This. Kerilum hit all my checkboxes. Except maybe for the "un-heroic" part, but that's mostly confined to high fantasy. I like the occasional high fantasy, but I prefer "standard" fantasy more. Have you read Terry Goodkind's Shannara series? You're describing that to a T.
i love when a book has a rich enough plot that the magic could be taken out and it could still stand alone. The Interesting Times book series comes to mind. There's action, excitement, great dialogue, and the author doesn't get hung up on making magic the centerpiece (although it gains more depth and becomes more exciting as you progress through the series). i'm convinced that we all love a good coming-of-age tale because deep down we see ourselves in the MC. We all face difficult, scary situations where we don't know what the crap we're doing, and so when we read about a character facing those same challenges we feel comforted by it. It's even more fun when said character "ascends" and becomes whatever awesome hero they were meant to be. Once again we hope that we can be that badass, fire-flinging hero in our regular everyday lives. Preferably via a two-paragraph training montage that fast-forwards two months. I have always ascribed to the belief that the only books I want to read are the ones that have nothing to do with the world I live in. If I wanted a story about an ordinary girl doing ordinary things and dealing with mundane problems, I'd watch The Real World.
Elves and fairies live and make out in the blossoms of flowers, and they soak their crinolines with dew, and wear green hats, and illuminate the blossoms from within, and they reside in the lovely gardens, ready to help the dreaming humans on their spiritual paths.
No, some things become horrifying when you do them with humans. A hive mind is fine when it's with insects, make it a city of humans and you've got something kinda horrifying.
Anyway, I enjoy seeing people mix and remix history, cultures, fantasy and mythology. Show me the thing you've created.
I look for characters with whom you can journey with and be in their shoes as they do incredible, mundane, and heartbreaking things. I also enjoy a well thought-out magic system, but that's because Sanderson and Rothfuss have spoiled me.
Depends. Wouldn't it make an interesting story if humans HAD to fight something that could eat planets? Wouldn't you like to see what those lil' guys can do? Also, build a space lazer. Pew pew. Exactly. Given the choice between reading about a hive mind of insects and a hive mind of humans, I'd chose humans. Sounds like a better story. Lets see... How much is too much? For example, if there's a book you're reading with some fantasy religion in it, do you want all of the reason for this religion fleshed out in the book, or is it enough to have a few lines about it, a couple basic commandments the sect follows, and the rest is up to you to figure out? Would you rather--given the option--have all of the information there in the book, or have a wiki page you could go and read if you were interested? How much info-dump is too much before you start skipping paragraphs to get back to the action?
Wiki page or even a separate book. There's a reason books like "The World of Ice and Fire" and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" exist.
And what if you wanted this in a fantasy story that precedes high technology? If were talking humans, not superhuman wizards (which is just another fantasy race), they can't do anything.
Joe Haldeman did a hive mind with humans at the end of the 'forever war' and the beginning of 'forever free'
1) Magic being used creatively in ways people haven't seen before: In one of the Dresden Files novels - no, not the one with the Necromantic Zombie Tyrannosaurus, one of the books after that one - Harry Dresden is trying to save a boat full of hostages who've been trapped in the middle of lake Michigan. Does he use ice magic to conjure a bridge for the hostages to run to shore (despite being famously more powerful with fire magic than with ice)? No, he powers a fire spell by sucking out enough of the heat for the water to freeze over 2) Magic taking a lot of hard work to do correctly under normal circumstance, and it not spontaneously disappearing the conflict in a single stroke unless the hero had put in even more work than normal ahead of time: Halfway out of the lake, Dresden realizes that his ice bridge isn't strong enough and that it's starting to break, but that his proverbial fire-muscles are exhausted and he can't suck any more heat out of the water underneath to make it stronger
What about a hundred human wizards that build a tower with a crystal on top to focus magic into a space lazer? And maybe they have to sacrifice other humans to get enough magic to shoot it! Maybe they have to sacrifice a whole country! Just to blow up a giant space monster. That sounds like a good story.
Well my fantasies often include seeing Rachel Riley with her clothes off ... but that probably isn't helpful here
I have huge respect for writers who avoid the cliches in hugely popular genres like fantasy and come up with something totally new, or else take a cliche and find some new way of making funny or exciting or interesting. Max Brooks' World War Z (not the god-awful film adaption) is one of my favorite books in a genre which is full of cliches, and it avoids all of them. I mean I guess apocalyptic fiction falls somewhere near fantasy, right?
! I love non-magical fantasy! I have to keep this somewhere I can find it, seriously THANK YOU. The only ones I have able to find was John Flanagan's and Brian Jacques'. (I don't browse the adult section much. Or at all. So that may have something to do with it.) EDIT: So, on topic for me. . . I don't really know? I like non-magical fantasy, I like seeing the different races played strait or subverted, either one's neat. Personally I've been trying to write in a way that ignores the stereotypes. I do have one novel that I'm not working on currently that is probably the most heavily fantasy of them all. I actually plan for humans to not be much of a part of it at all, it's mostly fantasy creatures of one kind or another. Also I have three made up races that I'll be sticking in there. I half want to make up more but that might be a bit much. Which, come to think of it, maybe with some reworking my current novel and that one could be set in the same world. Hmm. . .
Elves. Several different types of elves with different cultures and levels of primitive technology. Traveling (in general) as in exploration rather than going to defeat something. I'd love to read something that has more elven drama and culture where humans aren't the main focus of the story.
