ahh, the stench of EVIL in the early morning...

Okay, so I'm reading the third book in Alison Croggon's Pellinor series ('The Crow') and the whole drawn-out blah-blah battle-against-Light-and-Dark (which are really 'aspects of the human heart', of course) thing is getting to me. -.- As in, as much as I like the books, I'm seriously having to struggle to read about 'true evil' of a certain sort in a text I try to take somewhat seriously (unlike say, HP, which I'm sorry to tell you but I don't take seriously at all, in a philosophical sense, and don't know why anyone would bother... but that's neither here nor there).

Anyway, um, the 'type' of evil/dark-bad-wrongness I mean is when it's not just rage/perverted envy/narcissism/pure lust for power but that most confusing of all evils, the lust for pure 'deathless' power and the use of that urge to actually destroy rather than just control the populace. Or (speaking of rampant brainwashing), where 'control' really means 'rot their mind entirely' o_0. I mean, I understand if you, big Evil Bad Dude, do not see your minions as really human or worthy of concern; fine. But. Have not these evil dudes heard of a little thing called sustainability? Considering they plan to, well, live forever and all.

I think I snapped just now when The Big Evil Guy was mutating crows (marking them as Evil!Crows) by making them maddened disease-spreading berserkers who attacked everything in sight. But that's not bad enough, because they've also got these... uh, little second crow-heads growing out of their necks (now that's -really- evil! omg, genetic engineering magicians, what's next!)

( ...eh. -.- )

~~

Also: and I say this as someone who -enjoys- Tolkienesque high fantasy for the adventure & the world-building & the magic-- why oh -why- is it always, always about The Ultimate Battle Between Good And Evil?? Aren't there other things to like... capture one's interest? Or something? ^^;;;

And okay, if it has to be about Good and Evil and That Other Thing No One Talks About (whatever that might be), whyyyyyyy is it that writing about it has to be so... inevitably ponderous and preachy, preachy, PREACHY (and often tell-not-showy). It's like, the same talent that makes a writer go into near-painful (yet inventive) world-building detail about all the little intricacies of magic systems and foreign cities makes that writer spell out everything else in the characters, as well, down to the tiniest little Lesson Learned While In Trying Times. *facepalm* The ONLY current popular high fantasy writer who doesn't do this is GRR Martin, and while his Fire & Ice books aren't (conventionally) preachy, the trade-off is that basically EVERYONE DIES (and I guess that's the moral). -.-;;

Just as I admire all the inventiveness and richness of the world and go 'ooh, neato!', I constantly go, 'yes THANK YOU FOR BELABORING THE OBVIOUS YET AGAIN, YEAH, I REALLY APPRECIATED THAT'. -.-; There is no winning, as I always say.

People (who don't like stylistic writing as much) may wonder why my favorite traditional fantasy writer is someone like Patricia McKillip, and at least -some- of it is that when everything is oblique and pretty and symbolic, there's no room to be in your face evangelical, like 99.9% of the epic fantasy I've read is. >:O Maybe it's something to do with the cheer chutzpah of writing multi-volume epics to start with; to go that far, maybe you just have to feel you have all these Big Important Points to make about your pretty little world, and you BETTER MAKE SURE everyone gets it, right? No child reader left behind! -.- That said... uh, I'm not really as rageful as I sound, it's just annoying 'cause it accumulates and because I -want- to enjoy my nice world-building & adventure in PEACE without the prissy voice-over, thanks.... bleh.