According to the Irish Times, in the new Lord of Rings series on Amazon, the Hobbits are Irish charicatures and the Dwarfs are Scottish charicatures.
It also notes that the Men have Lancashire accents while the Elves are Upper Class British, commenting that “Somehow the Victorian caste system has been smuggled into a 21st-century American fantasy series.”
presented without comment: the covers of 6 books that released within 3 years of each other (!) by the same NYT bestselling author, and then two quotes by said author.
make of this what you will.
actually fuck it i will comment: this has less to do with the author and more with the industry. the tiktokification of fiction is actively harming not only publishing but also the audiences who seek this shit out. major publishers are prioritizing fic tags and shorthand tropes for the sake of sales, and it’s rotting the literary landscape from the inside. when you pick up a book from a major bookseller that has one of these stock-image-ass covers, you’re not so much reading a work of literature as you are a corporate-concocted combination of buzzwords. authors deserve better, and you as a reader deserve better. and if you say something like you prefer the pre-bottled story-by-committee stuff, then i really just don’t have all that much to say to you.
