Tuesday 12 May 2009

Forgotten Fantasy Masterpieces: Legends of Lone Wolf

Between the ages of around 12 and 14, I was a huge fan of The Legends of Lone Wolf - a series of novels based on the Lone Wolf gamebooks, written by John Grant (real name: Paul Barnett). In fact, one of my clearest memories from that time was trading a bunsen burner from an old chemistry set to a friend in my class for his copy of The Dark Door Opens, book 2 in the series.

The books are now largely forgotten, which is utterly amazing to me, because they are, as the author himself (modestly) admits about book 4, "beyond quite good". This is an epic understatement. The Legends of Lone Wolf was fantastically, shockingly, amazingly, heartbreakingly good - so high in quality for a line of such humble status that it beggars belief. Though the first is by-the-numbers fantasy and the second only a mild improvement, by the third and fourth books the quality had been ratcheted far above any concievable rival in the young adult section of the bookshop.

Of course, the novels always had to contend with the fact that they were based on a series of adventure gamebooks, which would never endear them to the adult market in the same way other 'children's books' (like Harry Potter) could. And they were also very poorly dealt with by a publisher that apparently knew nothing about the genre; Grant talks about his editor slashing the word count of one book because as it stood it was over 400 pages and "nobody would read a fantasy book that long" (!). But nevertheless, we're not talking here about cheap crap written to cash in on a successful franchise. We're talking about genuinely well-written, exciting fantasy novels for young adults, dealing with death, sex, mystery, adulthood and love in a mature and interesting way (far more so than plenty of so-called serious fantasy books). Harry Potter, Twilight... there is simply no comparison. Why are they no longer noticed?

I believe this is because they were published at a time when fantasy was still ghettoised in the literary world. (Proper fantasy still is, but these days you get some crossover success with fantasy-lite, as people like Neil Gaiman evidence.) This was in the dark days of the early 90s, long before J. K. Rowling and the Jackson Lord of the Rings films. Books involving magic and swords were, for the establishment, untouchable at that time. They were seen as nothing more than cheap escapist entertainment for cretins, and the idea of a fantasy writer being lauded for their skill was anathema. Publishers thought that way too, deep down inside, and you can see this by looking at the covers of the Lone Wolf novels. These weren't books written in the expectation of mainstream success.

Perhaps if they had come along 10 years after they did, they would still be in print and recieving the credit they deserve. Either way, you owe it to yourself to try to track them down. Grant has talked about a reprinting and 'reconstituting' of the texts to be more in line with his original image, without meddling from the publisher. I'm not sure how far this has progressed, but here's hoping.

I'll finish this entry with a quote from John Grant, which I think sums up the spirit in which the books were written:
I was a bit startled when I was asked to write this series of novels -- initially four of them, in the end twelve -- because this type of high, fighting fantasy wasn't the sort of fantasy I'd hitherto been much interested in. Indeed, I'll go further than that: at the time I wasn't much interested in fantasy at all, because too much of what I'd read was the kind of generic crap that still, sadly, constitutes most of what's published in the field. It seemed to me that fantasy, as a literary form, was a dead end; all the good stuff had already been done by people like C.S. Lewis and George Macdonald and Alan Garner and Lewis Carroll and Mervyn Peake and Diana Wynne Jones and ... In short, I was a bit ignorant, and hadn't realized the possibilities within fantasy. I've since become a complete convert, to the point that I will argue at great length to anyone prepared to listen that fantasy is the single most important form of literature the human species has ever invented, and, as such, is one of the most important means of expression available to us.
The later Legend of Lone Wolf books especially seem to have been written with this in mind.

16 comments:

  1. This post gave me a completely different nostalgia. By the time I was around, no one in their right mind would have EVER made a children's chemistry set that included a bunsen burner.

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  2. Fantasy fans ghettoise the genre themselves by pretty much exclusively reading within the genre and having no credibility as readers of literature in general.

    Like someone who only eats chocolate and has chocolate smeared all over his face angrily shouting in a restaurant that everyone should be eating more chocolate cake.

    How can you still think that some fiction you thought was great when you were 12-14 is still great now that you are a grown man?

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  3. Rach: Young people are far too molly coddled these days...

    Kent: Many people only read one genre - whether they are romance fans, historical fiction fans, crime fans or whateveer. Literary pseuds too, who only read 'contemporary literature' of the Zadie Smith/Ian McEewan/Salman Rushdie variety - which is a genre like any other (though absurdly elevated about the others). I don't think fantasy fans are any worse...

    How can you still think that some fiction you thought was great when you were 12-14 is still great now that you are a grown man?
    I think if something is great for what it is (e.g. a great young adults' book) then that greatness doesn't fade - even if the book is no longer exactly what I'd choose to read every day on the train. I still would call the Jennings books great, for example, and I enjoyed them when I was even younger (about 9 or 10). For what they are, they are head and shoulders above anything else.

    Another more relevant example is The Hobbit, which I read and enjoyed at age 10 and still love now. As a matter of fact I think I first read The Lord of the Rings at about the age of 11, so there's one more...!

    I'm not comparing The Legends of Lone Wolf to Dickens, you understand. But they are such good examples of the genre they have lasting value.

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  4. You are right about contemporary fiction being another kind of faddish genre. I don't think we will agree (no harm in that) on the merit of recommending adolescent fiction just like I don't understand why so many adults read comic books, and they have to read tons of them because they only take 10 mins to read. In large city bookstores comics get more space now than classics which is a daft state of affairs.

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  5. Kent: The mass promotion and consumption of comic books by adults is in my opinion one of the greatest examples of the Emperor's New Clothes in the history of the consumer economy. So you'll get no argument from me on that front (though I suspect from a number of people reading the blog...)! One of my best friends is a comic fanatic; it's just one of those things I've had to learn to accept - he will not see reason on the matter.

    But are you really saying that no adolescent fiction is worth reading by adults? What about The Hobbit, or Treasure Island, or The Chronicles of Narnia?

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  6. I do admit The Hobbit is a remarkable and strange book but I would never recommend it to my peers. Im not sure I understand my own prejudice there.

    I do know however that I am sick of intelligent people reading and recommending terrible rubbish. I want to open one of the books in front of them, start reading and ask what exactly is good about this?

    Why don't smart people read grown up books for smart people. Why is it embarrassing (pretentious) and pointless to recommend Shakespeare? The list of good fantasy books is about five books long and the rest justifiably give those five a bad name.

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  7. I think its fair to say my comments are not really relevant to your post so don't mind 'em.

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  8. Wow. A nicely written nostalgia trip about the Lone Wolf books marred only by some utter tripe in the comments. It seems even book-snobs aren't above doing a little trolling these days.

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  9. Kent: Well, I don't think Shakespeare really needs recommending - it's a bit like recommending chocolate. I agree that sometimes terrible rubbish is recommended by people on the internet, but The Legends of Lone Wolf really aren't terrible rubbish at all. They deserve more respect than they get, hence this post.

    Arcona: Thanks. Kent isn't a troll though. He just needs educating about the wonders of Lone Wolf novels. ;)

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  10. I'd heard of the Lone Wolf gamebooks, way back when, but everyone was doing Fighting Fantasy... I think I saw one in one of the local used book stores. However, my Unread Shelf is already groaning under the weight of about fifty books... from Gorky Park to Solomon Kane, The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus to All The President's Men, Stephen King to Alistair MacLean, Ray Bradbury to Edgar Rice Burroughs...

    Remind me of Lone Wolf in about six months? ;)

    wv: aphilo - non-love (weirdly enough, a rather appropriate word for this discussion)

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  11. Comics I can't justify, except in the same way I justify my RPG books: Someone's gotta be geeky enough to read 'em.

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  12. @noisms: Just like you need educating about the wonders of comics and sequential art...

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  13. PS - I loved the Lone Wolf gamebooks (am I thinking of the right thing? Sommersword's and the Order of the Kai or something, right?) and read some of the novels. I remember getting the first one on audiobook from the library and listening to it over and over again.

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  14. user@example.com16 May 2009 at 21:18

    The novels were good, but as far as the gamebooks go I liked them, but preferred the Fabled Lands series - not even a series, really, more one huge sandbox adventure spread over several books, which you could move between as you wished.

    A shame that the line was cancelled - I was really hyped up by the trip one character of mine took over the mountains to the edge of the world, only to discover that I had to take my treasure and turn around, because the Underworld book was never published.

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  15. Excellent blog post. I came upon this page while searching for information on the Legends of Lone Wolf series in a fit of nostalgia. I remember it capturing my imagination intensely in primary school (before I came upon the Wheel of Time that is). Books like The Tellings were simply beyond any writing I'd seen up to that point. It would be fantastic to see the novels in print again for a new generation of readers - even better if edited and restored to their intended state.

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  16. creamyhorror: Thanks! I still have about five of the original fourteen books somewhere in my Dad's attic; will have to dig them out next time I visit - I remember The Tellings being among them. (And I had the same experience as you - The Tellings was probably the first book I had ever read with any form of narrative experimentation.)

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