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Suffering from a bit ofdeja vuafter reading your umpteenth fantasy trilogy? Seen too many magic swords, musical elves and warring wizards? Then you're ready for the funniest and most complete "tourist's" guide to Fantasyland's standard character types, plot elements, and settings ever devised.
Diana Wynne Jones describes (starting, of course, with a map) every sword-and-sorcery cliché in wickedly accurate detail, arranged alphabetically. Elves sing in beautiful, unearthly voices about how much better things used to be. Swords with Runes may kill dragons or demons, or have powers like storm-raising, but they are not much use when you're attacked by bandits. You can only have an Axe if you're a Northern Barbarian, a Dwarf, or a Blacksmith. Jones also tackles hard-hitting questions: how does Fantasyland's ecology work when there are few or no bacteria and insects and vast tracts of magically irradiated wastelands? Why doesn't the economy collapse when pirates and bandits are so active and there is no perceptible industry?
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland(U.K. Edition) was a 1997 Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominee. It's a good companion to Jones'sDark Lord of Derkholm, a fantasy about what happens when your land is turned into a theme park for questing tourist parties. Fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books will enjoy both.--Nona Vero
OUTSTANDING! I love both reading and writing fantasy, and this is the best book as a guide for both! You shouldn't venture into the Fantasy section of Borders unarmed!
A Must-Have For Every Fantasyland Tourist The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is not a novel, but it does manage to tell a sort of story. Written as an amusing travel guide, the book assumes that you are a 'tourist' in a fantasy world. You are, of course, going on a quest, and you will meet all sorts of strange people, visit strange places, eat lots of stew (and probably save the world as well) before the tour is over.
The strange people, places, and the details of your journey are all described in a humorous, deadpan style, and, through the guide, the main cliches of fantasy literature are clearly pointed out. This is why I think this book would be a good writing guide. If you're interested in writing fantasy, either as a pastime or as a job, this book will show you all the things you should definitely avoid, because they have been done to death already. It also shows some things that a good author might consider writing about, such as creating an ecology for their fantasyland.
I myself have already put TTGTF to use, and looked up some tired fantasy concepts when I came across them in other books. Diana Wynne Jones's explanations of such cliches are always very enlightening, and often quite funny.
My favorite parts, however, were probably the arbitrary and irrelevant quotes at the beginning of each section. I greatly enjoyed them. Some of the quotes are hilarious, and some of them are quite applicable to real life.Ready to Quest (OMT)? The Tough Guide To Fantasy Land by Diana Wynne Jones DAW Books, 1996
Diana Wynne Jones has been for me, since an early age, a favorite. Her fantasy stories are entertaining, thoughtful and often quite unique. And now I know how she figured out how to give her stories that unique quality, she cataloged all the cliches of genre fantasy first. Then she avoided using them until she put them in her Tough Guide To Fantasy Land.
This book is a dictionary of every trope and cliche that comes standard with the fantasy genre (OMT). With the pretense that all fantasy novels are actually tour guides of Fantasyland, Jones lists all the sights and events one can expect while on their specific tour. The writer is Management and what you can expect is dictated by The Rules (which SMELL slightly of Campbell).
Each entry is a wonderfully wicked stab at the pulp, and is cross-referenced and littered with Official Management Terms (OMT) which can be found in italics and every pulp fantasy novel ever written. Jones will inform you that SOCKS are simply not worn but amazingly all BOOTS will be without SMELL even after being worn for weeks on end (and they won't wear out either). Fantasyland ECOLOGY is suspicious at best, with no insects or really animals at all except for LEATHERY-WINGED AVIANS who will attack near the beginning of the tour, which of course makes you wonder just what the Management is putting into the STEW (which is mostly all you'll eat).
This book's only problem is a number of typos. It was an occasional distraction that I hope is fixed in later editions.
If you have ever picked up a trilogy of fantasy (for most tours have three legs, if more they become EPICS), you're looking to write a genre fantasy novel, or just want to read them all in one volume, then this will leave you laughing, entertained and ready if you ever make your way through the misting mirror into Fantasyland.
