Reading high fantasy
21 May 2026 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneI am resisting reading the new Murderbot book still because then I will be out of Murderbot again.
But that reminded me that I had another book by Wells waiting. I bounced off Witch King the first time I picked it up because it starts with a three page glossary of characters with exotic fantasy names, and those always annoy me. It's useful to have a list, but I think I prefer it as a appendix. I don't have any patience for homework that I'm supposed to do before I start reading. If your book is prose, and it's elaborate enough to require reference lists (is my feeling), you'd fucking better be able to write exposition skillfully enough to introduce your characters and places in the text! And Wells is skilled enough to do that. You don't need to read the list before you start reading.
Not knowing how to pronounce the names is also very annoying, but I have to say that on balance, the fantasy novels that try to explain the pronunciation in a folksy way are even more annoying, so I think I agree with her choice. It would just be nice to have an appendix with actual phonetic symbols, or a whole thing explaining the phonology of each invented language (Wells isn't Tolkien. I don't think she actually invented the languages). In things that are set in the real world, or very close to it, it's usually possible to identify the places and languages and thus get at least a good guess at pronunciation, but Wells' fantasy cultures are not (to me) merely identifiable Earth ones with the serial numbers filed off (which is a point very much in her favor in terms of world-building, but it does make pronunciation more challenging). But my mind's ear has to decide what it thinks for each name or I'll be stumbling over them every time, and I cannot actually stop myself from getting distracted wondering about it nearly every time the names come up. Of course this is a set of eternal dilemmas in high fantasy.
This book is more recent than the Ile-Rien trilogy and much more mature and well written, but I still prefer her sf to her fantasy.
But that reminded me that I had another book by Wells waiting. I bounced off Witch King the first time I picked it up because it starts with a three page glossary of characters with exotic fantasy names, and those always annoy me. It's useful to have a list, but I think I prefer it as a appendix. I don't have any patience for homework that I'm supposed to do before I start reading. If your book is prose, and it's elaborate enough to require reference lists (is my feeling), you'd fucking better be able to write exposition skillfully enough to introduce your characters and places in the text! And Wells is skilled enough to do that. You don't need to read the list before you start reading.
Not knowing how to pronounce the names is also very annoying, but I have to say that on balance, the fantasy novels that try to explain the pronunciation in a folksy way are even more annoying, so I think I agree with her choice. It would just be nice to have an appendix with actual phonetic symbols, or a whole thing explaining the phonology of each invented language (Wells isn't Tolkien. I don't think she actually invented the languages). In things that are set in the real world, or very close to it, it's usually possible to identify the places and languages and thus get at least a good guess at pronunciation, but Wells' fantasy cultures are not (to me) merely identifiable Earth ones with the serial numbers filed off (which is a point very much in her favor in terms of world-building, but it does make pronunciation more challenging). But my mind's ear has to decide what it thinks for each name or I'll be stumbling over them every time, and I cannot actually stop myself from getting distracted wondering about it nearly every time the names come up. Of course this is a set of eternal dilemmas in high fantasy.
This book is more recent than the Ile-Rien trilogy and much more mature and well written, but I still prefer her sf to her fantasy.
