Sadly, Against the Giants isn’t a very good book.
Now, I generally don’t trash books I don’t like. Just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean they’re bad, and some of the books I’ve enjoyed most have severe flaws. (No, I’m not going to name names; I’m not going to throw an author who’s given my several hours of enjoyment under the bus.) But even if the story has flaws, if it captures my imagination, I can look past them.
But sometimes I can’t; and sometimes those flaws need to be discussed in order to learn how to be a better writer, a better reader, and a better judge of fiction.
I wanted to like novelization of Against the Giants. I really, really did. It was the first D&D module I ever played — when I was eleven, with my cousin, in his basement. I loved every minute of it; it made me a gamer, gave my love of fantasy adventure. My hope was the Ru Emerson could take me back to that long-forgotten place.
And she did take me back to that place . . . for a while.
Then the group of adventurers enter the giant’s keep, and the next 50 pages are a mixture of battles and hiding and battles and running and battles and stealing and battles and trying to escape and battles. Pure octane, but no character development whatsoever.
A good battle scene is always fun to read . . . so long as it comes to an end. Sooner rather than later. As a reader (and even as a viewer), I eventually want to move from action to contemplation, from what the characters are doing to how it has changed them. Life and death situations must eventually transcend to questions about salvation or damnation.
Because, you know, that what happens to real people. Life and death situations affect them. Sometimes, people even change.
Granted, deep psychological fiction is usually the domain of literary fiction. So lest you think I’m unjustly criticizing Against the Giants, holding it up to literary standards that are reserved for the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, let’s look at another book in the Greyhawk series — Keith Strohm’s The Tomb of Horrors.
Structurally, The Tomb of Horrors is a pure-blood adventure novel. A group of companions go searching for treasure in the lost tomb of the evil wizard Acererak. They’re followed by a rival (and evil) group of companions. And these two groups face off in the deepest chambers of Acererak’s tomb.
But what makes The Tomb of Horrors a novel of damnation and salvation is the character of Kaerion. There are plenty of life and death situations in The Tomb of Horrors, but in the end, Kaerion’s interior journey — how the adventure both affected him and eventually changed him — is what ultimately matters to the reader. If a character like Kaerion can find redemption, then maybe we can, too.
Unfortunately, Ru Emerson never raised Against the Giants to that level. She never made me care for the souls of the characters, and regretfully, I didn’t care too much for her novel.
