In a fantasy universe, the "tool box's" rules are less restrictive, but that doesn't absolve the writer of his responsibility to be consistent. The social and political design work still have to be done right, too, and, in some ways, the genre itself has traditionally been rather more limiting. There are expectations, especially in "swords-and-sorcery" fantasy. For example, if you put orcs (or their equivalent) into a fantasy novel, they're probably going to be the bad guys. Elves may be followers of the light or of the dark, but there are certain inherently "elvish" qualities we generally expect to find. Half-elves usually combine the best of both human and elf, and everyone knows the dwarves are greedy, grasping, avaricious sorts who usually end up with the short end of the stick, at least as far as anyone's actually liking or admiring them.

Please note that I said these are expectations. The best fantasy writers, I think, are those who can take those expectations and lead their readers somewhere else without losing them. Those are the ones I've always most enjoyed reading, at least. Mind you, I'm not talking about Tolkien here. Most of the expectations in modern English-language fantasy derive from his work in one way or another, and in my opinion the reason they do is that he did them so very, very well.

At any rate, one of the reasons I wanted to write the Bahzell books was to bend some of those expectations myself. For example, the hradani obviously fill the same "ecological niche" as Tolkien's orcs in some ways, but my hero is a hradani. In fact, we spend more time with his people than with anyone else. The gods are very involved, yet they aren't omniscient and they are ultimately dependent on the actions of mortals to accomplish their ends. The half-elves are the nasty, bigoted racists. The elves spend most of their time dreaming and generally avoiding contact with a world which has bruised and abused them once too often. And the dwarves run Norfressa's one true superpower. (Ha! Take that, silly elvish k-nig-it!) And I might as well go ahead and admit right now that I'm still not through bending.