One of those things I hate in fantasy books.

[roseembolism]

Well, having read Lindsgold's "Wolf Mind, Wolf Heart", and found out there's four more books at least in the series, I'm done.  I recommend stoppping at the first book. 

And another thing: the book also has one thing that kind of grates when I see it in fantasy books: English homonyms.  Case in point.  The main character looking out a window at a bay, and thinking it's nothing like the sound a hound makes.

The thing is, that's comparing two words that coincidentally have the same pronunciation in English, when logically, in a fantasy world where they presumably don't speak English, they shouldn't have anything to do with each other.  This is really just sloppy world-building, people.

So authors, stop it, OK?

Comments

[seawasp]

Note that on Zarathan (my own world of magic), they DO speak English, or something that has all the necessary equivalencies, so in my own fantasy stories you'll have to live with it!

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Meh, that's not a good nitpick. If you're hung up on a world that doesn't speak English, then simply consider it a well-translated pun. It's still an awful pun, mind you, but it's great translation work.

[mrteufel.livejournal.com]

Don't like long series myself, generally. So I empathise with point one.

However, I have to take umbrage at point 2. Unless you're willing to create an entire fictional language, write your novel in it, then translate it back to English with footnotes indicating verbal wordplay in the fantasy language, you're denying yourself one of the most useful qualities of English: its varied and idiosyncratic vocabulary. Heck, Tolkien was a language professor, and even he didn't go quite that far.

And most translations that have the help of the original author (Umberto Ecco springs to mind - ooh, also Goscinny and Uderzo) will try to keep the style of the original by making equivalent wordplays even if the original details were different.

[sandpanther.livejournal.com]

Was the character looking at the bay and making the comment a native speaker of the language? Something like that makes it sound like he's a foreigner who is dealing with the idiosyncrasies of a second language.

(That would be my argument for not doing that. It implies things about the character that aren't entirely true. And, unless the character is a foreigner or a linguistic scholar, is more the author inserting their own voice into the character. And that should generally be avoided whenever possible.)