you will see dozens (even hundreds, if you want to get nit-picky) of parallels between Jordan’s work and Tolkien’s.
The parallels start when you open the book. Before each story begins, we see a map. Tolkien’s map shows his world, Middle-earth, “at the end of the third age.” Jordan’s novel has a map with a strikingly similar coast line, and at the end of Jordan’s brief and powerful prologue, we see that he quotes historians from “the Fourth Age.” There are other similarities in the maps. Tolkien has his Mount Doom , while Jordan has his Mountains of Dhoom . Tolkien talks of his Misty Mountains, Jordan has (on his second map) the Mountains of Mist.
In both novels, we begin with a celebration. In The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien’s Hobbits plan to celebrate a birthday party. Jordan’s characters plan to celebrate Bel Tine.
In The Lord of the Rings , the wizard Gandalf plans to make an unusual appearance and sets off fireworks. In Jordan’s novel, wizards make an unusual appearance in town and thus add to the spectacle of the planned fireworks.
In The Lord of the Rings , our hero is a young man, a rustic gentleman farmer, who barely escapes his home with three companions when the Dark Riders begin their hunt. With Jordan , our hero is a young man, a poor farmer, who barely escapes his home with three companions when trollocs attack. (Note that in Tolkien’s world we have trolls, in Jordan’s we have trollocs .)
Now, I could go on for pages like this, dissecting sentences to show how Jordan is establishing resonance with Tolkien, Howard, Arthurian legend, and so on. Yet I feel like I’ve done enough of that. Rather, I’d like to get to the point of what I’m trying to say: Robert Jordan is a very fine and powerful writer in his own right. He could have created his own fantasy world, populated it with creatures from his own imagination , and given us something new. But he recognized that there was a vast audience out there who was still looking for something that resonated deeply with Tolkien’s work, and he made the choice to capture that existing audience rather than write in the hope that he might gather his own fans independently.
The truth is that if you write something startlingly original, it is very difficult to sell. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings went to dozens of publishers before it found a home, yet now if you look at most polls by fantasy readers, it is considered the greatest fantasy of all time.
Similarly, in science fiction, the novel Dune is now considered by most readers to be the best Science Fiction novel ever written—but Frank Herbert went through every publisher in New York before a magazine company decided to give it a shot.
If you try to create and sell a truly original fantasy, publishers won’t know what to do with it. So let’s say you write about creatures that you call “ Golunds .” Your protagonist has three legs and two heads. He lives in a land called Neuropa , and his great conflict is that he hopes to find love in a land where all solicitations for affection are outlawed. You send your masterpiece into a publisher and manage to hook an editor. They love it. “What shelf should we put it on?” they’ll ask. “How do we market it? What other bestseller is it most like?” If you answer, “It’s totally different!” they will not be happy. I n fact, it will never make it past the marketing board.
So as a writer, you need to consider, “What other works will my book resonate with?”
One way to do this is to aim a book right down the reader’s throat. Look at the age of your target audience, and ask yourself, “What works have most influenced my audience?”
Let’s say you’re writing to a young teen audience. You might decide that the huge blockbuster movies of the past decade have been Harry Potter ; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ; Pirates of the Caribbean ; Shrek ; Spiderman , and so on.
The parallels start when you open the book. Before each story begins, we see a map. Tolkien’s map shows his world, Middle-earth, “at the end of the third age.” Jordan’s novel has a map with a strikingly similar coast line, and at the end of Jordan’s brief and powerful prologue, we see that he quotes historians from “the Fourth Age.” There are other similarities in the maps. Tolkien has his Mount Doom , while Jordan has his Mountains of Dhoom . Tolkien talks of his Misty Mountains, Jordan has (on his second map) the Mountains of Mist.
In both novels, we begin with a celebration. In The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien’s Hobbits plan to celebrate a birthday party. Jordan’s characters plan to celebrate Bel Tine.
In The Lord of the Rings , the wizard Gandalf plans to make an unusual appearance and sets off fireworks. In Jordan’s novel, wizards make an unusual appearance in town and thus add to the spectacle of the planned fireworks.
In The Lord of the Rings , our hero is a young man, a rustic gentleman farmer, who barely escapes his home with three companions when the Dark Riders begin their hunt. With Jordan , our hero is a young man, a poor farmer, who barely escapes his home with three companions when trollocs attack. (Note that in Tolkien’s world we have trolls, in Jordan’s we have trollocs .)
Now, I could go on for pages like this, dissecting sentences to show how Jordan is establishing resonance with Tolkien, Howard, Arthurian legend, and so on. Yet I feel like I’ve done enough of that. Rather, I’d like to get to the point of what I’m trying to say: Robert Jordan is a very fine and powerful writer in his own right. He could have created his own fantasy world, populated it with creatures from his own imagination , and given us something new. But he recognized that there was a vast audience out there who was still looking for something that resonated deeply with Tolkien’s work, and he made the choice to capture that existing audience rather than write in the hope that he might gather his own fans independently.
The truth is that if you write something startlingly original, it is very difficult to sell. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings went to dozens of publishers before it found a home, yet now if you look at most polls by fantasy readers, it is considered the greatest fantasy of all time.
Similarly, in science fiction, the novel Dune is now considered by most readers to be the best Science Fiction novel ever written—but Frank Herbert went through every publisher in New York before a magazine company decided to give it a shot.
If you try to create and sell a truly original fantasy, publishers won’t know what to do with it. So let’s say you write about creatures that you call “ Golunds .” Your protagonist has three legs and two heads. He lives in a land called Neuropa , and his great conflict is that he hopes to find love in a land where all solicitations for affection are outlawed. You send your masterpiece into a publisher and manage to hook an editor. They love it. “What shelf should we put it on?” they’ll ask. “How do we market it? What other bestseller is it most like?” If you answer, “It’s totally different!” they will not be happy. I n fact, it will never make it past the marketing board.
So as a writer, you need to consider, “What other works will my book resonate with?”
One way to do this is to aim a book right down the reader’s throat. Look at the age of your target audience, and ask yourself, “What works have most influenced my audience?”
Let’s say you’re writing to a young teen audience. You might decide that the huge blockbuster movies of the past decade have been Harry Potter ; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe ; Pirates of the Caribbean ; Shrek ; Spiderman , and so on.
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