Only after the invention of the printing press could written stories begin to surpass oral tales for mass entertainment, and fantasy in the form of the chivalric romance (“romance” here means containing supernatural or fantastic elements), such as Amadis of Gaul (1508) and its dozens of sequels and hundreds of imitators, was both popular and influential. These tales generally portrayed a handsome and noble hero out to rescue a beautiful, virtuous damsel-in-distress, and were full of the stock items of modern fantasy such as magicians and sorceresses, magic and magical devices, monsters, evil spirits, madness, exile, and wonders of all description. Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote as a parody of the worst examples of the genre, the Don having been driven mad by the books of chivalry he’d read.
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590), partly intended to celebrate the Tudor dynasty and glorify Queen Elizabeth the First, who is portrayed as Gloriana, the Faerie Queen, was strongly influenced by Arthurian legend, Virgil’s Aeneid, and other earlier epics, and contains many fantasy elements including monsters, magical creatures, and wicked wizards.17
With the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century, realism triumphed over fantasy, but only temporarily. The origins of modern fantasy can be clearly seen in the Gothic novels of Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto, 1764), Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794), Charles Maturin (Melmoth the Wanderer, 1820, which also has an anti-Catholic theme), and others, and many of these novels remain in print to this day. Gothic romances were commonly set in a partly ruined and labyrinthine castle inhabited by a mad or villainous lord or monk, who pursues the heroine through it until she is finally rescued. The setting is dank, gloomy, and oppressive, full of lunatics, demons, ghosts and other undead, ancestral curses, and violence, cruelty, and torture, e.g.:The maniac marked the destruction of the spot where she thought she stood by one desperate bound, accompanied by a wild shriek, and then calmly gazed on her infants as they rolled over the scorching fragments, and sunk into the abyss of fire below. ‘There they go, -one-two-three-all!’ and her voice sunk into low mutterings, and her convulsions into faint, cold shudderings, like the sobbings of a spent storm. . . . (Melmoth the Wanderer)
Unlike modern fantasy, Gothic novels were always set in a (admittedly corrupt) version of our world, and were the most-read form of fiction in this era. It is no coincidence that their popularity coincided with the vast social upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, the population shift to urban squalor and the “dark, satanic mills” of the industrial workplace. Perhaps they provided an escape from the turmoil of everyday life in the same way as the recent boom in fantasy and SF TV series (e.g., Lost, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica) which sometimes invert the stereotypes of good and evil for the chronically anxious or completely tuned-out post-September 11 generation. Around a quarter of the pilot shows picked up for TV series by the U.S. networks in 2008 are either SF or fantasy, or heavily influenced by these genres, which represents a dramatic break with the past. But I digress.
Gothic fiction was profoundly influential on many of the great European writers of the nineteenth century, from Wordsworth to Goethe, to Poe and the French Romantics. Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey to poke fun at the genre, and clearly had read a lot of it. Gothic fiction also led to Frankenstein, Dracula, and Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), one of the most influential works of fiction of all time, which ultimately inspired the horror films of the mid-to-late twentieth century, the vampire novels of Anne Rice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the explosion of vampire fantasy fiction in the past decade and a half.
In the stability of the Victorian era the appeal of fantasy waned, and realistic fiction reigned supreme while fantasy was largely restricted to children’s stories and the penny dreadfuls. Modern fantasy fiction began in this interval with George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858), a psychological novel set in a dream landscape, and William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World (1894), arguably the world’s first true fantasy novel in that it is set in a kind of medieval but invented world. The anthologist Lin Carter has proposed that Morris was the inventor of the modern fantasy novel.18 Though written in an archaic style which is difficult to read— Walter leapt up and put his arm about her, and looked whitherward she pointed, and at first saw nought . . . . and then at last he saw that it was the Evil Thing which had met him when he first came into that land; and now it stood upright, and he could see that it was clad in a coat of yellow samite—
Morris’s three fantasy novels were immensely influential (notably to C. S. Lewis), and pseudo-medieval invented worlds remain the most common settings of fantasy to this day, in the works of Tolkien and Lewis, as well as in current popular fantasists such as George R. R. Martin, Tad Williams, Robin Hobb, Lois McMaster Bujold, and Paolini.
From the turn of the twentieth century the prolific Irish writer, Lord Dunsany, wrote dozens of fantasy stories and several novels, and was a powerful influence on many later fantasists, including H. P. Lovecraft, Jack Vance, Ursula K. Le Guin, David Eddings, and Tolkien.
Tolkien’s other influences included Nordic myth—his dwarf names Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Thorin, Fili, and Kili, among others, come from The Deluding of Gylfi in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, as does Gandalf ’s name—and Beowulf, notably the dragon Beowulf fights as an old man:The burning one who hunts out barrows,
The slick-skinned dragon, threatening the night sky
With streamers of fire.
The Hobbit’s brooding, malicious dragon, Smaug, jealously guarding a stolen treasure hoard in its cave and every so often sweeping out to bring fire and ruin on the surrounding lands, was clearly inspired by the barrow-dwelling dragon in Beowulf.
Tolkien created an unprecedentedly detailed and internally consistent world for the stories he set in Middle-earth, and many of the other popular fantasists of recent times have done the same, sometimes in prodigious and meticulous detail (e.g., the intricate political landscape in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire). In Williams’s monumental Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, every race and species has its own characteristic mode of speech and Williams never falters in his portrayal of it.
It has been argued19 that modern fantasy “is a literature for a discontented city population” or an audience “which wished to turn its back on a scientific and technological world,” and I believe this to be partly true. I recall a man in the audience at a talk I was giving, when asked why he read fantasy rather than SF, replying, “I’m not interested in the future.”
And little wonder—in a post-September 11 world where the State intrudes ever more deeply into our private lives to further the War on Terror, and the nightly news brings every atrocity in the world into our living rooms in voyeuristic high definition, and our complex lives seem increasingly out of our control—that readers should want to escape into a world of fantasy where the dividing line between right and wrong is (generally) clear, and ordinary people can do extraordinary deeds and make a difference.
But I think most people read fantasy because, while some other genres have become increasingly literary, fantasy largely remains focused on storytelling—that is, on pure entertainment.
The phenomenal rise of the modern fantasy genre dates to the mid-1960s, when the Lord of the Rings, first published a decade earlier, became an enduring bestseller and, along with the works of other writers such as Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea and Robert E. Howard’s Conan series, created a great hunger for multivolume epic fantasy stories which could not be satisfied by the available literature. A decade later, Terry Brooks’s The Sword of Shannara (itself highly derivative of Tolkien’s work) became an instant bestseller and the form of modern popular fantasy was fully established. Fantasy is arguably the broadest of all genres but, for the adult market at least, few writers have achieved great and enduring public popularity writing outside the pseudo-medieval setting and the now clichéd struggle of good versus evil.
The Inheritance Cycle, clearly, falls in the middle of this great tradition of epic fantasy. Unfortunately
, any critical overview of the series is hampered because the fourth volume, as yet unnamed, will not be published for some time. Since the resolution of the Inheritance Cycle is unknown, it is not possible to fully appreciate the story canvas the author has created.
Thus far, there is little that can be considered original in Eragon or Eldest, and I find no fault with that. The characters, setting, and plot of the Inheritance Cycle would have been familiar to audiences three thousand years ago, for the books deal with universal themes. Where Inheritance does differ from the fantasy epics of recent decades, it is in the style and logic of Paolini’s storytelling, which in my view owes as much to movies and fantasy gaming as to fantasy literature.
I think the Inheritance Cycle is strongly influenced by fantasy gaming, especially in fight scenes. For example, when Eragon strikes down twelve attacking Urgals at once after leaving Teirm, and again when he escapes from prison in Gil’ead and rescues Arya, it reads like the moves of a mêlée in a fantasy game rather than a “realistic” fantasy fight scene, as the previously mentioned authors would have written it.
And in Eldest, when Eragon is given a variety of magical gifts by the Varden before going off to fight Galbatorix’s army, the story is reminiscent of an adventurer being equipped to venture into a monster-infested game dungeon.
The gaming influence is particularly evident when Eragon is defeated in the battle with Murtagh at the end of Eldest. He doesn’t fight to the end of his physical and mental abilities, but rather he has only so much energy, like gaming’s “hit points,” and once it is all used up he falls.
The last reserves of power stored in Za’roc’s ruby and the belt of Beloth the Wise were only enough to maintain his exertions for another minute. . . .
In Brisingr, when Eragon and Murtagh fight in mid-air on Saphira and Thorn, and Murtagh’s blow stabs into Eragon so hard that the sword tip is embedded in his hip bone, the pain is described as insignificant and the injury portrayed as superficial—“The pain shocked Eragon like a splash of frigid water”—though in a real battle it would be a serious injury. This again is a gaming image, where injury occurs without significant suffering or consequences, where characters can be healed over and over, and even healing magic is trivial: “Eragon squirmed in the saddle as the elves’ magic took effect and his hip began to tingle and itch as if covered in flea bites.”
When Eragon is healed by the dragons in the Agaetí Blödhren and gains the powers and qualities of an elf, it is hauntingly reminiscent of characters I’ve known in times past undergoing rejuvenation or transformation in Dungeons and Dragons and other fantasy games:The dragon bent his neck and, with his snout, touched the heart of Eragon’s gedwëy ignasia. A spark jumped between them, and Eragon went rigid as incandescent heat poured through his body, consuming his insides. His vision flashed red and black, and the scar on his back burned as if branded. . . .
Many critics have noted the similarities between the plots of Star Wars and Eragon—a farm boy is brought up by relatives, having no knowledge of who his parents were; his guardians are killed by the Empire and the boy sets off on a journey of discovery with a wise and mysterious counselor; etc.—but I believe the influence goes deeper than that. I believe that Paolini’s storytelling style is also influenced by the way stories like Star Wars are told.
Certainly Eragon follows closely the classical three-act narrative structure of the original Star Wars film (1977) and similar block-buster movies, with the first third of the book (roughly up to his arrival at Teirm) being the setup, his travel and adventures up to the revelation that Murtagh is the son of Morzan being the second act, and the remainder of the book being the climax and resolution.
Parts of the story are told in a cinematic fashion too. As I’ve noted above, the authors of the great fantasy epics of recent decades go to enormous lengths to make their invented worlds internally consistent and the actions of their characters plausible. Heroes may perform marvels but they don’t do things that are, in that world, impossible; traveler’s journeys take a realistic amount of time, according to the nature of the terrain to be crossed; magic, where used, is never a convenience to get people out of trouble, but springs from the history, race, and training of the wielder, and is always limited. Fight scenes are informed by a thorough understanding of the limitations of the weapons used, and of human capabilities. Where a character must perform a seemingly impossible feat, the author is careful to show, in advance, how the character comes by the ability to do so, so that the internal logic of the novel’s fictive world is always maintained. Once the impossible becomes achievable, the fictive dream state—the feeling of being carried away into another world that readers so crave—will be broken, and many readers will lose faith in the story.
In fantasy movies, for instance the Matrix series or Star Wars, some characters perform impossible or highly implausible deeds as a matter of commonplace, though this is more tolerable because the audience does not have to imagine the story—all they have to do is look at it on the screen. Even in movies, though, there has to be a degree of plausibility, which the director breaks at his peril.
The sight of Anakin Skywalker leaping over the side of an air car in Attack of the Clones, and falling thousands of feet through the sky traffic to intercept an enemy, quite destroyed the credibility of the movie for me. How could I identify with, and emote about, characters who can seemingly do anything?
Paolini does not make this mistake; Eragon displays sufficient pain, confusion, and genuine human frailty that the reader does identify with and care about his fate. But it has to be said that he doesn’t struggle much: Typically Eragon encounters a small initial difficulty, but easily overcomes it, and afterward mastery comes quickly. This is frustrating to many readers who have grown up with written storytelling for readers identify with the protagonist’s difficulties and failures, and long for him to succeed. If he doesn’t struggle much, it’s hard to care deeply about his goals, or his fate.
In the battle with the Urgal in Yazuac, Eragon uses magic for the first time whenThe energy inside him burned at an unbearable level. He had to release it, or it would consume him. A word suddenly leapt unbidden to his lips. He shot, yelling “Brisingr!”
His arrow, enchanted with fire by the word of power, kills his enemy. Eragon had heard Brom say “Brisingr,” previously but thought it was a swear word, and has no good reason for using it here. He did not know the word was magic, nor how to use magic—it simply came to him when he needed it and worked perfectly. Predestination or coincidence? Either are uncomfortable bedfellows in storytelling.
Again, in Teirm, when Eragon wants to listen in on Brom and Jeod’s conversation, some words of power Brom had once mentioned give Eragon perfect hearing the first time he tries them. And when Brom needs help to read the shipping records, he teaches Eragon to read in a week. After one week, he can read complex documents written in a variety of hands! These easy successes, which might be perfectly acceptable in a fast-paced movie, weakened the story logic of Eragon for me, undermined the fictive dream, and diminished the story—I still enjoyed it, but I might have enjoyed it so much more.
In Brisingr, Eragon and Arya are confronted by a patrol of fifteen soldiers and kill them all in a few minutes at no cost to themselves save that Eragon smashes his hand so badly the cartilage is showing through his mangled skin. His only reaction is to think, Blast, as though he’d stubbed a toe.
In the final battle with Durza in Eragon, the Shade strikes Eragon across the back, the sword blow cutting into him so deeply that, even after the best efforts of the healers, Eragon is left with a huge, ropy, and disfiguring scar from his right shoulder to his left hip. In reality, such a deep gash would have severed his spine and almost cut him in half, yet he overcomes the pain, and, “He lunged forward . . . And stabbed Durza through the heart.”
Such clearly impossible feats are commonplace in the fantasies, myths, and romances of earlier ages—Don Quixote tells of Felixmarte, a warrior in a chiva
lric romance he’d read, who “with a single backstroke he cleft five giants asunder as if they had been made of bean cods”—and in sword and sorcery tales, but not in the great epic fantasies of the past few decades. I don’t, however, think that Paolini is harking back to earlier tales; rather, he is employing gaming and cinematic techniques for a predominantly young audience who, having grown up seeing the majority of their stories on a screen rather than on the printed page, are more comfortable with this manner of storytelling.
The fantasy writers I enjoy most are those like Martin, Tolkien, and Bujold, whose invented worlds are internally consistent and whose characters’ actions are always plausible, within the boundaries of that created world. But then, as well as being firmly in the camp of written rather than visual storytelling, no doubt I’m a curmudgeonly old reactionary. I hope so. And besides, as well as being a writer, I’ve been a scientist all my professional life and therefore yearn for logic, order, and most of all, consistency in my fantasy fare.
It is, of course, perfectly acceptable for Paolini to tell the Inheritance Cycle in a more visual, movie-influenced manner—literary critics may sneer, but there are no rules in storytelling. All that matters is that the audience be captivated by the tale, as clearly much of Paolini’s audience has been, and good luck to him.
Secrets of the Dragon Riders: Your Favorite Authors on Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle: Completely Unauthorized Page 15
