Customer Reviews

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I think most of the negative reviews are from people whose tongue is not inserted properly in their cheek.Really, guys, who goes around COUNTING cliches and who can really catch every single one when it all comes dowen to it. This book is full of wicked humor and a skewering look at fantasy not to be missed.

True fans of any genre are the ones that can laugh at it. This book is great because it tells writers exactly what cliches to avoid and points out funny facts. (Come to think of it, when HAS a fantasy character, a serious heroic one, mind you, ever worn socks? Tell me if you know!)

Read it, be prepared for initial indignation, then laughter then get on with your life and for heaven's sake don't count how many times these tired cliches have been used! It spoils all the fun

If you like fantasy and have a sense of humor, get this book. Diana Wynne Jones knows whereof she speaks, and she hits many nails on the head. This is a delightful send-up of fantasy conventions and if you don't laugh out loud you will at least smile a lot.

In view of the current resurgence of LOTR (thanks to the movie)this book should be sold in conjunction with Bored of the Rings by the Harvard Lampoon, which I hear is being re-issued after many years. The two would make a nice gift set.

Like another reviewer, I am sorry that even more items were not included--such as Knights--but one author cannot think of everything and the book -is- 300 pages long.

It is fun to imagine what particular authors Ms. Jones might have had in mind as she wrote the different entries (although I don't suggest she is always being "author-specific".) In my own case, I am as it happens finishing up Elizabeth Moon's DEED OF PAKSENNARION, and the entry for "Female Mercenary" really had me chuckling. Hello, Paks!

I hope someone sends copies of this masterpiece to R.J., T.G., and several other people who badly need to read it.

The Tough Guide To Fantasy Land
by Diana Wynne Jones
DAW Books, 1996

Diana Wynne Jones has been for me, since an early age, a favorite. Her fantasy stories are entertaining, thoughtful and often quite unique. And now I know how she figured out how to give her stories that unique quality, she cataloged all the cliches of genre fantasy first. Then she avoided using them until she put them in her Tough Guide To Fantasy Land.

This book is a dictionary of every trope and cliche that comes standard with the fantasy genre (OMT). With the pretense that all fantasy novels are actually tour guides of Fantasyland, Jones lists all the sights and events one can expect while on their specific tour. The writer is Management and what you can expect is dictated by The Rules (which SMELL slightly of Campbell).

Each entry is a wonderfully wicked stab at the pulp, and is cross-referenced and littered with Official Management Terms (OMT) which can be found in italics and every pulp fantasy novel ever written. Jones will inform you that SOCKS are simply not worn but amazingly all BOOTS will be without SMELL even after being worn for weeks on end (and they won't wear out either). Fantasyland ECOLOGY is suspicious at best, with no insects or really animals at all except for LEATHERY-WINGED AVIANS who will attack near the beginning of the tour, which of course makes you wonder just what the Management is putting into the STEW (which is mostly all you'll eat).

This book's only problem is a number of typos. It was an occasional distraction that I hope is fixed in later editions.

If you have ever picked up a trilogy of fantasy (for most tours have three legs, if more they become EPICS), you're looking to write a genre fantasy novel, or just want to read them all in one volume, then this will leave you laughing, entertained and ready if you ever make your way through the misting mirror into Fantasyland.

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is not a novel, but it does manage to tell a sort of story. Written as an amusing travel guide, the book assumes that you are a 'tourist' in a fantasy world. You are, of course, going on a quest, and you will meet all sorts of strange people, visit strange places, eat lots of stew (and probably save the world as well) before the tour is over.

The strange people, places, and the details of your journey are all described in a humorous, deadpan style, and, through the guide, the main cliches of fantasy literature are clearly pointed out. This is why I think this book would be a good writing guide. If you're interested in writing fantasy, either as a pastime or as a job, this book will show you all the things you should definitely avoid, because they have been done to death already. It also shows some things that a good author might consider writing about, such as creating an ecology for their fantasyland.

I myself have already put TTGTF to use, and looked up some tired fantasy concepts when I came across them in other books. Diana Wynne Jones's explanations of such cliches are always very enlightening, and often quite funny.

My favorite parts, however, were probably the arbitrary and irrelevant quotes at the beginning of each section. I greatly enjoyed them. Some of the quotes are hilarious, and some of them are quite applicable to real life.

Exhausted and sick of barbarian heroes in invincable loin clothes? Ever wondered WHY the hero and heroine have a thing with *baths*? Wonder no longer! Diana Wynne Jones exposes all those cobwebs, smirks at Conan, raises an eyebrow at all those red-haired,green-eyes, bad-tempered magic using females, and gives us a refreshing insight into what makes up *FantasyLand* This book is a must for all fantasy readers, you can love Robert Jordan's work but still find The Tuffguide funny! She goes through all the cliches found in Fantasyland alphabetically, exposing Stew, Tavern Brawls, the Loveable Rogue who is really a Prince and so on. Take an open mind and delve into it, if you're a fan of fractured fairytales, you'll love taking this PanCeltic tour, I did.

Diana Wynne Jones has given us (among many other fabulous things; do check out her fiction) a wonderful reference book, a veritable encyclopedia of fantasy novel cliches. I've read it through from start to finish over three times, and expect to do so many times again.

It's entertaining, but more than that: it helps me write.

I'm happy to see a number of other reviewers have spotted the potential in this book that I found. I'm not sure the author intended this book to be such a useful resource to writers, but it is. When I have all the characters in place but am failing to put my finger on the plot, I can pull out a cliche from this rollicking work of reference, file off the serial numbers, and keep the story moving. And reading through the laundry list of what other people have done tells me both what resonates with readers and how to step nimbly out of an overly predictable twist.

As a writer, I work best when scrambling known myths and stereotypical concepts into unprecedented combinations. This wry bestiary of such things has made a home on my desk, right next to the road atlas and Polti's Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations.

I would not recommend reading this book straight through, which can get a little tedious. Instead, flip through it and read when something catches your interest. Pretty soon, you will have read all the entries. I have read these entries over and over, and they never pale for me, probably because each time I look at the Guide, I am thinking of the latest fantasy book I have read, which made use of a different cliche than the one before. I love fantasy, I enjoy the Epic Doorstops, but I sure can laugh at them. Yes, this book does not include absolutely every cliche, there is no "love" entry (though there is an entry for "sex"). However, I do not see that it has to include everything- maybe the problem is that some people are expecting this to be a real reference book, not just something to amuse you. And to those reviewers who do not recognize all the cliches Jones points out, you simply have not read enough fantasy. While I am not myself a writer, I could see this book being useful. I read this when I don't want to be drawn into an enormous book, and I love sharing it with friends. One reviewer thought it a trifle cruel to include a map as a cliche, it being genuinely useful and reasonable. But this book is about that typical fantasy book, and they do, without variance, have that map. At this point that map is not even useful, being all curlicued. I love the entries on Swords, Talented Girls, Color Coding, Gnomic Utterances...it's all so true.

An amusing catalogue of fantasy cliches. Sample entries:

APOSTROPHES. Few names in Fantasyland are considered complete unless they are interrupted by an apostrophe somewhere in the middle. ... No one knows the reason for this. Nor does anyone really know how an apostrophe should be pronounced...

GAY MAGE may be one of your COMPANIONS on the Tour. He will be very beautiful and he will dress in gorgeous colors. He will have long hair which may be silver-blonde. He will "ache with sensitivity" [Official Management Term]. He will not like to fight or be angry with people. Despite all this, he will be strong, competent and determined, and he will be very good at MAGIC indeed. He will fall in love while on the Tour and suffer other disasters, but this will not impair his efficiency in the least. You will find him giving you a backrub and aromatherapy late in the Tour at some point when he ought to be dead. A valuable Companion.

Quite amusing if you've read a lot of fantasy.. especially a lot of *bad* fantasy. :) Also don't miss the excellent entries on horsebreeding and ecology [which I would have given as examples, but they were a bit too long].

As someone who reads (and enjoys) sword and sorcery fantasy, I loved this book! I haven't come across some of her entries yet, and she doesn't include, for instance, Knights, when I've found them pretty common in much of the fantasy I've read, but for the most part, she's right on the mark. It's a great book for anyone who reads/writes fantasy--yes, quests are fun, but they don't make for War and Peace. She destroyed any illusions I had about the genre on the first page, with the hilarious directions for using the map, and it only got better. Entries such as Economy, Nunneries, and Food would have been worth it on their own.

Jones relentlessly skewers lowest common denominator (LCD) fantasy novels in a form of a travel guide to the generic Fantasyland that LCD fantasies are set in. Everything from bad worldbuilding to bad cliches are shown in meticulous detail.

A fun exercise is to take a best-selling fantasy of your choice and count how many entries apply to it. The more that do, the less original (and thus less imaginative) the author has been.

If you want to write fantasy, read this book first. It will show you all the mistakes that everyone else has been committing (how to avoid them is your own problem).