![]() ![]() Not that I was afraid to die, but maybe who you die with is important. Then along comes a grinning monster of a book like Christopher Buelhman’s The Blacktongue Thief. ![]() ![]() My relationship with High Fantasy has increasingly consisted of re-reading The Lord of the Rings once every couple of years and wishing it were less racist. I try, I sigh, perhaps I roll my eyes, and I set the book down and check to see if Bujold has published another Penric novella. But these days, I demand more artistry or depth than most of my youthful favorites provide. As a teen, I could grab any book that had “Forgotten Realms,” or “Dragonlance,” on the spine and be reliably transported. I spent most of my childhood in the crowded cupboard, but I only occasionally poke my head in it these days. Yet it’s been crammed with countless books, while many of the mansion’s largest chambers are all but empty. ![]() In the vast mansion of possible ways in which a story could strongly incorporate the supernatural, these traits occupy no more space than a kitchen cupboard. Quests that are explicitly described as quests. Humans existing alongside (and often in fierce competition with) intelligent non-humans, most commonly dwarves, elves, halflings, orcs and goblins. For all the endless arguments of what’s Sword and Sorcery and what’s High Fantasy, both genres tend to orbit around a weirdly specific set of traits.Ī setting more or less vaguely inspired by medieval or classical Europe. ![]()
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