Into the Shadow World

This weekend I got my first taste of the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. Nine Princes in Amber was dedicated to main character Corwin's initiation into the fantasy realm of Amber. See, the book (and thus the series) starts out with the tone of a typical sf or spy/thriller 1970's novel. There is nothing magical- simply an amnesiac who wakes up in a hospital, certain only that someone tried to kill him and someone else is keeping him heavily sedated and locked up. A large portion of the book is dedicated to Corwin remembering who he really is- and in the process, understanding that Amber is the real world, and the world we all know to be "real" is just a shadow.

Zelazny uses Corwin's amnesia to make him, like the reader, an initiate into the fantasy world. This technique is used in many fantasy novels. Compare Harry Potter, raised outside the wizarding community, introduced to magic along with the reader. This threshold crossing element is also critical to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - emphasis on the wardrobe , the link that takes the Pevensie children from their reality into Narnia. To me, the most magical part of the story has always been this threshold transition. And if the inclusion of wardrobe in the title doesn't convince you of the major part the threshold plays in the structure of the fantasy, take a look at this one sentence plot summary of the recently released film version :

"Four kids travel through a wardrobe to the land of Narnia and learn of their destiny to free it with the guidance of a lion messiah." (from the internet movie database)

The threshold crossing takes up nearly half of this brief summary.

It's interesting to note that many fantasy authors skip the transition from the real world to the fantasy world. Tolkein is an excellent example of this style- possibly because to Tolkein, Middle Earth was quite real. Other authors have taken their cue from Tolkein, and simply assumed our presence in the fantasy world as a convention of the genre. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire and Ice jump to my mind as immediate examples of making no "excuses" for being in the middle of a fantasy story. No connection to the "real" world, or in Zelazny's case, the world as we know it, is necessary.

What do we lose by omitting the threshold? What do we gain?