Fantasy author Mark Lawrence just wrote an interesting blog post about readers' complaints regarding Prince of Fools and his writing in general. Here's a teaser:
Often these 'whys' are asked in a manner that indicates the questioner has a very firm idea of the (my) writing process in their head. I must have sat down with a ruler and set square and designed each element of my tale, weighing up the choices, wondering what message they'd send and what world view they're promoting...
[...]
The medieval-esque setting (like the Eastern setting, the cold north with bearded axemen, the hot south with arab-esque inhabitants) is part of the landscape of the reader's imagination - there to be taken advantage of, saving 400 pages and a fuck-load of confusion.
[...]
So, yes, if you want the focus to be on how clever and imaginative you are ... weird me out. If you want the focus to be on your plans for utopia or your critique of modern society, play those games. But if you're going to criticise fantasy as conservative or me for drawing on the architecture of existing fantasy to furnish my pages with stuff for my characters to play with ... then you've very much missed the point of what most authors are trying to do.
Why didn't I play the rather heavy handed gender-politics games that excite a certain rather vocal section of the blog-o-sphere?
Because those are not the games that excite me.
Follow this link to read the full article.
4 commentaires:
So tired of hearing about this dude... His Prince Trilogy was complete garbage... So many people claiming he's "The King of Grimdark" blah blah blah. His shit isn't even risqué I have no clue why people give a damn.
People give a damn because he touches on issues most important to us, guilt, regret, fear and love, and he does it within the setting of 'post-apocalyptic sword and sorcery'. His prose is as good as anyone's in the genre, and his writing is tempered by a personal hardship that is greater than many first-world people face in their lifetimes. If all you want is shock value grimdark is the wrong genre for you, what you are looking for is called torture porn.
Different strokes, eh?... I happened to love his Prince trilogy. So perhaps we cancel each other out...
Well, you could always re-read Harry Potter....
Won a copy of this on the site. Still have not received. Thought the other ones were great. Was looking forward to this one. :(
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