I read an X-post somewhat recently where an author was trying to drum up interest for his debut novel by promising to post lore on his world; encyclopedia entries, that’s what the promise seemed to me.

I wish him luck, and if he gets his gambit to work I’ll be curious to learn his ways—but I don’t have a lot of hope for that strategy. People tend to not be very interested in learning about a fictional world until they already have some sort of investment in it, usually through being engrossed by a book (or graphic novel, etc); even then, most people are usually more interested in reading another well-written story in that world than trivia about the world that story takes place in. Encyclopedias don’t sell well.

Here’s a bit of context along those lines.

The Lord of the Rings has sold about a hundred and fifty million copies worldwide. (This info is from Wikipedia, so accuracy may vary or be a bit dated; also, it appears that number refers to copies of the trilogy, rather than sales for each individual novel.) That’s quite a lot of books! The Lord of the Rings is, after all, one of the most popular and beloved stories—and mythologies—of all time, and uniquely famous for its depth of world building. (Tolkien did, after all, write the books to serve the world he was building for his precious constructed languages, rather than the other way around.) Some Tolkien fans are a bit infamous for how crazy they get over Tolkien’s lore—you can take classes to become “fluent” in Quenya.

So, how many encyclopedias on Tolkien’s lore have sold? That’s a difficult question to answer with five minutes of searching. Encyclopedia of Tolkien: The History and Mythology (David Day) has sold over three million copies worldwide. Assuming that each purchase is a single fan (which I think is likely for the encyclopedia, while any given copy of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was probably shared with another person, so we’re being generous here), that means two percent of fans that bought the trilogy got invested enough in the world building alone to go on and buy a book solely about lore. Not great numbers to stake a business enterprise on, at least for most anything less famous than Tolkien’s work.

(If I wanted to be significantly more rigorous about this little exercise, I’m sure there’s a lot more I could look into to get an idea of the “magnetism” of lore. After all, this isn’t the only Tolkien/Middle Earth encyclopedia that exists. Another consideration, an encyclopedia has a price barrier to entry; other resources, such as fan sites, normally don’t, and are still avenues for fans to immerse themselves in factoids and trivia. There are likely fans that have devoured page after web page of text [and ads], and I don’t know what their overlap would be with encyclopedia-buying fans. So on and so forth.)

I think this number—two percent—is a good enough working estimate for the number of fans interested in lore-centered work. But that’s the key—around two percent of fans… not strangers. Something else had to get them into the story, and thus the world and characters, before they started caring about the lore at all.

I’m not even sure how I’d begin researching times lore has brought fans into a world before the stories and characters of that world…

Anecdotally, lore kind of got me into the world of Rivals of Aether before story did. Kind of. As a fighting game, I was really there for the gameplay, but in the hopes of enhancing the gameplay I looked up the lore of the world, which ended up leading me to researching the game’s stories and characters (and having a good time, despite its messiness). But, again, I was invested in the game in some way before the lore behind the game became enticing, so this more serves to prove the point than anything.

But… as an anecdote supporting that lore can be exciting on its own when it comes after good stories, I love it when stories include appendices at the end: descriptions of the world, an overview of unique words (or the language), pictures and descriptions of characters and locations, and so forth. An abridged encyclopedia supplementing the book, essentially. Dune has an engrossing description of the universe and its history included as an appendix of sorts, which I would not have read nor cared about if it hadn’t come after one of the best books I’d read in my life!

I also very fondly remember reading through the detailed magic system descriptions that Sanderson puts at the end of many of his novels. Such things become valuable references after I’ve read the book, and particularly when debating with friends.

I think Sea of Trolls—a childhood favorite—has such an appendix, but I’m not sure. I wonder if these memories are real or manufactured.

I’m not a huge fan of appendices that are just lists of characters and locations with brief, dry descriptions, though. Those are boring. But also far less effort, so I’m not surprised they are the modern norm, particularly if the author doesn’t see the appendix as very valuable for its own sake.

This is a long, perhaps unnecessary way of saying that I intend to have such an appendix at the end of Halfwhisker, if it works out as far as timing, page count, and word count are concerned.

(There’s an entirely separate discussion to be had, whether or not such appendices are a good idea because of how they obscure book length… It is sometimes disappointing to get to the end of an amazing book twenty percent of the page count sooner than you thought you would. On the other hand, I sometimes injure my enjoyment of a book by guessing plot development based on remaining page count, and an unexpectedly swift ending—on occasion—helps keep me on my toes. But only if I didn’t know there was an appendix to begin with. Probably the end result is a wash, at least for readers that share my preferences. And look at that, I’m well off topic!)

Bloggyness Review: Monster Hunter Siege and Guardian

Monster Hunter Siege and Monster Hunger Guardian are the sixth and seventh books, respectively, in the eight-book Monster Hunter International series by Larry Correia. They are also my latest reads in my enthusiastic devouring of all things Correia.

Siege was okay. Still worth reading, and I wouldn’t have been disappointed if I had bought it, but… Well, for a book named “siege,” there’s not a whole lot of sieging to be had. In fact, about half of the book is build up to a siege that gets resolved very quickly, and the end result is a book that mostly feels like it exists to set up the climax of the series.

That said, Siege still features a lot of excellent action, interesting monsters, and high stakes. This book also has some of my favorite Own Z Pitt moments, regularly forcing him into uncomfortable situations where he has to stretch and grow outside of monster hunting, while still keeping the fights and monsters fresh when it’s time to start pumping lead. It all helps to alleviate how often Owen feels like a sledgehammer.

This book also has one of my single favorite moments in all of the Monster Hunter International series. To avoid too much in the way of spoilers, Pitt has an extremely touching reunion of sorts with his father at the end of the book that felt really, really good. Correia may be mostly about writing big slabs of muscle going nuts with heavy weaponry, but that does not mean there isn’t a bleeding heart at the center of it all!

Guardian, on the other hand, is going right up there with Alpha and Nemesis as my “Favorite Monster Hunter International Books, Which Ironically Don’t Feature Owen Pitt as a Lead Despite Him Being the Protagonist of the Series.” (These books also happen to all feel stand-alone enough that I think they could make incredible movies or mini-series even disconnected from the rest of the Monster Hunter International series. Especially Alpha. But I digress.)

Guardian features Julie, wife of Pitt and mother to a gregarious six-month-old, essentially going Liam Neeson on an underground monster society when her precious baby gets kidnapped while her husband is out sieging the underworld.

This book does an excellent job at believably getting Julie to lose her baby without making her look incompetent, while also cutting her off from most of her allies and resources, putting her in a truly desperate situation where she needs to push herself beyond her limits to save her child. The book also does a really good job at giving you reason to believe why the baby would be worth saving in the first place. This isn’t to say that babies wouldn’t be worth saving—they always are—but if a baby is kidnapped by a vampire-like-monster commanded to kill it, you wouldn’t normally expect the baby to last much longer than it takes for the vampire to pick it up and bring it to the vampire’s teeth, right? Well, the book makes all those details work in a very believable—and somewhat depressing—way.

(Don’t worry, there’s no on-screen child abuse in this book. There are some horrific implications at certain points, the sort of things you probably can expect in a story where a parents sets out to rescue a child from a seedy underworld that traffics slaves and children.)

And I have to say—Management is the real MVP in this story. If you know you know, but this mysterious character is becoming one of my favorite Monster Hunter International regulars.

If I had one complaint about Guardian, it’s that plot armor issue I mentioned in some of Correia’s others books. The magic that saves the day in this story isn’t very well-defined, and as such things don’t feel as satisfying as they could have when certain plot threads are resolved using the magic. I like squishier magic systems, systems intentionally designed to evoke wonder (rather than scientific analysis), but such magic systems only make for satisfying solutions to problems when done very, very carefully, and I don’t think that happened here.

That said, Guardian‘s epilogue is incredibly satisfying. Absolutely beautiful. Another stand-out moment in the series that goes near the top, at least as far as scenes that filled me with the most emotion are concerned.

Writing Updates

Halfwhisker, as of writing this blog post, is at about 192k words. When I last wrote I was at about 188k words… Oof. I really did not write much over Thanksgiving. In part because I was prioritizing time with family, in part because I was extremely ill.

Oh well. We’re cruising toward the conclusion. I just dropped a rat in a vat of acid, hopefully comedically. Hazel is about to create an android, unwittingly. Meaningful progress is happening.

As for the Visions of the Future article I mention on occasion… I’ve started writing it! I’m only five hundred or so words into the article, a chunk of which is quoting other people, but I’m just glad something is happening there. (I’m having fun with it, too, which I hope comes out clearly in the finished piece.)

Send-off

I am still sick from whatever took me out over Thanksgiving, so I’m going to be frank and admit I’m too tired to come up with a good send-off. I’ve been staring at this screen for too long and really need to do something else. So… Hey you. Yeah, you.

You’re pretty cool.