And yet... how many books can you think of where the hero or heroine is widely disliked by people who are not, in some way, the "bad guys"?
Well, there's the Vlad Taltos books by Steven Brust, which I recomment as top-flight fluff.
Vlad -- the first-person narrator -- is emminently likeable, in a swash-buckling, wise-cracking, under-doggish sort of way. He's also an assassin and minor underworld boss. (Illegal but fairly common in his society.)
Most of his friends, naturally, support him. Some of the genuinely, morally good people in the book -- including his grandfather, and later his wife -- disapprove of what he does, and eventually oppose him. But of the people who oppose him are up to no good themselves, and come of badly because they aren't as funny as Vlad-- and of course because he's the narrator and spins it that way.
But, as you note, a book where the protangonist isn't good and the antigonists aren't bad are an exception. In f/sf, anyway. I think perhaps "literary" fiction is another story.
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Date: 2003-03-25 07:02 pm (UTC)Well, there's the Vlad Taltos books by Steven Brust, which I recomment as top-flight fluff.
Vlad -- the first-person narrator -- is emminently likeable, in a swash-buckling, wise-cracking, under-doggish sort of way. He's also an assassin and minor underworld boss. (Illegal but fairly common in his society.)
Most of his friends, naturally, support him. Some of the genuinely, morally good people in the book -- including his grandfather, and later his wife -- disapprove of what he does, and eventually oppose him. But of the people who oppose him are up to no good themselves, and come of badly because they aren't as funny as Vlad-- and of course because he's the narrator and spins it that way.
But, as you note, a book where the protangonist isn't good and the antigonists aren't bad are an exception. In f/sf, anyway. I think perhaps "literary" fiction is another story.
--Erin
http://www.sitehouse.net/vivid