"The Runelords", "Game of Thrones" and the Problem of Endings
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 9:12PM Longtime readers know that Nathaniel has a wee problem with addiction to fantasy literature. This proclivity is more masochistic curse than pleasureable blessing since fantasy literature is allergic to endings and there are few things Nathaniel likes more in storytelling than a brilliant finale.
So last night I finished the first book of the The Runelords series "The Sum of All Men" by David Farland. I had heard that it would eventually be a movie so when my brother suggested I read it last month on my vacation, I gladly grabbed it for the airplane time. [Note: turns out the movie option ran out last year and Farland has the rights again.] The book concerns the young naive prince Gaborn whose quest to win the heart of a neighboring kingdom's progressive idealistic princess Iome is interrupted by an invading army of the Runelord Raj Athan who seeks to become "The Sum of All Men".
The conceit of The Runelords world is that, through magic rituals, people can gift their best attributes to others creating a stratified world where those in power are granted more and more of it as people sell their most economically viable asset to them be that beauty, strength, vision, intelligence, stamina (and everything else). It's sort of like the vampire economy that the USA is dealing with now as the rich and powerful decimate the weaker middle class in order to gain more and more and more (to infinity and beyond) for themselves to feed their insatiable greed and misplaced sense of entitlement. Never mind that once a Runelord has the strength of 1000 men, it hardly makes a difference to him if he has the strength of 1001... but it sure as hell matters to the weakling 1,001st man he's left behind in his greedy conquest.
But let's not get into the ever-miserable discussion of the downward spiral of the actual world we live in. We're talking books and movies, the fake world we prefer to dream of!
Gandalf the Grey... no, WHITE. Most of the major characters in the book are those who have received "endowments" from others so they're all amazingly beautiful or super strong or what not; superheroes in medieval frocks and cloaks if you will. If they're not runelords they're wizards. The major wizard Binneman is basically Gandalf since he's very powerful, very wise, very old and his hair and wardrobe changes colors once he moves to the next stage of his power. But then, what wizard isn't Gandalf? He casts a long long shadow on fantasy literature.