Any Anti-fantasy fans here?
 

I somewhat doubt it, as these sort of books seem to be rather unpopular (not without reason, I think), but they're the only kind of fantasy I can tolerate anymore.

I am just so tired of the tropes and the slavish adherence to the classic hero-story mold. I like it when an author does something unexpected, turns a cliche on its head, makes you think they're going in a well-worn direction, only to surprise you with something refreshing. This... doesn't tend to happen in the fantasy genre, though this problem seems to finally be getting addressed by some more current authors. And it is about time.

If anyone's looking for recommendations in this vein,

The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Steven Erikson. 10,000 pages of taking everything good about the genre and killing the rest with fire.

The Prince of Nothing and Aspect-Emperor trilogies by R. Scott Bakker. Set in a world based on the First Crusade where religious belief affects reality. The main character is a sociopathic genius monk who is this world's Anti-Christ.

The Black Company series by Glen Cook. A fast-paced-, gritty 1st-person tale about a company of a jaded mercenaries put through hell again and again.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson. A writer with leprosy is hit by a police car and wakes up in a dreamworld that seems to be shaped by his subconscious, where he does everything he can to avoid all manner of responsibility, all the while refusing to belief any of it is real.

I don't classify GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire in this category, he's very much telling a classic sort of fantasy story, just telling it very well and in a much more mature way than a lot of what came before.

On my list are Joe Abercrombie's books, and the upcoming Prince of Thorns looks interesting as well.

And of course, if anyone has any to add to the above, I'd love to hear about them. I'm always looking for books that take the genre to places it hasn't been before.

Anti-Fantasy Fantasy Books?
Sounds... weird.
I would love to find some and read them. You're right. The well worn path that fantasy books lead us down is something I wish to get away from. I wouldn't mind stumbling through the forest trying to find the way out.

Honestly I'm starting to get sick of happy endings too. I know we all get attached to the characters in our books but come on. Every once and a while something bad has to happen. Nothing is perfect. Life sure isn't. Every once and a while I just want something to go wrong. Something that messes with that happily ever after concept that everyone seems to love.

Call it post-modern fantasy, if you prefer. :p

And you make a good point about happy endings and immortal good guys (*cough* Drizzt *cough*). In a story that's at least partially supposed to hinge on a sense of action and danger, the effect is smothered if the characters prevail time and again.

That also reminds me, a pattern in the books I mentioned above is that they all tend to be rather "dark" (though that's a vague description, I know.) The characters are nearly all painted in shades of gray and the plots can't reduced to anything as simplistic as Good vs. Evil.

To add to what I mentioned above, for the action/adventure type fantasy fan a bit tired with predictable plots, Malazan and the Black Company both fill that void nicely.

And for those looking for something a bit more cerebral, with meatier characters and pronounced psychological and philosophical elements, Thomas Covenant and the Prince of Nothing are both really rewarding on that level.

Don't know if I'd call myself an anti-fantasy person, but the books I'm looking into now are starting to lean in that direction simply for lack of anything that I'm interested in on the traditionaly marketable end.

Have Donaldson, gave up on Game of Thrones but not Martin, and am trying out GG Kay now with Ysabel. It's pretty standard so far with the young boy who has wierd powers he didn't know he had, but it is leaning more towards folklore than fantasy. One of the things I've noticed is that I'm really not sure at this point whether or not certain characters fall into the category of good or evil. For instance, one of the 'persons of interest' appears to be working against some sinister figure, or something that seems sinister, but also admits freely that he will, and has, killed children in his life because they got in his way. He says this to teh 15 year old main character in the manner of standard fact than in trying to get any emotional reaction it seems. Really not sure what to make of him and others so far, and I'm interested in reading more of the book just to see more of the people.

I've never read Kay, but I've heard good things about him. (And he has a cool name.)

Some other authors I've heard mentioned as being good for something beyond the norm are Scott Lynch and Gene Wolfe, but I haven't read either of them, either.

I picked up Ysabel in particular because it won the world fantasy award and I've read another book that won that award and I liked it. When I see books or movies have won particular accolades I like to check them out and see how my own opinions match up with the awards so I know whether or not it's something I should look out for.

I don't put much stock in awards. My opinion is divergent enough from the norm, usually, that I find it isn't worth my time. Most of the stuff I like is relatively unpopular, and conversely, I tend not to like books that are. (I'm lukewarm on Mr. Martin. I think I know too much about him as a person, thanks to all the drama around A Dance With Dragons, to really enjoy his writing.)

Well, like I said, I like to investigate such things because it does make picking somthing new a little easier than throwing darts at the bookstores shelves.

I have my Martin book of short stories with me but I still haven't read it. Haven't read anything. Bad me. I'd go back to Lord Foul's Bane but at the moment I think I need to finish a few of the books I'm reading before moving on earnestly in that and a few others I started in on.

Lord Foul's Bane is very much a product of its time. It was written as a direct response to LotR and as such, borrows a lot of elements from it, in order to twist and subvert them. The story becomes much broader and more original in the later books. One thing to be said about Donaldson, he knows how to write a good sequel.

David Eddings is one of the reasons I'm anti-fantasy... :p

And don't mistake me, the books I mentioned above are all fantasy books, they just try hard to get away from the cliches and do something new.

Well, not just because of him, but a large group of authors who write a story with the following plot:

Young protagonist is sheltered and ignorant about the world. Something exciting happens to force him/her into the world. He/She gains a wise mentor along the way, as well as a group of eclectic companions. He/She finds out he/she is the Chosen One and must defeat the Great Evil. He/She finds true love whose fate is tied to victory over the Great Evil. Big battle is fought and protagonist is victorious, marries love interest. The end.

I'm just sick of reading the same story over and over. I'm sick of good vs. evil and I'm sick of invincible heroes who can do no wrong.

Granted, I liked his books when I read them,, when I was 11 or 12, but that was ten years ago and my tastes have changed. At least Eddings was up-front about how shamelessly cliche his story is. Other authors don't seem to realize that fact.

Yep, I've been at it all my life. Gets tiring after a while.

...T.V. Tropes might have ruined my life, also. :|

On the contrary, as I mentioned in the first post, there's a lot of authors now who are aware of this issue and trying to do something about it, so it's a fairly good time to be an anti-fantasy fan. :p

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
I remember reading these books at my dad's request. I almost felt the author wanted you to hate Thomas. I wasn't particularly fond of the first one but the rest were rather good from what I remember.
As for fantasy books that don't follow the standard mold, it's really hard to write it well and still be a sellable story. Most people like their endings wrapped up nicely and anti-fantasy seems like it wouldn't do that.
So saying I might have to look into some of these books later :3

Well, yeah, that's the whole point of Covenant. I once saw a parody cover of one of the books with the title replaced as "Asshole Leper Rapist". But the point is missed unless you read the entire series to see how he changes, and yet remains true to himself.

And, yes, there's a distinct negative correlation between these sorts of books and marketability. Most of those authors I mentioned are not very successful.

Steven Erikson got a $1,000,000.00 advance for his series, but that's only 100k per book, and I'm not even sure if he's sold enough to earn much in the way of royalties yet.

Scott Bakker is apparently having a hard time even making ends meet from his writing, and Glen Cook has worked as a mechanic all his life.

Donaldson was suggested to be my a number of people, both fantasy fans and intellectual types. It was a while before I was able to get the name of the book though, with the author (need to thanks Sheol for that). Not that far into the first book though. Need to consolodate my reading, and possibly start reading one book at a time instead of five. Things might move quicker.

Oh, don't thank me yet. You haven't got to the part that puts most people off from the book yet. Or, at least, I don't think you have.

It's a shame, but Covenant is one of those series that gets better with each installment. LFB is easily the weakest book. Malazan suffers the same problem with Gardens of the Moon having been written ten years before the second book, Deadhouse Gates.

It's not a hard read so far, and I'm pretty sure I haven't hit the part you're talking about but I'm expecting not so nice things given what you've said so far. At the moment, I'm just past the little "don't bother trying to fight me" speech in the cave.

I enjoy fantasy books, but I cannot only tolerate them for so long. I don't like cliche fantasy, so I try looking outside the box to more romance books. I know that sounds odd but some are less cliched and take an idea, and do something different to it.

I am also planning on writing my own series of fantasy novels, but without the cliche outcome. Most of it will be in modern times, most of it will have fantasy creatures BUT my version of them, not what everyone considers them... It will associate a lot with history, mythology and religion. I am really trying to bring a real world feel into it... Plus it is more science fiction then fantasy.

I am particular about what I read. I like the works of JRR Tolkien, Madline L'Engle, CS Lewis and the like. They are my first favorite authors.

It's weird, but a lot early fantasy was less derivative and cliche than what came after. Once Lord of the Rings got huge, everyone was trying copy Tolkien, and the genre is only now starting to climb out of his shadow.

Either that, or cliche stuff sells better and is more popular, while more imaginative material collects dust on the shelf, making publishers turn there noses up at it, which is a much more depressing thought. I don't think that's true, though.

People like familiarity. Consdier Sherlock Holmes for example. He's a very flat character. He doesn't change, doesn't develop, and typically reacts to the same way to the same things. That predictability becomes an endearing part of the character. It happens in TV shows too. In some ways, books tend to get formulaic for the same reason. I think the shared worlds books put out by TSR, then Wizards of the Coast are like that, and it seems they also take up the bulk of the shelf when I walk to the fantasy/sci-fi section in the bookstores.

It wouldn't surprise me if publishers make efforts to put what might be called a "good" fantasy book in a different genre, for the reason that fantasy and sci-fi tend not to be taken all that seriously. Tolkein books are found in fantasy but he has his name to beat out the genre, while half the time I've seen books by G.G.Kay, also fantasy, worked into general fiction. The same goes for Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake which has been considered sci-fi and speculative fiction, yet I have never seen it in that section. As a result of this, the "fantasy" genere tends to stay within it's sterotype while what some would believe are the better fantasy books wind up elsewhere.

Hmm. Well, all the books I mentioned above are pretty definitively fantasy, I'd be very surprised to find them in any other section. I mean, they have all the elements: elaborate secondary world, functional magic, predisposed focus on wars and battles, and all the rest. They just... somehow manage to do it differently, whether by adding elements of philosophy or anthropology, or by making those secondary worlds less black and white than the usual genre fare.

For some reason, I can't see publishers marketing these books as anything but fantasy, the elements are just too strong. I get what you're saying, quiet, but those works are a bit less-tightly genre-bound, no? When something involves warrior-monks and sorcerous warfare, as the Prince of Nothing does, no amount of philosophy and psychology (which is the main focus of the books) is going to make it something other than fantasy. Which is hurting Bakker's sales, I've read.

Not to mention, now that these sort of books are coming out, a lot of authors are admitting that their stories originated in DnD and other RPGs and were an outcry against the tropes and norms of that game. Malazan and Prince of Nothing are both fairly obviously inspired by that sort of TSR/WotC fiction, and while they reach higher, they're still standing very firmly on the shoulders of what has come before.

I was never a fan of fantasy like Lord if the Rings type cause it just doesn't make sense to me. I'd rather have a story that's taken place in earth in areas that I know of than to create a world :P

The closest fantasy that I can read without being confused is Harry Potter

I suppose it's a matter of preference. The classic argument against that is "why would want you to read about what you already know?" but there's pros and cons to both types of stories.

Though, I rather like being challenged by books, so sprawling alien settings that ask me to trust the author and be patient while learning new details appeal to me. If a book is too simple, I tend to get bored and end up thinking it's not worth my time. But the complexity has to have a purpose. Making a story inaccessible for the sake of making it inaccessible is stupid and tasteless. There has to be a reason behind it.

Anyway, fantasy as a genre is useful for externalizing abstract conflicts, sort of turning traditional modes of literature inside-out. I find it can present themes a bit more vividly thanks to this, though it requires a skilled author to take a fantasy story above simple entertainment (which is what this thread is really about.)