I just finished reading "The Game" by Dianna Wynne Jones recently (yes, I got it from the children's section). It started out really good. My only previous exposure to her work has been through Howl's Moving Castle and I remember enjoying the Miyazaki Anime movie more than the book because, as I recall, the world felt kind of vague when I read the book and I couldn't really put myself there...
Anyway, back to "The Game". At the beginning I was very impressed because, unlike Howl, this book was very detailed and there didn't seem to be any vagueness. I could easily immerse myself into the thoughts and the awkwardness of the main character and I loved the hue size of her family and her interactions with all the cousins. I was intrigued enough by the idea of the mythosphere and the introduction to the Game itself had me thinking "interesting idea!". Maybe it's because it's a children's book and I'm used to things like Lord of the Rings where you get more detail than you ever needed, but again, as soon as they started playing the game I felt like I had been flung back out of the book and couldn't situate myself comfortably in it anymore.
That didn't bother me too much, though - I could overlook that because I was genuinely interested in seeing what happened next and what the main character would do and find out. And then, suddenly, it was revealed that the characters were all figures from Greek Mythology (as in, the main character's ENTIRE family and Every. Single. Person she met through the entire book). Good guys, bad guys, the maid that used to work for the main character's Grandma, the Aunt's love interest, and even the random musicians she met on the street...
This was the point where I became very annoyed and dissatisfied with the book. Not only were all the characters from Greek Mythology, they were all characterized in a way that fits with their roles in Greek Mythology... not that I know much about it in order to compare. There were notes at the back of the book, you see. I read through the character sketches/notes and one fact stuck out to me all of a sudden. I realized that Greek Mythology could, perhaps, have been interesting, but because it was so overused (in school projects, in movies, in books, almost literally everywhere) I had grown to hate it and steer clear of it if I ever had the option.
A final note on "The Game" - as a story it started out really well, and if only the characters had remained firmly human: humans who dabbled in this mythosphere and visited it from time to time even though it was "forbidden" ... that would have made a great book. As it was, I lost interest in the characters the moment they all became these legendary figures. And again, why ALL of them?! Why?!
This reminds me of King Arthur and how every once in a while I'll come across a re-telling of the story, or an allusion to it somewhere, or a thinly veiled rip-off where the characters have different names, but they're really just Arthur and Lancelot and Guinevere and all the rest of them. Not that I dislike Arthur. I really enjoy the storyline, I loved the animated movie "Sword in the Stone" and the 2004 film was pretty awesome too. However, I do not need to be reading a fantasy novel and suddenly see Arthur and Guinevere staring out at me. For one thing, it kills any suspense there ever was in the storyline. It also makes me feel as if the author put it there solely for the purpose of injecting the story with the same emotions people get from the original storyline.
The thing is, the Arthur story isn't awesome because it's about a dude called Arthur who has a best friend Lancelot and a bunch of other knights and a queen called Guinevere. It's a great story because it's about human beings and their relationships and the hardships they face. Because it's about themes like loyalty and justice and equality and things like that. The round-table isn't cool because it's in the shape of a circle, it's cool because of what that shape means for the people sitting on it; what it represents. When modern authors invoke these aspects of Arthurian legend as if they're calling on Greek "gods" the story loses its human character, it loses the factor that made Arthur so awesome in the first place!
One major example that I can give is the first Trilogy that Guy Gavriel Kay wrote. His other books are very original and the story lines are gripping, but this first one, the Fionavar Tapestry, felt really forced and failed to impress me because it borrowed way too much from Tolkien and from Arthurian legend. I forgave him for the Tolkien when I found out he had spent years helping Christopher Tolkien with the History of Middle Earth (I mean, if anyone has an excuse to lift from Tolkien it would have to be him) but the Arthur really threw me off. Again, it eliminated all sense of suspense and originality of the storyline and made me feel like the characters were just robotically preforming old, tired roles.
It was great the first time, and maybe the first three or four times it got ripped off, but not anymore... just let the poor characters rest - I'm sure they must be sick of making all these re-appearances and living it all again, and again, and again.
It makes me very, very glad that I found The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings before I read the five billion elf, dwarf and ranger in a pub stories...
So, what do you think? Are there any stories that you enjoyed that do lift from Arthur or Greek Mythology? Do you think it can be done well? Are there any other often-used story-lines that you're sick of seeing? Let me know by leaving a comment below!
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