Very frustrating, perhaps I'm getting old . . .

[biodroid]

Yip, I enjoyed grimdark when it popped up onto the scene with Joe Abercrombie but the constant hatred between characters was slowly irritating me. The last book in The Shattered Sea series was everyone basically trying to fight everyone else including the tortured violent wife that married the meek man, Thorn Bathu and the dude (I don't know his name). It was getting tedious. Harry Potter was good in the beginning but since watching all the re-runs of the movies lately I couldn't be bothered to finish the books.

 

[Toby Frost]

To be honest, I'm not much of a fan of grimdark either. Cheap cynicism is just that, and it only gets you so far. Where some early fantasy strikes me as a bit childish, with its prettified medieval settings and inevitable happy endings, the grimdark world view seems fundamentally adolescent to me: everyone is stupid and corrupt, nice guys never get the girl and everything sucks.

One of the big problems I have with fantasy, grim and otherwise, is that so often it plays off old stereotypes (usually from Tolkien filtered through D&D), whether it reproduces them or parodies them. There came a point towards the end of The First Law - which I think is a very well-written series - where it became clear that where Cliched Fantasy Story would turn left, it would turn right, and at that point it became quite predictable.

However, I see nothing wrong with trying to put a bit of seriousness and realism into fantasy (as opposed to endless rapes and disembowelings). Richard Morgan once said that Noir was different to grimdark, because it was about acknowledging the bad things and moral complexity and struggling to put them right. I'd be happy to read that.

 

[The Big Peat]

I have always been like this. I've always been picky and have given up on a huge number of books. Why shouldn't I? The point of reading is to enjoy doing so. If I'm not enjoying it and don't think I'm about to do so, why continue? I have to say this is an attitude that I took more or less entirely from one of David Eddings' books, where one of the characters says that if you don't like the game, change the rules or stop playing. Well, that's where I am with reading. Sometimes I try to stick with books more but it rarely ends in me enjoying it.

And while it's frustrating not being able to find a new book you love, it's not as frustrating as wading through something you don't like.

Tropes. As Parson says, I often see things that I've seen many times before. Even mocking or subverting tropes, as per The First Law, feels as if it's been "done" now.

I'm going to guess people said the same thing about Michael Moorcock too. Genre subversion is eternal.

 

[Toby Frost]

That sounds reasonable to me! The answer really boils down to "Life's too short". I know people who read only books that they consider "important" or "improving", and it always sounds like a chore. While "I don't like this and so it's bad" seems wrong to me, the reader is surely always entitled to say "This just isn't my sort of thing" and to stop. After all, above a fairly low level, all reading is reading for pleasure. It's just what you consider the most enjoyable that matters.

On the genre subversion thing, I remember something that Teresa said a while ago, to the effect that the idea that fantasy novels all involved a lad from a farm discovering that he was destined to save the world was very dated, so that books "subverting" it were subverting something that didn't exist anymore. I think the risk is that the genre ends up chasing its own tail, and doesn't go anywhere new.

 

[The Big Peat]

That sounds reasonable to me! The answer really boils down to "Life's too short". I know people who read only books that they consider "important" or "improving", and it always sounds like a chore. While "I don't like this and so it's bad" seems wrong to me, the reader is surely always entitled to say "This just isn't my sort of thing" and to stop. After all, above a fairly low level, all reading is reading for pleasure. It's just what you consider the most enjoyable that matters.

On the genre subversion thing, I remember something that Teresa said a while ago, to the effect that the idea that fantasy novels all involved a lad from a farm discovering that he was destined to save the world was very dated, so that books "subverting" it were subverting something that didn't exist anymore. I think the risk is that the genre ends up chasing its own tail, and doesn't go anywhere new.

Maybe there should be a topic on what we think are really the tropes of modern fantasy. I've seen a lot more cases of magic being inherently dangerous and a double edged sword than farmboys recently, that's for sure...

 

[HareBrain]

I've seen a lot more cases of magic being inherently dangerous and a double edged sword than farmboys recently, that's for sure...

Nope, I'd definitely go with farmboys being more inherently dangerous.

 

[tinkerdan]

Yes...

Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. What everyone seems to want these days are grimdark sh*t like ASoIaF and urban fantasy crap like Harry Potter. I'm just wondering what happened to the more lighthearted, magic-filled fantasy, or at least a break from reality and with some light of hope throughout. But it seems to me that those days are long gone, never to return.

Like that cheery Zelazny Amber series where the family with the 9 princes that are out to kill each other.
Or Philip Jose Farmer's disfunctional family in the tier world series.
Or TLOTR cheery cast of thousands.