Some of My Current Favorite Authors: Pullman, Pratchett, Eddings, Brooks, Rowling, Zimmer Bradley, Tolkien

This post was triggered by the fact that I'm vacationing here in Tucson, (which is odd, because life is just one long vacation, now that I'm retired,) and I bought two books at (one of the branches of) the famous Bookmans store in Tucson.  (Bookmans is apparently basically an Arizona family of stores.)

One of the books is Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett, written around 2001, and from its style, mostly Pratchett's writing.  The other was The Book of Dust, by Philip Pullman, both of them authors whose works I have reviewed on this blog.  I was just reporting on these purchases to the boss, who's back home holding the fort, and the purchases were tentatively approved.  Meanwhile, of course, I'm eating far too much Mexican food; and if you eat the American versions of Mexican food, you end up eating a lot more cheese than is good for you, and that's exactly what I have been doing.  And more of it is coming up for lunch.

The things I scrutinize new stories I read for, are: Is there a jolly good story?  Then: are the characters mostly likeable?  Then: does the writer have a sense of humor?  This is important; our society is becoming relentlessly humorless, and keeping a sense of humor is coming to be more of a survival characteristic than it has been in the past.  Then: Is the author condescending towards his or her audience?  In the case of Science Fiction (or SciFi, if that is more familiar--there, see?  I was condescending right there), a little condescension is inevitable, if you really want to explain some pivotal concept that is not some magical business.  Arthur Clarke was of the opinion that you may as well allow the reader to treat it as magic; I'm not entirely convinced of that.  Already most citizens take an attitude towards technology that is dangerously skewed towards regarding it as magic, or at least deception.  I'm talking about those on the Flat-Earth Spectrum; you know who you are.  Anyway, there's a difference between laughing with the reader, and laughing at the reader.

Terry Pratchett gets high points for his characters, and his humor, and for the first half of his story plots.  But in each case, the endings of the stories tend to unravel rather than to end nicely.  The fact that Pratchett has magic to help him end his stories is a weakness.  A large minority of his stories do have nice, logical endings.  But nearly half of his stories just fall apart, but the fun characters floundering around at the end are a sort of consolation prize with which I can live.

Philip Pullman is an awesome author, whose stories are closely plotted, and whose details seem to be worked out in almost painfully logical fashion, and I don't have enough insight into his work to have an informed opinion about the various characteristics that I'm looking for.  One interesting thing is that his characters are not clearly divided into good and bad ones.  There are always flaws in the good characters, and saving graces in the bad ones.  But I have only read three complete books (the Golden Compass trilogy), and read just 10 pages of this prequel that I've just bought, so I expect to have better informed opinions by the time I finish.

David Eddings is also an excellent author.  He brings to his writing an enormous knowledge of history, and of mythology in general, and of his study of people (which all authors must do, because ultimately the writing is only as successful as their ability to draw on our--the readers'--experiences with people.

Terry Brooks is an author about whom I haven't written before.  This gentleman seems to have a lot of knowledge about mythology, too; among other things, Indian and other South Asian mythologies.  He draws on these things to good effect.  But I do not like the sort of brinkmanship he displays in creating absolutely horrifying scenarios in his stories; I find myself skipping like mad, just to avoid having nightmares.  Call me a snowflake; I take the criticism willingly.  His canvas is also large, and his palette equally large, but that sense of being manipulated is hard to take.

Jane Rowling is a master plotter.  I mean, there are certainly a few stumbles here and there, but they are minor.  I think she should be given credit for being the Tolkien of this generation, and it is impossible to be more serious about one's subject-matter without losing one's sense of humor entirely.  The characters are brilliant (more brilliant for those who are familiar with British children's literature, since they draw on some beloved archetypes), and all the ingredients are there.  I'm not saying that authors will be unable to repeat her writing feat; but it is going to take a lot of very hard work.  (If not for the work involved, I myself would be an author!!)

Marion Zimmer Bradley, the author of the Darkover series of books, and several other important books, such as The Mists of Avalon set of books, and The Firebrand, about the Trojan War, is a wonderful author.  One has to come to terms with the particular aspects of magical realism that she uses in the Darkover series, for instance.  I can't understand why some of the details in the Darkover series are so inconsistent; taking a wild guess, I would say that she wrote the whole thing as a single enormous story long ago, and began to publish episodes taken from it.  Or the opposite may be true: she may have started publishing independent short stories initially, (we do know that she did this,) which she subsequently tried to weave into a coherent whole.  Her characters are not all easy to relate to, but many of them are.  He male characters all seem to be unstable and eccentric, and her female characters seem to be unattractive and weak, but with redeeming aspects of strength.  She must have known some very peculiar people, or else the people she admired were the weirder ones among her acquaintances.  Still, I enjoyed reading many of her books.

J. R. R. Tolkien was a fabulous plotsman, and a mythologist, and a character smith.  Mythic characters are a little hard to identify with and enjoy.  The hobbits were the ones we were, I believe, expected to identify with, whereas the Elves and Dwarfs were sort of background furniture.  Still, despite all the peculiarities of his stories to which we have become accustomed, Tolkien casts such an enormous shadow that it is impossible to evaluate him side by side with authors who were influenced by him.  (I'm probably writing someone's term paper for her.)

Of course, none of us have known the exact sorts of people who become characters in all these books; it's always a mixture of types of people we know very well; people who are a little like those we know; and people who completely out of left field, but who are somehow plausible to some degree.  If all the characters echo those we have known, then . . . I don't know; would that be a good thing?  With Pratchett, that's what happens, it seems to me.

[To be continued.  Yeah, right . . .]