The Philippine Online Chronicles

The first time tourist to Fantasyland is likely to be in for a hard time trying to figure out what’s going on and what to do on their first Tour. What does one order for dinner at an inn?  How do you go about removing a curse? What do you do with a magical sword? What sights will you see in a Dwarven Fastness? And how in the world can you tell who or what is a minion of the Dark Lord?

Never fear, for the Management has decided to supply novice tourists with an elegantly written, infinitely useful reference for their package tour: The Tough Guide To Fantasyland, a finalist for both the World Fantasy Awards and the Hugo Awards.

Diana Wynne Jones’ The Tough Guide To Fantasyland is an affectionate parody of the clichés and tropes of the high fantasy genre. Inspired by the Rough Guide series of travel books, The Tough Guide presents itself as a travel guide supplied to tourists by the "Tour Management" as the tourists go on a package tour of a generic fantasy world (the actual physical book even comes complete with blank pages for the "tourist" to take down notes). The Tough Guide catalogues the creatures, places, and characters that a tourist/reader can be expected to encounter during the tour (or, in other words, what a reader might encounter in a cookie-cutter fantasy story) as well as helpful recommendations on how to deal with them, along the way chronicling the clichés of the high fantasy genre (TVtropes has a list of some that the book tackles) in a tongue-in-cheek tone that infuses the entire book and which gives the Tough Guide a delightfully snarky tone.

Here are some of those "helpful recommendations" from the Tough Guide (which are also helpful negative examples for the fantasy writer obsessing about how to make his/her work stand out):

• Be polite to evil wizards (they can do horrible things to you), but even more so to the bumbling ones (if they cast a spell on you while pissed off, who knows what might happen), and whatever you do, never attempt to seduce a female Wizard, or “the consequences can be terrible.”
• “LEGENDS are an important source of true information. They always turn out to be far more accurate than HISTORY.”
• “COUNCILLORS are those who advise a KING. Nine-tenths of them are evil.”

Beneath all the affection that is evident in the parody, however, the tone also has an underlying edge, and for good reason. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, in serving as a guide to the common elements of high fantasy, also offers a scathing critique of hackneyed writing and the clichés of the genre. The travel guide conceit allows Jones to play up an atmosphere of kitsch and commercialism, and the idea of Fantasyland as a package tour (or three tours, as seems to be the Rule given how many fantasies come in threes) mirrors a publishing industry (as it was in 1996, when the book was first published, with some elements that still persist until today) that churns out fantasy novels, trilogies, and sagas by the dozen. Lousy writers are equated with the tour’s Management, and are portrayed as dour, unimaginative, and possessed of a certain banality that sucks the magic out of even the most wonderful worlds, people and places.

As the book puts it: “MANAGEMENT is the body who has arranged this Tour for you. It has made up the Rules for your comfort and convenience, so that no Tourist will ever be taken by surprise or shocked by an unexpected INCIDENT. Management reserves the right to alter the Rules in accordance with current fashions, and will admit absolutely no complaints or responsibility. It wishes you a safe and happy Tour of Fantasyland.”

The tone of the book turns particularly nasty when Jones tackles common problems such purple prose, sorry world building, and painfully stereotypical characters, locales, and plots. Hackneyed phrases and overdone verbiage for example, are categorized as “official management terms” (OMTs) and “management directives”.  Thus: “…OMTs are forms of words which the management has dreamed up for use every time a certain thing, fact, sensation or person is mentioned. Thus, STEW is always thick and savoury; HISTORY is always lost; at the point where the party of Tourists is about to be attacked the very air seemed doom-laden…” And “MANAGEMENT DIRECTIVES occur when the Management requires heavenly choirs to add to the usual OFFICIAL MANAGEMENT TERMS (OMTs)…OMTs go into overdrive and start saying things backward. Typical MDs are Grim were they and of awesome countenance, or Wan was that dawn and spectral the Sun…Sang they with eagerness and sang their swords with them…”

Lazy world building is also in the crosshairs when she pokes fun at stereotypical fantasy cultures and places, such as the “Imperial Citizens” (fantasy Romans who “are so civilized that they have given up war in favour of politics and poison”), “Northern Barbarians” (who are apparently immune to cold since all they seem to wear are furs, loincloths, and copper bracers), and the residents of the “Fanatic Caliphates”. The entry for nunneries quips that the Rule is that whenever the tourist desperately needs shelter, the nunnery will have recently been sacked. The Plague may walk the land, but lesser ills such as chilbains, the common cold, and fevers (unless caused by infected wounds) are nonexistent. Thieves’ Guilds and Assassins’ Guilds seem to be the most common organizations in Fantasyland, so perhaps crime is the only organized activity.

There are also jabs at many other issues. Why, for example, are there no (or very, very few) Dark Ladies rather than Dark Lords? Why is female virginity such a big deal in fantasy magic, while male virginity is useless? Clear-cut morality is also under fire, when she writes “[e]verything is black and white – there is none of the greyness that afflicts enmities in our world, where you are always having to concede that there may be some good in someone you hate.” The definition for turncoats is “people who change to the side of the DARK LORD in mid-tour…Note that turncoat is never used to describe a person who leaves the cause of the Dark Lord to join yours. This is reasonable. Your side is the right. People who join you are merely being converted.”

The Tough Guide of Fantasyland manages to avoid becoming a boiling mess of sarcastic vitriol. (Although that need not be a bad thing, as can be seen from Ambroce Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary a 1911work that is a collection of dark and bitter definitions for common terms, where "abasement" is described as "[a] decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power.") Though Diana Wynne Jones critiques the shortcomings of the high fantasy genre, she does so with an evident affection for the form. For those who aren't aware of her, Wynne Jones is one of the most prolific and well-regarded authors of young adult fantasy, a winner of the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, and creator of classic works such as Howl's Moving Castle and the Chrestomanci books. She clearly knows her stuff, and the parody she delivers is friendly criticism, pointing out the good and highlighting the bad, and challenging other writers to do one better by avoiding the familiar, well-trodden ground that has already been worn thin by the Tours of the past.

That’s not to say that the book is perfect, of course. For one thing it takes the “Fantasyland Tour” joke and runs with it for page after page after page (a review at SFReviews.net says it "cudgels [its one joke] to death"). For some the premise might be worn thin by the extended conceit of the travel guide format (which is why other reviewers recommend that it not be read straight through, but be consulted in portions, like a dictionary), and the dry flavour of the tongue-in-cheek humour might be lost on some, and of course someone not familiar with high fantasy might, ironically, be lost at all the subtle in-jokes and allusions made in the book.

Still, for anyone but newcomers, all in all I’d recommend The Tough Guide to Fantasyland to anyone planning to take a Fantasyland Tour, whether as a tourist or as a tour guide. Fantasy readers will be delighted at the tongue-in-cheek humour (as Rich Horton says, Wynne Jones is s consistently funny a writer as we have, and she does not disappoint here) and aspiring fantasy writers will find it even more useful as a resource, a guide to what’s been done before and how to avoid the clichés and stereotypes of the genre.

Besides, you never know, one day you just might need a few helpful hints on getting rid of that cursed magical sword.

Copies of the book can be found at Fully Booked branches.

[Image source: Penguin Books. Copyright holder/s maintain appropriate rights.]

Philip Corpuz is a full-time dataminer and part-time game master. He wishes he could reverse that situation. Between working and gaming, he also serves as a copy editor for Nosfecatu Publishing.