These days I read a lot less books than I used to. I read too much blogs on the topic of role-playing games, too much time spent on Google+, also on the topic of role-playing games, I skim this role-playing book and that PDF, and since I’m mostly interested in the *Old School Renaissance* of role-playing games—namely D&D from the nineteen eighties—I also feel like I ought to like the books recommended by one of the founding fathers of D&D, Gary Gygax in his Appendix N of the AD&D *Dungeon Master’s Guide*. If you’re interested, you should check out the articles in Martin Ralya’s blog tagged Reading Appendix N.
These books are weird. Compared with the The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire or Malazan Book of the Fallen, these older books are short. There are sometimes short stories, collection of short stories, novellas, or little paperback books. All of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian fit into two books of typical size for these fantasy series.
A while back, I remembered how eagerly I read all those Darkover books by Marion Zimmer Bradley and I decided to find them all second hand, in German, on Amazon, and buy them for Claudia. Every now and the she reads one of them, interspersed with some Steven Erickson and George R. R. Martin. We start talking and comparing. There are two aspects I like about these books:
1. each book stands on its own
2. each book only has a single plot line
Tolkien may have started this dreadful fashion of telling multiple stories at once. But in his case, at least each segment was long, very long. When I read George R. R. Martin, I feel like the author is suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. Is every little segment ending on a cliff hanger? When I start noticing the literary devices, when I start to see the man behind the curtain, it doesn’t really work anymore. It starts to bore me. I start noticing that—like in Zeno’s paradox about Achilles being unable to overtake the turtle—as the number of segments increase, the time slot available decreases. As more stories are told in parallel, less actually happens. Plot is reduced to flashes and still images.
I am exaggerating, of course. In comparison with older books, however, I start to appreciate a tight plot, a unified vision, a drive forward. All the Conan stories stand on their own. They can be arranged in some sort of chronological order, but that’s not the important part. Similarly, the Darkover books can be read in any order. You get the occasional reward for regular readers. Older stories are referred to, but understanding this is strictly optional.
I was once again reminded of this when I read The Walrus and the Warwolf. It was published in Paizo’s *Planet Stories* line (now discontinued). I liked it very much. The book itself wasn’t short, but the chapters were short. The characterizations were short. Things happened. I felt that it incorporated not the best of literature, of language, of fancy words and synonyms and antonyms but it incorporated *what is best in story telling*. Keeping things short. Just enough words to let the reader’s imagination embellish it all without ever taking too long to read.
I’m hoping that I’ll like the other volumes in Hugh Cook’s Chronicles of an Age of Darkness series. I’ve ordered many of the volumes second hand, via Amazon. I also ordered the four books that got translated into German. Perhaps Claudia will enjoy them as well.
Chronicles of an Age of Darkness
#Books #RPG #Old School #Keep It Short
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I loved hugh cooks books. A breath of fresh air when they were released. I read recently that initially he had planned 60+ books in the series. Sadly passed away now but walrus and warwolf was ond of the better ones
– brad 2014-01-05 10:31 UTC
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Yeah, I read the same thing on Wikipedia. I was sad to learn that he had died in 2008 and I was disappointed to learn that his 60 book plan had been cancelled much earlier because of financial failure. Nooo!
I’m fascinated by the idea of telling the story of a different protagonist in each book with intersections between the books every now and then. It reminds me of the Eternal Champion stories by Michael Moorcock. I was always fascinated by the boat trip in the mist where the various heroes all meet.
– Alex Schroeder 2014-01-05 12:26 UTC