Scott Bakker’s The Thousandfold Thought (2006). ![]() Epic fantasy’s overwhelming preference for a distanced, “totalizing world view” (28) is discussed in Chapter 3 by way of rather different examples of third-person narration and focalisation from Donaldson’s novella “The King’s Justice” (2015) and R. Narrative perspective and point of view are the subjects of Section II. ![]() Kuang’s The Poppy War (2018) and Ursula Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan (1970) and Tehanu (1990) to show how the use of such excess can be critiqued by contradicting readers’ expectations. Their stylistically excessive language is contrasted with the sparse, editorial style of R. F. Martin’s Storm of Swords (2000) in Chapter 2. Donaldson’s The Last Dark (2013) in Chapter 1 and George R. Here the typically (over)elaborate language used in epic fantasy is discussed with reference to Steven Erikson’s Toll the Hounds (2008) and Stephen R. Section I of Magic Words, Magic Worlds focuses on the uses of narrative style to elicit emotional responses from readers. It should be noted that Oliver has made excellent use of the book-length format, and chapters are best read sequentially, because arguments are often sustained across chapters and sections. Instead of aiming to provide closure or synthesis, analyses strive to remain open-ended, as each of these sections in turn comprises two chapters that juxtapose typical and atypical examples of the aspect under the discussion without a concluding synthesis. ![]() The project’s postmodern approach is also reflected in its structure: each of the book’s four sections is focused on a particular aspect of the style of epic fantasy. Yet much of the disjunct seems to be due to the vastly different natures of their projects, although Oliver probably correctly identifies Mendlesohn’s somewhat dismissive attitude to epic fantasy. Oliver aligns himself with Susan Mandala’s Language in Science Fiction and Fantasy (2010) and Charul Palmer-Patel’s more recent The Shape of Fantasy (2019), while frequently finding himself at odds with Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008), particularly when trying to fit epic fantasy into Mendlesohn’s category of portal-quest fantasy. ![]() The approach taken is thus broadly postmodern. Drawing on Caroline Levine’s terminology, Oliver particularly addresses the affordances of epic fantasy as a form as well as the “core collision” of the genre, namely that “between stable historical narrative and contingent narrative” (17). Moreover, by highlighting the self-awareness inherent in the genre, he shows that epic fantasy’s reputation for hegemonic, essentialist worldviews is not entirely justified.Īs may be expected, much of the theoretical groundwork regarding definitions, main concerns and selection criteria is laid in the introduction. By extrapolating larger observations on the genre and its politics from stylistic details, Oliver convincingly shows that magic is as much an element of the oft-derided style of epic fantasy as of the plots of these works. Politics here includes the identity positions that authors, readers and characters can take, and empathy is discussed as one of the prime mechanisms facilitating such political involvement. The overall argument of Matthew Oliver’s Magic Words, Magic Worlds (2022) is that the style of epic fantasy shapes readers’ experiences in what he broadly calls “political ways” (26).
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