon)

The factional strife between the three different varieties of tiste might also work as commentary on factions of elves (dark/wood/sun, or choose another set of adjectives) but I'm not well versed enough in that kind of fantasy to speak on it.

[Avatar]

Haha, good post Holsety.

My error; I called them that because I did not want to refer to them as vampires when, as far as I can recall, Martin never has them refer to themselves as such. Given that the purpose of the book was to explore vampires in the Mississippi with steamboats, I'd say that calling it unoriginal is unfair. Or to be more accurate, it 'was kind of the point'. A lot fails to do that; the theme is never explicit about the use of fantasy archetypes.

I gotcha. My point was just that they're clearly recognisable as an embodiment of the vampiric idea. And I think I see your point about an explicit theme of the archtype...why is it present...what purpose does it serve...often, as you point out, fairly vaguely explored if at all.

--A

[deer of the dawn]

Av said:

Thing is, if the elves, dwarves, orcs etc. are archtypal races, it's probably quite hard to come up with something new. And even if it is technically new, we're still predisposed to think in those terms.

Yeah, except that enough other writers have come up with fresh ideas-- SRD, for example. The ur-viles started out kinda orcish, but became so much more interesting than that. The Giants were so vivid and amazing, even though there is nothing new about "giants" his were new. I suppose you could count the elohim elvish, but they aren't anything like anyone else's elves. Haruchai and the Ramen are their own.

I must be getting old. A lot of the suggested books I have read, but maybe a decade or two or even THREE ago. The Earthsea books and Zelazny were my teens, the Amber books in my twenties or thirties, some series I can't even remember the name or author a few years ago.

Thanks for the suggestions. Most of the titles and authors aren't available here, but I will be in the US this year for a while and have to stock up! But since I'm poor, maybe some kind folks can mail me their old paperbacks!!!

[Holsety]

The ur-viles started out kinda orcish, but became so much more interesting than that.

Even the ur-viles, a sort of hording, brutal race, have a fair amount of depth to 'em. Not to mention that their heads are cool as hell.

Haha, good post Holsety.

Your laughter is confusing, and I am not sure at what it is recommended. I can only assume you are mocking me with insincere praise.

Haruchai and the Ramen are their own.

Ya, geez. I stood for about ten minutes trying to think of a really good comparison to the haruchai with some other fantasy race, and couldn't think of anything. A mountain race of warriors whose lives are prolonged by their duty...

I know a lot of SRD's stuff is original but the haruchai seem particularly so in my view (having thought on it just now).

One unusual thing in SRD is evil wolves (I think?). I feel like wolves are usually noble and likable, but the kresh ain't exactly that.