What is current(ish) Epic Fantasy? Age of Myth (Michael J Sullivan, 2016)

A+ cover, no notes

​   We were talking about epic fantasy recently and I realized I’ve got a bit of a gap in reading “recent” epic fantasy outside of either indie things personally recommended to me or established authors I’ve enjoyed before like Correia (great), Feist (middle-brow but fun), Akers (criminally under-exposed) or Sanderson (fallen off, not interested anymore). I asked around a bit for recommendations for a good mainstream exemplar and Michael J Sullivan kept coming up. He’s extremely popular and I’ve certainly seen his covers in places but nothing about them screamed “buy me” and so I never checked him out.
   Well, now I’ve checked him out in Age of Myth, the first novel in a five-book series, published in 2016. If you want the bottom line up front…it’s good, 4 stars, well worth spending time on, would read the next book, etc. The detailed review that follows contains spoilers so if you want to avoid those and check it out yourself, you’ll probably enjoy the read.
   First off, a note about how these novels get published; Sullivan is working with a Big Five publisher for this series, but that’s not how he started and his model isn’t traditional at all. He writes all of a particular series before publishing the first book, so trilogies at first, and a five-book series this time around. This model requires patience, a steady income not reliant on immediate book sales, and a strong editorial/beta reading team to ensure heavy feedback early. The benefits of the model, to quote the author’s own forward, are that the story is sure to be resolved, and that fans don’t have to worry about a random bus leaving them George RR Martin’d. Worth it if you can do it, imo. This also feeds into Sullivan’s funding model, which seems to be starting with Kickstarters for his books, raising both funds for publication and publicity for his funds. Smart and independent model. Also, probably not viable for any author without a significant publicity base beforehand, but don’t begrudge the man his success.
  Age of Myth is set thousands of years before Sullivan’s first trilogies, in a primitive time where elves rule the known world, worshipped by inconsistently primitive Stone Age humans and shunned by dwarves who live to the south. The series’ ostensible main story is about humans killing a single elf, elves retaliating with genocide, and humans along with elf defectors defeating the Standard Issue Debauched High Elf Caste. All a reasonably standard setup for fantasy, but the worldbuilding is conveyed in a confident, clear voice and the initial setup with the human Not!Scotsman semi-accidentally killing the elf is great. Then the novel pivots and Sullivan tells the story he’d really interested in telling.
  All that previous stuff? Background. In the foreground is an extremely close story about a local village, starring the widow of the village’s old chief. The novel takes its time and looks through the eyes of Persphone at the characters of the village (okay, clan town really). She loves them, and that warm love is remarkably well conveyed in the text, even as she has to struggle with the dangers of the whole elfs-trying-to-genocide-humanity situation (don’t worry, the elves are casual about it) and a man-eating demon bear in the woods. It’s an intimate character story with a lot of local politics, and at least for most of the novel it is quite good. Its only towards the end that things become a little uneven.
  I do have a couple issues with dialogue and especially naming over the course of the novel. The first line uttered in our epic fantasy yarn? “Hey”. Followed by “okay”, “yeah”, and a whole host of other casual and contemporary word choices. Names are also wildly uneven. The village of Persphone also has a Sarah, an Iver, a Reglan, a Maeve, a Brin, a Gifford, and a Suri, just for an example. Not only are these real names from a variety of different backgrounds, but they also have a weird set of sounds to be mixed together. Both of these issues are surface-level nits but they point to a certain pedestrian lens that fights the epic ambitions of scale. Which is a pity, because I like the windowpane prose in general.
   Thankfully, magic is spared this modernism. Magic (called “The Art” by elves) is magical and often undefined, nobody casts Fireball or discusses Investiture. While talk of a demon in the villain bear is a red herring, ancient trees talk to mystics and auguries are performed by burning bones, yielding riddles that have to be followed to thwart disaster, along of course with heroic actions of daring and courage. This is how fantasy should be, and I’d forgive a thousand “okays” for that strong fundamental respect of the Old Rules.
  Sadly, the stumble at the end of the novel is about the people, not the trappings. In the end the biggest issue is that the Goodies and the Baddies shake out into All Good and All Bad, with the suspicious new chief falling to outright villainy while the old hag gets absolved of all wrongdoing by being a wronged victim in turn. Simple good-and-bad isn’t the worst sin, but the morality is extremely recent; powerful older men bad, all women but one good, young men good if crippled, escaped slave, sexy elf, or infatuated with old woman. All the expected dynamics of 1999, without granting any of the traditional power figures paths to redemption. Everyone good is well-written, with moral qualities actually extant and not just assumed due to identities. Their victories are satisfying. It’s just less mythic and more contemporary than epic fantasy that resonates with a timeless quality really should have.
   Fun read though.