Q1: Shardik the Fantasy

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Shardik is a fantasy, set in a fantasy world, or a fantasy part of our world since it seems to share at least some similar history. Is it a convincing world? How does it compare to Middle Earth, Hed, Gormenghast, or other fantastical places you might have read about?

Comments

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    I was very glad you posted the map as my (fairly old paperback) version didn't have an overall one, just a bunch of individual small-area ones as you went through. But the map itself struck me as kind of naff - it reminded me far too much of the kind of maps used to draw as kids in school... all big rectangles and straight lines between them for roads etc. So even though I like maps and am usually a sucker for them, I did wonder if actually it was a bad idea in this case, and maybe it would have been better to just leave it to each reader's internal idea of what the world was like.

    That kind of followed through to the recounted history and such like - it was all very blocky and served just to reinforce a plot point. Basically I couldn't believe that the geography or the history was that of a real place... it felt too artificial for that (and yes, I do realise that _all_ fantasy geographies and histories are artificial, but the question here is whether I can suspend disbelief enough to think of them as real).

    Other contenders... Middle Earth is of course fantastically detailed, but it's a kind of unfair comparison because it represents a lifetime work rather than a single book background! Hed I enjoy and find altogether credible, in that case largely because the magic and terrain of each region mirror each other. Gormenghast I don't know well enough to comment. Earthsea is great and I'm totally sold that it's a real place somewhere, not least because it's principally islands in an ocean rather a continent.

    There have to be loads of others but they're not coming to mind just now - I'm not counting post-apocalyptic ones like _Hiero's Journey_ or _Riddley Walker_, or any historical fiction books, as they really are drawn from reality :)
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    A general comment: I'm sorry, but I just bounced off this book almost immediately. I tried a couple of times, but always found myself skim-reading after only a couple of pages. Adams loves the sound of his own voice, and I just couldn't wade through the verbiage. Just too many words.

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    @NeilNjae said:
    A general comment: I'm sorry, but I just bounced off this book almost immediately. I tried a couple of times, but always found myself skim-reading after only a couple of pages. Adams loves the sound of his own voice, and I just couldn't wade through the verbiage. Just too many words.

    He talks in the intro about writing it after the success of Watership Down and I guess nobody had the nerve to edit him down :)

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    I thought the setting was alright, just not very organic? It felt to me as if places were constructed to the needs of plot.

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    edited January 12

    I agree about the setting - it doesn't feel very organic. As a made-up fantasy setting, it's not bad, and someone refreshing in avoiding the usual tolkienesque tropes that one finds so often now. There's no malignant twisted evil race, or fading old-ones, no bearded underground dwellers. Thank God! But it also doesn't really feel like it could be a real place. It's an 'empire' on an extremely small piece of territory. It's made of several lands, but these lands are not really culturally distinct. It's surrounded by desert and no-mans lands on all sides. And the land is very square, like it was designed to fit a page. The naming feel original without feeling too made-up, which is good. So there were both things I liked about it and things I didn't find convincing.

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    I thought the names of the places were at times okay, and at other times felt a little much, but it can be difficult to come up with creative names for everything, so not a big deal. I struggled to visualise the map in my head as the book went along and it wasn't until nearly the end that I thought to look it up online. For example, I couldn't quite wrap my head around how there could be a river that cut off an entire whole world of people. The map helped a little bit to see how he had envisioned it. An entire empire felt too big for the amount of space given. Picky stuff perhaps. I did like the village of Zeray as this place that sort of was the end of the line for the worst of the worst.

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