Some time about a year, year and a half ago, I watched a video essay on the theme of death and mortality in The Last Unicorn movie. Yes, I am that much of a nerd, though I will admit I prefer reading essays to watching them. Still, having grown up watching the movie, it surprised me to realise that it was based on a book. (It says so right in the beginning credits, but at seven, I was disinclined to read credits.) I immediately put the book on my TBR list and promptly forgot about it.

Then, sometime the beginning of December, I went to Barnes & Noble on my first bookstore trip in the new place (five months after moving. I know, I know, but I really and truly dislike driving, so don’t go out much. Even to bookstores). There, I found a copy of Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn with a snazzy new cover. I picked it up and got around to reading it over the Christmas holiday.

Shortly after reading The Last Unicorn, I reread The Hobbit for the nth time. I grew up reading Tolkien, which then led to Anne McCaffery, and then to a whole pile of mystery books which have nothing to do with this. Anyways, I haven’t read The Hobbit in a good long while, and I realised during my reread, and my reading of The Last Unicorn, that fantasy really has changed quite a bit over the years.

I will be the first to admit that I haven’t read a lot of the big names in fantasy. Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings has been on my shelf for about six months now and I haven’t even touched it. I only read Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World last year and still haven’t gotten around to book two. I also haven’t read George R.R. Martin, but I’m not putting him in this category since he was published more recently. The older fantasy novels, though, the Tolkien and the Anne McCaffery, and the Peter S. Beagle, are noticeably different than a lot of the modern fantasy books out there.

In structure, the classical books have a very event-driven style. The Hobbit focuses primarily on getting to The Lonely Mountain and dealing with Smaug rather than the intricacies of characterisation. We get very few descriptions of the characters and the world, except in vague, painterly strokes when a scene needs to be set. I know that The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings vary quite significantly in style, but they both are Tolkien works and are therefore similar in that regard. The events take centre stage.

The Last Unicorn is similar, though it focuses more on character-as-plot-device than anything. The plot is still central, but the characters drive the plot. (For example, Lír is painted as a “hero” and has classic hero tasks.) The description is still limited and the character dynamics are less fleshed out than I see in modern stories. The events of the book, as concerns the characters, take centre stage.

In modern fantasy, of course the plot is central to the story, but I have noticed a lot more focus on the characters-as-people rather than as merely plot devices. There is a lot more description, a lot more little things that characterise the people involved, and they don’t usually exist just to serve the plot. (Okay, to be fair, there are many side characters that exist just to serve the plot, and even I have had a few of those, but in general, these plot-people only exist on paper for a few scenes rather than throughout the book.) The prose seems to be more involved, as though they’re trying to portray life exactly as it is rather than paint a general picture. 

Stylistically, the two types of fantasy are so far apart as to be almost separate sub-genres. 

Now, granted, I haven’t read every classical fantasy book out there. Certainly the various Dragonriders of Pern novels by Anne McCaffery read quite different to Tolkien stories and have a lot more detail, but even those are quite different than modern stories in direct comparison.

Nor have I read every modern fantasy book out there. My tastes are wide and varied, so I’ve dipped into most all sub-genres of fantasy, but I readily admit that I haven’t read the Big Names. However, even the Robert Jordan book that I have read (and this straddles the line, having been published in the late 90s), is quite different than Tolkien. (Despite sharing most major plot points and character archetypes, that is.) 

Direct comparison between say, V.E. Schwab and Peter S. Beagle is significantly vast. Both authors are quite readable, quite entertaining, but they are so different that it’s difficult to compare them well. The language style is more poetic in The Last Unicorn than in A Darker Shade of Magic. The characters are more ephemeral, more shaped by reader imagination than author direction. The plot is grand and epic in both, but with very different scopes. 

As an author, I find the differences to be both astonishing and very interesting. As a reader, I can tell you that I love both styles of fantasy (and need to read more of both). And, as a reader of more than just fantasy, I can tell you that this style shift does not at all hold true in other genres. 

Mystery novels written in the 30s and 40s read very similarly to those written today (disregarding technology, of course). Romance novels from two hundred years ago have the same general plot points and themes as romance novels from the 80s as romance novels today (minus various amounts of spice). Subtle changes in society obviously make reader expectations different, but on the whole, these feel very much fluid across time. Not so with fantasy.

Frankly, I do not mind at all. I fell in love with Tolkien as a child and I continue to love it today, even after having read a vast amount of books in all sorts of genres and styles. I’m pleased to see how fantasy has evolved over time, and I am eager to see what happens next in the world of dragons and magic.

The post Word Nerdery: Classical Fantasy vs Modern Fantasy first appeared on Tarney Brae Creative Endeavours.