10 Fantasy Sagas That Are Wronger Than Twilight

Post by **sgt.null** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 6:47 am

cambo - have to agree with the It scene. i wondered where the hell that came from. but the ending was such a let down anyway i let go of it. i really wish he'd redo the ending.

Post by **Cambo** » Tue Aug 02, 2011 11:25 am

deer of the dawn wrote:Okay, having given birth a couple times, sorry guys but everything down there is so stretched out, there IS no clitoris or any other identifiable body parts at the moment of the head coming out. That has to be a weird, wishful guy-fantasy. Mom is so busy roaring she wouldn't care anyway. She is utterly inviolable. Maybe that's King's point, to step on the feminine creative power of the moment. (and that from a born-again Christian!)

No need to apologise to me, I'm actually kind of releived; makes the world seem a little more sane

. And forgive my ignorance, but at 21 I'm kinda happy to have only vague ideas about the practicalities of childbirth. I will say that as King wrote it, it didn't seem particularly sexual, and he made no mention of Susannah noticing it. And I doubt he's being anti-feminist, from what I know of him he's pretty liberal...still, very strange thing to put in.

sgt null wrote:cambo - have to agree with the It scene. i wondered where the hell that came from. but the ending was such a let down anyway i let go of it. i really wish he'd redo the ending.

Yeah, the ending didn't live up to the rest of a damn fine book.

The bits in the alternate reality were cool, I thought, but the random offspring introduced at the last minute were jarring, and the bit with the bike was just cheesy.

Spoiler

As for the orgy, it didn't even make narrative sence. We all screwed, and now we know the way out of the sewers. Huh?

Post by **Merlanthe** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 12:14 pm

Cant say about the other books mentioned on that list but as someone who owns and has repreatedly read and reread the Pern series over the years i can definitely say that it sounds like the person making the list has never read any of the Pern books and has heard a grabled account of how the dragon mating process works.

The dragon riders are emotionally linked to their dragons so when a female dragon goes into heat, which doesnt happen as often as it sounds, the rider reacts. But they arent forced to have sex with anyone. For a start the dragon is strongly influenced by the riders own romantic preferences. Usually with female riders her dragon will only be caught by the male dragon whose rider she is most romantically interested in. Which is why when two riders in love their dragons mate only with the other riders dragon and no other.

As for those riders who have no preferences, the rider usually knows before hand when their dragon is going to go on heat and make arrangements so that another rider with whom they have an understanding will either be the one to catch their dragon and mate with them or else that their dragons will mate but both riders will get it on with their preferred love interest rather than each other. Also green and blue dragons actively prefer riders who are homosexual/bisexual and usually they form couples and remain together.

Also during a mating flight the dragons broadcast amorous emotions that may influence ADULT people in range but not in the lose all control and jump the nearest person more in the feel the sudden need to look up their significant other for a quick fumble or grab a cold shower. Believe it or not this whole dragon mating sytem doesnt really play a large role in the novels except when leadership of the weyr is on the line cause it is decided via mating flight. But otherwise its a minor thing that the author of that article has twisted and blown out of proportion.

Post by **Sorus** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:05 am

Only 4 of those books were actually published as fantasy, the others were mainly romance with a couple of horror. Not that it makes much difference how they're classified, just defending one of my favorite genres.

Post by **Orlion** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:33 am

Romance?

Post by **Sorus** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 2:37 am

Why, I oughta...

Post by **Cambo** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 3:06 am

There's a shelf in my favourite bookstore called "fantasy romance." All Twilight and rip offs. At first it annoyed me that they got their own shelf, but then I thought it's probably a good thing to keep them separate from the rest of the literature, in case some poor unsuspecting reader mistakes them for something worth buying.

Post by **I'm Murrin** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 5:57 am

Over here they shelve them as "Dark Fantasy".

Post by **Cambo** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 1:54 pm

Ha! A label much more suited to SRD's work than Stephanie Meyer's, I think.

Post by **I'm Murrin** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 4:43 pm

From what I understand, they wanted to get away from the connotations of the word "romance" in the old "paranormal romance" label, and "urban fantasy" didn't catch on (nevermind that it was already a name for a different genre), so they invented "dark fantasy" as a category.

Post by **Frostheart Grueburn** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 6:59 pm

Murrin wrote:From what I understand, they wanted to get away from the connotations of the word "romance" in the old "paranormal romance" label, and "urban fantasy" didn't catch on (nevermind that it was already a name for a different genre), so they invented "dark fantasy" as a category.

Gah, I plonked ASOIAF under the 'dark fantasy' label years ago. What am I going to call it now, lest people begin thinking Westeros is a stage for a glittering vampire high school musical?

Post by **aliantha** » Wed Aug 17, 2011 7:24 pm

I was thinking the same thing, Zorm -- "I thought Malazan was dark fantasy. Well, epic fantasy, but really dark, too..."

Post by **Sorus** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 2:24 am

Exactly - ASoIaF and Malazan - plus Eternal Champion and Black Company and TCTC and a few other things are what I have always called dark fantasy.

Wouldn't 'sparkly romance' be more appropriate?

I don't generally insult books that I haven't read, but Twilight does not belong anywhere near anything listed above.

Post by **aliantha** » Thu Aug 18, 2011 5:21 am

Sorus wrote:Wouldn't 'sparkly romance' be more appropriate?

Post by **TerisasMirror** » Thu Dec 22, 2011 3:52 am

Well, I seem to be in a minority of folks who have read anything on the list other than the Pern novels (read them, too).

The Anita Blake stuff actually started out pretty darn good. My best friend gave them to me because the physical and personality description of Blake (at least in the first two books) matched me so closely it was scary! (The second book opens with her drinking from a mug that is just like one I own!! Or at least, has the same saying printed on it.) But somewhere around the third book, Laurel K Hamilton apparently took leave of her senses. I stopped reading them. My best friend continued. She told me not only did they just get more "out there", but the writing actually got worse, to boot!! Very sad....

The Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris were like that, too. Although they did not get nearly as "out there" as the Anita Blake stuff. And it took longer for it to happen.

Stonemaybe - I have read Vardeman's War of Powers. He gets rather kinky in the Cenotaph Road series, too. Although most of that is used to depict how morally corrpt certain people/societies are. So it has a point, even the point is belabored a bit.
But it does not come NEAR the level of most of the stuff in this list. Trust me.

Post by **stonemaybe** » Fri Dec 23, 2011 8:09 am

Terisasmirror wrote:

Stonemaybe - I have read Vardeman's War of Powers. He gets rather kinky in the Cenotaph Road series, too. Although most of that is used to depict how morally corrpt certain people/societies are. So it has a point, even the point is belabored a bit.
But it does not come NEAR the level of most of the stuff in this list. Trust me.

I will.

But the giant stone statue 'sacrifice' scene is branded into my memory (and it must be 20 years since I've read vardeman).

Kevin's Watch

Kevin's Watch

10 Fantasy Sagas That Are Wronger Than Twilight