One of the best things about fantasy, I do believe, is the fact that a well-written fantasy novel can indeed be more realistic than a book set in the real world.
Why? Well, it's quite simple. The fact that the world in which the novel is set is so surreal means that for the tale to be believeable, each of the characters must be 100% relatable, with the same thought processes as ourselves. Because a fantasy world is so far from our reality, the characters must be especially close to it.
They may be fighting a dragon, or sailing to the end of the world, or running away from a host of nightmarish creatures, yet the fact that the characters act the way we might in the same situation makes us believe every word the story is saying. It intrigues us to see everyday people who are very similar to us face adverseries we will never have to face (such as dragons) and overcome everyday things we all have to face (such as lack of confidence). It is this mixture of the unbelievable and the believable that makes fantasy so entertaining.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons I was not a fan of VDT when I saw it on DVD. All the sets were absolutely gorgeous, many of them depicting Narnia very close to what I had imagined, but the lack of character development throughout the film was pitiful. Shallow character arcs with terrible dialouge made for a film that was visually stunning, but lacked any connection to reality.
Over the next while, I'll be going into detail over each of the characters in VDT and how they fell short of the characters C.S. Lewis wrote about in his novel.
I realise I haven't been around for AGES, and I really do apologise for this. But I've been learning how to be diligent lately, putting church, family, violin and school in front of my hobbies.
I've also discovered an amazing fantasy series, called 'The Wheel of Time'. I just finished the first book, 'The Eye of the World' this morning. All the elements of a great fantasy book are right there, including... yes, you guessed it, incredibly believable main characters. The series is an exceedingly long one; the first book was almost 800 pages and so far there are 13 in the series (a fourteenth coming out this December, I'm told), but 'The Eye of the World' was very easy to read, and with about 30 minutes of reading each day, I managed to finish it in about a month. I'll be sure to dedicate a whole post to it later.
I hope you all haven't given up on me just yet!
Signing off,
~SON
P.S. If anyone has a preference to which charaver they would prefer to be analysed first, feel free to comment. :)
