On Giants

Giants!

What does that word conjure up in your mind? Perhaps you see a very tall, bulky and awkward, perhaps even clumsy, humanoid. Very unprepossessing & slow-witted perhaps? Do Hagrid and his half-brother Grawp come to mind? If you are like most folk we have talked with about giants, that is precisely what you are thinking.

I think we have all had the same type character driven into our minds since we were children, from Jack the Giant-Killer to Brave Little Tailor and Farmer Giles of Ham. This certainly has been our experience and the trend has continued into modern fantasy literature (witness J. K. Rowling). There may be exceptions out there, for aught I know, but if so, I have not encountered them.

It was our feeling that Giants have been getting a raw deal, and so we decided to 'rehabilitate' them, if you will, in our stories. No big, slow, stupid, clumsy giants would show their faces in our books!

Big they are, certainly. Beldronnen, the tallest of the Giants of Linden, the world in which our stories are set, was twenty-three feet tall, and on average, our Giants are fifteen feet or so. Our main Giant character, Menannon, who in fact has a trilogy devoted to him beginning with The Last Giant: Transgression, is rather a very short Giant, measuring nine feet. His parents were normal, however, with his father, Gorlanndon, topping out at fifteen feet and a smidge.

Neither are our Giants dim-witted, not at all. Gorlanndon is, in fact, a very intelligent and educated person, an inventor and a very successful merchant. Mennanon himself is a very skilled harper and talented artist. Further, he is accounted an excellent dancer although there are very few women tall enough to dance with him comfortably save for the Teluri and some of the women of the People of the Long Ships who often run to seven or eight feet. He is accustomed to dance partners of six feet or less, however, as it was with ladies of that stature that he learned the art of dancing while an apprentice at the master guild hall of the Harpers' Guild in Aridion City.

You may also forget the usual ugly Giant. Menannon is a very handsome youth, very much like his father. His mother, Julianna of Lornennog, is a great beauty by anyone's standards. Handsome, articulate, talented, light on his feet, educated, wealthy, privileged: Menannon is definitely not your stereotypical Giant, and that is as it should be.

The Giants of Linden have other talents as well, talents of which few non-Giants are aware. As to what precisely those talents are, well, you will have to read The Last Giant: Transgression to find out.