It is to the point I can feel myself getting physically ill every time I open a book and it starts with a goddamn farm boy living in ass nowhere. I am so freaking sick of the exact same tropes over and over and over. The travelling merchant / bard, the general store, the tragic event that finally moves the godforsaken story along, etc.

How many lazy hacks can write this exact same goddamn first third of a book without killing themselves for sins against creativity?

Today I started reading 'The Warded Man' after hearing so many good things about it. I deleted the POS in disgust once the slack-jawed characters starting showing us how charmingly provincial they are whilst drooling over a travelling juggler. Really Peter V. Brett? 2008 and we are still writing that opening? Does this idiot think writing the exact same story with a world building twist is unique or interesting?

I spit on everyone who ever suggested that this book had merit.

/rant off

 

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i'm currently w/o a book to read. i finished farseer and it made me depressed as fk. now i'm like afraid to read a book again or something.

 

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Richelle Mead just released her sixth and final book in her succubus series.

I really enjoyed the books and place them in my top 10 UF series easily.

I have trouble convincing my friends to read them since they are about a succubus but she is a reluctant succubus and it doesn't have any of the trashy things one might expect.

 

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The series as a whole is decent enough to read.

I agree with the setting however, it's as pat and overused as the "you are really a secret prince/princess is hiding" and the "young son who rebels and acts like a jerk until his family is murdered then grows up to become a hero" thing.

With 83 million new "fantasy" novels coming out every day now...the vast majority of them being written by authors who formerly made their living writing romance novels.....you gotta figure the opening third of the book isn't worth looking at most of the time however.

I hear you. Even the farmboy beginning of the Princess Bride set my teeth on edge.

 

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Yeah, I much prefer the "normal person enters fantasy world they didn't realize existed and then rolls with the punches" approach to the "random person already living in fantasy world becomes/secretly already is someone influential" one.

 

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Read the Coramonde Duology
The Doomfarers of Coramonde (1977), ISBN 0-345-25708-1
The Starfollowers of Coramonde (1979)



Chock full of "I don't know WTF magic is but we'll see if this tank round will solve the problem." common sense.

Brian Daley is always an easy relaxing read.

 

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That sounds like my cup of tea minus the military angle, but I may give it a shot anyway. It's always hard to predict whether that perspective is going to end up weighing down the book with boring details or just helping with character development.

 

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If you're looking to avoid tired tropes, reading mass market fantasy is probably a bad idea.

 

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I've agreed about that trope since the early to mid 90's, but there always exceptions to the rule. Wheel of Time for example. The first four of that series are some of the best books to hit fantasy in the past 3 decades and it fully utilizes the "farm boy" trope for its THREE main male characters.

And, I hate to say this, but the farm boy trope will never go away. It is practically required by "The Heroes Journey".