Elves, Dwarves and Orcs Over Done?

For a recent and rather different take on orcs, try Jonathan French's THE GREY BASTARDS.

They are the protagonists and much more than bloodthirsty automatically-evil cannon fodder in the book.

One Goodreads reviewer nailed the description of the book:

"The Grey Bastards can be described as Lord of the Rings meet Sons of Anarchy."
 
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With the word Orc I think the problem is with the meaning of the name. I believe the Anglo-Saxon spelling was orcneas which meant ''monster' and the current spelling first appeared at some time in the 16th century with the same meaning but closer to ''ogre'. History and Tolkien tradition do not bode well for orcs.

Dwarves and Elves(Norse svartalfar) according to Germanic and Norse tales liked to take a trip on the dark side.

However if your story is good enough it will not matter what road you take with these races.
 
I agree that it helps if you try to reinvent them a little. I recently started working on my project again after 2 years of writers block and part of what helped me break it was the stereotypes. I have a group of elves who broke off from the others after a civil war, led by a power hungry evil *******. Also have an orc leader who was trained by humans as part of a type of social experiment. Basically he just wants the orcs to be able to travel the lands for trade and their own kingdom where everyone leaves them alone. In all honesty he is my favorite character in the book so far.
 
One thing that often stands out to me is how often humans are depicted as being so highly varied. Often having multiple groups of humans in the same setting. Whilst most fantasy races are often shown as being VERY singular not just in society, but as a species. Ergo you get Elves who are very pure elves all over the place and there's often only one group of elves. Whilst humans might have several different kingdoms and focuses. Where you do get different fantasy races of the same species its often right along the good/evil dividing line. So you get good elves and bad elves.

Indeed the ability to adapt and evolve, to be varied and almost to be the only creative race is a trait so often applied to humanity.
 
It's hard enough to make non-human races distinctive and internally consistent. Then introducing variants within that is a herculean task; it's not surprising few authors attempt it. Even harder is then adding layers of individuality within the variants.
 
Yet they manage for humans more than once. Sometimes I wonder if their striving for distinctiveness within a non-human race results in the creation of a race that is too mono-dimensional.
 
Overread said:
Yet they manage for humans more than once. Sometimes I wonder if their striving for distinctiveness within a non-human race results in the creation of a race that is too mono-dimensional.
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Indeed the OP title could be amended to 'Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and Humans over done'

How many times have we read tales containing barbarian hordes, desert nomads, dastardly pirates, decadent empires, religious despots, hardy mountain tribes, jungle dwelling primitives?

Yet, despite it being fantasy there has to be a grounding somewhere in myth or reality to give the reader a chance to keep up with what's going on. Either that or drown them with unnecessary info.

Edit: I'll give an example. The First Law world of Joe Abercrombie is nothing new. He has his northern barbarians, the civilised kingdom, the desert empire. All the old themes are there. Was I bored? Did I think damn this is old hat? No, because he's given us a damn good series of exciting stories and unforgettable characters.

That's the key.
 
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I can't see the title of this thread without thinking that it's some strange breakfast order. "Two helpings of elves, a dwarf and two orcs. I'll have the orcs over-done, please."
 
Toby Frost said:
I can't see the title of this thread without thinking that it's some strange breakfast order. "Two helpings of elves, a dwarf and two orcs. I'll have the orcs over-done, please."
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Sounds good, do they do fried Halfling?
 
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