All posts tagged: Robert Jordan

Fantasy warriors – Those who follow another path…

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herocollector.com Orc.  From The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Where else to start than the mythical warriors of Middle Earth, that we meet in the writings of Tolkien.  The term Goblin and Orc are actually synonymous in the world of Middle Earth, however Tolkien tended to refer to them as Goblins in The Hobbit, whereas by the time you reach The Lord of the Rings, the term Orc is more common. In Middle Earth, before the Dark Lord Sauron, there was Melkor – Sauron’s one time master.  It was Melkor who bred the first orcs, by corrupting enslaved elves, by the slow arts of cruelty and his malignant magic with which he infused his dark will.  This is because evil in Middle Earth isn’t capable of true creation, and so the orcs were born as a cruel mockery of the elves who they had first descended from.  The orcs then bred and multiplied in vast numbers, disgorging from the lands of Mordor to swamp Middle Earth with their cruelty and spite. Grotesquely malformed, …

10 great maps of fantasy worlds!

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In no other genre, is a map at the start of the novel as important as fantasy.  I put a map at the start of my own historical novel Roman Mask, but as that map is essentially of Europe with Roman names, I realise is doesn’t really hold the same importance to a reader as a fantasy novel’s would.  A fantasy novel’s map is more than just a piece of cartography, it is a depiction of the world the writer has created in their mind, and a glimpse into a new world.  The rivers, valleys, forests, and mountains can sweep across continents and seas, creating the perfect avenue of escapism that makes the fantasy genre so appealing.  As my cousin used to say to me when we were eleven and first discovering fantasy books, ‘you can always tell it’s going to be a good one by its map, I always judge a fantasy novel by its map!,’ A bit harsh maybe, but that’s eleven year old’s for you, and it shows how important this aspect …

Great Borderlands and frontiers in novels – Part 1 : Fantasy

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For the past week and a half I’ve been staying in a small cottage up in the wild hills of Northumberland, one of England’s two counties that lie on the border with Scotland.  Evidence of previous animosity between the two countries are all around, not just with Hadrian’s Wall that runs through the borderlands, but in the number of castles and fortified buildings that lie festooned over the countryside.  My own cottage that I am staying in still has arrow slits in the outbuildings, a relic from its past when the inhabitants needed to defend themselves from the periodic raiding parties from the Scottish North. This has made me think about borderlands in literature, and what a great location they are to set any novel.  Obviously history is full of hostile frontiers, and next week I will go through a few of those and show some examples.  But equally this works well for fantasy novels, and here are just a few great examples of fantasy novelists that have used this topic so well. Mordor, Middle …

10 Types of Magic

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What is it that separates fantasy novels from other genres? Most fantasy novels are set on mythical worlds straight from the author’s imagination, some inhabited by outlandish beasts, or strange and mysterious semi-human dwellers. But what really defines and holds these worlds together is the existence of magic.