Monsters
Monsters and other unenviable type creatures dominate the secondary population of the stories in this collection. Writers of this sort of fantasy fiction have to develop a very specific talent for describing that which does not actually exist (or so one would hope) if they are to have any success in the genre:
“A howling monstrosity emerged from the office. It was so tall that it had to hunch over to clear the wrecked doorway. As a matter of fact, it wrenched the doorframe open with clawed hands so the opening would accommodate its girth. I’d never seen or heard of anything like it before, whether in the folktales that my mom and aunties used to tell me when I was a kit, or in the holo shows that we’d crowded together to watch.”
Perception
All imagery is about perception. Most of the memorable imagery one comes across is directly appealing to the sensory perception of a person so that smells, sights, sounds and such stuff can almost literally put them right into the scene being described. There is another type of perception that can account as imagery, however, and that is the way one culture perceives a familiar entity differently—often in complete opposition—to another culture:
“The local AMC was having an Indiana Jones revival. I love them all, but my favorite is the third one, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. (Or Last Jihad , as I like to think of it.)”
Jargon
Another commonly used type of imagery used in stories like those in this collection is that which depends to a great extent upon the use of jargon. That is to say, the utilization of terminology that makes little sense if any outside of context, but is almost an absolute necessity within:
“Who wouldn’t like a night full of magic? And let’s be clear—I’m not talking about the Las Vegas–magician, sleight-of-hand kind of magic. I’m talking about the real deal . The carnival is the one time of year when the witch clans’ secret gifts can be displayed in public for the non-gifted population—we call them saram —to see. Not that the saram know any better, of course. To them, the spells are just elaborate illusions designed to wow the crowd. (And just to be safe, the organizers spray the saram attendees with a light mist of Memoryhaze potion right before they leave.)”
Character Description
Simple character description—even if the characters being described are not exactly simple—is prevalent throughout the narrative. Even fantasy novels are highly dependent upon the basics of literary techniques found in other genres as well as that fiction standing outside generic conventions:
“She was called the Gray One because she was gray. It was not the most imaginative nickname. Her long ashen hair was braided with pieces of glass, because she had a weakness for shiny things. Her face was as hard and withered as a corpse pulled from the bog. On the left side of her nose was a wart the size of an egg, which I would sometimes watch, fantasizing about what might emerge when it hatched.”
