Sunday, 27 April 2008
(Books) Dan Hemmens invents a new game, while being mean about genre fiction.
~
As regular ferretbrainers will know, I've recently finished reading Trudi Canavan's Age of the Five trilogy. In the back of the last volume, there's an advertisement for another book called Wolfblade (a cursory googling of the title, incidentally, reveals a disturbing number of furry sites, which surprises me less than I'd have liked). The book (my slightly less cursory, furry-excluding googling reveals) follows one Marla Wolfblade of Hythria (yes, Hythria, it's a perfectly good name) on her quest to restore her family's name (the fine old name of Wolfblade, apparently) to its former glory (and good God that paragraph contains a lot of parentheses).
I've not read the book, it's not the book I'm here to talk about. Instead I'm here to talk about an exciting new game I invented while skimming the plot summary. The aim is to compile a list, as long as possible but of no less than eleven words, which can be combined, in pairs, in any combination or order in order to produce something which sounds like a totally believable title for a Fantasy novel.
The first two on the list are, of course "Wolf" and "Blade". This gives us our first two novels: Wolfblade (the book that started it all) and Bladewolf, who perhaps is another fellow with an unfortunate surname, or perhaps "the Bladewolf" is the pseudonym of some terrifying swordsman, read on and find out!
A third word (let us say "blood") will give us another four novels (Wolfblood practically writes itself, Bloodwolf is probably the sequel to Bladewolf, following the protagonist's descent into violence and madness) Bloodblade is going to be a cheap Elric knockoff while Bladeblood will be the story of a young orphan boy, raised by a group of terrifyingly dedicated warriors who view the blade as their only family.
As more words are added, of course, the number of possible permutations increases pyramidally, we go from two to four to ten and once the list gets to be eleven words long we should have the raw material for a staggering one hundred and ten Fantasy novels
The game's not as easy as it looks of course, you can't really include more than one weapon, for example, because "Bladesword" and "Swordblade" sound just that little bit too lame (and it gets even worse when you add in the possibilities of such titles as "Swordspear" and "Spearsword" (although actually I think Swordspear was the name of a place in an old D&D setting, so it works better than it might). Similarly you can have "King" or "Queen" but not really both because then you wind up with "Kingqueen" and "Queenking". Stock fantasy professions are a good bet, because things like Mage and Thief can be combined endlessly (and indeed have been).
My putative list, then, is going to go something like this:
1. Wolf
2. Blade
3. Blood
4. Shadow
5. Crown (which precludes King or Queen, because Kingcrown is a lame title)
6. Mage
7. Thief
8. Curse
9. Dragon
10. War
11. Song
I am pretty confident that you can take any pair of those, and get something that sounds, well not good, but at least plausible. Although you might have to play the "it's the protagonist's surname card" for "Crownwar".
So let's give it a whirl:
Let's start out easy with Shadow Mage, the story of a young orphan girl, who discovers that she is secretly from a long line of powerful sorcerers and may, in fact, be the most powerful sorceress in ten generations. Her command of the powers of shadow is rivalled only by her uncanny beauty which captivates the cruel Lord Trael, who pursues her relentlessly.
Lord Trael is the eponymous character of Blood Mage, pitting his forbidden blood-sorcery against our heroine's ever-growing power, in his increasing desperation to plunge the world into darkness, and get into her pants. The series of course ends with Dragon Mage, in which our heroine does some shit involving dragons because of, like, destiny or something, and that makes everything all right. Like always.
The War Song septology is of course a far more ambitious work, chronicling the rise to fame, and descent into infamy of a great warrior prince, and seeking to confront serious themes about the futility of war and the place of violence in human society. It begins with Dragonblade, which establishes a tenor of heroic fantasy which is slowly deconstructed over the later six volumes. In the first book, Prince Esoric of Afaria embarks upon a quest to retrieve the lost weapon of his forefathers (the Dragonblade of the title) in order to prove his worth to his father. The narrative unfolds as a simple quest story, and ends with his triumphant return to his father's court. The second volume, Bloodshadow reveals that the Dragonblade carries a curse, dooming those who bear it to a lifetime of strife and conflict (although the book carries the strong implication that the curse in fact stems from the wielder's own ambition and ruthlessness). Prince Esoric undertakes a quest to destroy the Dragonblade, which darkly parallels his quest in the previous book, but in the end he is unwilling to do so, and returns to Afaria set on a path of war and destruction. Book three Magewolf builds on the foundation laid in the second volume. Afaria is under siege from the mysterious wild men of the deep forest, whose strange pacts with the wolves are allowing them to beat back the armies of Afaria. Esoric's strategies become colder and more ruthless and he fights this new enemy. The series has its turning point in War Song, as Esoric's ambition plunges the entire continent into a vast, destructive conflict. The final three volumes have been expected for nearly six years, and the author insists that volume five: Blade Crown is nearing completion, although it may have to be divided into two volumes for publication.
Blood Thief is the tale of the unfortunate thief Ronar Laren, who picks the wrong mark one day and winds up hunted by six prominent trade guilds and a cabal of sorcerers. He quickly finds himself involved far too deeply with all the wrong sort of people, and has to flee his homeland and away to the mysterious east. There he falls in with a sect of assassins who find his quick wits and stealth useful. The story continues in Shadow Curse, in which Laren abandons the assassins and winds up being pursued back to his original homeland. There his two sets of enemies converge in what could charitably be described as a tremendous cluster fuck. The final volume, Dragon Song reveals, completely out of left field, that the vast, quasi-renaissance city-state which the first novel was set in was actually the spaceship of a race of psychic space dragons, and it is these who Laren finally confronts in the denouement to the series.
See! All the fun of actually reading fantasy novels, without all the tedious work of reading brick thick novels.
Anybody care to give it a try?
I've not read the book, it's not the book I'm here to talk about. Instead I'm here to talk about an exciting new game I invented while skimming the plot summary. The aim is to compile a list, as long as possible but of no less than eleven words, which can be combined, in pairs, in any combination or order in order to produce something which sounds like a totally believable title for a Fantasy novel.
The first two on the list are, of course "Wolf" and "Blade". This gives us our first two novels: Wolfblade (the book that started it all) and Bladewolf, who perhaps is another fellow with an unfortunate surname, or perhaps "the Bladewolf" is the pseudonym of some terrifying swordsman, read on and find out!
A third word (let us say "blood") will give us another four novels (Wolfblood practically writes itself, Bloodwolf is probably the sequel to Bladewolf, following the protagonist's descent into violence and madness) Bloodblade is going to be a cheap Elric knockoff while Bladeblood will be the story of a young orphan boy, raised by a group of terrifyingly dedicated warriors who view the blade as their only family.
As more words are added, of course, the number of possible permutations increases pyramidally, we go from two to four to ten and once the list gets to be eleven words long we should have the raw material for a staggering one hundred and ten Fantasy novels
The game's not as easy as it looks of course, you can't really include more than one weapon, for example, because "Bladesword" and "Swordblade" sound just that little bit too lame (and it gets even worse when you add in the possibilities of such titles as "Swordspear" and "Spearsword" (although actually I think Swordspear was the name of a place in an old D&D setting, so it works better than it might). Similarly you can have "King" or "Queen" but not really both because then you wind up with "Kingqueen" and "Queenking". Stock fantasy professions are a good bet, because things like Mage and Thief can be combined endlessly (and indeed have been).
My putative list, then, is going to go something like this:
1. Wolf
2. Blade
3. Blood
4. Shadow
5. Crown (which precludes King or Queen, because Kingcrown is a lame title)
6. Mage
7. Thief
8. Curse
9. Dragon
10. War
11. Song
I am pretty confident that you can take any pair of those, and get something that sounds, well not good, but at least plausible. Although you might have to play the "it's the protagonist's surname card" for "Crownwar".
So let's give it a whirl:
Let's start out easy with Shadow Mage, the story of a young orphan girl, who discovers that she is secretly from a long line of powerful sorcerers and may, in fact, be the most powerful sorceress in ten generations. Her command of the powers of shadow is rivalled only by her uncanny beauty which captivates the cruel Lord Trael, who pursues her relentlessly.
Lord Trael is the eponymous character of Blood Mage, pitting his forbidden blood-sorcery against our heroine's ever-growing power, in his increasing desperation to plunge the world into darkness, and get into her pants. The series of course ends with Dragon Mage, in which our heroine does some shit involving dragons because of, like, destiny or something, and that makes everything all right. Like always.
The War Song septology is of course a far more ambitious work, chronicling the rise to fame, and descent into infamy of a great warrior prince, and seeking to confront serious themes about the futility of war and the place of violence in human society. It begins with Dragonblade, which establishes a tenor of heroic fantasy which is slowly deconstructed over the later six volumes. In the first book, Prince Esoric of Afaria embarks upon a quest to retrieve the lost weapon of his forefathers (the Dragonblade of the title) in order to prove his worth to his father. The narrative unfolds as a simple quest story, and ends with his triumphant return to his father's court. The second volume, Bloodshadow reveals that the Dragonblade carries a curse, dooming those who bear it to a lifetime of strife and conflict (although the book carries the strong implication that the curse in fact stems from the wielder's own ambition and ruthlessness). Prince Esoric undertakes a quest to destroy the Dragonblade, which darkly parallels his quest in the previous book, but in the end he is unwilling to do so, and returns to Afaria set on a path of war and destruction. Book three Magewolf builds on the foundation laid in the second volume. Afaria is under siege from the mysterious wild men of the deep forest, whose strange pacts with the wolves are allowing them to beat back the armies of Afaria. Esoric's strategies become colder and more ruthless and he fights this new enemy. The series has its turning point in War Song, as Esoric's ambition plunges the entire continent into a vast, destructive conflict. The final three volumes have been expected for nearly six years, and the author insists that volume five: Blade Crown is nearing completion, although it may have to be divided into two volumes for publication.
Blood Thief is the tale of the unfortunate thief Ronar Laren, who picks the wrong mark one day and winds up hunted by six prominent trade guilds and a cabal of sorcerers. He quickly finds himself involved far too deeply with all the wrong sort of people, and has to flee his homeland and away to the mysterious east. There he falls in with a sect of assassins who find his quick wits and stealth useful. The story continues in Shadow Curse, in which Laren abandons the assassins and winds up being pursued back to his original homeland. There his two sets of enemies converge in what could charitably be described as a tremendous cluster fuck. The final volume, Dragon Song reveals, completely out of left field, that the vast, quasi-renaissance city-state which the first novel was set in was actually the spaceship of a race of psychic space dragons, and it is these who Laren finally confronts in the denouement to the series.
See! All the fun of actually reading fantasy novels, without all the tedious work of reading brick thick novels.
Anybody care to give it a try?
~
Of course, if I could call them Light / Dark and Dark / Light then we could have a standard Descent Into Evil (While Others Look On In Horror) / Redemption From The Dark Side (Thanks To
[insert author's random philosophical "point" here]) duology.Ooh, this is lots of fun!
For really advanced players there's the Dragonlance gambit, where you have "VW: X of the YZ", in which WX must be the same for each book (the game here is to make a trilogy where you use each of the words in the list once). The Shadowcrown series is the saga of a mismatched band of heroes who stumble across an ancient evil - namely, an undead king - and accidentally awake him in Shadowcrown: Curse of the Blood Song (the Blood Song in question is the sacred song sung by a ghostly choir which keeps the king asleep and is disrupted by the spilling of blood). In Shadowcrown: Blade of the Wolf Thief a renegade werewolf appears to be an adversary, but actually proves to be a key ally of the party. In Shadowcrown: War of the Dragon Mage the lich is finally defeated when Our Heroes enlist the help of a secret society of dragons; it turns out that the party's mage is in fact a dragon in human form, who proceeds to lead the draconic armies against the forces of the Shadowcrown.