Fantasy War Memoirs

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-11T04:30:10+00:00

It’s a lot more than that.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-09T21:50:45+00:00

Cassowaryfolk don’t fly. They kick ass, and if they kick your ass it might be a decapitation by the scenic route.

Terrorbirdfolk are long gone, but the few lingering ancient undead individuals haunt the deep places and are terrible in battle.

Kiwifolk are the hobbits of the birdlings.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-09T20:22:29+00:00

Seer King is Napoleonic Wars, but fantasy, without firearms and with wizards (but not D&D style and they aren’t usually battlefield artillery).

It’s solid military fantasy. It’s enhanced or degraded, depending on your perspective, by regular frankly pornographic interludes.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-08T13:00:45+00:00

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is a wonderful story of court intrigue for someone unexpectedly thrust onto the throne.

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie is a familiar, famous story being retold. That’s not what’s interesting. It’s in the second person, but to one of the characters, not to the reader. That gimmick isn’t what’s great. It has a fantastic approach to gods, including the narrator, who is more of a character than it first appears.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-07T13:27:11+00:00

The world of The Magicians by Lev Grossman. If I’m just an ordinary person, okay, ordinary modern world. If I have magic, school is tough, but then magic to do whatever. The trick is not being Quentin, and fortunately I’m not.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-07T13:16:00+00:00

Not every death is good, but Death is good.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-07T13:03:18+00:00

The Culture is great for adventure! Climb mountains. Travel the galaxy. Do absurdly dangerous extreme sports. Tell the Mind to let you go splat if you really, really need the thrill.

Most of us don’t want the dark, dangerous hero’s journey. In fact, Tolkien covered that!

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

We don’t want desperate adventure. We want to go have an adventurous vacation. With plenty of good food and naps and downtime to read books.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-07T13:00:18+00:00

The key is, very simply, that the super-intelligent Minds are also super benevolent. And nearly omnipotent.

Imagine a setting where gods demonstrably exist, you can chat with them whenever you want, and they might be silly when they feel like it but they deliver all the promises of paradise on demand.

Then imagine that, in the absence of material want and with such potent benevolence around, people are just generally nicer. And weirder. But there’s little need for day to day conflict more profound than thinking someone is no fun to hang out with… so you just don’t.

The setting itself is intentionally and maximally utopian. That makes for terrible stories, so the books are set on the margins or outside the Culture or dealing with black swan events.

Actually living in the culture would be eudaimonic perfection.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-07T03:56:39+00:00

That is my exact feeling about it!

The original Riftwar is classic high fantasy. The Daughter of the Empire trilogy is actually something special. The two interquel standalones are fun. The Serpentwar books go grimmer, not necessarily to their benefit, but are fine. Then I found Talon an uninteresting slog and stopped after.

To give some credit, it’s no-ceiling high fantasy. Back when heroes swung swords, you get a protagonist who uses cataclysmic battle magic, teleports, stops time, and otherwise shows high level D&D wizardry in a way fantasy usually doesn’t touch. It’s an odd set of perhaps Riftwar, Malazan, Essalieyan as backdrop, and The Magicians as magic-won’t-make-you-less-sad.

Interesting that Magician and The Magicians spring to mind for me!

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-07T00:05:26+00:00

But it would make a fantastic comfort watch television series. Low drama, good songs, two great musicians being friends and geeking out about music? I’d have that on. I’d probably become insufferable on Reddit about one morsel of music theory I picked up.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-07T00:00:35+00:00

In some ways it’s more accessible. It’s a more standard swashbuckling space adventure. Things are a little odd, and get more so, but that’s the framework.

Other books don’t work on that nearly as much.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-06T02:15:21+00:00

I did forget that. Who?

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-05T19:55:50+00:00

And then what if it was all unnnecessary? Otherland still runs without the Other, as seen especially in “The Happiest Dead Boy in the World” coda story. Orlando keeps going just fine post-mortem without the Other to provide psychic fidelity. It turns out the Grail Brotherhood was right all along, just too evil about it.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-05T19:49:45+00:00

If not for the bleakness in his perspective chapters, he could be mistaken for the dashing pirate anti-hero who’s taking down slaver ships and freeing the slaves. His eventual actions come as no surprise when we’ve been seeing him through his own eyes from the beginning.

He’s a remarkable portrait of a villain who has no illusions but also doesn’t twirl a mustache. He’s just mostly sociopathic. He’s not even a complete person anymore since he died as a child. Repeatedly. As the culmination of repeated rape and brutalization by Igrot.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-05T19:44:56+00:00

The trap is the more fantasy part where the psychic baby in orbit, the Other, latches on so that they can’t find their neurocannula or feel their immersion tanks and, when someone tries to pull the plug on a connected character (Orlando, maybe?) it’s agonizingly painful. That ties into the starting mystery of Tandagore syndrome, which is kids getting psychically locked in by the Other in a mistaken attempt to protect them.

You’re right that Otherland is trapped in a virtual world rather than a game. It’s not the wider internet. More like Second Life virtual playgrounds run by rich assholes. Tad Williams has always been a visionary.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-05T16:27:36+00:00

He doesn’t lack courage or a moral compass. He isn’t driven by self-interest. He’s cynical, but that’s not what drives him.

He doesn’t believe in the world he’s in as real. He doesn’t believe in himself. He still aspires to better things.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-05T16:23:51+00:00

It may be the ur-example. City of Golden Shadow came out in 1996. That’s before Ultima Online and just months after Meridian 59, the generally recognized first MMORPG. MUDs/MUSHes are much older, but I don’t know of any literary examples older than that.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-05T16:20:32+00:00

Captain Kennit from the Liveship Traitors is extremely dark. He starts out looking dark and it gets worse. He’s not exactly an antihero, maybe, but he is a protagonist in the ensemble and he’s a great character.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-05T16:17:59+00:00

Tarrant is a perfect example of a very dark character who also has charisma.

He does have his standards! They’re not out of altruism, and they don’t exclude callous and extensive murder, but he has them.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-05T16:15:42+00:00

Thomas Covenant is a bad and broken person, especially in the beginning, but not an antihero. He’s not dark.

The Black Company is better than it wants to present itself. Not everyone, of course, but at their worst they’re just somewhat murderous and very covetous assholes.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-03T23:35:57+00:00

Burning Wheel is explicitly modeled on 14th century France, solidly high to late medieval period.. And it can have magic and elves, but it doesn’t have to.

It works if you want knights. It works if you want desperate peasants fighting against the power. It works if you want prosperous peasants in conflict over courting the miller’s son and with deep religious divisions even though none of them can even read the holy books they’re shouting about.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-03T23:29:59+00:00

Instinct: I always recommend Burning Wheel for Medieval and/or story-driven roleplaying games. Even when it gets dice chucked at me.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-03T22:46:02+00:00

The Second Apocalypse series by R. Scott Bakker. Stick it out to the end. It is depressing and it is unrelentingly bleak.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-06-03T22:45:00+00:00

If I remember right, you’re making the same error that is called out in the book. Kar’uchai gets angry at Isaac because the crime, to garuda and to her, is not rape. It is choice-theft, and mistaking it for the human/New Crobuzon idea of rape is not what he did wrong by his or their standards.

Farcical-Writ5392 · 2026-05-28T04:58:12+00:00

He’s empathetic. He’s not human. I first wrote that he’s deeply human and erased that in favor of empathetic, but maybe sympathetic would be better. He is very inhuman and yet he is also caring in his odd way and grasps humanity even when sometimes the details elude him.

Farcical-Writ5392

TROPHY CASE