It’s Monday, so it’s time for the Fantasy With Friends discussion meme (hosted at Pages Unbound). This week’s theme is about religion in fantasy:

What are some interesting portrayals of religion in fantasy? Do you like seeing invented religions, or do you prefer fantasy worlds to have none?

The most interesting examples of religion in fantasy are pretty much all from cases where the writer has come up with a whole fully fleshed-out world, locating the story within it rather than inventing a world to suit the story. It can be a subtle difference, but it shows in the details: the example that comes to mind first is Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor and the other books set in the same world. It’s clear there are multiple sects and ways of worshipping, with the main character belonging to a fairly meditative tradition which is out of fashion, and a range of different gods who are worshipped in different ways (and focused on by different people).

Another example I’ve been enjoying is in T. Kingfisher’s books: gods are a major part of the world, but their nature is part of the story too. Can a god be killed? Where do they come from and what happens if they die? Can someone (or something) become a god?

I sometimes feel a bit annoyed with religion in fantasy, not because I think it shouldn’t be there — it’s clearly a major factor of human experience so, at least when writing about humans, it seems ripe for adding world-building — but because it’s lazy. Real world religions get poorly copy/pasted in and roughly reworked where it’s most obvious or impedes the story, in a way that can end up being disrespectful or implying that Christianity is some kind of default. People tend to write what they know and vary very little from it, and sometimes want us to believe that everyone in a whole world worships the same god with no disagreement about what that worship looks like.

Buuut when it’s done with an eye to the world you’re writing and to avoiding simple copy/pastes, it’s great: you can do a lot with comparatively few references to e.g. gods who are the patron of particular professions, or by including architecture like churches/temples/etc.

In conclusion, it very much depends on how lazy it is, along with how important it is to the story. You don’t need to have a fully fleshed out massive state religion if the whole book takes place at sea or something… but if it’s included, I much prefer it when it’s thought out.