I didn't even realize this bugged me until now.

[velvetpage]

The scene I just posted deals with a major character coming back to the faith of his childhood. (That's the end of the spoilers for this post, I promise.) The religion in question is called S'Allumer. (As the resident consultant for the French language while Ironclaw was in the development stage, I was instrumental in naming it, but the rest of the development of the faith in the Ironclaw world had nothing to do with me.) For those among you who don't speak French, "s'allumer" is a verb meaning, "to light up." The religion venerates light, but in other respects is very Catholic in a medieval sense. Much of the vocabulary and imagery is taken from Catholicism. It's easy to do, because Christianity uses the metaphor of light quite extensively. During our first campaign, while playing Annarisse, I remember taking advantage of a bit of downtime in-game to come up with filks of Christian hymns that I could use in character, changing a few words so they'd fit. I know, heresy. :) But it was fun.

Anyhow.

It occurred to me just now, while answering a comment about the scene I just posted, that I'm fighting a common trope of modern fantasy novels. Pretty much every generic medieval/Renaissance fantasy world has something called the Church. Often there's a suggestion of a Sacrificed God, just to drive home the analogy with the force of a stake through the brain. "Hello! I'm not calling it Catholic, but that's what it is! See, I can prove it! There's a sacrificed God! Mercedes Lackey does this. So do a few of the Dragonlance books, IIRC. Terry Pratchett does it, though admittedly tongue-in-cheek. Even Ursula Vernon's new book does it. And in most of them, the Church of the Sacrificed God is, if not outright evil, then at least a cover for much of the evil that goes on. It seems most of the worshippers and pretty nearly all of the priesthood are insular, domineering, power-hungry, and phobic about some group of "others," and often more than one group of "others."

I can't remember very many instances in any of those books where there were good characters who believed in the faith and got solace, and peace, and joy from it. I remember a couple of spots where the author countered their own "The Church is Teh Evil" with a, "Yanno, they're not ALL bad" plot point, but that's about as good as it tends to get within the sword-and-sorcery genre.

I'm tired of it.

Churches are human institutions. Humans make mistakes. They do stupid, or nasty, or power-grabbing stuff from time to time. Sometimes they do those things pretty consistently. But not everyone within such an institution is doing those things. Some of them are there for good reasons. Some of them are trying to lead pious lives in tune with God. Some of them are trying to help. Some of them are even succeeding in that help. There are people who are unaware of the politics surrounding the institution, who believe it, and experience peace through it, and help others out of allegiance to it.

I have been fighting this particular element of the sword-and-sorcery genre of which Ironclaw is a sub-genre. There are evil priests in the books - it's one of the main plot points in Dream-Carver. But there are also good people striving to do right through their faith and because of it. Redemption comes about in many ways in my writing, and the faith is one of the vessels for redemption.

Comments

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

That author (Guy Gavriel Kay) sounds really interesting.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

He is. Start with the Fionavar Tapestry. You're at U of T, right? You'll recognize some of the places in it. After that, I liked Tigana and the Lions of Al-Rassan best.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

My favourites of his are the two Sarantine books, followed by Tigana, then Lions, then Song for Arbonne. I would put Fionavar right down near the bottom, really - I find it overly Tolkien-ish. Not that there's anything wrong with Tolkien, but Tolkien already did it best ;) Of course, he wrote Fionavar after he'd done so much work with the Tolkien estate, editing the Silmarillion and so forth, so it's understandable that he was heavily influenced by it. I just like him better when he's doing something that's more his own ;)

Oh, and I realized that you might have been talking about Ysabel when you said you didn't have his newest book yet - I'd forgotten it was out already! I was still thinking of Last Light of the Sun as his latest, so apply my earlier review to that instead ;)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I wasn't crazy about Song for Arbonne - i couldn't get into it. I liked all the others, though. The Fionavar Tapestry is iconic, but you're right, it's not his best work. The whole Jennifer storyline drove me entirely up the wall.

I enjoyed Last Light of the Sun when it came out - I should reread it. And yes, it's Ysabel that's new. *updates Amazon wishlist*

[neosis.livejournal.com]

Personally, I thought Tigana was much, much better the the Fionavar Tapestry. Of course, that's because I didn't like Fionavar very much.