Is it just me, or does pretty much every epic fantasy book spend the first 200 pages showing the protagonists walking through a forest? I mean, I don't mean to knock Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time or anything like that, but...
Really guys? Really?
In all honesty, the only epic fantasy I've ever read from start to finish was Tolkien's The Hobbit. It was a pretty good book and I really enjoyed it. Sure, they spent a lot of the time in a forest, but I was kind of young when I read it, so I didn't know any better. But seriously, every epic fantasy book tends to start out with a large group of protagonists, one of them being a wide-eyed youthful innocent kid who just wants to see the world, but just doesn't want to leave his home. The protagonists chit-chat for a little while, dropping ominous hints about some big peril or other in the forest. We learn a bit about the history of the world, and then BAM! some evil infests the town. In Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, that means monsters coming from the forest and pretty much raping everything (but not literally raping, 'cause that'd be more than a little weird...). In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, that just means, "Oh noes! Looks like this didleedoo of a ring I gots here ain't good! I gots to leave the town to gets rid of it!" Essentially, evil forces the protagonist out of his hometown (the innocent youth is never a girl, mind you). Then he spends the rest of the 200 pages walking around in the forest, worrying about that murky, shadowy evil.
Quite frankly, it gets really old really quickly. If you're lucky, you might get a few glimpses at the evil. But there aren't many awesome action scenes, especially awesome action scenes where the hero wins. It's just kind of a bore. And I'm wondering: is there any epic fantasy out there that, oh, I don't know, actually has an interesting beginning to it?
Because I'm going to be up front about this: I haven't finished Wheel of Time or Lord of the Rings. And I'm wondering, am I looking in the wrong spot? Is there a better, more interesting gateway into epic fantasy literature? I think R. E. Howard is great, so it's not like I'm predisposed against fantasy in general. There's nothing wrong with elves, orcs, barbarians or mages. Actually, they're pretty cool.
I mean, I liked Xena: Warrior Princess when I was younger, for reasons completely unrelated to the plot and completely related to Lucy Lawless, but nonetheless, I have no problem with fantasy setting, but instead have problems with fantasy execution.
So is there anything out there for me that actually involves a good plot?
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