Question about complexity in a commercial novel:
How complex is too complex?
I have finished the first draft of a historical fantasy novel (I'm a bit uncomfortable with that label, but that's the subject of another thread), which is a fairly straightforward plot, but includes a lot of themes.
Plot: boy's parents are murdered, he uses magical heirloom to avenge them, which starts him on a quest. He avenges his parents, then gets exiled from his home (a very poor village) and goes to Constantinople to learn the secret of his heirloom. On the way, he kills a dragon.
The heirloom gets stolen, he begins another quest to recover it, kills monsters.
Intertwined in this is a love story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back but finds out she's really not right for him.
He also grow up a lot and learns to trust himself.
In the story, I have deliberately incorporated as many of the myths that underlie much of western literature as I can: the fisher king, Sigfried, the Evil King, the doomed mentor, etc.
There is a look at early Christianity and its struggle through disparate beliefs that were labeled heresies, as well as looks at mythologies and religions of ancient Europe, and at Gnosticism and mysticism.
So, is this too much? It's around 130,000 words, and the plot is fairly straightforward: crime, revenge, quest, boy meets girl, loses girl, loses heirloom, gets it all back at the end. And I like to tell myself the plot hangs together.
What do you think, Uncle Jim?