You’ve heard me rant about bad storytelling before. And I will admit I have been a bit worried about the tendencies of both video and print media lately. More and more consideration has been given to questions of politics and ideology, not talent (or even basic competence).
But it may well be that the catastrophe is overblown. Yes, some of the bizarre casting choices in The Witcher were clearly politically motivated. But the story of The Witcher was pretty good. The Rise of Skywalker consciously tried to disavow anything to do with The Last Jedi and chose (unsuccessfully, for the most part) to follow a more traditional storytelling structure.
And if you look a little more deeply at the kinds of books that are being published, you might be pleasantly surprised.
I certainly was! Thanks to a recommendation from a friend, I started a new series. How do I describe it? Space opera meets epic science fantasy meets military sci-fi meets far future sci-fi…
Or… it’s what Star Wars wishes it was. It’s the heir to the Dune series and Gene Wolfe’s New Sun series.
It’s Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series.
A while back, I had the pleasure of interviewing Christopher. He’s a lot younger than I expected and is well-read, intelligent, and fun to talk to. If the future of imaginative literature is in the hands of people like him, I’m not so worried.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
The Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio
My previous review of Sun Eater
Just for fun, here’s a bonus! Enter your email and I’ll send you a short story of my own. “The Erestuna” is a comic fantasy short about a hapless seminarian, a possibly predatory mermaid, and a bunch of crazy Cossacks.