Lord of the Rings

Tough Travels: Elves

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 58 Comments

Tough Travelling is normally a beginning-of-the-month post, but since it took me a little longer to get the ball rolling on this one it’s a middle-of-the-month post this time round… the plus side being I’ve had more time to ruminate on some worthy elves to list!

The Tough Travelling feature was originally created by Nathan at Fantasy Review Barn, revived on Fantasy Faction, and is now hosted by the team at The Fantasy Hive. Inspired by Diana Wynne Jones’s humorous classic The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, every month it puts the spotlight on a particular fantasy trope, theme or cliché, and invites bloggers to list stand-out books related to that week’s theme.

This month’s theme is elves:  Continue reading →

Tough Travels: Minions

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 19 Comments

It’s tough travelling time again! This feature was originally created and run by Nathan at Fantasy Review Barn and is now hosted by Laura Hughes at Fantasy Faction. Inspired by Diana Wynne Jones’s humorous classic The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, every month it puts the spotlight on a particular fantasy trope, theme or cliché, and invites bloggers to list stand-out books related to that week’s theme.

This month’s theme is minions:

Minions of the DARK LORD can be male or female, though he tends to favour males (who seem to be more susceptible to the Evil One’s wiles). They can take many forms: BAD KINGS, ENCHANTRESSES, HIGH PRIESTS, EUNUCHS, DUKES, REGENTS or WITCHES. Additionally, there are the non-human minions, such as ORCS, TROLLS, GOBLINS and random OTHER PEOPLES . . . not to mention MUTANT NASTIES, carefully selected MONSTERS, UNDEAD, and DEMONS.

Continue reading →

Books That Made Me Cry: Fantasy, Sci-fi and Dystopian Tearjerkers

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 12 Comments
Katniss Everdeen – The Hunger Games

Last week I mentioned some reasons why movies are usually bigger tearjerkers than books for me. However, there are still several books that have prickled my eyes or had me in tears, so today I thought I’d pay tribute these emotional tales.

Before I begin: this list will include SPOILERS. Discussing the sad moments in books necessarily involves mentioning character deaths and tragedies, and while I’ll try to keep it vague, I can’t promise I won’t give away too much. So if you haven’t read one of these books and don’t want a key plot point revealed, I suggest skipping the second paragraph of each section. Continue reading →

Are They Really Dead? 5 Kinds of False Deaths in Fantasy

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 7 Comments
Photo by Alan Weir via Flickr CC BY 2.0

When a favourite character dies in a fantasy novel, movie or TV show, our sense of sadness or shock is often tempered by that niggling question that immediately presents itself… are they really dead?

And we can’t be blamed for asking it. Continue reading →

What Did Tolkien Think of Fantasy Fiction?

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 7 Comments
Hobbit Hole. Photo by Trey Ratcliff (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

We all know J.R.R. Tolkien wrote fantasy fiction. He was the brilliant mind behind The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, a creator of intricate and enthralling new worlds, and one of the founding fathers of the genre. You can rarely talk about fantasy fiction without mentioning Tolkien… but I think his skill in writing fantasy was not the only thing that made him the legend he is today.  Continue reading →

History in the Potterverse and Other Magical Worlds

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 3 Comments
Photo by Jeff Kays (CC BY 2.0)

If you’ve read the Harry Potter series, the name Bathilda Bagshot might be familiar to you. You may even recognise her as the author of Hogwarts, a History, a book to which Harry’s friend Hermione regularly refers in the series. Whenever the characters need to know something about the ancient castle they go to school in, Hermione is there, spouting “historical” facts from Bagshot’s work to help them solve their problems.

Continue reading →

Learning a Fantasy Language? Apparently There’s an App for That

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 5 Comments
Galadriel’s Lament. Photo by Roberta Cortese (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

I work part time at an institute that runs classes in a whole range of foreign languages. Real-world languages, that is – like French and Arabic and Japanese. On our feedback forms at the end of each course, we ask students to suggest any new languages that they would like us to offer in the following year. One day a colleague came to me, confused, with a feedback form in hand, and asked:

Continue reading →

The ‘Ye Olde’ in Epic Fantasy: 6 More Archaisms and Why Authors Use Them

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 6 Comments
First Lines of Beowulf. Photo from Wikimedia – Public Domain

Last week I listed some English archaic forms often seen in epic fantasy novels: things like “here be dragons” and “unsavoury louts they were” and “prithee”. This week I’m continuing with a few more ‘ye olde’ words fantasy authors like to throw into the mix, as well as having a look at why they do it.

So without further ado, and again with the help of Susan Mandala’s Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Question of Style, here are the remaining 6: Continue reading →

Does Loving Epic Fantasy Make You a Monarchist?

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 2 Comments
Royal Wedding Mug. Photo by Nicola Alter (CC BY SA 4.0)

Okay, admittedly that seems like an odd question. But if you’ve ever stopped to think about the attitudes to royalty presented in fantasy stories, particularly epic high fantasies, it’s not so absurd. There is a very obvious bias toward royalty, and the idea that a person born into a role is the most rightful and qualified person to perform that role. Continue reading →

Talking Trees… and Other Sentient Vegetation

/ Nicola @ Thoughts on Fantasy / 1 Comment

I have a friend who cannot stand talking trees in fiction.

Talking animals are fine, and she’s happy to accept a whole range of other incongruous fantasy logic (for example, werewolves that turn back into humans and still have their clothes on). But trees that talk, or walk, or are in any way sentient? She finds them stupid. And a bit creepy.  Continue reading →