Who will replace Goodkind and Jordan?

[Werthead]

I must be getting old because I can't really recall an "explosion of lesbianism" in WoT. Sure, with all the Aes Sedai PoVs in the later books there are a number of references to lesbian relationships and then there's that noble lady of some country or other/seafolk woman relationship, but other than that? Sex scenes? Making out? Kissing? Did I miss any good stuff when I was skimming through CoT?

Moiraine and Siuan do kiss in New Spring but the chapter immediately cuts away. I've seen some WoT fans try to claim that this was just friendship but Cadsuan does say a bit later that Siuan and Moiraine were intimate with one another and Moiraine is embarrassed and outraged, but is unable to respond (either through anger or the Three Oaths isn't too clear).

I mean, you don't see anything go on - Jordan was possibly trying to maintain his PG-13, compatible-with-a-YA-readership rating - but given the phenomenon isn't mentioned once in the first eight books, it is odd that we get multiple references to it in books 9-11 and also in the novel version of New Spring.

 

[Brahm_K]

And let's not forget the constant spanking, which is just cringeworthy. Authors are allowed to have fetishes, yes, but there's no need to include them in books.

 

[Big Bubba]

One kiss, that's it? I don't think WoT will be shelved among lesbian literature any time soon then.

 

[prophetman]

"Explosion of lesbianism" made me laugh a little too. Man do I need to grow up. Maybe Jordan was just going through his notes while working on the later books, and he suddenly remembered that some of these people were supposed to be lesbian. It is possible, there's a lot of stuff to keep track of And what's this about spanking? I'm pretty sure that's not really a fetish, I think he was probably using it since it's a fairly common form of corporal punishment (not that authors don't sometimes indulge fetishes cough *piers anthony* cough).

 

[Werthead]

Yeah, to be honest the most notable spanking thing so far has been when Mat did it to that Aes Seda in KoD.

It is notable that in the series' (mainly positive) entry in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy the spanking is directly mentioned and the editor admits to being slightly bemused by its frequency. And that only came out after Book 7 had been published.

 

[Lady Envy]

Moiraine and Siuan do kiss in New Spring but the chapter immediately cuts away. I've seen some WoT fans try to claim that this was just friendship but Cadsuan does say a bit later that Siuan and Moiraine were intimate with one another and Moiraine is embarrassed and outraged, but is unable to respond (either through anger or the Three Oaths isn't too clear).

Weren't they called pillow friends in one of the books?

 

[Thradar]

I hope nobody replaces them. I'm sick of 5, 7, 10, umpteen book neverending series. I go out of my way to avoid reading (and buying) such books these days...and it's getting more and more difficult to do so.

Publishing books and drawing out stories/series with more words and hundreds of pages of bloated prose to fill said books just to make an extra buck is ruining the SF and fantasy genre (and probably others).

Goodkind, Jordan and their ilk can vanish and never be replaced as far as I'm concerned.

Sorry, mini-rant on the subject...and surely not my last.

 

[Thradar]

Kevin J. Anderson – 16 million

This is a joke right? This HACK has sold 16 million books? The man who piggybacks on everyone elses ideas (Star Wars, X Files, Dune, Starcraft) or writes books with co-authors...and profits, big time apparently?

Oh...wow. That's not right.

 

[columbob]

This is a joke right? This HACK has sold 16 million books? The man who piggybacks on everyone elses ideas (Star Wars, X Files, Dune, Starcraft) or writes books with co-authors...and profits, big time apparently?

Oh...wow. That's not right.

Just goes to prove that the Dune spinoffs and media tie-ins are a pretty lucrative business.

 

[Rob B]

I think ChrisW has deduced that Brent Weeks will replace Robert Jordan, at least.

 

[JohnH]

So who will replace Goodkind and Jordan as the Kings of Fantasy. Kings as in selling hundreds of thousands of copies of each book and being a #1 NYT bestseller.

GRRM obviously is since AFFC but who else is going to be able get up there?

I don't see anyone managing it myself. The requirements seem to be that you need to write big books in a long series and be writing said series over a long period of time.

Note: This isnt about quality but numbers. So no whining about me calling Terry and RJ kings.

I have to wonder just how higher Martin can go. With Jordan and Goodkind both there was a consistent and rather prolific flow five books in. Lord of Chaos was the first significant slowing in WoT. And even after that, while the gaps grew a bit larger, there was not the lengthy ambiguity as to the status of the next book's publication. I really don't want to turn this into yet another scratching and tearing hair fest as to who is the prettiest prom queen candidate. And the delay and inability to seem to focus on his series in an effective manner might serve Martin well. The eventual publication could see a huge leap in debut ranking on bestsellers lists. But he could also be hampering the introduction of new fans that a new book on the shelf every year and then every two years did for Jordan and Goodkind.

Rothfuss is the first name that comes to mind. His debut reception reminds me of The Eye of the World and Wizard's First rule both. Add on the expansion of the internet community since both Jordan and Goodkind started their careers with their particular signature series and you have a step or two up for new authors.

Daniel Abraham, if he can produce a big door stopper on a somewhat reliable schedule in epic fantasy could garner the audience that Jordan once enjoyed. Particularly as he has already won over a segment of the genre's readers that wouldn't sully their hands with epic fantasy let alone the endless serial type. Abraham enjoys the rare position of being well reviewed and a steady if not stellar industry performer and that could let him take risks both grander and more grandiose. Something I'm too leery of disappointment to entertain. Much.

Many sneer at Zafon being a fantasy writer. To me he is. And while it is not serial work, really, I can see his work not only straddling and further blurring genre lines, but I can see his presence growing considerably in fantasy reading circles. Which is actually incredibly amusing. I read The Shadow of the Wind when it came out in english and all the atention was from the general fiction arena. Now in the last two years, I've seen it firmly settle into fantasy circles and embraced rather eagerly. The english release of his next new work I suspect will enjoy a much greater attention by readers more faithful to the fantasy genre. Whether he can sustain it among the general reading population just might not matter. Enough fantasy readers have found him and embraced his work.

Guy Gavriel Kay. An odd duck. And it depends on so many variables not yet in play. Right now he seems very content to write at a pace that would discourage a breakout in sales and profile. And yet he enjoys a rather favored author status in the fantasy community on both writer and reader side. Imagine if he was more prolific and was able to maintain the style that his fans clearly enjoy. Imagine if he was able to translate that style into a multi-volume layered complexity series that was delivered in a timely and dependable manner. Not just tapping into his existing fan base but also expanding it with just a more visible presence. More visible new release presence.

I also would not count either Jacqueline Carey or Robin Hobb out. Both have proven they can do series and sell them well. Even with six books Carey is still new to the genre. And though I never found her material to be risque to the extent the covers suggested let alone the pearl clutching crowd; if Carey took a slightly less mature tone as she did with her last series and decided to emulate one of her inspirations, Dorothy Dunnett, a bit more closely and delivered a more complex and wide reaching socio-political travelogue that took more than just three books to complete.

Hobb as well has delivered to some extent. Hobb is one of those names that come up at conventions in the publishing circles as an example of the wait and see trilogy buy. Her books seem to leap in mass market when the third book in her trilogy comes out in mmpb. Many authors do. Her's do so significantly from what I've heard. The people who budget to mass market flock to her books both in initial release and in complete release. This is a phenomenon that Hobb's steady and sure release of her trilogies encourages. But hypothetically make her next series seven books. Or ten. And hardcover immediate sales could surge as fans simply refuse to wait three years with a three book completed series payoff.

 

[KatG]

Martin will continue to be considered a powerhouse of secondary world fantasy. He doesn't have to replace Jordan or Goodkind because he's on the laundry list with them, along with Brooks, Salvatore, Donaldson, Feist and a few others. Jordan and Goodkind have benefitted from the higher market exposure of category SFF, from the higher prices of books and from the internationalization of book publishing. And now, as JohnH notes, we've extra help from the Internet. Until the world economy collapses and the power runs out.

The replacement, if such is the case and if it's limited to secondary world fantasy only, not contemporary fantasy or satirical fantasy, isn't here yet, I'd say. Patrick Rothfuss has a good shot, but while his series will do very well and is a firm bestseller, I suspect that it's not going to top out on top. If I'm wrong, I won't be flabbergasted, though. Erikson has done very well, but his series is seen as long in the tooth now. It's possible with a new one that he might vault upwards, and certainly he's on the laundry list.

But the odds are that the phenom is going to be a new writer in the next few years. There's a thirty percent chance it will be a woman writer, but given that we still seem to have massive bias among many fans that women can't do military battle sequences well, I'm guessing a guy. Probably an American, despite the wonderful Brits, and probably in his thirties. Possibly with a short story track record. Possibly a science fiction writer as well, who will bring in some of that audience. Someone who will be a bit dark and cyberpunky, but attract teen readers as well.

And possibly, though this is far from a given, someone published out of category but marketed to the category audience. Because that's going to be more common for secondary world fantasy over the next decade.

 

[DailyRich]

Lots of good discussion in this thread.

I may be in the minority here, but I'm getting to the point where I'd rather read five or six good, self-contained novels by the same author than a long, drawn-out story that could have been told in three books but gets stretched out to five or six or more. Wheel of Time was heading to a satisfying conclusion in The Dragon Reborn, and then the whole thing lurched away from it so that the series could go on. And on. And on. I was totally on-board with A Song of Ice and Fire until the meandering Feast for Crows killed the momentum dead for me. Too many of these epic series seem long just for the sake of being long. The thinking that "Tolkien wrote a trilogy, so every fantasy story has to be" is glutting the market, and people forget that Tolkien didn't write LOTR as a trilogy, it was split up by the pubisher. I hate finding what looks like an interesting book, only to see "Book I of" or "The start of a new series" on the cover. Especially when it's a new author -- seems to me you should establish yourself before asking your readers to commit to a multi-volume series.

I have no problem with lengthy series, providing the author has new and interesting stories to tell in their world. But too often, you've got an Eddings or an Anthony or a Feist who just keep telling the same stories with a new cast of characters.

Brandon Sanderson caught my eye because Elantris was a single-volume fantasy of satisfying length that told its story. The strength of that got me to give his Mistborn series a chance, and that had enough going on to justify the three-book length, and didn't artificially extend itself to sell more books.

So I guess I'm saying I'd rather nobody replace Goodkind and Jordan simply for the sake of having a multi-book series going on. Tell good stories. If your audience wants more, give them more. But don't set out asking them for a multi-book commitment right off that bat. That has to be earned.

 

[Werthead]

So I guess I'm saying I'd rather nobody replace Goodkind and Jordan simply for the sake of having a multi-book series going on. Tell good stories. If your audience wants more, give them more. But don't set out asking them for a multi-book commitment right off that bat. That has to be earned.

Well, Robert Jordan wrote some stand-alone novels and some Conan tie-ins before WoT and George RR Martin had a highly successful career publishing SF&F short stories and novels for the better part of thirty years before starting ASoIaF, so they did 'earn' those series as well. Yet they're the ones you mention in your post as being worthy of criticism.

Conversely, the best multi-volume fantasy series of recent years are Joe Abercrombie's The First Law and Daniel Abraham's The Long Price, both of which are their debut works (although Abraham had a few short stories published previously).

So I wouldn't say there are any hard and fast rules here.

 

[DailyRich]

True, just stating my preference.

And I was totally into Wheel of Time and Ice and Fire in the beginning, I just soured on them as they began to meander.

 

[StealthCat22]

I think Ken Scholes is going to be the "next big thing" in epic fantasy. Lamentation has been getting rave reviews, and the hype machine is working overtime on this one.

 

[ThornofCamorr]

I don't remember who I said before, but having just finished The Hero of Ages I'm gonna say that Brandon Sanderson definitely has the ability to become a juggernaut of fantasy. Or whatever area he wants to work in really.

 

[Curethan]

When fantasy sells large quantities, the larger part of the market is not a critical audience. Therefore it is illogical to assume that quality is the factor that drives sales. Such succeses are often (more likely than not) driven by a dumbed down or somehow more accessible version of recycled tropes executed in a voice which a large audience can relate too.

Lord of the rings itself was a pastiche of glorious old legends and folktales rewoven and retold in 'mordern english'. A detailed re-imagining of fairy stories that everybody could relate to but seemed new.

Notice that Goodkind and Jordan both spun the concept of fat books and trilogies in 10+ volumes, Jordan's tale is epic high fantasy with the destined child trope taken to erm, epic scope. Goodkind takes thematic 'noble' fantasy away and beyond into randian socialism. This is what made the books so popular, certainly not the writing, plots or characterisation.

The Davinci Code is a good example of such success in another genre.

Such works exist in every genre and contribute to the critical literary establishment's derision of 'genre writing'.

If you want to see the roots of the next 'Goodkind' or 'Jordan' look to more difficult reads like Bakker and Mieville. I do not recommend them to casual or nongenre reader because I don't believe they have a critical language with which to appreciate them.
But to find the succesor who bloats their ideas and themes into succesor material, look for an easy to read book that reminds you of half a dozen better stories.

The next 'fantasy king' will probably be worth avoiding for me.

 

[Bond]

When fantasy sells large quantities, the larger part of the market is not a critical audience. Therefore it is illogical to assume that quality is the factor that drives sales. Such succeses are often (more likely than not) driven by a dumbed down or somehow more accessible version of recycled tropes executed in a voice which a large audience can relate too.

Strange, is it just me or does not what you describe suggest universality? The ability of many people from many different backgrounds and circumstances to relate to a work? You imply that is bad? I wonder what you think of Shakespeare. How would you describe his genius?

I also find it funny that you think quality does not drive sales. But of course one must first me very aware of what "quality" one is talking about.

It must be a bit frustrating to be an expert in a field everyone is familiar with the way a literary, movie, or food critic is. It's not like being a specialist in the field of medicine for example. Everyone uses language, watches movies and eats. Therefore literary critics have created an entire body of dogma to justify their expertise and to convince people to pay any attention to them. Unfortunately, it is the self-serving promotion of this dogma that often ends up as the ultimate end of many a critic. In other fields, experiments are performed and observations recorded to come up with theories to interpret and understand a phenomena. In the literary criticism many proffer, however, there is none of that. Judgments are arrived at a priori according to the dogma. Instead of asking why is a book popular and exploring the reasons behind it, the aspiring literary critics that abound seem instead to value works according to a preconceived checklist of literary worthiness conforming to the approved dogma. It's like dismissing Copernicus and Galileo because everyone knows the Earth is at the center of the universe and ridiculing Columbus because the world is flat.

Such works exist in every genre and contribute to the critical literary establishment's derision of 'genre writing'.

If they exist in every genre then it follows according to your logic that all genres are derided by critics. What does that say about genre writing? Nothing. What does that say about critics?

 

[Curethan]

@ Bond.

It was not my intent to rag on on all popular works, merely to point out some general truths. That is that superior quality does not engender broad success, especially in genre truths.

A level of quality is certainly required, but originality and artistic flair are ever destined for the fringes. It is a professional critic's task to recognize such things and help to bring attention to their merits.

Neither should it be forgotten that we are all critics, and our tastes are defined and refined by the material that we chose to examine. I recall my early years where I would read voraciously amongst any type of fiction, Shakespeare to Robert Adams. Some of the things that I enjoyed then would be unreadable now. This is because I have developed a critical language that defines what I do and don't like and enables me to communicate why. This is something anyone who comes to sites such as these shares, though their personal tastes and 'vocabulary' differs.

For something like Scott Lynch to go from being widely celebrated here to the level of Goodkind requires another level of accessability.

It is true to say that genre writing is widely denigrated amongst 'literary' circles, and the 'common voice' that is employed in most best sellers is to me one of the main reasons why. Iain Banks was the last genre writer from scifi/fantasy that I can recall to garner respect in that quarter and it certainly did not catapult him to the forefront of bestseller lists.

It is unfair to draw analogies between my arguement (which regards art) and scientific discoveries or between interpretive analysis and professional skill. Also your inference that I believe all such popular works to be bad is understandable but erroneous. I simply don't think they are great works, I enjoyed the early volumes of both Jordan and Goodkind but they really aren't as god as many similar works I've read through the years. Harry Potter kept me enthralled through to the final volume, but the writing was very clunky at points.

Perhaps time will elevate Goodkind to the level of Shakespeare, but I believe by such a time the english language and writing will have changed as much as between our times and Elizabethan England, rendering critical comparisons with contempary works nonsensical

Well, I hope I'm not coming across as elitist or contemptuous, I only wanted to express an opinion I formed reading through this thread.

Oh and I certainly do respect critics. Although they may not like something, there should be enough non-spoiler material to enable me to decide whether or not I will like something independantly from reading their review (if they are any good ). It's the main reason I come to this site!