It's hard to find a good fantasy novel these days. With more and more terrible fantasy books cluttering the physical and virtual shelves of bookstores, fantasy readers need some way of distinguishing the bad novels from the good ones. Fortunately, you can read this guide for some tips on how to find a good fantasy book.Ignore Book Cover
Book covers are deceptive. Most people will buy a fantasy book based on the book cover itself, but this is a mistake. Book covers are designed to sell you the book; the skill of the artist drawing the cover does not relate in any way to how good the book is. It's nice to appreciate a nice cover, but please don't use this criteria to choose a fantasy novel -- you will find yourself disappointed. "Don't judge a book by it's cover": you've heard it over and over, that phrase your mother used to say when you mention that girl or boy who has a crush on you is rather unattractive. While it may be a trite phrase tossed around by parents who want their children to date ugly people, but when you take the phrase literally, it's true.
Cover Blurbs Lie, Ignore them
The sole purpose of cover blurbs are to sell books.
Don't be swayed by the raving cover blurb opinions written by other authors. The dirty truth is that cover blurbing is an entire industry of traded favors - a sort of "if you plug my book, I'll plug your book." There are even companies that SELL cover blurbs at 19.99 for half a dozen. The publishing world is small, especially the genre publishing world. Authors writing in the same genre probably know each other or at least have some affiliation with one another. The blurber and blurbee may be friends, colleagues, or simply share the same publisher. All are united by the same purpose: to sell more books. Publisher and authors have figured out that blurbs = more sales; you can bet they are capitalizing on this fact.
Blurbs do have one use though: you can use them to weed out book you don't want to read. For example, if I see any book plugged by the likes of Terry Brooks, David Eddings, Terry Goodkind, or R.A. Salvatore, I drop it and run -- any book endorsed, however illegitimate the endorsement may be, is a book I want nothing to do with.
Read the First Couple of Pages
Hey, you know the phrase spouted by infomercials: "Try before you buy." Unlike crappy infomercial products that fall apart before you actually try them, trying out a book gives you a feel for whether the book might be good or not.
Too many people read the book cover and description the buy the book. Big mistake. I hope you certainly would not buy the new car without at least looking at the specs on paper and reading a couple reviews -- maybe even a test drive first.
Read the first couple pages of the book. If the story and writing captures your attentions, there is a good chance the rest of the book will too. The first couple of pages are designed to lure the reader in, to convince th reader to keep reading the story. If an author can not achieve this in a section specifically designed for this, it's doubtful the author will be able to maintain your interest in the rest of the novel.
If you really want to be picky, open the novel to a random page and read. If you are drawn into the story without having any backstory knowledge, you may have found yourself a great book!
Once you get a feel for the quality of the author's prose, read the book description -- this gives you will a more unbiased view of the book.
Don't Trust the Book Description
Like the book covers and cover blurbs, the book description is the third part of the publisher's evil trinity of tool designed to sell you novels. It follows that you should not blindly trust the book description. Indeed, book descriptions are like movie trailers: they can make even the most boring movies look like Oscar winners. When you do read the description to get a summary of the book, the story should scream with originality.
The Story Should Scream Originality
It's an understatement to claim that most fantasy books these days are derivative. Fantasy readers are so desperate for a drop of originality that they will readily declare any Fantasy novels with a shred of originality the second coming of Christ. A good fantasy story today must be original in some way or twist the standard conventions of the genre in a new direction. If the book description smells like something unoriginal, be warned!
Don't Ignore Children's Fantasy
Don't ignore a fantasy book just because it's ostensibly aimed at a younger audience. Some of the best works of fantasy fiction have been written for kids yet appeal to adults. One of the more famous examples is Pullman's His Dark Materials which features a young female protagonist but a story that is aimed at the adults. Some fantasy books can transcend reading ages; any book that does is worth reading.
Old Books May be Good Books
Oldies may still be goodies. This applies to applies, women, and fantasy books. With all the hype surrounding some of the modern fantasy books (such as Martin's Song of Ice and Fire), some old classics have fallen by the wayside. However, these old classics helped defined the genre of fantasy and should not be ignored. Books like Lord of the Rings, which is clocking in at 50 years old, Ursula Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea, and the seminal fantasy The Worm Ouroboros are timeless classics that should not be judged by their publishing date. Newer most definitely does not always mean better.
theguru -- lover of all things fantasy
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