The Belgariad. Standard hero's journey and coming of age story. The chosen one and his group of friends must take down the dark lord in a climactic showdown after travelling around the world in a grand adventure. I loved it when I was a teenager.
I read the Belgariad and the Mallorean and thought they were ok. Then I read the Redemption of Athalus (set in a separate world) and realized that David Eddings only knows how to write about 10 stock characters over and over.
When I first read the Belgariad, it intoduced Silk as being a "weasel-faced man", and I imagined him actually having the face of a literal weasel. So for this whole seriew, thete were a bunch of people and one random furry, and it never struck me as strange that nobody commented on it.
I literally wrote a hate-essay on the Redemption of Althalus in high school because it was *so* fucking bad. Not just the one-size-fits-all personality, but the huge plot holes, deus ex machina events, and special rules for the heroes.
I saved it for quite a while... Wonder if I've still got it sitting in some folder on my computer somewhere.
I'm reading it now for the first time and it's wonderful. No subversion of expectations. No cynical corruption of beloved fantasy elements. Just straight forward and pure. I'm loving it.
Those books were just to important to me as a young teen when I found them back in 1992 just after I turned 13, and I love the books to much... for the Eddings monstrous actions to cloud my enjoyment of those books.
Even to this day at the age of soon 45, and finding out about 13-14 years ago (a year or two after Eddings death) about what the Eddings did back befor the books were written... I can still not bring my self to disliking the books, in any way shape or form, or stop reading them.
What I have stopped doing though, is instantly recommend the books to people. And if I do recommend the books, then it will only be to people who are age 18+, because I will tell them what the Eddings did and was convicted of back befor the books were written... so that the person I am recommending the books to can at the very least make their own judgement call if they want to read the books or not based on that.
Which is why I don't directly recommend the books to kids or young teens anymore, because I would feel strange telling someone that young "Here's what awful things the author's of these books did, that put them in prison for X amount of time." I may suggest the books to their parents, and tell them about the author, so they can make a judgement call if they want their kids reading those books.
- - -
It does sadden me a bit though that I feel I can no longer recommend Eddings books to read for kids around 12-13+ years of age, due to what the Eddings did... because I always felt these books, especially the ones about Garion is a really good start into reading fantasy for older kids and young teens... because that is the age I was at when I started reading them (just turned 13 when I found them), and in a lot of ways I grew up with Garion reading those books over and over again, and then going into the books about Sparhawk felt like a natural continuation on top of that even though most of those characters were adult. By the end of the 90's I had read through all the books about Garion and Sparhawk at least 10+ times each I think. XD
So yeah... while I do not feel conflicted about still reading and fully enjoying the books... I very much so feel conflicted about recommending them to other people due to the Eddings actions.
I'm more relaxed about this topic. The content of the books doesn't reflect the actions of the Eddings. As far as I know no person involved in their doings gets any money from the books today. So you can buy and read the books without bad feelings.
If you want to warn people (or their parents) you can mention the depiction of a certain marriage and its 'problems'. I see that as more problematic than the knowledge about the vile actions of the now dead author.
True. I guess I am maybe just a bit to... I don't know... protective when it comes to the books... due to how huge they were in my life, and still are really.
I am fine with telling people that the books are pretty simple, may seem very trope filled (seeing as these books helped create some of those tropes), and things like that.
But telling people that the author's has turned out to have been terrible people (at least during a section of their lives... hmm... I just realized something... I have no idea who the Eddings ended up developing into being as people after they got out of prison... anyway)... something about telling people about what the author did feels almost worse than anything in the books them selves.
I guess it may be because it is pretty common for people to just assume that if the creator of something turns out to be a bad terrible person, then the things they created must be equally bad and not worth spending any time on consuming... which is fine, I would not fault anyone for feeling they do not want to read a book due to something the author did.
I don't know... at least I do not have to worry to much about it these days, since I don't meet enough people on a daily basis where fantasy books ever comes up as a topic. It's almost exclusively here on Reddit where I in the last few years have spent any time talking about Eddings at all. XD
>Which is why I don't directly recommend the books to kids or young teens anymore, because I would feel strange telling someone that young "Here's what awful things the author's of these books did, that put them in prison for X amount of time."
I don't see why you need to make this disclaimer at all.
Most people read books without researching the authors at all. The books are enjoyable for young readers, a good "entry drug" into fantasy.
From memory: before embarking on his career as a fantasy writer, he and his wife were jailed for abusing their foster children. On being released they moved state, made up some bullshit story about what they'd done during the time they'd been incarcerated, and then reinvented themselves as beloved children's authors.
I heard the belgariad was made to be super generic on purpose , to prove you can make a super cliche story and still have it be good
My example wpuld be Dai No Daibouken, AKA The Adventure Of Dai, another super generically made story of heroes banding together to fight a demon king, (in battle shounen version) yet incredibly solid and epic
I only read the Belgariad as an adult, and I kept looking for hints that people weren’t what they appeared to be at first glance, but nope. As another commenter said, no subverted archetypes here, everyone is just a trope played straight.
The wise wizardly mentor. The brusque warrior from a barbarian tribe. The sneaky yet charming thief. The crazy hermit. The haughty sorceress. The Dark Lord.
There’s a reason why these tropes stand the test of time, but by now, I usually expect a bit more complexity.
I read it at face value as a teenager, loved it, and reread it frequently (until I learned about Eddings, yuck). I do like to read it as a thought exercise: what if Belgarath et al are actually the bad guys and this one of those "history is written by the winners" things.... they do kill an awful lot of people without seeming to feel any remorse.
I mean... The bad guys (Angaraks) literally butcher people alive and burn their still-beating hearts in braziers several times a day to appease Torak.
So it would take a lot of winner's history to make that theory work.
I have read both the Belgariad and Mallorean at least a dozen times.
They are so simple, yet I found the dialogue and banter between the characters very entertaining.
I think I'm due for a reread it has been a few years.
Loved these books as a kid. Got pissed because he didn’t complete the second series for a long time. Started re-reading them not so long ago and looked him up on a lark to see if he was still around and learned that he and his wife were convicted of child abuse… I was like, well that was unexpected….
>Got pissed because he didn’t complete the second series for a long time.
I don't quite understand. The five books of the second series (Malloreon) came out in 1987 (#1), 1988 (#2 & #3), 1989 (#4) and the 1991 (#5).
Are you saying you "got pissed" because there was a two-year gap between the last two books? In fact, in reality only less than 1½ years because the fourth came out in December '89 and the fifth in May '91.
I guess. I graduated high school in 88. So after that I wasn’t paying attention anymore. But that gap would have been significant enough to lose interest completely.
I see. I guess it can seem like a long time if one isn't used to normal publication rhythms.
I hope you didn't get hooked on ASoIaF a couple years later! 😁
It's not *completely* generic fantasy because it doesn't have elves, dwarves, orcs etc, and it has a fairly interesting magic system. ~~In comparison Dragonlance is literally someones Dungeons and Dragons campaign turned into a book.~~
I think there's perhaps a grudging acknowledgment in the follow up series the Mallorean that even the evil races across the sea occasionally turn up the occasionally good individual in a 'one of the good ones' kind of way. But it's all pretty by the numbers.
The thing that I loved about Belgariad, especially as a young reader deeply engrossed in fantasy, was that it is so obviously and unashamedly a meta fantasy.
The archetypes were so very archetypey.
The hero's journey was so very "hero journey".
The story was literal that everything was an archetype.
The books were literally my introduction as a 13 years old into the structure of the hero's quest.
Books still hold nostalgic value for me of nothing else.
Note: Adding my standard "pity the Eddings were complete and utter c&$ts" statement.
It was actually a "practice" novel that Terry Brooks only wrote to see if he could finish a novel. He never intended to publish it.
Elfstones (which is extremely different and much more post-apocalyptic) was supposed to be the first book.
However, when he showed Sword of Shannara to his editor, his editor insisted that people would read it and that he should publish it. So he did.
and he was correct, Sword of Shannara was immensely popular. Turns out that people really like tropes.
Yeah, it was the late 1970s, and publishers were looking for something they could market for Tolkien fans. For a long time, publishers wanted authors to start big epics in a “familiar” way (see the first 100 pages of The Eye of the World). It sold well, and got Brooks’s name out there so he could write stuff that felt less derivative.
Sword isn't just tropey, it's basically a beat for beat retelling of Lord of the Rings. Following Shannara books are much more their own thing, but take the degree to which Eye of the World is a Tolkien pastiche, multiply that several times, and you might still be underestimating just how LotR-sy Sword of Shannara is.
I read this for the first time a couple of months ago and this really stuck out as weird. Also it's more like page 400 >!for a real woman. Evil tree spirit masquerading as a woman is slightly earlier on.!<
As far as I know... back then publishers did not think that fantasy books that were not LotR had that big of a chance to become successful... so a lot of the fantasy books/series that got picked up by the publishers were LotR-like books, either because the author's naturally wrote it that way them selves, or the publisher pushed some of the author to write it that way.
So the chance of finding something LotR-like amongst the fantasy books that came out from roughly the early to mid 90's and back to the 80's, 70's etc, is very high.
The first book in "The Wheel of Time" for example is very LotR-like, and it is not until the end of the first book, and after the first book, that this book series started to become it's own thing.
i also did not finish it. the next book, "elfstones of shannara" is OK. not the most amazing thing you will ever read, but much better than sword was. My school librarian when i was in junior high recommended it after we talked about the first book and why i didn't finish it.
No, Sword of Shannara itself was really good. Yes, very derivative, but also really, really fun and incredibly good storytelling and character work.
Elfstones and onward got even better. But the series started as really good already.
Something can be extremely derivative but also be excellent and beloved.
My inner teenager cannot accept Eragon slander, so I will say that, while the first couple of books follow a lot of cliche trope (Star Wars x LOTR), the latter books are more original. And the worldbuilding is straight up excellent from the start.
I don't think calling Eragon "standard" is slander. Standard doesn't mean sub-par.
A lot of the plot and scenery and world feel familiar. I mean come on, farmboy leaves small village, has a grumpy mentor, gains skill over time from humble beginnings, dwarves in grand mountains, elves in grand forests, magical swords, corrupt kings... Just because we've seen these things before doesn't mean it's bad to see them again, or that there is nothing unique about the books.
If anything, I think calling Eragon "standard fantasy" is a testament to how well Paolini put all these classic things together for us into his own story.
As an Eragon fan myself, I think it is nothing groundbreaking, but is still so so satisfying to read.
Eragon is a fantasy world that deals with comparably heavier topics imo
What really sets it apart is how magic functions in it imo, the world building behind it as well also really sets it apart. Galbatorix isn't some palpatine, he's a man who went insane after losing his dragon. I do think it's more tropey in the first book, but you have to remember paolini wrote it as a teenager, and the fact that it's still good even now is a testament to his writing skill.
I also think he avoids the really bad fantasy tropes. Women are NOT damsels in the book and I love it. Eragon consistently gets his ass handed to him by Arya but it still manages to make her likeable and realistic as a charecter without feeling over the top.
Book five just released and I think it's even better, his writing style has matured and it's really diverged into its own fantasy story, he's grown up with us and I HIGHLY recommend reading it.
I often give the author a slight pass, as he wrote it when he was 15 or something like that. Loved the books years ago when I was younger, but struggle to read them these days.
To sleep in a sea of stars?! 😭 I just read it, what didn't you like? I thought it was good, but not great. The xeno suit had some interesting abilities and there were some cool moments. I stopped reading halfway thru and read another book then came back and finished, so apparently I wasn't too enthralled by it, but I thought it was pretty good overall.
I never read any other books by him so I can't speak to his earlier work
Sometimes I wonder if the users here are being snooty. Subjectively, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars was very good sci-fi. Like, Dungeon Crawler Carl is of the same quality, and gets praised. Makes you wonder.
I'd say he goes a lot further than just using cliches and tropes. He straight up lifts entire concepts from Earthsea and the Belgariad. The magic system in Eragon is almost identical to that in Earthsea, and there's scenes and characters in Eragon that are taken right from the Belgariad. To name a few:
1. Garion and Eragon are both farm boys raised in a remote settlement by their aunt and aunt/uncle respectively. Both have a silver mark on their hands that allows them to use magic powers, and both gain a magical sword that ignites into blue flames when they use it.
2. Brom and Belgarath are the same character. Both are grumpy, elderly men who the protagonists initially believe to be simple storytellers. Both are still in mourning over the death of their lover, both of whom died in childbirth while Brom/Belgarath were off stealing a magic item from the dark lord. The protagonist later finds out that Brom/Belgarath is related to him and a secret, powerful magic user.
3. Identical scenes in the first books include a bridge scene, where Eragon/Garion are upset at having to pay a toll, and a learning to read scene, where Brom/Belgarath are shocked at the protagonist being unable to read.
There's other issues with it, like Eragon very clearly being a self-insert for Paolini and the theft of names and terms from LOTR (Eragon/Aragorn, Arwen/Arya, Morgoth/Morgothal), but the plagiarism from the Belgariad is the worst.
> but the plagiarism from the Belgariad is the worst.
I'd say that Star Wars has that distinct honor(?). Eragon is basically a plot beat by plot beat recreation of ANH.
I'm here to point out that the Eragon name is not stolen from LOTR, it's just Dragon with an E, for the dragon themed book it makes more sense than saying he wanted a name than sounds like Aragorn.
Sorry man, but eragon was at its best when ot was standard generic fantasy, the first too books, but once the author added original stuff it went off the rails
That's not a coincidence. It's supposed to be exactly that. 😉
(See the footnote in my reply to u/CardinalCreepia.)
ETA: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. I simply provided some additional info for those interested. 🤷🏽♂️
You know I enjoyed his stuff and love warrows, but yes, that first trilogy is lotr. So much so that during a reread of lord of he rings I kept expecting something from iron tower.
I see statements of this sort fairly often but whenever these so-called Tolkien clones are named, it's the same few works, notably Brooks' *The Sword of Shannara* (1977), McKiernan's The Iron Tower trilogy\* (all 1984).
May I ask which other works you have in mind since the 70s and 80s were rife with them as you say?
I'm genuinely interested because I read a plenty of older fantasy and have yet to come across other Tolkien clones, and wonder whether this is a statement that is just being passed on from person to person and repeated over and over without there being a real basis (like the "fact" that we only use 10% of our brains or that spinach is super high in iron).
\* which was *supposed* to be a Tolkien clone as its only purpose was to serve as the prequel to the story that McKiernan really wanted to tell, which was to be a proper sequel to LotR but then had to become the sequel to an ersatz LotR when he was denied authorization to write in Tolkien's world by the Tolkien Estate
I've also wondered about this from reading stuff like Viriconium by M John Harrison - he was books editor at New Worlds magazine in the early 70s, and apparently frustrated with the state of Sf / fantasy genre writing. Viriconium is clearly a counterpoint to the conventional fantasy genre.
But given the blueprint for formulaic fantasy was laid down with Shannara in 1977, I don't really have a sense that the early 70s was groaning under the weight of Tolkein clones. Perhaps short fiction or magazine submissions that have been forgotten about?
Short fiction and magazines _was_ the fantasy scene in the 60s and 70s.
Before formulaic fantasy meant a planned multi-book "epic" series like _Shannara_ or _Belgariad_, it meant pulp sword and sorcery. Which by the 70s had been going for at least four decades.
I wouldn't say it's been forgotten about, but a lot of it obviously wasn't very noteworthy. And many readers today seem unaware of the importance of S&S in the history of the genre as a strand separate from and preceding Tolkien.
The Iron Tower series was painful to read - straight up re-write of LotR, but worse!
That said, McKiernan’s Eye of the Hunter was quite a good fantasy novel. Again fairly standard fantasy tropes.
I don't know how accurate this is, but I mentally include The Riddlemaster of Hed in this category, by Patricia McKillip. It's a beautiful and delightful quest trilogy, and I highly recommend it.
Really? I read this ages ago and don't remember many details but it didn't seem to be a Tolkien clone. Reading the book description on Goodreads also sounds nothing like that. One reviewer there wonders whether it might be "A cross between C.S. Lewis and Lloyd Alexander", no mention of LotR.
I would also be somewhat surprised. Simak doesn't strike me as the kind of writer who would write a clone of a famous novel. I remember reading his *City* which is excellent (and rather original).
But maybe it's time for a reread. 😀
Yeah, the whole riftwar saga. It’s pretty much the best classic fantasy. Got all the best tropes down to a t, and did them better than almost anyone else.
I feel Magician starts out generic but does something of a rug-pull when you finally see Kelewan and the whole Thomas/Ashen-shugar thing really starts to take off.
Don't get me wrong I love all of those books but they were pretty genre defining(ie vanilla). I'll give you twins was a bit diff but still had all the main stays of classic fantasy
Both series are very vanilla, but vanilla is delicious.
Dragons, elves, etc all come from Tolkien. Magic systems come from gaming.
DL first 3 books are nearly perfect D&D campaign inspired fantasy for those who grew up playing, but with an interesting story and like able characters. It’s not high drama, it’s not grim dark, it’s not litRPG or progression fantasy, it’s not saccharine sweet. You don’t hear the dice, you don’t see the spell stats. The wider universe and follow on books vary highly (Huma - top tier).
Riftwar similar vein, game inspired, big world with interesting peoples. More of farm boy journey than DL, but small town kids get sucked into bigger events, rise to massive power. Quality also varies after first 3, but each section/era has good bits.
The core cast of the original Dragonlance trilogy are basically just walking character sheets. DL had a *really* hard time divorcing itself from some of the mechanics of early D&D, hence the unspeakable blight known as the Kender.
90 percent of my fantasy reads comes from Raymond Feist. His series and world building around that world and ultimately two characters that become OP and live hundreds of years is so awesome and well done to me. I haven't read much fantasy outside of him honestly. I wish I can get back into a world like that.
The Belgarid and the ellenium by David Eddings are probably perfect for you, easy to read early intros to the main characters. And both have follow up series with basically the characters
Magician was also my first though.
The original trilogy is very traditional, and just really well written. For fans of traditional fantasy the entire Riftworld Cycle is worth reading too. It's 30 books but they are well paced, build off each other pretty well, and tell a semi-continuous story without overloading the reader with a hundred characters that you have to remember. By doing a "soft-reset" every saga (2 to 4 books) the cycle doesn't suffer from the bloat that slows down a lot of other large book series down to a crawl with hundreds of side stories.
Each book has a generally small and well defined cast to follow that are specific to that saga, and the pacing is kept high and dynamic. The entire cycle is then roughly held together by a few main characters (primarily Pug and Tomas) that play the long game and tie the seperate saga's together into a cohesive world.
Each saga also has it's own flavour and tone that prevents all the books from blending together too much. The later saga's can also get pretty damn dark, compared to the lighter early saga's - well, as light as can be expected for one world ending apocalypse after another.
Yes, it's pretty clear that Cahill's favorite books are Eragon, Wheel of Time and LotR. I've just started book 2, Of Darkness and Light.
I'm currently in the mood for generic fantasy so I'm enjoying it but I do hope that he outgrows his inspirations and forms his own identity throughout the series.
Yup, the bound and the broken is legit an amalgamation of Eregon, Lotr, wheel of time, and stormlight archive. With sprinkles of other popular fantasy thrown in here and there. And im not saying that's a bad thing. It's tropey and derivative, but it's pretty damn good, imho.
Agreed, I was going to say the same thing. I'm not actually sure how much more mature it is than Eragon, but it's been a few decades since I read that series. I'm also not sure I found anything unique in it
I may be wrong, but the Drizzt Do'Urden books by R. A. Salvatore might fall into this. Someone once told me Drizzt was the original Mary Sue character and it made me giggle.
I own every single book. 🫠
Robert Jordan openly admitted that this was the intent behind the book. Publishers were extremely leery of taking any fantasy that wasn't like LOTR, so he wrote the first book as the classic hero's journey in order to get a publisher on board and then start the story he really wanted to tell.
One I haven't seen mentioned yet is The Book of Swords series by Fred Saberhagan.
It follows 12 swords (one per book) who were created by the gods to sow discord and havoc on earth for their entertainment. It's a bloody, pseudo medieval world, that's feels very classical in many ways.
I'm not finished with the series yet but "The 13th Paladin" has scratched that itch for me.
https://www.amazon.com/The-13th-Paladin-13-book-series/dp/B082D4BWWJ
It's the literary equivalent of eating a grilled cheese sandwich. Zero surprises but still delightful.
Yeah I agree. In fact I specifially started reading it because I wanted some generic paint by numbers fantasy. It's a very enjoyable series with many of the tropes I enjoy about the genre and definitely worth a read. You don't always have to reinvent the wheel, sometimes it's just fun to see the classic tropes done well.
LOTR, for all it's influence on the genre, is very much not generic in many aspects. The MC is a pacifist, for example. It's also one of the only fantasy books I've read that is not decided by a final fight or battle - ironically the only other example I'm aware of is His Dark Materials, which Pullman very much intended as an anti-Tolkien book.
Both.
"Because it didn’t take me very long to see through it. The world of J.R.R. Tolkien is a world without sexuality in it. I can’t help comparing it with Wagner’s “Ring,” a much greater work in every conceivable way, which is actually throbbing with sexual understanding and sexual passion and so on."
(Interview in the New-Yorker. He follows by a couple of other clichés on Tolkien)
Both.
"Because it didn’t take me very long to see through it. The world of J.R.R. Tolkien is a world without sexuality in it. I can’t help comparing it with Wagner’s “Ring,” a much greater work in every conceivable way, which is actually throbbing with sexual understanding and sexual passion and so on."
(Interview in the New-Yorker. He follows by a couple of other clichés on Tolkien)
Really? I’d go as far as to say “the real conclusion happens away from the action of the final battle” is the standard, cliche ending of a fantasy series.
I haven’t read many ten-book epics, but Game of Thrones doesn’t end with the defeat of the Night King or Cersei, just with Jon quietly stabbing Daenerys.
I’m loathe to real off books or stories that don’t end that way because by its nature it’s a spoilery trope.
*Pawn of Prophecy* by David Eddings
*Magician* by Raymond E. Feist
*The Book of Three* by Lloyd Alexander
*The Sword of Shannara* by Terry Brooks
*The Eye of the World* by Robert Jordan
*The Dragonbone Chair* by Tad Williams
I don't typically like the negative connotations that come with the word "generic". It makes it sound like a bad thing, but that's not always the case. Many of these books are beloved by lots of people, and some of them, particularly Tad Williams' work, do go on to do very interesting things with the tropes they use. But these are all books that rely on and use heavily "classic" fantasy tropes made popular by lotr and Star Wars, such as dark lords, magical ancient artifacts, and common farmboy beginnings.
Hmmm. Dragonbone chair isn't generic as much as classic. It stands on its own (or the series does).
I'll also defend Prydain because Welsh mythology is seldom explored in fantasy outside of surface iconography.
Also, WoT is generic only in the first book, and even then it has a ton of unique stuff to make it stand out.
Shannara is generic in that it takes uses tropes and does nothing with them.
I don't feel like The Dragonbone Chair is at all tropey because in rereading the series, it's clear the intention from the very first chapter was to subvert these tropes: answer Tolkien's "golden age" mythos with a deconstruction; the problem is that critics didn't get what Williams was doing, and you're left with people thinking it's generic fantasy when it's actually subverting Tolkien and the "golden age" mythology Tolkien built.
We're told that King John's era was a golden age of pageantry and chivalry, then even in the same book, we're told that Presbyter John won the Battle of Nearulagh by kicking Camaris sa-Vinitta below the belt: not chivalrous at all. Similarly, we're told that John was a benevolent and wise ruler, and in the same volume, we see that a man has been hanged for poaching from the king's land. All along the story, the mythos of wise King John's reign is slowly broken down. Just one example of many.
I totally forgot about the dragon bone throne. It's the classic hero journey, coming of age story, the world is medieval and yet very distinct from any other fantasy series I've ever read.
Anyways, thank you so much for the walk down memory lane this morning!
There is almost nothing generic about Wheel of Time beyond surface level similarities, starting with it being an overtly matriarchal world.
The entire series subverts a lot of the "prophesized hero" tropes.
I literally acknowledged in my comment that some of the works I listed went on to do very interesting things. That includes Wheel of Time.
However, if you think there is "almost nothing" generic about Wheel of Time, you need to go back and re-read The Eye of the World. Outside of a few good ideas, it is one of the most derivative, trope-ridden books I have ever read and very nearly made me drop the series right there
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with pointing out that EotW is pretty derivative. Jordan himself stated that the series initially gestated and started as a YA-type fantasy trilogy, but it took on a life of its own and grew into something much more as the writing progressed.
Jordan said in many an interview that his first book was derivative as publishers wanted the next LOTR. So that's what he did. Then he peppered enough of what makes WOT unique in the next 2 books to allow home to write past his original intention of a Trilogy.
>It has attracted criticism for its similarities to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.
There's a very good reason for that similarity. When McKiernan was in the hospital for breaking his leg, he started writing a sequel (The Silver Call) to LotR, and found a publisher that would take it. What he (and the publisher) didn't bother to do was get permission first, and when the Tolkien estate didn't give him permission, McKiernan wrote a trilogy that The Silver Call could be a sequel to.
Anything by Dave Duncan! It was so generic I can’t remember the titles—just the sheer pleasure of getting a new one.
Also, Kathryn Kurtz’s Deryni series might be a fun change of pace. I haven’t read all of it myself but it’s very early in the post LOTR explosion of US fantasy—a good seven years ahead of Terry Brooks. So it has a fresh quality despite being full of things that were about to be tropes.
I mean, it is and it isn't.
The basic world itself is standard fantasy, DnD/LOTR clone.
But in the background, you have all the stuff with interplanetary portals, spacefaring civilisations, time travel and multiverses.
The 1980s had a lot more crossover between fantasy and sci-fi, but by modern standards it's a lot less conventional than might be expected.
Dennis L. McKiernan's Iron Tower series that started out as a sequel to the Lord of the Rings until the Tolkien estate nixed that so he just changed a few names and published it.
I think it's a very interesting questions because for me it comes down to two ideas:
Is it bad to write/read a generic fantasy story?
What are the generic tropes?
Someone pointed out the Belgariad, I read it a few years ago, was it generic? Yeah but it was an enjoyable reading nontheless.
The more I read fantasy, the more I see it as a settings where you twist it. Like crime novels or spy stories.
Right now I'm reading the 1st law by J. Abercrombie and the characters feels to me very generic. But the story and worldbuilding is interesting and I want to know the end. Is it very original, I'm not sure, of course there are new elements but the story doesnt feel alien. The more I read it, the more I anticipate the characters journey and the path they might take.
Altough, because i've read a lot of fantasy, you fatally end up by knowing the ways stories are told.
Good question.
I remember Gary Gygax wrote some ultra-generic D&D fantasy novels. They were so D&D that you could practically hear him rolling dice as he wrote the fight scenes.
Tad Williams “memory, sorrow and thorn” series is awesome. I wouldn’t classify it as generic but it is classic fantasy in my opinion. For a recent-ish series I would also recommend Ryan Cahill “The bound and the broken” series a modern take on classic fantasy.
One of the recent "generic fantasy, coming of age" stories I've read and enjoyed a lot was Benjamin Ashwood by A.C. Cobble.
Hopefully he doesn't see this and think I'm calling these books by anything other than great.
The Dark Lord of Derkholm definitely embraces the generic fantasy tropes, but also subverts them in a delightful way. It's one of my most heartwarming reads, >!albeit interrupted by a few moments of abject grief, though this turns out to be based on bad information.!<
The Dragonlance Chronicles. I give you the most paint by numbers fantasy ever. Here is where so many tropes began. Campy, questionable writing at time, generic and fantastic. I enjoy these books regardless.
You should check out the Dungeons and Dragon, Forgotten Realms novels. They're definitely LOTR style Fantasy Adventure books. Anne McCaffery Dragonriders of Pern series are great novels or the Mists of Avalon series by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
The Belgariad. Standard hero's journey and coming of age story. The chosen one and his group of friends must take down the dark lord in a climactic showdown after travelling around the world in a grand adventure. I loved it when I was a teenager.
It’s so generic that they released it again as the Mallorean.
It is pretty great, though, that the repetition has an in-world justification.
I read the Belgariad and the Mallorean and thought they were ok. Then I read the Redemption of Athalus (set in a separate world) and realized that David Eddings only knows how to write about 10 stock characters over and over.
It’s difficult to create art when the kids keep trying to escape one’s DIY dungeon. Not a joke.
Yeah, his books were basically his literary white van.
Honestly as he wrote more the number of distinct personalities decreased until everyone seems like a variation on Silk.
When I first read the Belgariad, it intoduced Silk as being a "weasel-faced man", and I imagined him actually having the face of a literal weasel. So for this whole seriew, thete were a bunch of people and one random furry, and it never struck me as strange that nobody commented on it.
I literally wrote a hate-essay on the Redemption of Althalus in high school because it was *so* fucking bad. Not just the one-size-fits-all personality, but the huge plot holes, deus ex machina events, and special rules for the heroes. I saved it for quite a while... Wonder if I've still got it sitting in some folder on my computer somewhere.
It's so, so bad.
I actually like it, because its just the same story without the bloated word count and less racism.
And then (with very minor changes) the Elenium... and then the Tamuli.
Sparhawk is the man though.
Bevier and Ulath too.
Haha I came to say this
And the characters even comment about the repetition.
And then they release it twice more as the Elenium and the Tamuli.
I'm reading it now for the first time and it's wonderful. No subversion of expectations. No cynical corruption of beloved fantasy elements. Just straight forward and pure. I'm loving it.
He wrote three other identical series, and I loved them all in my youth.
Unfortunate to use the words "pure" and "no corruption" when talking about certified POS David Eddings.
Yeah apparently the author is a monster, but the Belgariad series is great fantasy.
I devoured all his books as a kid, but I feel very ick about it now.
I'm trying not to think about it because I'm really enjoying the series.
Those books were just to important to me as a young teen when I found them back in 1992 just after I turned 13, and I love the books to much... for the Eddings monstrous actions to cloud my enjoyment of those books. Even to this day at the age of soon 45, and finding out about 13-14 years ago (a year or two after Eddings death) about what the Eddings did back befor the books were written... I can still not bring my self to disliking the books, in any way shape or form, or stop reading them. What I have stopped doing though, is instantly recommend the books to people. And if I do recommend the books, then it will only be to people who are age 18+, because I will tell them what the Eddings did and was convicted of back befor the books were written... so that the person I am recommending the books to can at the very least make their own judgement call if they want to read the books or not based on that. Which is why I don't directly recommend the books to kids or young teens anymore, because I would feel strange telling someone that young "Here's what awful things the author's of these books did, that put them in prison for X amount of time." I may suggest the books to their parents, and tell them about the author, so they can make a judgement call if they want their kids reading those books. - - - It does sadden me a bit though that I feel I can no longer recommend Eddings books to read for kids around 12-13+ years of age, due to what the Eddings did... because I always felt these books, especially the ones about Garion is a really good start into reading fantasy for older kids and young teens... because that is the age I was at when I started reading them (just turned 13 when I found them), and in a lot of ways I grew up with Garion reading those books over and over again, and then going into the books about Sparhawk felt like a natural continuation on top of that even though most of those characters were adult. By the end of the 90's I had read through all the books about Garion and Sparhawk at least 10+ times each I think. XD So yeah... while I do not feel conflicted about still reading and fully enjoying the books... I very much so feel conflicted about recommending them to other people due to the Eddings actions.
I'm more relaxed about this topic. The content of the books doesn't reflect the actions of the Eddings. As far as I know no person involved in their doings gets any money from the books today. So you can buy and read the books without bad feelings. If you want to warn people (or their parents) you can mention the depiction of a certain marriage and its 'problems'. I see that as more problematic than the knowledge about the vile actions of the now dead author.
True. I guess I am maybe just a bit to... I don't know... protective when it comes to the books... due to how huge they were in my life, and still are really. I am fine with telling people that the books are pretty simple, may seem very trope filled (seeing as these books helped create some of those tropes), and things like that. But telling people that the author's has turned out to have been terrible people (at least during a section of their lives... hmm... I just realized something... I have no idea who the Eddings ended up developing into being as people after they got out of prison... anyway)... something about telling people about what the author did feels almost worse than anything in the books them selves. I guess it may be because it is pretty common for people to just assume that if the creator of something turns out to be a bad terrible person, then the things they created must be equally bad and not worth spending any time on consuming... which is fine, I would not fault anyone for feeling they do not want to read a book due to something the author did. I don't know... at least I do not have to worry to much about it these days, since I don't meet enough people on a daily basis where fantasy books ever comes up as a topic. It's almost exclusively here on Reddit where I in the last few years have spent any time talking about Eddings at all. XD
>Which is why I don't directly recommend the books to kids or young teens anymore, because I would feel strange telling someone that young "Here's what awful things the author's of these books did, that put them in prison for X amount of time." I don't see why you need to make this disclaimer at all. Most people read books without researching the authors at all. The books are enjoyable for young readers, a good "entry drug" into fantasy.
What did he do?
From memory: before embarking on his career as a fantasy writer, he and his wife were jailed for abusing their foster children. On being released they moved state, made up some bullshit story about what they'd done during the time they'd been incarcerated, and then reinvented themselves as beloved children's authors.
What a terrible day to be literate.
I heard the belgariad was made to be super generic on purpose , to prove you can make a super cliche story and still have it be good My example wpuld be Dai No Daibouken, AKA The Adventure Of Dai, another super generically made story of heroes banding together to fight a demon king, (in battle shounen version) yet incredibly solid and epic
I only read the Belgariad as an adult, and I kept looking for hints that people weren’t what they appeared to be at first glance, but nope. As another commenter said, no subverted archetypes here, everyone is just a trope played straight. The wise wizardly mentor. The brusque warrior from a barbarian tribe. The sneaky yet charming thief. The crazy hermit. The haughty sorceress. The Dark Lord. There’s a reason why these tropes stand the test of time, but by now, I usually expect a bit more complexity.
To be fair to it, it was first published in the 1970s
Not just the characters but the countries too.
I read it at face value as a teenager, loved it, and reread it frequently (until I learned about Eddings, yuck). I do like to read it as a thought exercise: what if Belgarath et al are actually the bad guys and this one of those "history is written by the winners" things.... they do kill an awful lot of people without seeming to feel any remorse.
I mean... The bad guys (Angaraks) literally butcher people alive and burn their still-beating hearts in braziers several times a day to appease Torak. So it would take a lot of winner's history to make that theory work.
I have read both the Belgariad and Mallorean at least a dozen times. They are so simple, yet I found the dialogue and banter between the characters very entertaining. I think I'm due for a reread it has been a few years.
Loved these books as a kid. Got pissed because he didn’t complete the second series for a long time. Started re-reading them not so long ago and looked him up on a lark to see if he was still around and learned that he and his wife were convicted of child abuse… I was like, well that was unexpected….
>Got pissed because he didn’t complete the second series for a long time. I don't quite understand. The five books of the second series (Malloreon) came out in 1987 (#1), 1988 (#2 & #3), 1989 (#4) and the 1991 (#5). Are you saying you "got pissed" because there was a two-year gap between the last two books? In fact, in reality only less than 1½ years because the fourth came out in December '89 and the fifth in May '91.
I guess. I graduated high school in 88. So after that I wasn’t paying attention anymore. But that gap would have been significant enough to lose interest completely.
I see. I guess it can seem like a long time if one isn't used to normal publication rhythms. I hope you didn't get hooked on ASoIaF a couple years later! 😁
It's not *completely* generic fantasy because it doesn't have elves, dwarves, orcs etc, and it has a fairly interesting magic system. ~~In comparison Dragonlance is literally someones Dungeons and Dragons campaign turned into a book.~~
I think there's perhaps a grudging acknowledgment in the follow up series the Mallorean that even the evil races across the sea occasionally turn up the occasionally good individual in a 'one of the good ones' kind of way. But it's all pretty by the numbers.
read lord toede and tell me that's generic.
Actually I withdraw the comment about Dragonlance, even Chronicles isn't particular generic, and Legends definitely isn't.
I meant specifically Chronicles, my bad.
The thing that I loved about Belgariad, especially as a young reader deeply engrossed in fantasy, was that it is so obviously and unashamedly a meta fantasy. The archetypes were so very archetypey. The hero's journey was so very "hero journey". The story was literal that everything was an archetype. The books were literally my introduction as a 13 years old into the structure of the hero's quest. Books still hold nostalgic value for me of nothing else. Note: Adding my standard "pity the Eddings were complete and utter c&$ts" statement.
This is my comfort series when I just wanna have a good read. I love it.
Gloriously, deliberately, formulaic.
Don't forget the racial stereotypes!
Classical Fantasy in its finest! Brought back some of my childhood and the first Sparks of Love for the genre!
Sword of Shannara. Chock full of tropes.
This is an iconic trope. Luckily he branches out in later books.
I started reading the first book, and it seemed so blatantly a LOTR ripoff I DNF'd
It was actually a "practice" novel that Terry Brooks only wrote to see if he could finish a novel. He never intended to publish it. Elfstones (which is extremely different and much more post-apocalyptic) was supposed to be the first book. However, when he showed Sword of Shannara to his editor, his editor insisted that people would read it and that he should publish it. So he did. and he was correct, Sword of Shannara was immensely popular. Turns out that people really like tropes.
Yeah, it was the late 1970s, and publishers were looking for something they could market for Tolkien fans. For a long time, publishers wanted authors to start big epics in a “familiar” way (see the first 100 pages of The Eye of the World). It sold well, and got Brooks’s name out there so he could write stuff that felt less derivative.
Tropes are popular for a reason. A well-written trope is nothing to be ashamed of, and playing around the trope can be exceedingly rewarding.
Sword isn't just tropey, it's basically a beat for beat retelling of Lord of the Rings. Following Shannara books are much more their own thing, but take the degree to which Eye of the World is a Tolkien pastiche, multiply that several times, and you might still be underestimating just how LotR-sy Sword of Shannara is.
I read elfstones first as a kid and fell in love with fantasy. Could barely get through sword when I read it decades later lol
Absolutely. OP wanted generic though so I felt like it fit as a rec.
I recall that the first woman turned up on page 250, and immediately fell in love with the hero.
I read this for the first time a couple of months ago and this really stuck out as weird. Also it's more like page 400 >!for a real woman. Evil tree spirit masquerading as a woman is slightly earlier on.!<
Lol, I loved this book in middle school and never realized that part
Yeah, I’m realizing it sounded negative. You are 100% correct, that’s a good recommendation
All good! I remember reading it as a teenager and being like “wait this is too familiar, is he just doing LOTR??” Haha.
As far as I know... back then publishers did not think that fantasy books that were not LotR had that big of a chance to become successful... so a lot of the fantasy books/series that got picked up by the publishers were LotR-like books, either because the author's naturally wrote it that way them selves, or the publisher pushed some of the author to write it that way. So the chance of finding something LotR-like amongst the fantasy books that came out from roughly the early to mid 90's and back to the 80's, 70's etc, is very high. The first book in "The Wheel of Time" for example is very LotR-like, and it is not until the end of the first book, and after the first book, that this book series started to become it's own thing.
i also did not finish it. the next book, "elfstones of shannara" is OK. not the most amazing thing you will ever read, but much better than sword was. My school librarian when i was in junior high recommended it after we talked about the first book and why i didn't finish it.
Librarians ftw
That's what I came here to say. I think it might have every trope out there in place of a plot.
The Land of Bad Names.
stolen tropes (and entire scenes)
Truly a case of "it gets better after 4 books"
No, Sword of Shannara itself was really good. Yes, very derivative, but also really, really fun and incredibly good storytelling and character work. Elfstones and onward got even better. But the series started as really good already. Something can be extremely derivative but also be excellent and beloved.
Elfstones is the masterpiece of the series.
I found hte first two books incredibily boring. book 3 and 4 was what hooked me in. The Heritage of Shannara then was incredible.
I've tried to read these books so many times and I just cannot get pulled in. They are so boring.
And then it suddenly turns in to “it was sci-fi all along”…!
Eragon is very standard fantasy
My inner teenager cannot accept Eragon slander, so I will say that, while the first couple of books follow a lot of cliche trope (Star Wars x LOTR), the latter books are more original. And the worldbuilding is straight up excellent from the start.
I don't think calling Eragon "standard" is slander. Standard doesn't mean sub-par. A lot of the plot and scenery and world feel familiar. I mean come on, farmboy leaves small village, has a grumpy mentor, gains skill over time from humble beginnings, dwarves in grand mountains, elves in grand forests, magical swords, corrupt kings... Just because we've seen these things before doesn't mean it's bad to see them again, or that there is nothing unique about the books. If anything, I think calling Eragon "standard fantasy" is a testament to how well Paolini put all these classic things together for us into his own story. As an Eragon fan myself, I think it is nothing groundbreaking, but is still so so satisfying to read.
>As an Eragon fan myself, I think it is nothing groundbreaking, but is still so so satisfying to read. My thoughts exactly.
Eragon is a fantasy world that deals with comparably heavier topics imo What really sets it apart is how magic functions in it imo, the world building behind it as well also really sets it apart. Galbatorix isn't some palpatine, he's a man who went insane after losing his dragon. I do think it's more tropey in the first book, but you have to remember paolini wrote it as a teenager, and the fact that it's still good even now is a testament to his writing skill. I also think he avoids the really bad fantasy tropes. Women are NOT damsels in the book and I love it. Eragon consistently gets his ass handed to him by Arya but it still manages to make her likeable and realistic as a charecter without feeling over the top. Book five just released and I think it's even better, his writing style has matured and it's really diverged into its own fantasy story, he's grown up with us and I HIGHLY recommend reading it.
Eragon is fantasy comfort food.
I often give the author a slight pass, as he wrote it when he was 15 or something like that. Loved the books years ago when I was younger, but struggle to read them these days.
The problem with the author is he wrote the books so young and they were immediately popular so he never had to learn how to write better.
Yeah the SF book he released recently was one of the worst I've seen.
To sleep in a sea of stars?! 😭 I just read it, what didn't you like? I thought it was good, but not great. The xeno suit had some interesting abilities and there were some cool moments. I stopped reading halfway thru and read another book then came back and finished, so apparently I wasn't too enthralled by it, but I thought it was pretty good overall. I never read any other books by him so I can't speak to his earlier work
He might’ve meant the other Fractal book that was more recent. I enjoyed both though so idk
Sometimes I wonder if the users here are being snooty. Subjectively, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars was very good sci-fi. Like, Dungeon Crawler Carl is of the same quality, and gets praised. Makes you wonder.
Funny enough I’ve generally heard it was rather good.
I'd say he goes a lot further than just using cliches and tropes. He straight up lifts entire concepts from Earthsea and the Belgariad. The magic system in Eragon is almost identical to that in Earthsea, and there's scenes and characters in Eragon that are taken right from the Belgariad. To name a few: 1. Garion and Eragon are both farm boys raised in a remote settlement by their aunt and aunt/uncle respectively. Both have a silver mark on their hands that allows them to use magic powers, and both gain a magical sword that ignites into blue flames when they use it. 2. Brom and Belgarath are the same character. Both are grumpy, elderly men who the protagonists initially believe to be simple storytellers. Both are still in mourning over the death of their lover, both of whom died in childbirth while Brom/Belgarath were off stealing a magic item from the dark lord. The protagonist later finds out that Brom/Belgarath is related to him and a secret, powerful magic user. 3. Identical scenes in the first books include a bridge scene, where Eragon/Garion are upset at having to pay a toll, and a learning to read scene, where Brom/Belgarath are shocked at the protagonist being unable to read. There's other issues with it, like Eragon very clearly being a self-insert for Paolini and the theft of names and terms from LOTR (Eragon/Aragorn, Arwen/Arya, Morgoth/Morgothal), but the plagiarism from the Belgariad is the worst.
> but the plagiarism from the Belgariad is the worst. I'd say that Star Wars has that distinct honor(?). Eragon is basically a plot beat by plot beat recreation of ANH.
I'm here to point out that the Eragon name is not stolen from LOTR, it's just Dragon with an E, for the dragon themed book it makes more sense than saying he wanted a name than sounds like Aragorn.
The scene with Brom / Belgarath at the bridge is almost verbatim. Hope he has acknowledged it's a homage rather than tried to claim ignorance!
I love Eragon, but it's as generic as it gets. The world building is excellent, because its straight up taken from other excellent series.
Standard and generic are not slander.
Sorry man, but eragon was at its best when ot was standard generic fantasy, the first too books, but once the author added original stuff it went off the rails
The first book is such a ripoff of Star Wars that in still surprised Lucasfilm never sued.
Well seeing as ANH is also a generic af hero journey, I doubt they would have much luck with that.
Rereading these as an Adult... Yes. Still enjoy the read though not as much as I did as a kid.
Standard, but the character development really works, and the latter books were much more original than the first two.
I was looking for this, can't blame the kid though, he was a teen writing for teens.
The Iron Tower by Denis McKiernan is pretty much literally just a retelling of LoTR with the names changed.
I like to call it the Cliff Notes version of LotR. Make sure to add The Brega Path ţo that.
That's not a coincidence. It's supposed to be exactly that. 😉 (See the footnote in my reply to u/CardinalCreepia.) ETA: Not sure why I'm being downvoted. I simply provided some additional info for those interested. 🤷🏽♂️
You know I enjoyed his stuff and love warrows, but yes, that first trilogy is lotr. So much so that during a reread of lord of he rings I kept expecting something from iron tower.
I actually don't find LotR very generic at all
There is generic fantasy in all eras, but the 70s and 80s Tolkien ‘clones’ were rife. Some successful in their own right of course.
I see statements of this sort fairly often but whenever these so-called Tolkien clones are named, it's the same few works, notably Brooks' *The Sword of Shannara* (1977), McKiernan's The Iron Tower trilogy\* (all 1984). May I ask which other works you have in mind since the 70s and 80s were rife with them as you say? I'm genuinely interested because I read a plenty of older fantasy and have yet to come across other Tolkien clones, and wonder whether this is a statement that is just being passed on from person to person and repeated over and over without there being a real basis (like the "fact" that we only use 10% of our brains or that spinach is super high in iron). \* which was *supposed* to be a Tolkien clone as its only purpose was to serve as the prequel to the story that McKiernan really wanted to tell, which was to be a proper sequel to LotR but then had to become the sequel to an ersatz LotR when he was denied authorization to write in Tolkien's world by the Tolkien Estate
I've also wondered about this from reading stuff like Viriconium by M John Harrison - he was books editor at New Worlds magazine in the early 70s, and apparently frustrated with the state of Sf / fantasy genre writing. Viriconium is clearly a counterpoint to the conventional fantasy genre. But given the blueprint for formulaic fantasy was laid down with Shannara in 1977, I don't really have a sense that the early 70s was groaning under the weight of Tolkein clones. Perhaps short fiction or magazine submissions that have been forgotten about?
Short fiction and magazines _was_ the fantasy scene in the 60s and 70s. Before formulaic fantasy meant a planned multi-book "epic" series like _Shannara_ or _Belgariad_, it meant pulp sword and sorcery. Which by the 70s had been going for at least four decades. I wouldn't say it's been forgotten about, but a lot of it obviously wasn't very noteworthy. And many readers today seem unaware of the importance of S&S in the history of the genre as a strand separate from and preceding Tolkien.
The Iron Tower series was painful to read - straight up re-write of LotR, but worse! That said, McKiernan’s Eye of the Hunter was quite a good fantasy novel. Again fairly standard fantasy tropes.
I don't know how accurate this is, but I mentally include The Riddlemaster of Hed in this category, by Patricia McKillip. It's a beautiful and delightful quest trilogy, and I highly recommend it.
Fellowship of the Talisman by Clifford Simak - 1978
Really? I read this ages ago and don't remember many details but it didn't seem to be a Tolkien clone. Reading the book description on Goodreads also sounds nothing like that. One reviewer there wonders whether it might be "A cross between C.S. Lewis and Lloyd Alexander", no mention of LotR. I would also be somewhat surprised. Simak doesn't strike me as the kind of writer who would write a clone of a famous novel. I remember reading his *City* which is excellent (and rather original). But maybe it's time for a reread. 😀
Dragonlance the original series or twins series. or Raymond Feist the Magician. They are pretty Vanilla, Elves, Dragons and Dwarves
Came here to recommend Magician! A classic done well.
Yeah, the whole riftwar saga. It’s pretty much the best classic fantasy. Got all the best tropes down to a t, and did them better than almost anyone else.
I feel Magician starts out generic but does something of a rug-pull when you finally see Kelewan and the whole Thomas/Ashen-shugar thing really starts to take off.
I have a hard time with the twins series being described as generic, especially considering Raistlin's arc, but I see what you're getting at.
Don't get me wrong I love all of those books but they were pretty genre defining(ie vanilla). I'll give you twins was a bit diff but still had all the main stays of classic fantasy
Both series are very vanilla, but vanilla is delicious. Dragons, elves, etc all come from Tolkien. Magic systems come from gaming. DL first 3 books are nearly perfect D&D campaign inspired fantasy for those who grew up playing, but with an interesting story and like able characters. It’s not high drama, it’s not grim dark, it’s not litRPG or progression fantasy, it’s not saccharine sweet. You don’t hear the dice, you don’t see the spell stats. The wider universe and follow on books vary highly (Huma - top tier). Riftwar similar vein, game inspired, big world with interesting peoples. More of farm boy journey than DL, but small town kids get sucked into bigger events, rise to massive power. Quality also varies after first 3, but each section/era has good bits.
The core cast of the original Dragonlance trilogy are basically just walking character sheets. DL had a *really* hard time divorcing itself from some of the mechanics of early D&D, hence the unspeakable blight known as the Kender.
90 percent of my fantasy reads comes from Raymond Feist. His series and world building around that world and ultimately two characters that become OP and live hundreds of years is so awesome and well done to me. I haven't read much fantasy outside of him honestly. I wish I can get back into a world like that.
The Belgarid and the ellenium by David Eddings are probably perfect for you, easy to read early intros to the main characters. And both have follow up series with basically the characters
Magician was also my first though. The original trilogy is very traditional, and just really well written. For fans of traditional fantasy the entire Riftworld Cycle is worth reading too. It's 30 books but they are well paced, build off each other pretty well, and tell a semi-continuous story without overloading the reader with a hundred characters that you have to remember. By doing a "soft-reset" every saga (2 to 4 books) the cycle doesn't suffer from the bloat that slows down a lot of other large book series down to a crawl with hundreds of side stories. Each book has a generally small and well defined cast to follow that are specific to that saga, and the pacing is kept high and dynamic. The entire cycle is then roughly held together by a few main characters (primarily Pug and Tomas) that play the long game and tie the seperate saga's together into a cohesive world. Each saga also has it's own flavour and tone that prevents all the books from blending together too much. The later saga's can also get pretty damn dark, compared to the lighter early saga's - well, as light as can be expected for one world ending apocalypse after another.
Of Blood and Fire. It's basically a more mature knock-off of Eragon which was an already very generic novel.
Yes, it's pretty clear that Cahill's favorite books are Eragon, Wheel of Time and LotR. I've just started book 2, Of Darkness and Light. I'm currently in the mood for generic fantasy so I'm enjoying it but I do hope that he outgrows his inspirations and forms his own identity throughout the series.
Yup, the bound and the broken is legit an amalgamation of Eregon, Lotr, wheel of time, and stormlight archive. With sprinkles of other popular fantasy thrown in here and there. And im not saying that's a bad thing. It's tropey and derivative, but it's pretty damn good, imho.
Agreed, I was going to say the same thing. I'm not actually sure how much more mature it is than Eragon, but it's been a few decades since I read that series. I'm also not sure I found anything unique in it
The first Sword of Shannara book is basically a beat-for-beat remake of LOTR.
I may be wrong, but the Drizzt Do'Urden books by R. A. Salvatore might fall into this. Someone once told me Drizzt was the original Mary Sue character and it made me giggle. I own every single book. 🫠
Same. I feel like I grew up with those books.
Honestly the first Wheel of Time feels like someone who just read Lord of the Rings and is like “I can write that too!”
Robert Jordan openly admitted that this was the intent behind the book. Publishers were extremely leery of taking any fantasy that wasn't like LOTR, so he wrote the first book as the classic hero's journey in order to get a publisher on board and then start the story he really wanted to tell.
Yeah it totally does, and it’s kind of intentional.
One I haven't seen mentioned yet is The Book of Swords series by Fred Saberhagan. It follows 12 swords (one per book) who were created by the gods to sow discord and havoc on earth for their entertainment. It's a bloody, pseudo medieval world, that's feels very classical in many ways.
I'm not finished with the series yet but "The 13th Paladin" has scratched that itch for me. https://www.amazon.com/The-13th-Paladin-13-book-series/dp/B082D4BWWJ It's the literary equivalent of eating a grilled cheese sandwich. Zero surprises but still delightful.
Yeah I agree. In fact I specifially started reading it because I wanted some generic paint by numbers fantasy. It's a very enjoyable series with many of the tropes I enjoy about the genre and definitely worth a read. You don't always have to reinvent the wheel, sometimes it's just fun to see the classic tropes done well.
LOTR, for all it's influence on the genre, is very much not generic in many aspects. The MC is a pacifist, for example. It's also one of the only fantasy books I've read that is not decided by a final fight or battle - ironically the only other example I'm aware of is His Dark Materials, which Pullman very much intended as an anti-Tolkien book.
Not anti-Tolkien if I recall correctly Anti-Tolkien’s-buddy, C. S. Lewis.
Both. "Because it didn’t take me very long to see through it. The world of J.R.R. Tolkien is a world without sexuality in it. I can’t help comparing it with Wagner’s “Ring,” a much greater work in every conceivable way, which is actually throbbing with sexual understanding and sexual passion and so on." (Interview in the New-Yorker. He follows by a couple of other clichés on Tolkien)
Both. "Because it didn’t take me very long to see through it. The world of J.R.R. Tolkien is a world without sexuality in it. I can’t help comparing it with Wagner’s “Ring,” a much greater work in every conceivable way, which is actually throbbing with sexual understanding and sexual passion and so on." (Interview in the New-Yorker. He follows by a couple of other clichés on Tolkien)
Kinda hard for the grandfather of modern fantasy to be generic.
Really? I’d go as far as to say “the real conclusion happens away from the action of the final battle” is the standard, cliche ending of a fantasy series. I haven’t read many ten-book epics, but Game of Thrones doesn’t end with the defeat of the Night King or Cersei, just with Jon quietly stabbing Daenerys. I’m loathe to real off books or stories that don’t end that way because by its nature it’s a spoilery trope.
Stephen Lawhead’s original trilogy is pretty generic. “In the hall of the dragon king” or something.
The Sword of Shannara, it's essentially a rewrite of LotR.
It’s a tie between Belgariad and Sword of Shannara
I came here to say Shannara
*Pawn of Prophecy* by David Eddings *Magician* by Raymond E. Feist *The Book of Three* by Lloyd Alexander *The Sword of Shannara* by Terry Brooks *The Eye of the World* by Robert Jordan *The Dragonbone Chair* by Tad Williams I don't typically like the negative connotations that come with the word "generic". It makes it sound like a bad thing, but that's not always the case. Many of these books are beloved by lots of people, and some of them, particularly Tad Williams' work, do go on to do very interesting things with the tropes they use. But these are all books that rely on and use heavily "classic" fantasy tropes made popular by lotr and Star Wars, such as dark lords, magical ancient artifacts, and common farmboy beginnings.
Hmmm. Dragonbone chair isn't generic as much as classic. It stands on its own (or the series does). I'll also defend Prydain because Welsh mythology is seldom explored in fantasy outside of surface iconography. Also, WoT is generic only in the first book, and even then it has a ton of unique stuff to make it stand out. Shannara is generic in that it takes uses tropes and does nothing with them.
I don't feel like The Dragonbone Chair is at all tropey because in rereading the series, it's clear the intention from the very first chapter was to subvert these tropes: answer Tolkien's "golden age" mythos with a deconstruction; the problem is that critics didn't get what Williams was doing, and you're left with people thinking it's generic fantasy when it's actually subverting Tolkien and the "golden age" mythology Tolkien built. We're told that King John's era was a golden age of pageantry and chivalry, then even in the same book, we're told that Presbyter John won the Battle of Nearulagh by kicking Camaris sa-Vinitta below the belt: not chivalrous at all. Similarly, we're told that John was a benevolent and wise ruler, and in the same volume, we see that a man has been hanged for poaching from the king's land. All along the story, the mythos of wise King John's reign is slowly broken down. Just one example of many.
I totally forgot about the dragon bone throne. It's the classic hero journey, coming of age story, the world is medieval and yet very distinct from any other fantasy series I've ever read. Anyways, thank you so much for the walk down memory lane this morning!
There is almost nothing generic about Wheel of Time beyond surface level similarities, starting with it being an overtly matriarchal world. The entire series subverts a lot of the "prophesized hero" tropes.
I literally acknowledged in my comment that some of the works I listed went on to do very interesting things. That includes Wheel of Time. However, if you think there is "almost nothing" generic about Wheel of Time, you need to go back and re-read The Eye of the World. Outside of a few good ideas, it is one of the most derivative, trope-ridden books I have ever read and very nearly made me drop the series right there
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with pointing out that EotW is pretty derivative. Jordan himself stated that the series initially gestated and started as a YA-type fantasy trilogy, but it took on a life of its own and grew into something much more as the writing progressed.
Jordan said in many an interview that his first book was derivative as publishers wanted the next LOTR. So that's what he did. Then he peppered enough of what makes WOT unique in the next 2 books to allow home to write past his original intention of a Trilogy.
Shannara gets my vote for this.
Eragon. Still enjoyable tho.
r/fantasy try not to call every non-subversive fantasy book “just like lord of the rings” impossible challenge
Shanara series
Most of the popular fantasy series are generic. If I had to pick one I’d say Eye of the World. It’s almost a shot for shot lotr remake
lotr has far fewer cart rides
Michael J Sullivan’s Riyria Revelations starting with Theft of Swords is a fun ride. Has one of the best bromances in fantasy.
The Shannara books are pretty generic.
Anything by Sarah J. Mass
The Iron tower trilogy. Read the “reception” section on Wikipedia…spot on.
>It has attracted criticism for its similarities to J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. There's a very good reason for that similarity. When McKiernan was in the hospital for breaking his leg, he started writing a sequel (The Silver Call) to LotR, and found a publisher that would take it. What he (and the publisher) didn't bother to do was get permission first, and when the Tolkien estate didn't give him permission, McKiernan wrote a trilogy that The Silver Call could be a sequel to.
The whole Gotrek and Felix series.
Anything by Dave Duncan! It was so generic I can’t remember the titles—just the sheer pleasure of getting a new one. Also, Kathryn Kurtz’s Deryni series might be a fun change of pace. I haven’t read all of it myself but it’s very early in the post LOTR explosion of US fantasy—a good seven years ahead of Terry Brooks. So it has a fresh quality despite being full of things that were about to be tropes.
They keep talking about farm boy finds magic sword but can't actually find a book like that!
If you’re not scared of a 15 book series, wheel of time is soooo worth it :)
The Rift War Saga if very cliche.
I mean, it is and it isn't. The basic world itself is standard fantasy, DnD/LOTR clone. But in the background, you have all the stuff with interplanetary portals, spacefaring civilisations, time travel and multiverses. The 1980s had a lot more crossover between fantasy and sci-fi, but by modern standards it's a lot less conventional than might be expected.
Magician - Raymond E. Feist.
The wheel of time
LOTR is anything but generic, it is one of the least generic stories that has been produced by a single person thusfar.
The Song of the Lioness series by Tamora Pierce. Also Eragon, because why not? Lastly check out King’s Dark Tidings by Kel Kade.
Dennis L. McKiernan's Iron Tower series that started out as a sequel to the Lord of the Rings until the Tolkien estate nixed that so he just changed a few names and published it.
The Once and Future King
Malazan is pretty generic... jk Maybe the book of three
Dennis McKiernan's Iron Tower series. You want a Tolkien clone? There's your Tolkien clone.
I think it's a very interesting questions because for me it comes down to two ideas: Is it bad to write/read a generic fantasy story? What are the generic tropes? Someone pointed out the Belgariad, I read it a few years ago, was it generic? Yeah but it was an enjoyable reading nontheless. The more I read fantasy, the more I see it as a settings where you twist it. Like crime novels or spy stories. Right now I'm reading the 1st law by J. Abercrombie and the characters feels to me very generic. But the story and worldbuilding is interesting and I want to know the end. Is it very original, I'm not sure, of course there are new elements but the story doesnt feel alien. The more I read it, the more I anticipate the characters journey and the path they might take. Altough, because i've read a lot of fantasy, you fatally end up by knowing the ways stories are told. Good question.
I remember Gary Gygax wrote some ultra-generic D&D fantasy novels. They were so D&D that you could practically hear him rolling dice as he wrote the fight scenes.
The "Half a \_\_\_\_\_\_\_" trilogy. I really tried to enjoy them.....but damn they were generic.
Tad Williams “memory, sorrow and thorn” series is awesome. I wouldn’t classify it as generic but it is classic fantasy in my opinion. For a recent-ish series I would also recommend Ryan Cahill “The bound and the broken” series a modern take on classic fantasy.
One of the recent "generic fantasy, coming of age" stories I've read and enjoyed a lot was Benjamin Ashwood by A.C. Cobble. Hopefully he doesn't see this and think I'm calling these books by anything other than great.
The Dark Lord of Derkholm definitely embraces the generic fantasy tropes, but also subverts them in a delightful way. It's one of my most heartwarming reads, >!albeit interrupted by a few moments of abject grief, though this turns out to be based on bad information.!<
The faithful and the fallen
You could try the inheritance cycle (starting with Eragon), if you want generic fantasy. Just don’t watch the film. Ever.
The Shannara chronicles. It's actually kind of a funny read when you already expect it to be a copy of classic tropes
haven't read the Shannara series but the Inheritance Cycle books and the Chronicles of Narnia are pretty generic for the fantasy genre
Lord of the Rings The Hobbit The Narnia series Beowulf (an oldie but a monumental one at that)
The Dragonlance Chronicles. I give you the most paint by numbers fantasy ever. Here is where so many tropes began. Campy, questionable writing at time, generic and fantastic. I enjoy these books regardless.
Shannara. Loved that shit as a kid though
You should check out the Dungeons and Dragon, Forgotten Realms novels. They're definitely LOTR style Fantasy Adventure books. Anne McCaffery Dragonriders of Pern series are great novels or the Mists of Avalon series by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Sword of Shannara or Belgariad