What to Read After Tolkien

I was recently asked what to read after one was done reading The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. The person asking was a Catholic, and so was also curious as which works of High Fantasy, if any, were likely to be in keeping with Catholic sensibilities.

Of course, any fantasy set in anything like the real period in Europe between the reign of Constantine and the rise of Luther will be in keeping with Catholic sensibilities to the degree it reflects real history: the culture was thoroughly immersed with the Christian atmosphere. Any fantasy world with knights and castles and kings and bishops where these elements are treated authentically rather than, say, as in a Dungeons and Dragons world, should be in keeping with this atmosphere.

If you are looking by books by Professor Tolkien himself, I can without qualification recommend you read THE SILMARILLION, SMITH OF WOTTON MAJOR, LEAF BY NIGGLE, as well as his translations of THE GREEN KNIGHT, THE PEARL, THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRUN, and his essay ON FAIRY STORIES.

No one is like Tolkien. If you are seeking Tolkienesque high fantasy, you will find a field crowded with imitators who copied his surface features but who cannot copy his core.

Those qualifications said, however, I can make some recommendations:

1. THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER & sequels by Gene Wolfe, or ON BLUE’S WATERS and sequels. The setting is nothing like Tolkien, and neither is the narrative style or the approach, but Wolfe is the most thoughtful and subtle writer in SF, fantasy or in any field living today, and evokes powerful, beautiful, eerie and memorable imagery. He is also a Roman Catholic. You might also want to read THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS and THE SORCERER’S HOUSE to see if he is to your taste. Wolfe depends on a style of unreliable narration, where he presents all the clues to the reader but never actually confirms what is really going on, which some readers find maddening to read.

2. ON STRANGER TIDES by Tim Powers or THE ANUBIS GATES. Powers is also a Roman Catholic, and a fine writer, albeit, again, the setting is nothing like Tolkien. His characterization tends to be a little flat.

3. THE LION, THE WITCH and THE WARDROBE and sequels by CS Lewis, or OUT FROM THE SILENT PLANET and sequels. Lewis was of that rare temperament that no Christian of any denomination has reason to complain of him. Narnia while written for children addresses themes significant to any awake adult, and THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH (The final book in his Space Trilogy) was written for adults.

A word of warning: if you read Narnia, be certain to read them in the order written! Some devil of hell has persuaded all modern publishers to print them in chronological order, putting THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW out as volume one, and HORSE AND HIS BOY out as volume two, which is an abomination unto the Lord: both Nature and Nature’s God intended THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE to be read first, and HORSE and NEPHEW to be fifth and sixth in the sequence.

4. THE WORM OUROBOROS by ER Eddison. It is with some reservation I recommend this one: the landscape has the sweep and power of a Tolkien book, but the mood and atmosphere are entirely pagan and Wagnerian, and may repel rather than attract.

5. A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA by Ursula K LeGuin. The same reservation applies. The story is thoughtful and wise, with beautiful and fascinating elements, but the world view is self consciously Taoist, not Catholic.

6. THE BOOK OF THREE by Lloyd Alexander. A beloved children’s book set in a mythical version of the Wales of the Mabinogion. There is nothing particularly Christian or Catholic about the world or the worldview, but it has its own charm.

7. WOOD AT THE WORLD’S END by William Morris. This may be too slow and mannered for modern tastes, but it is a pre-Tolkien high fantasy which established the genre.

8. THE LAST UNICORN by Peter S. Beagle. A must-read; a classic.

9. Finally, read outside the genre: you will find more flavor more like Tolkien reading a good translation of BEOWULF (I recommend Seamus Heaney) or reading Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY (I recommend Dorothy L. Sayers) or reading detective stories by GK Chesterton (I recommend MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY or any Father Brown mysteries) than you will find anywhere in the fantasy section of the bookstore. Read Mallory and Ariosto and William Morris and Lord Dunsany.

What to avoid? Phillip Pullman is rabidly anti-Catholic and a bad writer. The first book of his trilogy, NORTHERN LIGHTS, is good, even great, but the next two suck lemons like a Hoover vacuum cleaner, then like a shop-vacc, then like the Black Hole in Cygnus X-1. George RR Martin wrote a version of the War of the Roses set in a fantasy background, with well drawn characters, but the knights swear like sailors, and the characters suffer and die and die, so it is more like watching a gladiatorial game than enjoying a Tolkien fantasy: Martin is deliberately trying to break with Tolkien’s tradition.