I feel like there was this convention, for a very long time, that people who were special in any sort of magical way had to leave, because the authors felt like they had to "reset" the world and leave it mundane. At least for fantasy authors. (Horror authors were all about the terror lurking under the mundane, tyvm, Lovecraft.) Even the Friends of Narnia all had to die (excepting Susan, of course, which is just another problem entirely).
Which, you know, resetting the world to normal is kind of boring. (Also, didn't Eilonwy have to give up her powers or something to be Tristan's husband? It's been a LONG TIME since I've read those books, but I remember being really annoyed that the girl had to give up something to be good enough to get the guy.)
I'm trying to figure out when the first author to demolish that premise came about, and I would guess it's sometime in the seventies or eighties. Maybe Charles de Lint or Emma Bull? Gah, probably someone even before that. Anyway, thank goodness for urban fantasy (and its descendant, paranormal romance) for ignoring those former conventions of the genre.
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winterfish
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Date: 2010-12-29 03:40 pm (UTC)Which, you know, resetting the world to normal is kind of boring. (Also, didn't Eilonwy have to give up her powers or something to be Tristan's husband? It's been a LONG TIME since I've read those books, but I remember being really annoyed that the girl had to give up something to be good enough to get the guy.)
I'm trying to figure out when the first author to demolish that premise came about, and I would guess it's sometime in the seventies or eighties. Maybe Charles de Lint or Emma Bull? Gah, probably someone even before that. Anyway, thank goodness for urban fantasy (and its descendant, paranormal romance) for ignoring those former conventions of the genre.