Tranith Argan Fantasy Epic
Just starting? Read this.
My fantasy tale is:
Character driven, not just action
Not Young Adult, but is family friendly
Heroic and hopeful, not dystopian
You can read all six books for free as I post them. That’s fair to you.
A small subscription ($30) lets you hear the audio that I paid for. That’s fair to me.
Even just a $5/month sub, listen to all then cancel, I’ll be glad. That’s fair to us both.
Praise For Tranith Argan
is brilliant, there’s much to be said about his story, which is a slow-burn one that begins in a manner really reminiscent of the Dragonbone Chair. The idea being that Nick chose to celebrate the mundanity, the ordinary at the start of his story and like Tad Williams seems to be building up a Celtic styled world.
The difference is that where Tad kind of began to subvert with his second novel, Richards isn’t doing that. He’s sticking to classic themes and motifs and ideas, with things like the ‘secret royal kids’, the twin leads (like from Star Wars) (one girl and one boy), he also has other things like the Elvish love-interest who is a princess that he’s building up.
All of these are classic ideas in the first volume of his story.
But where he differs is in how proudly he demonstrates that he will stick to classic ideas, refusing to subvert, refusing to twist. It has honestly been generations since we’ve seen stories like this. Instead of prepping for a twist, or otherwise trying to outsmart the reader or going for cheap thrills, Nick is preferring to do that which Tolkien and Howard did; he is deepening his core two characters.
Kara is the female lead, a spunky if sensitive young woman who has a lot in common with Supergirl (who might well be the namesake), but also the likes of characters of Betty Cooper from Archie comics and Pippin from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings all seem to serve as some sort of spiritual set of predecessors. There’s something capable about Kara, but also something very feminine.
Never do you get the feeling that Kara is tacked onto Felanar’s story (Felanar being the male lead and main character). Nick has admitted to me in private that Kara grew in the telling and that she quickly grew into one of his favourite characters.
Kara though feels very natural with her and her brother having a very wholesome relationship with her brother, so that she serves like Leia does to Luke’s journey in quite a few stories from the Star Wars universe.
Felanar for his part, between his Elf love story, his dreaming nature, his love of the sea and the great destiny that looms ahead of him is obviously supposed to be a bildungsroman (I believe the term is) lead, who will one day be King. But the truth is there’s a depth to the character, a love of the simple in him that reminds of Jim from the Office, he has the same wit, the same funny nature so that it is impossible not to connect with the character.
Felanar has a passion for fishing at the start of the story, so that there’s an entirely relatable element to him, much like Luke Skywalker also. But where Luke is destined to only ever be a Jedi (a kind of Sci-Fi Monk) and never a King or ruler, it is likely Felanar’s destiny to be a King.
But a King of what? Likely Tranith Argan. And what is Tranith Argan? I will tell you. It is a Celtic or Irish seeming mythological world full of wonder and beauty. My gosh the descriptions that Richards uses are magical, as he dives into a world of beauty and water, and forests.
It is a world which seems to have its own personality. If I’m being honest, I like to wander through a local forest, everyday and while I’m in the woods I have a sense of a spirit and a personality about the place. Tranith Argan feels like that place. It is a place of fey and spirits of trees and water and rivers. It is a place of magic, and one that feels intimately familiar to any person who has read old Irish, Scottish and French folk-tales.
It is a place of wonder, and one that is filled with lochs, rivers, forests and with simple folks, ones who express curiosity about Elves and the mysteries of the world but little more. They are all content lower-ranking people who love the land, the sea and who are content to survive, compose poetry and who seem to live in a world full of nature and dragons (yes a dragon appears and it is awesome, and feels properly majestic and unbelievably beyond human comprehension and ability to fight).
The archetypes are painted clearly, the world is one that feels every inch Celtic where Tolkien’s was Anglo-Germanic with a touch of Celtic. Howard’s feels alien with a dab of Nordic-Celtic. Richards taps the most elusive of ideas and archetypes and even stereotypes, and fairy-lore whirls them together in his cauldron in such a way that only Williams seems to have attempted but where Williams abandoned his project, Richards doesn’t.
Richards’ gives a clear idea, a clear personality to his world. He knows that in fantasy it is not the characters who are the leads, but the world itself. This is what separates him from a great many writers, a great many fantasy creatives.