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The Trilogy Trap: Why Emerging Authors Should Think Twice Before Writing a Three-Book Series
There is a piece of conventional wisdom in fantasy publishing that has always struck me as somewhat backwards: if you want to write serious fantasy, write a trilogy. Look at Tolkien. Look at Terry Brooks. Look at Robert Jordan. Look at George R. R. Martin. Look at almost any shelf devoted to modern fantasy, and…
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“He Does Not Use It”: Sauron’s Self-Reference and the Curious Case of His Forbidden Name
Among the many linguistic puzzles in The Lord of the Rings, one of the most intriguing concerns a seemingly minor statement by Aragorn. While discussing the Dark Lord, Aragorn tells the hobbits: “Sauron is not his right name… He does not use it, nor permit it to be spelt or spoken.” At first glance, the…
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The Barghest as the Native English Gnome: A Germanic Spirit Tradition Behind Modern Fantasy
When the word “gnome” appears in modern fantasy, most readers imagine a familiar figure: a small, bearded, earth-dwelling creature associated with gardens, mines, hidden treasures, craftsmanship, and the secret places beneath the ground. This image, popularized through nineteenth- and twentieth-century fantasy, seems ancient, but the word itself is not. The term “gnome” entered European intellectual…
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Not Everything Is a Cage Match: Reading J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks
My dad was a devoted paperback fantasy fan from way back, picking up the habit through J. R. R. Tolkien and moving on to the likes of Piers Anthony, Katherine Kurtz, and Stephen R. Donaldson. I picked up the habit myself in 4th grade when I read The Hobbit. Then, on his suggestion, I picked…
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From Thieves to Sleuths: Reimagining AD&D 1e Classes
The character classes of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition are more than game mechanics. Their names are artifacts of fantasy history: a mixture of medieval romance, ancient mythology, pulp adventure, religious vocabulary, and the improvisational culture of early tabletop roleplaying. Each name carries centuries of linguistic history before it ever became a line on…
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After The Odyssey, Hollywood Should Look to Wagner’s The Valkyrie
The early enthusiasm surrounding Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey points to something easy to overlook in an era of cinematic universes and algorithmically optimized entertainment: audiences are still capable of being drawn toward stories that feel impossibly large. A filmmaker can still spend hundreds of millions of dollars adapting an ancient poem, filling the screen with…
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The Case for Adapting Tolkien: The Battle of Fornost
Every major Tolkien screen adaptation after The Lord of the Rings has run into the same structural problem in different forms. The Rings of Power attempts to compress vast stretches of the Second Age into a unified narrative timeline. That compression does more than simplify chronology—it alters causality itself. Events that were written as separated…
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Reconstruction of the Divine Twins in Germanic Tradition
In the deep roots of Indo-European religion, one of the most enduring and widespread motifs is that of the Divine Twins—a pair of brother gods often linked to horses, protection, healing, fertility, and the celestial sphere. Known under different names across cultures—such as the Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) in Greco-Roman myth, the Aśvins in Vedic…
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The Return of Saruman? A Case for His Re-embodiment in the Fourth Age
The fall of Saruman—once Curumo the Wise, chief of the Istari—is one of The Lord of the Rings’ most poignant and haunting character arcs. A being of immense wisdom and power, sent by the Valar to guide Middle-earth, ends his journey not with a cataclysm or a redemption, but with a knife in the back…
Christian A. Larsen 