Where Angels Fear To Tread . . . Or, My Top Five Fantasy Novel List

Not quite a novel, but I love it anyway

Lists are inherently exclusive.  The five books below represent what I think of as emblematic of the fantasy genre.  They're also the first books of series (since I can't in good conscience recommend some of the series as a whole.  But the first book is often outstanding.)  This list also happens to include my top five favorite fantasy books.  The rubric I used to determine this list is simple: Did I enjoy the book, and did I read it again?  A book that is fun the first time, and continues to be satisfying on a second reading is an outstanding read.  In genre fiction that is especially important since by definition fantasy fiction is also escapist.  So, if it draws you back in, it has the emotional and intellectual rigor to hold up under multiple readings.

You'll notice some books that are obviously missing, and I'm sure you'll disagree with me over why they haven't been included.  Your opinion is valid; this list is at best a value judgement on my own part, and not meant to reflect poorly on your opinions.

However, I still think Game of Thrones is just boring.

So here's the list!

5. The Dragonbone Chair -- Tad Williams.

The Dragonbone Chair might be the first major fantasy work that I ever read.  It was during the brief span when I was introduced the the genre, along with the Farseer Trilogy and the Wheel of Time.  Tad Williams is still a major voice in the genre and represents an older perspective on the fantastic.  His world is reminiscent of Tolkien -- he admits that he wrote the book as a specific response to Lord of the Rings.  But the world is uniquely his own and he thoroughly expands on themes which would eventually become tropes.

4. The Name of the Wind -- Patrick Rothfuss.

This is one of the newer authors in the fantasy tradition and though Rothfuss responds to what have become tired tropes, nevertheless remains true to the fantasy tradition in ways that other authors have not.  The protagonist is an orphan, seems destined by fate to be a hero, and is also tragically flawed.  The prose is delicious -- literary in a way that the rest simply are not.  Though the world feels vast and well imagined, that depth is also an illusion and Rothfuss's writerly chops are strained in the sequel.  Nonetheless, this first book in the series is a delight to read.

3. Golden Compass -- Philip Pullman.

It's difficult to talk about this book without discussing the series as a whole, and for that reason I almost included His Dark Materials as a whole.  But the third book veers in a much more serious direction that is far more intellectual than Compass or the second book The Subtle Knife.  Both are delightful and far more intelligent than you might expect from young adult literature -- but that might be a misunderstanding of young adult literature in general.  Certainly, we should know from Rowling and the Harry Potter series that young adults literature can expand itself the vast realms of more adult fare.  Regardless, The Golden Compass is a warm adventure filled with fantastical elements which belie its young adult protagonist.

2. Eye of the World -- Robert Jordan.

This one was tough.  It vied for top billing and it almost got it, since I happen to be rereading it right now.  As far as journey epics go, this is perhaps the foremost in the field.  Fantasy novels tend to follow the formula that Tolkien laid out: Heroes who go for walks.  But that shouldn't surprise us too much since the first fantasy novel -- The Odyssey -- has journey in its title.  Eye of the World is really about a long walk, but it's done so masterfully that it never becomes onerous the way other walking-epics do (I'm looking at you, George).  And Robert Jordan does something else that none of the other epics can boast: a fully developed cosmology.

While The Mary Sue and other feminist blogs are busy caterwauling about the lack of female perspectives in fantasy, it seems like most authors are responding by checking off a list: feisty female protagonist?  Check.  Does she have a tattoo or wear skimpy clothes so we know she's feisty?  Check.  Jordan integrates strong female characters as part of the world itself.  There's a reason for it that feels natural and integral to the plot.  And while many have (rightfully) pointed out that he writes his female characters perspectives poorly, they cannot discount their flawless integration into the world.

Finally, the sense of history in his books is unparalleled by any other author.  Save your breath fans of Steven Erikson.  He ain't got nothing on Jordan.

1. Assassin's Apprentice -- Robin Hobb.

Ultimately, Assassin's Apprentice got top billing because of its unfailing ability to make me care about every single character.  What's more, the entire series is absolutely, hands-down worth reading.  And so is the sequel series The Tawny Man trilogy.  If it came down to it, a top ten list of my favorite fantasy books would be sixty percent Robin Hobb.  The Farseer trilogy is Shakespearean in scope, and her characters are by far the richest and most real of any series.  Fans of fantasy series like to compare magic systems (think any book by Brandon Sanderson), or worldbuilding (Jordan, Erikson, George R. R. Martin) but when it comes down to it, people respond viscerally to the emotional connections they make with the characters.  Nobody makes those connections better than Hobb.  Beautiful, heart-rending, tragic and heroic.  Go read this book.



So that's my list.  What do you think?  What would you have included, or excluded?  More importantly, what are your favorite books in the fantasy genre and why?  Let me know in the comments below.

Political Animals . . . Or, A House Divided

US Capitol

I've been spending some time recently grappling over the apparently schismatic divide in the Congress.  Bipartisanship seems dead and compromise has become the shibboleth of Tea Party and ultra-conservatives desperate to dismantle the Obama Administration.  It feels like a crisis, and in some ways it is.  But in others, it's just another example of how a party out of power curtails the power of the party currently holding the reigns of state. 

When the Republicans lost the White House and much of Congress in 1933, it inaugurated a 20-year rule by the Democrats which Republicans ardently resisted.  Senators like Robert Taft from Ohio made their bones challenging the New Deal.  In many ways, they were right to do so.  The New Deal introduced a level of government intrusion which was genuinely novel.  It was a break from American politics which still resonates.

FDR

Opposition to FDR dragged Republicans into positions which today seem ridiculous--even stupid.  Watching from our side of the Atlantic, Republicans opposed American involvement in the European war then burgeoning.  Germany had recently grown belligerent, and the rise of fascists states signaled an ideological shift away from the centuries long liberal, humanist project Western Europe had been undertaking.  To many observers, the real danger lay to the West as Japan invaded Manchuria and introduced levels of barbarity unknown to the modern world.  Famously, Taft warned that Germany would never be a threat.  Whether or not FDR understood the true danger of Nazi aggression is still debatable; regardless, he dragged the nation into war with a persistence that would bewilder people like John McCain today.

Senator Ted Harkin

So these sorts of schism aren't particular uncommon.  But when reports emerge from Washington that this level of tension hasn't been seen since the Civil War, it inspires wariness.  Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat announced that the dynamic in Congress today is "very dangerous" and reminds him of "the breakup of the Union before the Civil War."

From the National Journal 

On the Senate floor before 10 a.m. Friday, the senator gave a speech describing how American politics have reached the level at which “a small group of willful men and women who have a certain ideology”—read: the tea party and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas—have been able to take over the congressional budget debate in the last week. “Since they can’t get their way,” Harkin said, “they’re going to create this confusion and discourse and hope that the public will be so mixed up in who is to blame for this, that they’ll blame both sides.” [...]

This isn’t the first time the senator has spoken out about the spiraling budget and the fight over Obamacare. Harkin suggested Thursday that Cruz looked “foolish” for his “little tirade” that lasted from Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday morning. Harkin called out Cruz as being part of “the most extreme tea-party wing” of his party, and for his “ideology-driven obstructionism.”

Maybe this is just another bit of hyperbole, but it's struck me in the last few weeks that the dynamic of who votes blue versus who votes red has dramatically shifted in the United States.  And those shifts are largely along geographic lines.  Not so much North/South or even East/West but rather urban/rural.

Population Density

The population shift from farms to cities isn't a new observation.  According to the World Health Organization more people live in cities than on farms, and the trend is likely to continue, with 60% of the world living in cities by 2030.  The numbers in the United States are even higher, with 80% of the population in metropolitan areas.  With most reports on demographic growth in the United States focusing on the low population rate, relative high rate of immigration, and shifts in ethnic composition, they generally fail to analyze the shift in American populations from rural populations to concentrated urban populations.

This has dangerous implications in politics since is presupposes that regardless of where you live, Republicans and Democrats should appeal to the population in roughly equal proportions.  That is, half of a city's population should be democrat, and the other half republican.  The same is true in farm communities and so-called frontier communities in Alaska.  This simply isn't the case.

Voting breakdown by county

The University of Michigan has produced a stunning representation of voting patterns in the United States since the election of 2012.  The maps, the article makes clear, slightly misrepresent the actual dynamic of voting patterns, but the data makes one thing clear: high population density areas tend to vote blue.  I suspect the Republican screed against government interference and personal autonomy appeals to rural voters, who are either ignorant of the interconnectedness of a global economy, or who are able to ignore that interconnectedness by repeating a Golden Myth of personal triumph.

And the divide is likely to increase.  With more people turning to cities, the power of the Democratic Party will grow.  Democratic politics is simply more equipped to respond to urban problems.  Appeals to urban populations will find more and more power concentrated in the Democrats until the GOP itself becomes a shibboleth--obsolete and foundering for voters.  The Tea Party is the first indication that the GOP recognizes its obsolescence.  When any group starts looking backward instead of forward, it will flounder and die.

Young Republicans

The only way to regain Republican strength is to find means of appealing to urban voters who recognize the necessity of some government intrusion in their lives.  Young democrats are educated and innovative.  Young republicans ought to be the same, and find means of addressing the needs of the growing segments of the population occupying an urban landscape.  

The End of the World . . . Or, What Do Cabin in the Woods and The World's End Have To Do With Syria?

Before we begin, if you haven't seen them already, go watch Cabin in the Woods and The World's End.  They're both fantastic movies and deserve to be seen.  Don't worry, I'll wait.

***

Okay.  Now that you're back, and imagining that about half of you reading this still haven't seen these two movies, fair warning: there be spoilers ahead.

On Tuesday September 3, Secretaries Kerry and Hagel, with General Dempsey outlined for the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations the Obama Administration's reasons for specific and limited use of the American Armed Forces in Syria.  As far as I can make out, their reasons are limited to the same hyper-masculine honor-culture bravado we should all remember from high school: If we don't stick up for ourselves, we'll get walked all over.  In effect, by not intervening when we said we would (the whole "red line" over use of chemical weapons) we would appear weak to the leaders of other rogue states, such as North Korea and Iran. 

http://www.polgeonow.com/2013/08/syria-civil-war-map-august-2013-11.html

The trouble is, we've all grown up since then.  Imagine if you confronted the same schoolyard bully as an adult.  They're locked in their six (or sixteen) year old body while you have a decade or more of experience, wisdom, social connections and money to leverage against them.  Responding with the use of force is silly.  But in honor culture, any slight must be met with strict, unmitigated force.  It is the rational of the street thug who, when asked why he behaved as he did, responds with a simple, "because he dissed me."  The excuse is as hollow to our ears as the Administration's justifications to intervene in Syria.

This kind of internationalism is morally bankrupt, and threatens to drain the coffers of the United States and its allies. 

As I listened to the arguments, I was increasingly (and a little uneasily) aware of certain similarities between non-interventionists in Congress and the protagonists of the two movies cited above. 

These two movies, one American, the other British, reveal a distinct rejection of authoritarian intervention.  They highlight a growing concern that our leaders (or traditional authority in general) is unable to adequately speak to our desires.  At their hearts, they reveal a desire for liberty regardless (or in full knowledge of) the consequences. 

But more broadly, they signal a rejection of meddling that has important repercussions on the foreign policy of sovereign nations.  It seems hardly coincidental that last week the British Parliament voted against the Prime Minster's appeal to stand with the United States in opposing Bashar Al-Assad's regime.  The "special relationship" shared by Britain and the United States was fostered in the Second World War and persisted throughout the Cold War, as fears of imperial communism gripped both nations.  But following the Cold War that relationship has been frequently tested, most lately by revelations of pervasive spying by the NSA on British citizens.  But the revelation had been strained since Gulf War numero dos.  These latest allegations of weapons of mass destruction seem to have broken British credulity. 

In fact, we see that growing incredulity mounting in popular films.

In Cabin in the Woods, the familiar horror trope is turned on its head.  After a group of teens arrive at a--you guessed it--cabin in the woods, supernatural forces begin killing them off.  In the end, only two survive and they are confronted with the knowledge that the entire situation was a requisite sacrifice to ensure that a much greater evil was not released.  Their deaths, in a sense, release the pressure on hell and keep Earth safe that much longer.  With this knowledge, our two survivors have the option of sacrificing themselves for the greater good of mankind, or allowing Satan to roam the Earth.  They decide that mankind doesn't deserve to go on.  It's a surprising ending, but not wholly unexpected.  Manipulated by shadowy government agents throughout the movie, their lives and deaths are treated callously and marked by dark humor; the audience is meant to view the agents' behavior as representative of traditional authority in general--callously disregarding the lives they're meant to safeguard.

In The World's End, a group of five friends reassemble thirty years later to finish a pub-crawl they began when they were eighteen.  With the gloss of youth tarnished by failure and loss, they painfully reunite and return to their childhood town but quickly realize that the town has changed.  The changes go beyond cosmetic, and are not limited to McDonaldification, or Starbuckification.  Instead, the people themselves are plain and unassuming, but nevertheless retain an ominous blandness.  They are Stepford Wives writ across the population.  Our heroes discover that the town has been invaded by aliens. 

But the aliens' invasion isn't necessarily malevolent so much as it's paternalistic.  They want to shape human culture to become more genial, so that we can enter galactic civilization which views us as parochial barbarians.  In the end, our heroes' drunken belligerence persuades the aliens that we simply aren't worth it.  The results are . . . Apocalyptic. 

These two movies, the British resolution, and the growing reluctance of American citizens to take government intrusion (from the NSA to the TSA) lying down all signal a sea change in popular political culture.  Secretary Kerry called this "armchair isolationism" that would embolden terrorist groups.  Americans rightly dismiss his belligerence as exaggerated and unnecessary.  Moreover, it condescends to thoughtful analysis and retards debate.  Instead, this is a moment to reflect on the force America wishes to be in the 21st century.