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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   2076 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 25, 2026

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I'm unfamiliar with it, would you recommend him? I'm on kind of a fantasy kick, I want literary junk food, but the quality of some of this just drives me off.

I'm not against strong female characters, even in a patriarchal setting, I think that female agency exists and is often underestimated in patriarchal settings! I even think you can do ye olde feminist trope well with the right context created.

What bugs me about Abercrombie is the unevenness: there's casual sex, and casually strong women, but then there's also "oh this can't be you're a commoner and I'm a noble!"

For all GRRM's flaws, and I think the setting gets sweaty after too many pages, I'm looking for more ASOIAF, but maybe with a more contained storyline and less bloat. Given that ASOIAF has to be one of the most bloated fantasy stories ever told, that ought not to be hard to find.

Oh, Bakker is up on Mount Rushmore for me as far as epic fantasy goes. Nothing quite scratches the same itch. If the idea of the First Crusade filtered through Tolkien, Herbert and Nietzsche appeals you'll likely find something in there for you.

And I think he treats religion - and the excruciating choices it puts us to - with far more seriousness than most of the genre can manage.

If anything the criticism is that he is too even and unrelentingly negative when it comes to patriarchy.

For all GRRM's flaws, and I think the setting gets sweaty after too many pages, I'm looking for more ASOIAF, but maybe with a more contained storyline and less bloat. Given that ASOIAF has to be one of the most bloated fantasy stories ever told, that ought not to be hard to find.

The first series - Prince of Nothing - I think is pretty focused for epic fantasy. There is some bloat in the sequel series though (4 more books, one more than expected).

Great! I'll give that a try, might scratch the itch for me.

And I think he treats religion - and the excruciating choices it puts us to - with far more seriousness than most of the genre can manage.

Religion is so touchy. Tolkien got it perfect, everyone else tends to either make religion too immanent and just another magical mechanic, or they go full Reddit atheism like the Eragon series which is just eye-roll inducing for me: you have magic but no supernatural?

Religion is so touchy. Tolkien got it perfect, everyone else tends to either make religion too immanent and just another magical mechanic

Tolkien had a supernatural cosmology he'd put a lot of thought in, sure, but he has very little in-universe religion. As far as we can tell from The Lord of the Rings, there's no clergy in Middle-Earth and the people don't have any particular religious beliefs they could explain or religious practices and traditions they follow. This was intentional, but it makes everyone feel like 20th century WEIRD people who cringe from espousing the actual metaphysical claims of their local traditional religion even when they don't want to outright denounce it as false.

which is just eye-roll inducing for me: you have magic but no supernatural?

This was deeply annoying about the Odyssey. "In a time of apparent magic" and then we see people get turned into pigs. Not in any sort of ambiguous way either. Odysseus even says she gets her power from the Gods!

And if you're going to show that in a pseudo-objective fashion, why do we also need to play coy with Athena?

Of course, if you have actual gods instead of just Bronze Age Zatanna , the whole therapeutic journey of self-discovery where the most important thing is how the protagonist feels about things needs to be rejiggered somewhere.

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