Guest Post: Can there be such a thing as “Too Much Fantasy?” by David Emrys

David E. Emrys is the author of a couple of self-published fantasies. I got to chatting with him on Twitter, and he seemed like a good fellow. So I asked if he’d like to write something. And he did. So here it is.

Is the fantasy world over-populated? It’s a valid question and one that keeps raising its ugly head in the current era of ‘Lord of the Authors: The Fellowship of the Fantasy’.

Without battling out the topic of Indie vs Traditional, I want to take a moment and talk about fantasy worlds. A simple blog post can’t cover every single fantasy tome to have ever graced a book shelf (or a digital market place like Amazon, for all you e-publishing gurus), but we can highlight a few.

DNF: “Assassin’s Apprentice” by Robin Hobb (Voyager)

A genre classic. A very disappointed first-time reader.

Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father’s gruff stableman. He is treated like an outcast by all the royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who has him secretly tutored in the arts of the assassin. For in Fitz’s blood runs the magic Skill – and the darker knowledge of a child raised with the stable hounds and rejected by his family. As barbarous raiders ravage the coasts, Fitz is growing to manhood. Soon he will face his first dangerous, soul-shattering mission. And though some regard him as a threat to the throne, he may just be the key to the survival of the kingdom.

I bought Assassin’s Apprentice for my Kindle quite a while ago. But, whenever I’ve thought about reading the first book in Hobb’s Farseer trilogy, I have been distracted by some newer, shinier book. After reading the first chapter at work last year (I was allowed! It was for work!), I finally got on with it, and started reading it properly. What I found left me cold and unimpressed. In the end, after a particularly bad chapter, I had to quit. In the end, I only managed to read the first 20% of the novel.

2013: New Year’s (Reading) Resolutions – Fantasy

Last year, I promised myself that I would read at least one of Joe Abercrombie’s novels. Thankfully, I just managed it. For 2013, I’ve decided to come up with a similar resolution, to address a few more gaps in my SFF reading. In this post, I give you the four fantasy series I hope to read at least one novel from in 2013:

Robin Hobb – Farseer Trilogy

James Barclay – Chronicles of the Raven

Brandon Sanderson – Mistborn

Tom Lloyd – Twilight Reign

There are, of course, many other established and completed series I wish I had tried by now. These are just four of the fantasy series I’ve decided to single out for this year. Allow me to share some details about these series, in case you haven’t managed to get around to them yourself. If you have already read any of these series, please do share your own thoughts and impressions, in the comments. (Or, alternatively, share suggestions for other fantasy series you think I and other readers need to try out.)

Ones That Got Away 2012…

I’ve already said I didn’t want to do a “Best Of 2012” post, so instead I’m going to look at the books I really wish I’d been able to read this past year. These books I was just not able to get around to this year, due to any number of unforeseen circumstances (usually because I was distracted by another book released this year).

In no particular order, this is actually just a small selection of the books that slipped by me (there are so many, I’ll probably do another similar post next week). I’ve included synopses and a few comments for some of them.

[Above image from here.]

Upcoming: “EPIC” ed. John Joseph Adams (Tachyon)

I almost gave this post a rather grand title along the lines of “The Most Important Introduction to Fantasy?” I decided to let my British reserve win out, but I think Epic could well be the best thing to happen to Fantasy newbies for a long time. It’s an anthology that, quite obviously, takes Epic Fantasy as its premise, and editor Joseph John Adams has drawn together a quite spectacular roster of new and established authors.

Weekly Round-Up (Apr.23-28)

This week, we saw the conclusion of Justin’s excellent series of Agency guest posts (by Robert Jackson Bennett and Robin Hobb); Suzanne Johnson wrote about her Urban Fantasy novel set in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans; Ian Irvine wrote about the lessons he’s learned writing fantasy; Chuck Wendig provides some thoughts on the Big Idea behind Blackbirds; Tor US announced their eBooks were going DRM-free from July, and both Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi commented on the decision and what it might mean for readers and authors.

These are all largely from the first half of the week – I was rather busy after Wednesday – so feel free to share links in the comments of anything I missed.

Book Indecision: March 2012

Ok, I feel like reading something a little “older” than usual. CR has focused predominantly on newer titles – partly because I am myself relatively new to reading genre fiction – but there are hundreds of novels that were released before I really started paying attention to the fantasy and sci-fi genres at large. There are a few in particular that have caught my eye, and while they are not necessarily old by, say, Tolkien or even Gemmell standards, they’ve nevertheless been around for a fair while. (Actually, speaking of Gemmell, I should try Legend at some point, too…)

I’ve narrowed the choices for the next round of Latecomer reviews down to three titles, and I’d like you to help me choose which to read and review first. Here are the choices:

Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice (Book One in the Farseer Trilogy)

James Barclay’s Dawnthief (Book One in The Chronicles of the Raven)

Neal Asher’s Gridlinked (the first Agent Cormac novel)

Which one should I read first, and why? I’ll probably go with the one that gets the most recommendations, unless someone writes a particularly compelling reason to read another.

Upcoming: “Latecomer” Reviews on CR

As some readers may already know, I’ve not been reading fantasy or science fiction for very long. Because of this, most of my SF/F reviews have been of newly or recently released titles.

In 2011, this will change.

I’m not going to stop reading and reviewing new titles (far from it – there are just too many exciting novels published this year to forgo), but I am going to do something I’ve been meaning to do for some time now – that is, catch up on the ‘classic’, ‘great’, and established fantasy titles and series. The reviews will all be prefixed as “Latecomer”, so should be easy to find as and when they start arriving.

I haven’t got them all picked out, yet, but here is a first selection of titles I’ll be reading (please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments):

James Barclay, Dawnthief (Gollancz)

George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones (Voyager)

Tad Williams, Shadowmarch & The Dragonbone Chair (Orbit)

Neal Asher, Gridlinked (Tor)

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Empire in Black and Gold (Tor)

Joe Abercombie, The Blade Itself (Gollancz)

Robin Hobb, Assassin’s Apprentice (Voyager)

Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire (Gollancz)

Tom Lloyd, Stormcaller (Gollancz)

Robert Jordan, The Eye of the World (Orbit)

Steven Brust, The Book of Jhereg (Ace)

Whether or not I get to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series will depend on how much I like the latter’s The Way of Kings, which I have already bought for my Kindle.

So, there’s the selection I’ve come up with for the moment. I’m sure there are others, and there’s no set order in which I’m going to read them, and there’s no guarantee that I will end up in the mood for them, but they’re all series I’ve been meaning to read for some time, and I just don’t want to keep putting them off for much longer. If I had to put money on it, I’d say James Barclay and Joe Abercrombie are the certainties, with Tom Lloyd and Adrian Tchaikovsky the two most likely after them.

Anyway, watch this space…