Two Hundred Pages of Sweeping
Epic fantasy’s most defended flaw. I am going to make the defense properly, and then explain why it still does not get the book off the hook.
The complaint
The Dragonbone Chair is 652 pages. For a great many of the early ones, a boy fails to sweep a room, hides from the head of the chambermaids, listens to an old man talk, and is called mooncalf.
This is the single most common thing said about the book, by people who love it as much as by people who put it down. It is not a slander. It is a description.
The defense, made properly
I want to make this argument at full strength, because it is a good one and I mostly believe it.
Simon’s arc does not work if you suspect him. The payoff is a boy shouting his own name at a dragon after six hundred pages of nobody using it. “Here I am! I am . . . Simon!”
For that to land, you have to genuinely believe he is nobody. Not humble nobody with obvious hidden depths. Actually unremarkable. Actually annoying. If chapter two gives him a prophecy birthmark or a mysterious swordsmanship talent, the whole thing collapses into a formality, and you spend six hundred pages waiting for the inevitable rather than watching a person change.
The dread needs domestic detail to work against. Morgenes’ line about buried citadels only lands because you have spent chapters in kitchens and corridors treating the Hayholt as an ordinary workplace. You need the floor to feel solid before it can drop.
And the ending is genuinely earned. I said so at length in the reacts. It is one of the best character payoffs I have read in the genre, and it is made of two hundred pages of chores.
That is the case for the defense and it is strong.
Where the defense stops working
Here is my problem with it, and it is not the book is boring so it is bad.
“Structurally necessary” is not the same as “well executed.”
The defense proves that Simon must start as nobody. It does not prove that establishing this requires two hundred pages. Those are different claims and the second one gets smuggled in behind the first.
A writer can establish that a boy is overlooked, forgetful and unpromising in forty pages. Plenty have. The question is not does the slow start serve the ending, it is does it need to be this slow to serve it, and I have never seen anyone actually argue the second point. They argue the first and then look pleased.
The genre has taught itself that length equals depth. This is the part that actually irritates me. Somewhere in the last forty years, epic fantasy decided that a slow opening is a sign of seriousness. Fast is commercial. Slow is literary. Anyone who bounces off is impatient rather than badly served.
That is a con, and it protects a lot of books that are not doing what this one is doing. The Dragonbone Chair uses its opening. Half the books that cite it as precedent are simply padded, and they borrow this defense to cover for it.
The actual rule, which is about promises
Here is what I think separates a slow opening that works from one that does not, and it has nothing to do with page count.
| Earned slow | Padded slow |
|---|---|
| Establishes a character state the ending will overturn | Establishes atmosphere that never becomes plot |
| Plants information you will need later | Describes food, heraldry and architecture for their own sake |
| Makes the ordinary feel solid so it can crack | Makes the ordinary feel ordinary and leaves it there |
| The reader is bored but oriented | The reader is bored and lost |
By that test this book mostly passes. Morgenes’ chatter is load-bearing. The chores are load-bearing. Rachel calling him mooncalf is the setup for the only line that matters.
But mostly is doing some work in that sentence, and the book is not entitled to a free pass just because its ending is good.
The honest reader’s position
Both of these are true and neither cancels the other:
The opening is structurally necessary and the payoff could not exist without it.
I was bored, repeatedly, for long stretches, and telling me I was reading it wrong is not an argument.
A book can be correct and still be a slog. The correct response is not to pretend the slog was secretly delightful. It is to say: this cost me something, and here is what I got for it, and in this case the exchange was worth it.
What I actually want
Not faster fantasy. I want the defense to be made honestly.
Stop telling people the opening is secretly gripping if you pay attention. It is not. It is a boy failing to sweep a room, on purpose, for a long time.
Tell them the truth: this book asks for two hundred pages on credit and it pays them back with interest in the last hundred. That is a real offer and some readers will take it. Dressing it up as a hidden pleasure just makes people feel stupid when they are bored, which is the fastest way to lose them.
Verdict
The trope stays on probation, and this particular book is acquitted with a note in its file.
Slow openings are not automatically deep. They are a loan, and most books that take one out do not repay it. This one does. The next fantasy novel that asks me for two hundred pages had better have a dragon at the end of them.
Written for CVM Sekai. · The book in question · The review · All RaeRae Rants