Monocultures bother me, too. And mono-languages. I don't believe worlds where everyone is the same. What else? Class. Too much fantasy has three basic classes -- aristocracy, townspeople (often shifty) and peasants (poor but honest). That's not only lazy writing, it's thoughtless and it's unrealistic: all societies, all communities have gradations of status. Even that tiny rural hamlet will have people who are considered better or worse than others. Oh, and Euro-fantasies, but which I mean any book which assumes a sort of Hollywood Middle Ages, with names and geography loosely adapted (Angleland; Francescia; Espanica and so on) but no real sense of how varied and different those countries are, and with only the most simplistic distinctions -- Anglelanders being all mystic and Celtic in Tartan, Espanicans with castanets...
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What else? Class. Too much fantasy has three basic classes -- aristocracy, townspeople (often shifty) and peasants (poor but honest). That's not only lazy writing, it's thoughtless and it's unrealistic: all societies, all communities have gradations of status. Even that tiny rural hamlet will have people who are considered better or worse than others.
Oh, and Euro-fantasies, but which I mean any book which assumes a sort of Hollywood Middle Ages, with names and geography loosely adapted (Angleland; Francescia; Espanica and so on) but no real sense of how varied and different those countries are, and with only the most simplistic distinctions -- Anglelanders being all mystic and Celtic in Tartan, Espanicans with castanets...