Re: The wheel of time and other fantasy books
Dark:
Again, I feel like you think I'm making some deep analysis here, like I think because he used these names it's just gonna be this cookie cutter plot right out of Christianity. That's not it at all. I'm just bummed about the names. It's like he's not even trying. It's like he's going, hey I need a name for somebody who betrays somebody, ah ha, I've got it, Benedict Arnold!
I'm not suggesting that his betrayal is going to mirror the real life Benedict Arnold's story. I'm just super bummed that's the amount of effort, or lack thereof, that he put into choosing names. It feels like that's the level we're on, at least in this first book, and it bums me right the hell out. It's an especially stark contrast because he *does* have lots of names that aren't like that, or don't do that. Artur Hawkwing, though I know exactly what he's drawing on, doesn't bother me nearly as much. Nor does the appropriation of mythology, I love the Book of Three stuff, and Lloyd Alexander just lifted names wholesale from Welsh mythology, concepts too.
The black cauldron is right out of the second branch of the Mabinogion. He did his own thing with the warriors, all the Mabinogion says is that they're resurrected but can't speak. They're not supposed to be undead, per Alexander, they're resurrected humans who lack the power of speech in the original.
So yeah, it's not that he's mutilating mythology, or that I expect his plot to slavishly mirror a myth. It's that I feel like he took the absolutely easiest and simplest path with some of those names and where they belong in his cosmology.
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