I grew up on a healthy diet of the usual suspects, in terms of fantasy authors—J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and J.K. Rowling. But my personal favorite during my adolescent years was David Eddings. His books were the ones that truly snared me, showed me the rules and tropes of the fantasy genre, wedging that hook deep in my brain and reeling me in—the books that were unputdownable.
I went on my first quest through the eyes of Garion, learned about magic, the Will and the Word, and discovered the battle that raged behind the scenes between good and evil. For my pubescent self, this battle made sense; it felt right. In reality, I was finding out the world could be hard and mean, and even oppressive, and the idea of pushing back against those forces—of taking a stand against the bullies, against the red-cloaked grolims of the world—felt righteous.
In the fictional world I inhabited, Eddings made it so damn easy to differentiate just who it was I was fighting against. For young me, this made the journey more enjoyable. The black and white characters meant that I didn’t have to waste time figuring out who was right and who was wrong, and could focus instead on the virtuousness of the battle at hand. Eddings did everything to serve it up to me—the band of heroes I traveled with were honorable and amicable. They bantered, for god’s sake! Oh, they had flaws, but Silk’s thievery, Barak’s propensity for violence, Ce’Nedra’s conceitedness, and Mandorallen’s thick-headed nobility were laughed off and eye-rolled into harmlessness like a classic Eighties sitcom. These were the good guys.
The villains of the piece may as well have been filled in with a paint-by-numbers set: the evil priesthood wore robes the color of old blood, they sacrificed people on altars, and were led by a scarred and narcissistic god. There were no shades of grey here; these were the bad guys.
This clear division of good versus evil meant that I knew where I stood, knew who to root for and who to revile. It clarified my world and gave me a code to follow. It helped confirm the knowledge that I was one of the good guys.
But that code started to fail as I got older. Back in reality, as I left my teenage years behind, I discovered that the world just wasn’t that clear cut. Wading into my university years, I met people who by all rights should have fallen into the darker side of that black and white division. They did things heroes weren’t supposed to do like smoked, drank, and took drugs. Some of these people cheated in their relationships, they lied, they made mistakes. But the thing was, I liked these people. In some cases, I even looked up to these people.
And then I was tempted, like all heroes eventually are, and I did some of those things heroes aren’t meant to do. My clear-cut perception on good and bad fractured, and I, like all people learning to become an adult, was lost trying to decide if I was a hero or a villain.
As shades of grey entered my real world, my fantasy worlds started to suffer for it. I continued to digest authors of similar ilk to Eddings—David Gemmell, Raymond E. Feist, and Robert Jordan—those writers who adhered to the familiar rules of fantasy. In their universes there was always a dark lord, or dark army, to pit oneself against. It was pretty clear—the heroes usually just needed to attack the evil-looking creatures of the night attempting to kill the innocent villages in order to win the day.
But this no longer squared with what I was exposed to in the real world. Those identifiable attributes that marked someone as Good or Evil simply didn’t hold up. No one could live up to the title of hero—so that either meant there were no heroes, or it was far more complicated than I’d been led to believe.
Because of this I started to get fantasy fatigue. Books had always been my mirror to the world and a way of figuring things out, but what I was reading just wasn’t offering the guidance it used to. I started reading outside the genre, leaving fantasy behind, for the most part.
Until Martin. George R.R. Martin had written the first four books of his A Song of Ice and Fire series when I eventually set about reading them. This was still years before HBO’s adaptation took the world by storm. I remember attempting A Game of Thrones when I was still in high school, but the dense text, the imposing horde of characters, and the complex worldbuilding was above me at the time, and after a few chapters I set it aside in favor of the more accessible Eddings.
But eventually a friend told me I should really read it. And the blogs and fantasy websites told me I should read it. So I bowed to peer pressure and returned to the fantasy realm.
At the start, I thought I knew exactly what I was in for. The initial set-up made it clear who our protagonists were—the House of Stark—and introduced our antagonists, the House of Lannister. Jamie Lannister pushed an innocent kid out of a tower after having sex with his own sister, for crying out loud! It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
Buy the Book
The Ruin of Kings
And then I kept reading…and before I knew it, I didn’t know where I was, or what was going on. Characters that appeared irredeemable redeemed themselves, and even became downright likable. Characters I thought of as good and noble made bad decisions and suffered for it. The whole thing fractured in ways I never saw coming, Daenerys the thirteen-year-old ended up falling in love with the savage horse lord who all but raped her (or arguably did rape her) on their wedding night; then the horse lord turned out to be more honorable than Daenerys’ own brother, and then the horse lord dies!
Every time I thought I had regained my bearings, categorized every character into the good or bad list, they would make decisions that set it all on fire and I had to start again. Characters that shouldn’t die (at least according to the rules I’d internalized) met with horrible ends, and characters that deserved to die flourished. By the time I found myself empathizing with Jamie Lannister, even rooting for him—the same guy who books earlier had indulged in incest and then the casual attempted murder of a child, I stopped trying to make sense of it. And felt better for it.
Once again my fantasy world mirrored my real world, at least in some ways, and because of that I could learn from it. All the complexities of the human condition, all the infinite shades of grey, were there; and from this shifting maze I learnt much more about the subtleties and nuances of what it means to be good and what it means to be evil.
Fantasy has always helped me understand the world, from the metaphors it employs, to the parallels with our own world, to the thoughtful exploration of its themes—one of the most important being the struggle between good and evil. As a reader, I am thankful to the clear-cut worlds of David Eddings for taking my hand and showing me the outlines of these concepts, and introducing me to characters that made the journey a joy. And I’m thankful, too, to the worlds of George R.R. Martin for helping me understand the profound depths and messiness of the same concepts, and that being a hero or a villain is never that straightforward—a realization that’s surprisingly reassuring, in the end.
Jonathan Robb is an Australian lost in London who spends his spare time reading and writing, and looking for entries into Narnia. You can find more of his work at his website.
The world of LE Modesitt is very good vs. evil. But just when you decide who you should be cheering for, you get a POV from the “enemy” and you can’t help but like them!
I like to read both kinds of characters. I know it’s popular now to make fantasy look like the real world, and especially to make it dark so no one is truly a heroine. But fantasy in the past often served up heroines who were good because it was something for us to aspire to, and that’s frankly something we need more of these days and I like reading about people like that.
I adore David Eddings, and have usually re-read the Belgariad and the Mallorean about once every couple of years since the mid 90s :) I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say his protagonists were clear-cut “good guys” though. Leaving aside the uncomfortable issue of Barak and Merel (which deserves its own commentary), the way the hero party glibly joke their way through rivers of blood borders on the psycopathic.
I suspect Eddings knew this, and intended it as a sly nod to the accepted trope of “protagonist centered morality” – given that he wrote the series to specifically invoke and make light of established fantasy tropes, this would very much have been his bag. Belgarath even alludes to this himself in (I think) “Enchanters End Game” (could have been “Castle of Wizardry” or even “Belgarath the Sorceror”, though) – “I prefer to think less in terms of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ as ‘us and them’ – it makes it easier that way”
One thing I particularly liked about the Mallorean was the way he then turned around and skewered those expectations of the so called “bad guys” by showing us the sympathetic sides to their societies. Foreshadowed all the way back in “Queen of Sorcery”, actually, now that I think about it.
By the same token, this was how Star Wars made such a huge impact in 1977 while we were lost in the mixed up world of Vietnam, Nixon, etc. It was refreshing to have a very simple, stark, good-vs-evil contest. I’ve been thinking, we’re returning to a state of deep need for this sort of thing, so lost as we currently are in all the shades of grey in our entertainment. Even Star Wars itself has moved this direction. The pendulum could use some swinging back the other way now, to give the whole audience a refreshed taste of being on the same side. The world could use some reuniting, even just for a couple of hours.
@@.-@ Yes. I want some SFF to show us how to use our better natures, to be kind, compassionate, intelligent, and educated. And to be a beacon to light our way. And also to provide some of the angry young men with a non-toxic father figure, which is what is 100% essential in the current age. In fact, I’d say right now that any SFF property which does not provide a father figure who can show a way out of toxic masculinity is a complete failure. I say that as a woman, too.
Interesting perspective. I also read Eddings as a teenager, and have since discarded his fiction since it now feels too shallow to me. I also tried to read Martin (as a twenty-something), and found it too intense, and have not returned to it since. However, I was introduced to Tolkien as a pre-teen, and have never outgrown LoTR (having now read the trilogy at least two dozen times). My current favorite, however, is Sanderson.
I’d argue that one of the points Robert Jordan made very well is that while the monsters are evil (because, duh), the people who choose to do evil are the greater threat, and taking it a level beyond that are the people who choose to do evil for good reasons. And beyond that are the people who do good for evil reasons, the good people who allow evil to be done, the people who don’t think it’s evil as long as it’s happening to other people, the morally-defensible but unjust, and on and on. He wrote an epic fantasy where the monsters are beside the point. Even the Dark One never really had a choice in what role to play and just wanted an end to his ever-lasting cycle of torment, imprisonment, and defeat (and an end to everything and everyone else in the process). I would definitely suggest giving the Wheel of Time another read, post-GoT.
IDK I never thought it was very hard to do what George R R Martin does– although granted I am judging him based off the show not the books, which isn’t fair. But from what I’ve seen in the show, the Bolton torture-kid is a terrible character meant to shock who doesn’t hold up. 1-dimenionsal and badly fleshed out. The ‘redemption of Jamie lannister arc’ while I admit I do root for him in the show now, it’s still not good writing. When an amoral sunuvaB suddenly is concerned with his honor and chivalry that is called ‘inconsistent character arc’ not ‘a great plot twist’.
it’s not that nobody can conceive of terrible people doing good things, it just isn’t consistent with good storytelling. Also it seems to me that poor Martin has either written himself into a corner and can’t think of an ending, or is intentionally drawing out the ending to milk more money out of the franchise, neither of which are hallmarks of a great artist.
In sum, based on the Game of Thrones show I’ve judged Martin as a decent writer who is in too deep at this point. Maybe that’s unfair of me but o well. I’m sure nowhere in his millions of dollars will he find time to care what my comment thinks
It’s definitely an interesting progression and then seeing authors take it even one step further. Joe Abercrombie’s First Law or better yet, Best Served Cold just give you people on a mission. You’re pulling for them to succeed but don’t necessarily think of them as heroes because they’re all pretty dark characters with a ton of flaws. A good reminder of how complex our real-life heroes are.
I found it interesting that you included David Gemmell in the “light versus dark” group because while on the surface that may be, what I love about him is that he always wrote about the common reality behind the legend, and that the real story of the legend is more complicated, grayer, more underwhelming than the myth. He often casts people of ill repute in the role of rising to hero status.
The bad guys are pretty clear, but the heroes are more complicated.
GRRM is a terrible writer and his books are filled with egregious misogyny. If it wasn’t for the excellent production values of the television adaptation, he and his work would have faded into well-earned obscurity.
The author of this article seems unsure whether or not forced child “marriage” excuses raping a 13-year-old. Yes, yes, we get it, the world is a grim, gritty place, and women are at the mercy of brutal men. That justification is nothing more than an excuse to write revenge porn. This is why I don’t find myself particularly interested in reading the works of male authors in the fantasy and science fiction genres.
@11 Definitely on the same page about GRRM and a lot of male fantasy authors. But don’t write them all off. Check out Max Gladstone’s Craft Sequence. Also Harry Connolly (urban fantasy) and Josiah Bancroft. They’re woke, avoid sexual violence, and write excellent female characters of all types while crafting amazing stories. For classics, Steven Brust’s Jhereg series is also fantastic and avoids revenge porn entirety.
Before picking up a new male fantasy author, I generally search Goodreads and Amazon reviews for “rape.” Sad, but necessary. If you want to connect on Goodreads, I have rating system for sexual violence. Just search mmaries
Honestly, there has to be a middle ground between “black and white” morality and a world like The Song of Ice and Fire. I’ve read the first two books and watched the first two seasons of Game of Thrones and bailed. It just didn’t work for me. We all know the “world sucks,” but fantasy can show us something better, something aspirational, something complex and wondrous. At the very least it should show us something interesting.
Many of the Glen cook books do a good job of showing the grey in life. The danger of the greater good, the benefits of a blood thirsty empire. It is not even that the villains are likable, its that the characters arent really sure if they are the good guys or not. Some of these books really make you think about ethics and what is the right way to look at ethics. Utilitarianism, kant, aristotle. If fighting back kills millions, is there more suffering than just being oppressed. Are cold blooded killers still murderers if they live by a code, or sometimes defend the helpless? These are the types of stories that are the fun to read. Joe Abercrombie and the Malazon book of the fallen do a good job confronting this questions.
@11 Based on the TV show and word of mouth around the books (I haven’t yet read them) I’m not convinced GoT is so much a misogynist story as a story about a misogynist setting – and that’s a key difference.
Westeros is undoubtedly a terrible place in which to be a woman. But what I see time and time again in GoT is female characters faced with a world that is unfairly stacked against them doing their best to survive and thrive anyway, each in their own way. And often doing very well at it.
I don’t think it’s fair to generalise it as “revenge porn”. Arya’s story can be categorised that way, but not Daenerys’s or Cersei’s or Margaery’s or Shae’s or Ellaria’s or Brienne’s. And that’s the point – GoT shows a wide variety of women, each with their own goals and agency, each pursuing them in their own ways. Personally I’d consider that the opposite of a misogynist story.
No has yet to mention Mark Lawrence’s Jorg Ancrath and his Band of Brothers; the first chapter is hard to get through for some reason-you think that the book is going to be one way-crazy bad guy, but then it opens up and, yes, he is a complete psychopath, but….not-and somehow endearing-I loved this series, except for a couple of things, primarily the second half of the third book-where the character’s evolution is complete, but oh so unnecessary-but Lawrence’s world is filled with variations of grey when it comes to good vs evil, and is more a commentary that we are not only products of our environment, our natures, but most importantly, anyone can do evil things, if they believe that the reason is good enough-and are they then evil, if they create good overall?
Eddings was definitely fun and did a lot to introduce folks to the genre. At 12 or 13, I couldn’t get enough of the story. His later books I do think turned things upside down when we say that the “bad guys” were people too. However there were other examples of moral ambiguity in the field before. Someone has already mentioned Glen Cook and his excellent Black Company work. I’d also have to suggest, as always, Moorcock with his Eternal Champion works. Is Elric good or bad? You decide but just don’t be around when Stormbringer gets hungry. Another is Raistlen from Weiss and Hickman. I didn’t know what to make of him when reading their stuff early on. I may have to go back and read it since I don’t acutally remember what his final disposition was. Lastly, I’d point out the shared world created by Robert Asprin with Lynn Abbey and others. few of the characters fit any type of good/evil mold. Tempus anyone???