I have just recently finished reading The Gate of Ivrel, a vaguely obscure (although apparently relatively high-selling) sword-and-planet novel by CJ Cherryh. I very much enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed it more because I deliberately - and this is the first time I've ever done this - did not look at the map on the first page or read the lengthy prologue before reading the actual story.
I have no concrete evidence for this, but I suspect often fantasy/SF authors are forced to write prologues by their publishers, who are worried that without Basil Exposition to come along and explain things beforehand, the readers won't be able to follow what's going on. (This is obviously more of a problem with films, where the anxiety that audiences are stupid and won't understand anything reaches fever pitch - think of the incredibly naff and unnecessary introductory segment to Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring.)
I have even less evidence for saying this, but I strongly suspect this is the case with Gate of Ivrel. CJ Cherryh is a good writer with good taste, and the story stands on its own merits without its accompanying map or prologue, and you can piece together the background easily enough if you have half a brain. This is also of course much more enjoyable and interesting than having the information dumped on you at the start.
I'm going to take this approach to all fantasy novels I read in future, and I suggest you do too. I will also suggest that we call this The Gate of Ivrel Prologue and Map Test. If a book has a prologue and map and the story itself can be read, enjoyed and understood without that prologue or map, it fails the test - the publisher misjudged the audience and should be ashamed for it. If it has a prologue and map and genuinely needs them because you can't actually understand or enjoy the story without them, it passes.
Whether you would actually want to read a book that passes the test is a question I'll leave to the philosophers.
The problem is that I love fantasy maps. I probably couldn't ignore the map, or at least it'd be hard.
ReplyDeleteAs a compromise, I suggest than rather look at the map, make your own map as you read, giving an outlet for your map love. Then you get the fun of comparing your map to the one in the book when you are done.
DeleteI used to make maps of all the old Fighting Fantasy books when I was a kid. A few years later, a board game version of Warlock of Firetop Mountain came out. Looking at the photo of the board on the back of the box, I was thrilled to see that it matched my own beloved map.
I like them too, but there's nothing stopping you looking at them at the end (or doing as Adam recommends).
DeleteThere is 100% something to this.
ReplyDeleteBut I think that at least as to the maps, a good dose of the fault falls on the readers. The Lord-of-the-Rings-clone model has been so omnipresent and popular in fantasy that the type of reader who plows through series after series demands the frontpiece map.
Every time I pick up a book with one of those damn maps I have this (maybe unjustified) image of this stereotypical guy sighing with contentment as he opens the cover, sees the map, and is reassured that this is his sort of book.
Yes, it's about signalling now, for sure. The market expects prologues and maps, and above all it expects "Book One in the [X] Series".
DeleteI can remember reading the Vance's Cugel novels for the first time and how refreshing that was. There was no map, but at the same time, a clear sense of geography unfolded in my mind as Cugel traveled.
ReplyDeleteGiven the unfamiliarity with a lot of the terrain to Cugel, that's a book that would actually be harmed if they had stuck a map in the front.
Something similar happens in the Lyonesse books - Vance just describes where things are and...you get where they are.
DeleteGate of Ivrel is great. I recommend you finish the series - several other books follow, continuing Morgaine's adventures.
ReplyDeleteI will do. I really liked the ending to this book. It's a rare fantasy book that I finish reading and think to myself, "This is actually a plausible account of human psychology in these circumstances."
DeleteOddly, the fantasy books where the map helps a bit, I think, are Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. I recently (re)read both with my kids, and I found myself constantly looking at the maps. But of course, these are largely real settings - and the kids didn't pay any attention to them at all. So it may just be that the maps provided extra interest to an adult reader who has read both books many times.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the Ivrel prologue has little or no bearing on the book. I did find it interesting, though, for entirely extra-literary, gaming-related reasons (hope you don't mind me posting the link again here - but it might be of interest to people who didn't read the comments on your last blog: https://hobgoblinry.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-qhal-and-slann-or-did-cj-cherryh.html).
Couldn't agree more on the Jackon LotR film - and I think that was a slavish nod to the Bakshi film, which did something similar if rather more smoothly.
And in general, I'd confess to being reluctant to read fantasy books with maps out of sheer snobbishness. There's something about a map that screams 'this is a Tolkien knock-off' rather than 'this is the new Viriconium/Gormenghast/Mythago Wood - all essentially mapless works. But, as you say, there's doubtless been immense pressure on writers to insist that book X is indeed the next LotR rather than something distinctive in its own right.
The prologue thing has clearly infected RPG books as well: think of all those interminable timelines for this gaming setting or that. In novels, I suppose the prologue to A Game of Thrones was a gust of fresh air - setting the scene in the present (and hinting at the future) rather than cataloguing the past.
I read your entry - I wonder about it, because I wonder whether CJ Cherryh came up with that general motif? It seems like it ought to be older somehow.
DeleteI know what you mean about the snobbishness and also the prologue to A Game of Thrones - one of the rare exceptions where I think it's justified. There was so much promise in that book - shame it's been downhill ever since really.
There certainly are older versions of the broad motif (TV Tropes lists it under "Precursors" and kicks off the list with Lovecraft). But I think Cherryh's specific iteration of it looks like the direct influence on the Slann (who get their name from some other sf writer if I recall correctly). It's the specifics of the technology and the language, as well as the real-world chronology, that seem most suggestive to me.
DeleteYes: the decline of that series is a real shame.
1. Prologues
ReplyDeleteThere was a vogue for prologues which transported readers of the early 20th century and before into fantastic realms, perhaps it was an apology, perhaps it served as a warning. The prologue of The Worm Ouroboros is controversial but I don't mind it at all. Getting your reader's or viewer's mind into your dream mind is something which should be done with the politeness of a frame. No doubt, these days cretinous gibberish cliched fantasy requires no introduction with the popularity of GOT. IMO GOT is not fantasy because the majority of random consumers are not puzzled by it, it is history+.
A badge of honour among fantasists is that no-one wants to (because they can't) produce their work for a wide market. This includes Tolkien whose primary works were not even contemplated to be published after the Hobbit. And whose LotR has been sullied by a mediocre director, (but not by Bakshi). Fantasy lives in the WORD if we are lucky enough to see it - think of those Tolkien fans who died before 1977. The reader has a part to play he is not invited to in the mass population viewing of a film. And so I forgive every prologue ahead of every film version.
2. Maps
I read books about exploration and know that maps are crucial. Who would read LotR and perversely avoid the maps? Vance's Cugel stories don't need maps (though I have them). Wolfe's BotNS has no maps and this works extraordinarily to its benefit, (because the novels are puzzles). Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros has no map and needs none, though there is a brilliant map available online.
Vance and Tolkien occupy two poles when it comes to maps. To Vance a map would intrude on the chain of his stories. To Tolkien not having a map would be incoherent, unrealistic and he would not have something to contemplate.
I don't know what the experience of reading LotR would be without looking at the maps but I do know that I read The Hobbit as a youngster without the map (the old tatty version of it that was in my house didn't have one) and it was fine - I visualised things myself. I'm not sure LotR as a work of fiction needs the maps at all. As a feat of worldbuilding it does, of course, but Tolkien was unusual in that for him the worldbuilding was the point.
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