An annoyance

[jethrien]

So I've just started Brian Sanderson's Elantris, and I'm a little annoyed. The concepts are very interesting, although the writing is just a hair, I don't know, clunky. Dealable, though. But the names are getting really annoying. There's the character Raoden, another character Elao, the country Teod, the magical process Shaod, the inversion of the magical process (I think? very badly introduced) Reod, the floating magical balls Seon...what the hell's with the vowel+o combo that this guy can't get over? I can't figure out how he wants any of these pronounced, and so my brain comes to a screeching halt every time I hit one. And at least one shows up probably at least once per paragraph, so it's like being in a stick-shift car with a novice driver, stalling out every ten feet.

Also? Too many made-up words. Way, way too many made-up words, dumped in together too quickly without good enough explanations of what any of them are. I'm willing to grant one or two made-up terms that characters toss around casually and the reader gradually understands the meaning of. But he doesn't explain very many definitions, or doesn't explain them for chapters. And there are dozens. There's a magical city, two different kinds of magical transformations, a system of magic, magic intelligent floating balls, at least two or three religions (one of which's god appears to have at least three or four names or maybe I'm confused because he hasn't explained anything), the priests, acolytes, warriors, rituals, and accoutrements of said two or three religions (actually, there might be only one, or more than three, again with the lack of explanations)...and each of these have their own made-up names, almost none of which have been clearly defined. Oh, and multiple languages, which people will drop one or two "foreign" words of into conversations. Without defining them.

And almost every made-up word has two random vowels pushed against each other. Usually one's an o. I haven't hit the double or triple o yet, but I know it must be lurking, waiting for me to become complacent. And I bet he wants you to pronounce it "Hroo-oh-oother" or something.

Seriously, dude. I'm going to put a ban on introducing any more words until you've defined the ones you've used in the first three chapters, ok?

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that last part about tripling up on vowels. Makes me think of Hawai'ian. Plenty of vowels pressed up (and pronounced) against each other in that language. I wonder if that isn't what he was going for, a language like that?

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I don't think that there's that much forethought put into it. I don't know if he just liked the way they sounded in his head, or whether he was trying to go for an overall "feel" for the language. But it ends up feeling like the reason you don't name two characters Ted and Todd in the same story - the words all look too similar, especially when they're all introduced casually and without explanation. So I'll end up having to stop and wonder whether the subject of a sentence is referring to a magical reaction, a person, or a city. Or maybe it's something else, new, similarly named, that has just been dropped into conversation without introduction. It makes it hard to get into the story when you're trying to figure out what the sentence means, over and over and over again.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

That's too bad. It can really take you right out of a story if you can't penetrate the language. Especially with fantasy, where there's already issues of making yourself understood about concepts.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I hate that, and it seems to be a feature of a lot of fantasy. I would not have made it through Glen Cook's Black Company unless forced, for that reason, even though I ended up liking it. It's like Interstellar Pig, where you stare at a book and it's utter utter gibberish until you stare at it long enough for it to resolve.

Also, I think I prefer authors who have just taken the phonetics of another language (like Welsh for the Prydain Chronicles, or Hungarian for Jhereg), rather than them just trying to put vowel combinations that aren't found in English. At least with that you can look up the phonetic system.

Or you could do what I often do and that is decide the character's name is something else. Let's face it, the eye doesn't take in every single letter as you read, so you could just decide the character's name is Ted. Kind of like I decided Draco's hair was black because I liked it better that way and it had no bearing on the plot.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but then I've got a character named Rad with a servant named Ed who married a woman from Ted and was turned by the Red when he should have been turned by the Shed. Still not that helpful. Still annoying.

I'm not usually that bothered by made-up terminology. But the key is to make it very clear what the majority of the terms mean, in the sentence in which they are first introduced. Also, with made-up terms, it's more critical than ever to make sure that the words are so different from each other that the reader doesn't confuse them. They should use different first and last letters, different vowels, and preferrably should be different lengths.

[lithoglyphic.livejournal.com]

There's a surprising amount of fantasy that I've put down within the first chapter because of PLACE NAMES ALONE.