I read the first book in the Thraxas series which was described to me as a comedic fantasy novel. I didn’t find the book funny at all; jokes, humorous situations, and anything else that I might consider comedy were sparse at best. The one time it appeared to be building to a joke it was ruined by the narrator pointing out that what was happening was funny. I didn’t laugh and I found it to be a weak fantasy novel.
So, has anyone read them and if so can you tell me why it’s promoted as a comedy and isn’t funny?
Yes to the fist part of your question; no to the second.
I’ve read plenty of winners of the World Fantasy Award, so when it was time for me to choose the next book for our fantasy book club (we’d read Metropolis and Devil in the White City and The Antelope wife–it was pretty liberal in its definition of fantasy), I chose, unread, Thraxas. Everyone bought a copy to read.
As soon as we met, I announced that I would never be making the club’s choice again. I figured I’d get the inevitable out of the way. We spent the rest of the time bitching about what a godawful book it was, the unfunniest bit of obvious cliched tripe we’d read.
And yes, the author was trying to undermine the cliches. We get it, dude. Problem is, his undermining of the cliches were themselves cliches. Gee, bimbos in chainmail bikinis who really aren’t bimbos? Even if we hadn’t read the exact same joke fifty times in previous chapters, we’d encountered it countless times in pop culture at large.
Let me take this oportunity to offer my sympathy on reading The Antelope Wife. There’s a book that I can’t describe in any other term than “passive”. “Passive voice”, “passive characters”, “passive plot”.
I didn’t even get that he was trying to undermine the cliches. There were a few parts where it seemed to be trying to be subversive (as you noted the chainmail bikini gag which hasn’t been clever in thirty years) but the other vast slabs of cliche that form the rest of the novel weren’t being played with.
I think it’s because people weren’t sure how to promote it–IMO it’s intended to be light fantasy, not necessarily comedy qua comedy. Think of it as being fantasy analogous to the Retief stories–light reading, playing with the tropes, but not going for the hamfisted japes that everybody seems to have come to expect since the advent of Pratchett.
Granted, I think winning the World Fantasy Award was analogous to Jethro Tull getting the Grammy for heavy metal, and I’m never going to claim that the books are great literature, but I think they do a good job for what they’re intended.
FWIW, the author also publishes under the name “Martin Millar”. I recently read the novel Lonely Werewolf Girl, and really liked it. Hell, the back cover has a blurb from Gaiman mentioning Millar in the same breath as Vonnegut and Pratchett, so he must be doing something right.
He had several well-received/cult novels out in the UK as Martin Miller well before he adopted a pseudonym for the Thraxas books.
Try The Good Fairies of New York if you want a comic novel from him…
Or Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation was a favourite of punks back in the late 80s.
Honestly besides being unfunny I found Thraxas to be clunky and a cliche ridden example of everything I hate in fantasy novels. There’s no way I’d seek out another book by him.
He was poking fun at the undermining of the cliches. Makri is too perfect, for example. Equally, she only really wears the bikini in the Avenging Axe as a means of garnering tips; there are places in the books where she wears rather more sensible armour. On the detecting side, Thraxas can’t be doing too badly if he’s that fat.
But the books are perfect bath-time reading: that is, it doesn’t matter if you drop them in the bath.
I have “boat books” like that. I read them when sailing – it does not bother me if they get water-bloated if I leave them on board or even if they fall overboard.
So what’s the difference between that and people who write the exact same stuff without a trace of ironiy?
Not that I got a hint of irony in any of that in Thraxas.
I’m not trying to pick on you with that question, either. It’s just that it hits rather close to the center of my confusion on the book. It’s easy to say that the book is intended ironically but if a reader doesn’t pick up on that irony it doesn’t stand apart from the dozens of bad books that do the same things unironically.
I’m not clear on what that means. Are you suggesting he thinks that satirists are getting lazy, or something? Where in the book do you see that he’s doing this?
I’m glad y’all are telling me he wrote The Good Fairies of New York. I keep thinking about picking that one up, but definitely won’t, now.
Take Makri, for example. Makri is too perfect: she’s an uber-warrior and uber-scholar, and exotically gorgeous, and yet she’s waiting tables in a slum.
Then there’s the style of the books: it’s sort of Philip Marlowe meets Homer.
And then there’s the whole Association of Gentlewomen metaplot running through the series.
I’m not clear on what that means. Are you suggesting he thinks that satirists are getting lazy, or something? Where in the book do you see that he’s doing this?