Finding: The Epic Fantasy

I'm no stranger to the strange lands of epic fantasy. I was raised by Harry Potter when I was a boy, encouraged by Wheel of Time enthusiasts throughout, and stumbled upon The Shadow of the Torturer in my adolescence. In fact, so thoroughly have I immersed myself in as many epic fantasies as possible, there's hardly been an occasion that I haven't had a book larger than my head held in my hands. It was never the (often) gorgeous cover art that caught my attention, though! Oh no. Rather, it's always been the heft of these volumes, embossed by author names that proudly spanned the widths of the cover pages and surging as if tides or perhaps a breeze in tall ancient trees, that's drawn me to the promise of unlimited magic within. Time and again, I've found myself learning new magic systems, struggling to make sense of ornate cartographic wonders improbable and glorious, yelling at obvious plotting and ham-fisted dialogue or passages of exposition, amazed that I committed to volumes that could break digits, and afraid it will all end before there is any more.

And then I've thrown a few epic fantasy novels out of windows.

Yes, I have defenestrated more bricks of paper than I can say anyone should be proud of. I would like to avoid naming names, but that's kind of against my point here: it is difficult to find an epic fantasy novel worth the time and energy they consume. Sometimes, you wind up with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time and you are so damned curious as to what he has in store that you begrudgingly pick up another copy of the first book to see if you can't talk yourself out of it all all over again. Other times, you've gone a hundred or more pages into one of Gene Wolfe's Sun novels and suddenly there's an altruistic character that is really a ghost or else, no, wait, that chapter ended three chapters ago without telling you what was happening and it happened while other stuff happened and this is you trying to make sense of it in your head before you get to the next stopping point. I would be remiss if I didn't mention the devilry that is a good epic fantasy novel that doubles as a caper that you couldn't possibly unravel on your own because that would spoil the whole ride! You're meant to keep your arms and legs in at all times, to really go with the story, if you're going to be able to enjoy the sheer nonsense of it all. You don't want to hit your head on whatever's on the path ahead of you or be grabbed at by whatever lurks just outside your peripherals.

There is always nonsense aplenty, be it ghouls that have no business meaning so unwell toward children, monstrous creatures that you are constantly drawing and redrawing in your head as the author describes the mayhem that is engulfing your heroes, or wizards that shouldn't have so much of a say as to the song your heart sings when the harp strings of it are plucked. Really, nothing in an epic fantasy novel is going to make any real sense if that book doesn't get out of your way and get behind you instead.

You could say I have a love-hate relationship with the genre. Often, it's drivel that has more upon approach than it does upon immersion (looking at you, Game of Thrones) or more adolescent male fantasy garble that doesn't know when not to take itself seriously (hi, The Sword of Truth.) And yet there's eloquence and genuine artistry where you least expect it (Mistborn, Broken Earth.) Before too late, you've discovered humor and wit (Vlad Taltos, Gentlemen Bastards) and honesty (Kingkiller, Bas-Laag) Why not poke about for alternate history that doesn't pretend the world is something else but imagines an entirely new world (Green Bone Saga)? Except maybe I'll wind up with something more in-between all of these like Earthsea or Stormlight Archives (which, really, is saying too little about these books and too much about what isn't really wrong with them.) I am forever revisiting this genre to capture the perfect escapist journey: the epic fantasy.

I will rate and recommend a few of those that I dig the most, if you'll permit me to say one irrefutable thing, readers. I do not hold with any novel that attempts to bludgeon its readers into submission with a thematic point that renders its story both arbitrary and silly. If an epic fantasy book has more to say about saying something than it does with allowing you to suspend disbelief long enough to learn something for yourself about your capacity to observe and empathize with the real world, then that novel has failed to be worth a damn!

I highly recommend:

• Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere (I was introduced to Mistborn and I've been devouring his incredible repertoire ever since.)
• Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, Long Sun, Short Sun as well as his Latro novels (profound, puzzling, profoundly puzzling!)
• Patrick Rothfuss is doing wonderful things with his Kingkiller Chronicles (gorgeous)
• N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy (it's nothing you expect and so much more besides)
• Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series (quick wit and very inventive that plays with genres for the fun of the story being told)
• Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea 
• Elizabeth Bear's The Lotus Kingdoms and Karen Memory

I've left off things I am unsure of my opinion on (Wheel of Time, Avalon, Harry Potter), but I stand by what I've said about authors not getting in the way of their own stories. I find and lose and find again these epic fantasies, and I intend to do so so long as I live. I hope you will too.

- Frank