Three separate things have teased out this half thought through blog post. They are;

• On Friday I went along to the Alexander the Great exhibition at the Australian Museum (awesome and open till April 28th, get along if you can).

• I’ve recently read two popular (i.e. well selling) fantasy series that have left me pretty cold.

• I came across this article at Black Gate

First the fantasy series. They’ll remain nameless – I’m going to be a coward and not name books I don’t like, sorry – but they were pretty similar. Both dealt with family, magical and political dramas in a vaguely medieval world. I found both quite boring. The two authors wrote well and their characters were relatively well fleshed out, but not much actually happened. Sure there were sword fights and betrayals (gasp) and encounters with monsters, but ultimately the worlds of both books felt fairly static.** A couple of times as I read each one I caught myself thinking “You own a world you can twist and bend to suit your own whim and you’ve still turned out a book more boring than plenty of history.” Continue reading →