The next big fantasy

[polishgenius]

Abercrombie? Much he has going for him such as fantastic characters, dialogue, flair, style, good plotting, but I question whether he will be the new GRRM because of the point that speaks in favour of a Sanderson. He's abandoned the First Law world for now, with 3 succesfull sequels. I think he will continue to sell very very well, and critically the fans reception will likely be good as well. But having stepped away from his main world and characters, as understandable as it was, I don't know if he will be the next megahit.

If anything, since YA series are more likely to make that big break in the public conciousness at the moment, there's a chance that Abercrombie might garner a massive new audience with the new trilogy, taking it back to the First Law series when he goes back to it for the closing (presumably) trilogy afterwards.

I think he's got a fairly good shout for being the next guy to break it really big.

[Shryke]

They were saying that about the what's-its-name, the one by Peter Orullian. That died quickly.

Sanderson continues to baffle me, but he might be it.

I don't see what's baffling about Sanderson. I think it's perfectly understandable why he's popular the way he is. He's a Terry Brooks with more interesting world building. It sells well.

[Shryke]

Just more generally, I don't see Sanderson working because Stormlight just feels too generic.

The thing about ASOIAF, the thing that imo makes so many people go "best fantasy ever!" is that it's not generic feeling. It very much feels revolutionary. Just familiar enough that the format is comfortable but fresh and different enough to be exciting so you feel like "finally, someone is doing it right".

Alot of the new "gritty" fantasies have the same problem imo. They feel like they are trying to out-gritty ASOIAF and they end up just feeling like a host of me-toos.

PS - I think Abercrombie's issues are similar to, say, Bakker's. As good as it is at what it does, I'm not sure what it does can make the mainstream.

Rothfuss and Lynch I think lost too much momentum waiting for subsequent volumes.

[Galactus]

I think Abercrombie also has the problem that his first outing wasn't really that strong, and while he's pretty much getting better and better for every book, it's interconnected in such a way that those early, more rough, volumes are still in. (not that the trilogy is BAD per se, but it's clearly not as smooth)

ASOIAF, OTOH started out pretty much with a bang, and then just ratcheted it up until book 3.

EDIT: I figure Abercrombie will be one of the "near-greats". The kind of author people will mention, but not the first guy they mention, if you know what I mean.

[Datepalm]

Just more generally, I don't see Sanderson working because Stormlight just feels too generic.

...

Alot of the new "gritty" fantasies have the same problem imo. They feel like they are trying to out-gritty ASOIAF and they end up just feeling like a host of me-toos.

PS - I think Abercrombie's issues are similar to, say, Bakker's. As good as it is at what it does, I'm not sure what it does can make the mainstream.

The weird thing about Stormlight is that it really isn't that generic, in terms of worldbuilding - it's really not your bog standard medieval thing - and yet you're right that it does feel generic, somehow. Something in the tone, the characters, the atmosphere, just has "this is ye olde classic Epic Fantasy" written all over it. I also think it's just badly written. Even your very, very trite generic authors - Brooks and Feist and so on, have a certain suck-you-in, easy to read quality, which I didn't feel at all with Way of Kings. I know people love it, I just genuinely don't get why.

The Gritty stuff, and Abercrombie and Bakker for that matter, strike me as being inaccessibly to people who aren't already familiar with the genre. A lot of what they do is this deconstructive, subversion, loudly shouting "this is NOT ye olde boring classic Epic Fantasy," which I figure has a somewhat limited appeal in the general population.

ASOIAF, OTOH started out pretty much with a bang, and then just ratcheted it up until book 3.

AFFC and ADWD are as good as anything and I will defend them to the death! :fencing:

[Darth Richard II]

Fans of the Star Wars EU are going to be really butthurt soon.

Edit: That Peter Orullian....thing....actually sold real well and got good reviews from certain crowds. Maybe he's the next Goodkind? :P

[Bolivar]

Since what we're talking about necessitates well-received adaptations, I don't think there will be anything else for a while. We haven't seen fantasy adaptations take off after Game of Thrones and they probably won't if they haven't by this point. The likelihood for all these new gritty prolific series to be adapted will diminish once the novelty of GoT's sex and character killing wears off. The acting and direction has gone down the toilet in my eyes, I think it's just taking time to sink in for non book readers since so many subversive things still shock them.

I think Bakker deserves to be up there but he won't be mainstream. There's things in those books that are central to the plot that I think readers outside of Geekendom just don't have the stomach for.

Martin depicts a lot of sex. Bakker has money shots.

I think Daniel Abraham may write something great someday. He seems like an author with great promise that would benefit from doing more short story work and really honing his craft that way, as opposed to the full length novels and multi-volume series that he's been churning out. I'm most of the way through The Dragon's Path and not planning to invest any more of my time in this series. I don't find the characters or the storyline especially compelling and the world just feels artificial. The financial stuff is somewhat interesting. I feel like that's a real strength that Abraham brings to the genre. He just needs to develop.

Off topic you should just read the King's Blood since it's the best book in the series so far.

[polishgenius]

The Gritty stuff, and Abercrombie and Bakker for that matter, strike me as being inaccessibly to people who aren't already familiar with the genre. A lot of what they do is this deconstructive, subversion, loudly shouting "this is NOT ye olde boring classic Epic Fantasy," which I figure has a somewhat limited appeal in the general population.

Bakker I agree with to an extent, because he's very particularly doing a deconstruction of Tolkien at some quite deep levels that a casual fan of the films or whatever won't necessarily catch (though I think most of his inaccessibility doesn't come from that), but I reckon anyone with a passing familiarity of LotR, Harry Potter and Star Wars will be able to get what Abercrombie's doing.

[Pecan]

The thing about ASOIAF, the thing that imo makes so many people go "best fantasy ever!" is that it's not generic feeling. It very much feels revolutionary. Just familiar enough that the format is comfortable but fresh and different enough to be exciting so you feel like "finally, someone is doing it right".

Alot of the new "gritty" fantasies have the same problem imo. They feel like they are trying to out-gritty ASOIAF and they end up just feeling like a host of me-toos.

Ha Ha! Both of your points above are exactly right.

On the second point, that's basically my problem with Abercrombie. I have high hopes for the man because I think he's a fundamentally strong writer. But he's so far down in the muck and the weeds and the grit that it makes me not so interested in spending time in his world. My wish is that he simply abandon the world of the First Law trilogy and come up with something new and more epic.

[Anatúrinbor]

Scott Bakker's "2nd apocalypse" will eventually be massive

:rofl:

I don't think most casual readers care a lot about deconstruction of tropes or whatever, what you need is a soap opera-ish fantasy (and I don't mean that as an insult.) Who's going to give readers a set of characters that they'll love/hate as much as they loved/hated the Starks/Lannisters at the beginning of ASoIaF? That's where you'll find your answer.

[Datepalm]

:rofl:

I don't think most casual readers care a lot about deconstruction of tropes or whatever, what you need is a soap opera-ish fantasy (and I don't mean that as an insult.) Who's going to give readers a set of characters that they'll love/hate as much as they loved/hated the Starks/Lannisters at the beginning of ASoIaF? That's where you'll find your answer.

I think it's all down to characters, in the end. All the literary tricks, deconstructions, innovations, stylistic breakthroughs, whatever, aren't going to hook in people like a set of characters they really, really care about, and argue about, and get offended for and defend to the death and ship and try to redeem and all that. I don't know how you do that exactly. It goes deeper than just some objective measure of quality or seriousness or grittiness or even psychological realism. ASOIAF does it, and so does Harry Potter, and you know what? So does Friends. It doesn't mean any of those are completely universal, but it clearly works for a lot of people and tha's what we're trying to get at here.

[Werthead]

An interesting question, and one I've pondered a lot over the years.

First off, we need to analyse what makes a big fantasy series really successful. The most successful such series have been Middle-earth, The Dark Tower, Discworld, The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire and Harry Potter. All have sold at least 30 million books (ASoIaF is actually the lowest-selling of those, only just about now hitting that figure) and are well-known within and outside the genre.

I would say that all of these series bar Discworld - which is a different case - are notable for:

1) High levels of detail, a slow or relatively slow pace and very large page counts, at least the more the series goes on (even Harry Potter's later books are short by big epic fantasy standards, but relative to the first three and relative to the YA genre, they are colossal).

2) Significant publishing delays between books (even Middle-earth suffers from this, with LotR following The Hobbit by 17 years, and there being a further 23 year wait for The Silmarillion, though LotR itself was published over less than 2 years). This may sound ludicrous for Harry Potter, but after churning out the first 4 books in 3 years, I remember Rowling being really hounded during the 3-year gap between Goblet and Phoenix, which resulted in the decision to keep the page count (and wait) for the last two books down. Such delays allow a devoted fanbase to spring up discussing the books for huge periods of time, driving the sense of a fan community.

3) Having a familiar touchstone which audiences can latch onto immediately - ASoIaF's relationship to real history, WoT's evocation of traditional fantasy tropes mixed with elements from Dune, Harry Potter's use of school tropes, The Dark Tower's Western-isms and so forth.

4) Having a strong focus on a reasonably large cast of characters, with room for fan-favourite minor characters (often very random choices that baffle the author) as well as the obvious heroes, vilains, anti-heroes etc.

5) Having not just a single plot, but multiple plots and subplots which intersect one another. They also have notable backstory mysteries and the plot often goes in two directions simultaneously, revealing more of past events even as the current-day storyline unfolds.

6) Appealing to both sexes. This is obviously necessary for widespread appeal. If you alienate 50% of your readership from the off, your series is never going to become The Next Big Thing.

Discworld is different because Pratchett almost doesn't approach the series as fantasy, instead using satire, history and social commentary (to use a common review phrase, he's much closer to Dickens now than Tolkien) to create something very different. I also think it helps that Discworld has numerous sub-series with vast numbers of characters and storylines between them, but no over-arcing plot to scare off newcomers.

So are we going to see another mega-successful fantasy series like the above again?

I wouldn't say never, but it's worth noting that even the most recent of the above series are now more than a decade and a half in the past, and none of the fantasy authors who have appeared since has shown much sign of matching them (with one exception: Rothfuss). It could well be that these authors have achieved a breakthrough of epic fantasy into the mainstream and new readers brought in by these authors split to the winds and read lots of different authors, rather than focusing on anyone in particular. That's good for raising the overall success level of the genre, but not necessarily for individual authors wanting to break out. Of course, and possibly more likely, is that people read those books because they are The Big Thing and promptly don't read anything else until the next Big Thing comes along.

Of the authors published recently, I would say it's not looking great for any of them to achieve giga-stardom bar Rothfuss, who has been totally huge with just two novels under his belt (I put this down to the 'adult Harry Potter' marketing it's gotten). However, Rothfuss needs to step up his output and also make his post-Doors of Stone books as successful even if they are dealing with different characters if he really wants to hit the big time. If the mooted TV series happens, that will help as well.

Sanderson I think has established himself as a solid bestseller, but it's surprising how restrained his sales have been given his profile. During the recent research into book sales, I discovered that Sanderson - for his solo work alone, not WoT - had sold several hundred thousand copies less than Abercrombie worldwide, despite Abercrombie starting his career a year later and having significantly fewer books to his name. That was very surprising, and it appears that whilst Sanderson is being presented as the Next Big Thing by Tor, his sales figures aren't reflecting that yet. I think Sanderson's long-term prospects, however, are very bright given his output and his active status in multiple subgenres, including YA, and under-explored genres, like superhero stories in novel form. He needs a really big breakout story, and I don't think Stormlight Archive is going to be it; although it will certainly be successful, I doubt at this point it will be a giga-seller.

Can something that was never canon actually be "retconned"?

As has been explained multiple times, LucasArts spent 20-odd years saying it was canon and setting out elaborate charts and systems - and even 300-page coffe table books! - showing how it all fitted together. So yes, it was canon, and yes, the current situation is indeed retconning.

Similarly, Neil Gaiman doesn't look as if he has an adult novel of any size left in him and if he does, it will probably be a standalone. Not the next big thing but will remain very popular regardless.

American Gods II is supposed to still be on his plate. In fact, the HBO deal was apparently dependent on him producing it so they could adapt it. I do wonder if his failure to do so, and his decision to write other stuff instead, might have impacted on the deal. HBO are also probably worried about how they're going to handle the ASoIaF overtake and want to avoid that for other projects.

Sandman could become huge (again) if the film adaptation happens and is good.

[Gaston de Foix]

great post, Wert.

1. Pratchett is inimitable. Discworld should be taken off the table.

2. All the remaining examples had one more important thing going for them- timing. The current crop are not competing in a vacuum or against the greats, they are competing against each other in real time.

3. I think the next big thing may well be a fantasy-romance crossover that takes both parts of the hyphen seriously. Alternatively, I think non-western centred history inspired fantasy could work if it had characters with depth.

[Gormenghast]

Uhm, when it comes to mainstream "Fantasy" is just territory you steal from.

The next "big" thing won't likely happen within "fantasy", but more as a kind of contamination of near-fantasy. Twilight, Harry Potter and things like those.

[The Crow's Third Eye]

Aww discworld. I think its that time of year where i dig out my collection again

[Whatever]

Please no Sanderson. He made a complete mess of The Wheel of Time. I cringe every time I think about the time he had....

So, the whole final third of the book - which he wrote - is better than everything RJ wrote in his last three books, and you're complaining because Moiraine doesn't let Thom light the fire?

Well, de gustibus, I guess. In the meanwhile, me is waiting very eagerly for the next Stormlight book, and I hate that I have to wait three weeks to get my hands on it.

*faints with excitement*

Seriously you've made my day :D I'm currently looking forward to the next Fitz and Fool book later this year. I know some were disappointed by the Tawny Man but I love it. I could read about the Six Duchies all day quite happily

ETA: I dont know that Hobb's work would make good TV though... maybe the first trilogy would.

Wait, what? :drool:

*grabs a pillow and screams*

(Even though the last book left me kinda cold, so I'm afraid I'll get disappointed again. I liked the Liveship Traders triology best. Brashen Trell was my very first literary crush - I think it was even before Mat from WoT. Awwww, Memory Lane.)

[jurble]

I really like the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks

It's actually very good. Unfortunately, I think his first series has given people a dim view of his abilities as a writer. I don't think it's the next big thing however.

[peterbound]

I had not heard of Anthony Ryan. Amazon's ratings are ridiculously strong. Might have to check this out.

It's good. Real.

[williamjm]

I quite understand why aSoIaF is lots of people's favourite, even though it's not mine - it's the (somewhat frequent) declaration that it's unequivocably the best and nothing else will ever match it that I take issue with.

And that often does come from people who have read almost no fantasy and seem uninterested in reading much more so firm is their conviction that aSoIaF has perfected the genre. It's irritating.

It's not a new phenomenon, I haven't seen it so much recently but I used to regularly see comments from people saying something along the lines of "I really liked LOTR but after that I read Sword of Shannara and realised that fantasy other than LOTR wasn't for me". Sometimes other series were involved in people dismissing fantasy but Brooks did seem to be the most common.

I also thing the Hugh Howly Wool series is going to be pretty goddamn big, especially now with the movie right secured.

I can imagine the first film being a big hit, but the sequels could be problematic, I think the quality of the series going rapidly downhill could limit its success a bit.

Rothfuss? I feel that he has something of that GRRM thing that really gets people involved, gets them to discuss his work, gets them to be major fans who are outspoken about his work. The Kingkiller books are a trilogy but the 3 books are very large and there is much to be found in them that people like. And there is the fact that more books could follow after the Kingkiller series concludes. I have him down as a strong maybe. Obvious downside is that even at the start of his career, he takes a very long time in between books.

I think Rothfuss has the potential to write an excellent fantasy series that could be a major crossover hit. I don't think the Kingkiller series is it, but maybe the follow-up series will manage to improve on some of the weaknesses of the Kingkiller books.

[Jiriki]

So, the whole final third of the book - which he wrote - is better than everything RJ wrote in his last three books, and you're complaining because Moiraine doesn't let Thom light the fire?

I'm complaining because that entire scene was ridiculous. And it didn't have to be written so badly. Who, just after losing an eye, says, "Welp, I'm going hunting!"? One of the dumbest moments in any fantasy series. Ever.

But that's only one example of many. I can think of many others.

The scene, for example, in the pavillion in the last volume, where two characters are arguing, and supposedly, even though the pavillion is full of people, no one notices their argument (why mention that no one notices their argument? If you want them to argue, and it's important that no one knows they're arguing, have them set up a ward, or at least have them go outside the freakin' tent!).

Or the fact that many of the characters started acting entirely out of character. At one point, the Queen of Andor spits into her hand to seal a deal. The last volume was a disjointed mess. It was like Sanderson hadn't read the original books at all. For example, a character, Padan Fain, who was given great importance in the early volumes, was barely mentioned at the end. Many dormant threads were never tied up at all. But many endless, boring trollock battles did take place.

I give Sanderson credit for wrapping up one storyline (the Verin thing) extremely well. If that was him and not RJ. The rest was just messy and unnecessary.

Well, de gustibus, I guess.

Yes, non est disputandum.