In Vain I Have Struggled; It Will Not Do

The Naming by Alison Croggan

I tried my best, I really did. But I simply cannot get past the “Note on the Text” pages of this book. I’ve written about sword-and-sorcery and the derivative nature of many high fantasy works, but never in my life have I seen something so blatantly obvious about its linguistic debt to Tolkien.

The “Note on the Text” opens like this:

The Naraudh Lar-Chanë (or Riddle of the Treesong), one of the key legents of the lost civilization of Edil-Amarandh, is here translated in full for the first time. This great classic of Annaren literature deserves, it seems to me, a much wider audience than the academics it has so far attracted.

I am going to betray the depth of my geekiness but I do not care. I have never hidden my love for Tolkien and THE LORD OF THE RINGS—I even went so far as to study the Elvish languages Tolkien created, both Sindarin and Quenya, although I focused mostly on Sindarin. (For the linguistically inclined, I would absolutely recommend the Ardalambion.) The place-names and character names in this book remind me far too much of Tolkien, there is even a map in the beginning of this book that looks suspiciously like Middle Earth, complete with Tolkien-esque calligraphy.

Let us take for example part of this book’s title: THE NAMING, The First Book of Pellinor. Pellinor. Like Pelennor Fields, where a battle takes place in THE RETURN OF THE KING. Or other places on this map, which includes names likes Osírian, Raur Na Nor, Mithrad Bay, Neera Marshes, Forsaken Lands (formerly Indurain). I don’t even know where to begin here: Osírian is similar to Osgiliath, Mithrad similar to Mithrandír, Indurain similar to the River Anduin, or even Baranduin. Ugh!

Look, I understand the desire to riff off THE LORD OF THE RINGS. I do. I wrote a hell of a lot of derivative fantasy myself when I was in junior high and high school, complete with similar sounding place names. But the reason Tolkien endures is because he put years of thought into the building of Middle-Earth, a place which wasn’t wholly original so much as taking bits and pieces from British folklore, wrapped with Anglo-Saxon sensibilities, and a re-imagining of the Eddas.

Here is why I stopped cold at the words “Naraudh-Lar-Chanë“. Upon first glance, it looks pretty similar to Sindarin, which is the Elvish we see used conversationally in LORD OF THE RINGS, as well as being linguistically based on P-Celtic/Brythonic languages like Welsh. “Naraudh” pronounced like “NAH-rowth” with a vocalised “th” as in “father” and not “think” seems linguistically plausible as a Brythonic word. Both Tolkien and the author use the digraph “dh” where the Welsh would have used “dd”.

Then we have the word “Chanë“, pronounced “KHA-nay”. The diaeresis is unnecessary according to the rules of pronunciation as established by the author. Diaereses don’t occur in Sindarin, although they make appearances in Quenya, High Elvish (although mostly unnecessary there as well). Quenya is also linguistically inspired by Finnish with vowel harmony. It’s this lack of consistency in a simple title like “Naraudh-Lar-Chanë” that drives me crazy. Tolkien did not pull these languages out of his ass. While I’m probably being unnecessarily harsh on the author, this book is giving me facial tics. It’s not enough to make your world as close to Middle Earth without actually being Middle Earth; you have to imply the intuitive wholeness of your world in some other way. I am such a stickler for worldbuilding that this is unacceptable to me.

Oh well. I apologise to the author. My brother did buy your book after all and I’m sure he’ll enjoy it (because I’ll admit it; Tolkien is exceedingly dry). But I cannot.

On to reviewing PRETTIES and SPECIALS after finishing GRACELING.

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