Guess who finished her 20-page paper on Jane Austen and her writing for today and can now write a rant on secondary characters in fantasy?

Yep. Me.

(Not that either was much of a chore. I'm pretty pleased with how the Austen paper turned out, and it isn't going to be THAT great a chore to go back in and add the page references for the quotes I pulled conveniently off the Internet. And Queen At Any Moment is past the 50,000-word mark now and growing nicely. But finishing what I planned for the day- and beyond- always feels good).

( Irritating things in amateur fantasy: Secondary characters )

It's weird, in a way. The first thing I do when reading a fantasy story is try to bond with the main character, and if done well, that person inevitably becomes my favorite character. It works that way with Seyonne, the first-person narrator of Carol Berg's Rai-kirah trilogy, and with Caius Crispus, the mosaicist hero of Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Duology. But there are other books where it doesn't work, and I grow more interested in the secondary characters. If the author doesn't do a good job of building them up, or demonizes them, I am one unhappy reader.

Well, so far I'm taking a break today after all. I suppose it could be justified, since I really didn't expect to finish the grading yesterday.

Anyway.

( Irritating things in amateur fantasy fiction: Teenagers )

On occasion, adult protagonists fall into these same traps, but often the fantasy authors who write them seem to assume that they, at least, are allowed to think about things other than what they look like and if someone likes them or likes-likes them.

More things in amateur fantasy fiction that make me squeak and hide.

( The hero's/heroine's/protagonist's childhood )

So. There you go.

Rant on fantasy teenagers next.