Letting Tolkien Go
Many 'fantasy readers' cannot move on from the legend, and frankly, that's part of the problem with modern fantasy
I’ll begin this post by saying that I am a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and I absolutely adore his work. While I didn’t read the trilogy until well after I watched Peter Jackson’s films, I appreciated them in a way that few would when I did.
Of course I’d already read close to one hundred fantasy titles by that time. I grew up with them, you see; my mother stocked them in our living room, and given that she was into them and there wasn’t an absolutely saturated attention economy sucking the life out of people every single moment of the day, I read a lot of them. I had video games, but I read fantasy whenever I had the chance. Video games got boring. What can I say?
It enriched my life in ways that I cannot describe. I’m about to publish my first fantasy novel—and trust me, it’ll be a hit. I just know it will. Do I have to share it on Substack? Nah. I’m that confident. I won’t even use this platform for promotion. I don’t need to.
But to get back to the topic at hand, I loved fantasy and I fell in love with it. Sci-fi never did it for me—sorry, it just didn’t. If you’re into sci-fi, then great; if you’re not, more power to you. It’s not for me, even if I’ll read the odd sci-fi book from time to time.
Now I write fantasy for a living. I write for a game studio—indeed, I’ve written for several over the last year—but one might say that’s not proper fantasy fiction. Case in point, Alexandru Constantin, one plebian among an endless sea of plebeians who are all too eager to attack modern fantasy authors. It’s amazing to me that someone with absolutely no experience with writing professionally can so brazenly malign a talent beyond their comprehension. But alas, modernity (to be fair, Alexandru is generally a nice guy, and he’s kind here, at least at the beginning):
I want to be clear about one thing: I do not think that Sanderson is the second coming of Tolkien. He’s not close to the legend.
But he’s good. Like, very good. He writes to a modern audience, and his prose is remarkably powerful for that audience. Let me give you an example.
This prose is fantastic. Why? Because it’s so simple. It’s easily digestible, yet it conveys the PoV character’s mentality in such simple terms. Cenn is scared. He’s terrified. He thinks he should use his shield. But he doesn’t understand the nuances of what is happening, and neither do we as readers. So, we are introduced to the situation the same way as Cenn is. The beautiful simplicity of Sanderson’s prose drives it home—it cuts to the chase. The opening line is gold.
The enemy had a lot of archers.
Did they? Alright, then. Sounds good. I get it. This sentence could be written in a million ways, but Sanderson opts for the cleanest, most concise sentence. It tells the reader what they need to know. It doesn’t push flowery descriptions; it’s just the truth.
This is what modern fantasy readers want. And, remember, as a fantasy writer, you are writing for the market. For the readers. Fuck your creative ‘ambition.’ Read Robert A. Heinlein’s rules, you stupid fuck. The modern audience detests long, flowery descriptions and banal lore-focused chapters. They want action. Lore should be shown rather than told. I’m reading Sanderson’s Mistborn right now, and it’s brilliant in its simplicity.
In an early scene, Kelsier, the character who has been portrayed as the book’s hero thus far, has a conversation with an ally. It’s simple, to-the-point, and makes you smile. We read for enjoyment, remember? Here it is:
Dockson strolled up next to Kelsier, then learned against the battlement, resting a pair of stout arms on the stone.
“You’re a few days late, Kell.”
“I decided to make a few extra stops in the plantation to the north.”
“Ah,” Dockson said. “So you did have something to do with Lord Tresting’s death.”
Kelsier smiled. “You could say that.”
“His murder caused quite a stir among the local nobility. “
“That was kind of the intention,” Kelsier said. “Though, to be honest, it was almost more of an accident than anything else.”
Dockson raised an eyebrow. “How do you ‘accidentally’ kill a noble in his own mansion?”
“With a knife in the chest,” Kelsier said lightly, “Or, rather, a pair of knives to the chest—it always pays to be careful.”
There it is: simple, punchy, irreverent, fun, and to the point. Is it any wonder Sanderson is the biggest fantasy author of the age?
Personally, I’ve enjoyed a lot of fantasy, and, honestly, I enjoyed this a lot more than I did Tolkien’s work when I was in my 20s. It might be that I write fantasy professionally now, but I don’t think so.
But the bigger problem that I’ve come to notice is the endless romanticization of Tolkien, which is especially prevalent in right wing spaces. You know the type: it’s the substacker who doesn’t really have anything to write about; he or she (usually he, let’s be honest), publishes “hot takes” about American politics on Notes, and he’s probably started a fiction sub-substack at some point.
Then, when nobody reads it, they go back to posting on notes and crying about modernity.
Modernity, I’m afraid, is here to stay. I’m sorry to tell you, sir; I know, I know, I know, fantasy is dead! No one will ever rival Tolkien. All the TV shows are awful slop, oh, God, I just can’t take it (I agree that the TV shows are awful, by the way; I just don’t write notes about it on Substack. I’ve got writing to do)!
Did I mention that Brandon Sanders—who, yes, is the greatest-selling traditional fantasy fiction author of this age (an insane achievement in and of itself in an age where literacy is at an all-time low, but I digress…)—is a bargain bin option of a “real fantasy author?”
Yeah. It’s boring. It’s old. And, most of all, it tells me one thing: you can’t write fiction and are angry that other people are still succeeding in that space.
Oh, I know—I get it. You don’t like what fantasy has become; these days, it’s all LitRPG and, God forbid, fantasy with sex! How could they? Don’t they understand that fantasy is meant to be transcendent? No SEX! I am a Christian!
Fucking boring.
Give me a break. Money is money. Fantasy writers have got to eat—not everyone’s sold out to some shit corpo coasting through life because they don’t like what fantasy has become. Some people have adapted; some people have said ‘You know what? I’m gonna take a shot at this new genre.’ And then, after trial and error, they’ve hit. They’ve made $67,000 out of three books, like my best-selling author friend who writes “haremlit slop.”
That’s a pretty great salary when you’re living in Eastern Europe. You can feed your two kids, go on holidays to the UK to see the relatives, and buy them all the nonsense they’ll ever need.
It’s not all ‘genre fiction’, either.
Hell, in some cases, talented authors are publishing quality dark & epic fantasy all by themselves. They don’t even need to write ‘genre fiction.’ They start their own publishing companies and just go after it. That’s what a real fantasy writer looks like, by the way. They’re not on Substack bitching about Tolkien and writing essays about how bad modern fantasy is. They’re writing 10-part series and self-publishing their way into feeding their family and creating a name for themselves.
Andy Peloquin is just one example.
And honestly, that’s what makes this narrative so fucking exhausting. All the cool kids are saying shit like “there’s no good fantasy writers anymore”, or “Tolkien is the best”, or, “Wokeness has ruined everything”, and well, that’s just not true.
Real men (and women) lift up their chins and say “fuck off.” They write the thing. They market it. They play the game because that’s how things are now. If you can’t take the heat, then get the fuck out of the kitchen.
Because people are publishing quality fiction, you’re just not reading it. You’re definitely not writing it. You turn your nose up at it because it has explicit sex; you say it’s trash because it’s not what you read in the 80s, 90s, or 00s.
Hell, it’s not what I read. I grew up reading the greats—Raymond E. Feist, David Gemmell, Sara Douglass, Glen Cook, Steven Erikson, and yes, Tolkien.
But above all else, it’s time to move on from Tolkien. If you really care about fantasy—and I don’t think most of the whiners do, honestly—then you’ll try the new stuff. You might try Declan Court and his Magebreaker series; it’s possible to venture outside what you’re used to and read Second Chance Swordsman. Maybe it isn’t insane that a lot of people enjoy Warlock by Daniel Kensington. Perhaps you’re just a prudish “get off my lawn” millennial; after all, you’re getting on, champ. Maybe you’re out-of-fucking-touch. Maybe.
Perhaps above all, it’s time to move on from Tolkien. It’s time to accept that meandering chapters that expand upon Tom Bombadil lore might just be shit; that—and I can’t believe I’m going to say this—Sarah J Maas might even be a good writer.
I know, shocking. But if people want to buy it, if people are willing to read it over the latest American culture war slop, then maybe it’s got some merit. I’ll take a Sarah J Maas reader over a culture war warrior any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s shit. It could mean that you are a closed-minded cunt, and that your tastes are outdated. Sorry, guy, that’s just how it is.
Move on from Tolkien. There’s still a ton of talent out there writing fantasy. Stop trying to emulate a writing style that hasn’t been successful for more than fifty years.
Love,
Your friendly Hungarian
PS: I’m reading Mistborn right now and it’s genuinely brilliant. If you think it sucks, well, that’s probably a you thing. Sorry.
PPS: I wrote this post in 45 minutes flat after imbibing 7 gins. What? I finished my first novel today. Second draft editing tomorrow—I’ve got 133,000 words to edit, sir. Wish me luck. :) <3 My kids eat because of my writing. Am I being vulgar? Sure. Am I still twice the writer you’ll ever be? Definitely. Yeah, this one was meant to lose a few subs. Love you, too, champ. Chin up. You can do it. I promise you can write fantasy if you want to; hell, I did it, and I was terrible. I probably still am. But it’s possible and, if anyone tells you it can’t be done, you might just tell them to fuck off. Just like I did. Bye now, and I wish you all the prosperity in the world for you and yours—especially if you’re doing something bold like publishing your first book. Godbless. Amen. (:
can't you just say this about anything? it sells, therefore you're wrong if you think it's crap? Tons of people watch every netflix slop show, so aren't you just out of touch if you think TV sucks? The lowest common denominator is what sells easiest, it seems perfectly possible to me that brilliantly marketable writing and brilliant writing might not be the same thing.
It is what it is. You're right that older styles of writing are not commercially viable and that authors have to play a certain game to make a job out of their craft. Could just be that we live in an age that isn't conducive to high culture.
Comparing any other fantasy to Tolkein is silly in my opinion. The scope of what Tolkein was attempting is insane for any person to undertake (taking Beowulf and other old Germanic tales and trying to reconstruct a mythic landscape for England itself), and no other fantasy should have to live up to the same sort of scope. I agree to let fantasy just breath without the spectre.
To me Tolkein is better compared to something like the Aeneid or Wagners Ring cycle than a fantasy novel.