Re: The wheel of time and other fantasy books
@khomus, many of the names have mythological origins or analogues, but the mythos is very rarely borrowed hole sale, EG The dark one is not a fallen angel or the like, Ba'alzamon is actually a guy who just went particularly evil, there is certainly no christ analogue, and though the hero has his messianic moments, they are dealt with in a rather different way.
Then again, I never really mind appropriation of ideas in a fantasy setting so long as the author is telling an interesting story and doing something interesting with them, heck in memory sorrow and Thorn, Tad williams pretty much borrows certain cultures and idea hole sale, including nordic and catholic christianity, but since the story's main elements involve semi immortal rather alien elf like creatures, and one very renigade undead elf prince who wants to destroy the world in revenge, the historical/mythological cultural borrowing is pretty much just background.
The only time it irritates me, is when mythology spoils the story, say when a character just becomes an uninteresting hit things type of figure under the disguise of the author making mythological parallels, or when the author's attempt to cram in and reference mythology pushes other elements of the story to one side.
I was actually really bothered by this in Guy Gavril Kay's Fionavar tapastry. The first book is an incredibly good fantasy about five graduate students getting sucked into another world and participating in a war against that worlds' dark lord.
The second however, suddenly introduces Arthur himself, and Lancelot, and makes one of the principle characters into Guinevere, a character who had a lot of journeying to do on her own.
Unfortunately from that point, while the main cast still have things to do (accept the poor girl who pretty much ends up mind subsumed into Guinevere), we also have to have Arthur and Lancelot riding around being awesome and playing out the old triangle.
the writing is lovely, and Lancelot in particular has some really awesome moments (including an incredible duel against an earth guardian), however, I really didn't want! Arthur or Lancelot's stories at that point, I wanted to see the five characters from our own world be awesome and stop the darkness and go on their own journeys, as they had in the first book.
again, both Williams and Kay did this in their first fantasies and changed things later, so whether it was a reliance on established myth I don't know.
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