One of the things about fantasy that I love the most are the epic battle scenes, where the good guys and the bad guys face off across the field of battle in a conflict that will determine the fate of everything they hold dear. My favorite scene in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is the ride of the Rohirrim, where Theoden comes to the aid of Gondor and gives his rousing speech before his men charge into the fray, shouting the battle cry “death!”
I feel like the big set-piece battles are more common in older fantasy, which drew a lot more from J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. Many of these older fantasy writers, including C.S. Lewis and Lord Dunsaney, were drawing from history as they told their stories and created their worlds—specifically, the old-fashioned understanding of history, where the things that mattered most were the clash of civilizations and the great men at the head of those civilizations.
In some ways, it’s good that we’ve moved to a much more holistic view of history, but there really is something to be said about those battles where everything stood on the edge of a knife, and the course of the next thousand years was decided in a single day. When I read about the numerous times the Muslim invaders were turned back by the Theodosian land walls of Constantinople, it takes me back to the siege of Minas Tirith and the Battle of Pelennor Fields. When I rewatch the scene from Gettysburg where Lawrence Chamberlain leads the charge of the 20th Maine, it stirs something deep within me that, outside of historical military fiction, I have only ever found in fantasy.
Tolkien and Howard were both really great at writing epic battle scenes, but the best, in my opinion, is David Gemmell. His debut novel /Legend/ is one of the most soul-stirring depictions of war that I have ever read. More than anything else, it captures the deep sense of meaning, purpose, and love that comes from staring death and the face and deciding which things (or which people) are worth dying for. In the words of Mel Gibson from Braveheart: everybody dies, but not everybody really lives.
The military aspect of fantasy tends to appeal more to male readers, which is probably why it’s more common in old-fashioned fantasy. Some subgenres like grimdark have preserved it, but with the rise of subgenres like romantasy and the increasing gender divide within publishing, it’s been dying out (not the least because of all the other baggage that grimdark brings, which I will discuss in G is for Grimdark vs. Noblebright).
Call me old-fashioned, but I much prefer the rousing battle scenes from Tolkien, Howard, and Gemmell to much of the stuff that is coming out today. Will the market swing back? If and when it does, I hope to be a part of that. I don’t always put epic battle scenes in my books, but when I do, those are the authors who inspire me.
