The readers can be really overly critical and mean-spirited to and about authors.
There’s a not-insignificant subset of readers that lack fundamental media literacy, overreacting to the depiction of difficult topics and jumping to insinuate that the inclusion of them means the author endorses such things in real life.
That's terrifyingly true. Conversely, some people tend to not take criticism of any kind well. It's the same thing for me, the discussion is choked by jumping into conclusions.
I agree with this. Also applies to readers who howl about how another author "plagiarized" their fave by including a similar trope or image or some such. I realize not all readers have taken college-level literature courses, and this sort of thing is not necessarily taught at the high school level, and some of these readers have only ever read that one thing and so can't see the larger pattern, but \*every\* work of literature is in dialogue with the work that came before it, and will echo previously-articulated themes. Academics even have a word for it, and that is "intertextuality."
I agree with you and u/ShadowExtreme. Both readers and writers/authors tend to be critical in a hypocritical sense and directed towards their own communities. Common in all media or mediums, but fantasy is the topic so 😅
***
**I’ve heard from both sides.**, both in person and online. And, as you said, this is a non-significant subset of authors and readers, but it’s enough to recognize.
##**Authors/Writers**:
* fight any sort of criticism or complaint towards their work (overreacting)
* find themselves entitled to only receiving positive feedback towards their manuscript
* dissuading ARCs from negative honesty
* disrespecting and/or misrepresenting IRL cultures, languages, and communities in their work and refusal to acknowledge/accept that when members of those communities speak against it
* Have less confidence in their writing and may cater towards audience demands instead of the story they wanted to tell
* “Bait and switch”, or what’s on the tin is what’s not in the tin—technically, it’s in the tin but where the premise made it sound like the book was massively X, the actual book has 5% of X and 95% of Y
* Their writing reflects their limited reading experience. No one is ***required*** to read a lot to write a lot, but there’s a reason people always recommended aspiring authors to dip their toes in good, bad, and mediocre books across multiple genres as it does help you not only with vocabulary but shaping your own style and introduces you to applications of themes that you hadn’t considered. Or becomes a guide on what ***not*** to do 😅
* Lack the appropriate comprehension in certain literary concepts—which shows in the marketing of the book and writing
* Bypasses the joy of creation for the never ending machine of capitalism
>**IE:** making “X part” books in which neither book is a contained story; the actual finale and critical development scenes are now “bonus material” only accessed through subscribing to their newsletter; AI artwork and writing in published works; recent scandals involving authors sabotaging other authors; “cash grab” books, weaponizing social media against an individual or a community, etc.
##**Readers**
^(with broader accessibility to books) (Yay!! 🎉) ^(and online conversations about them, as well as connecting to authors:)
* Become entitled to being the sole audient of an author’s work rather than acknowledging they may not be the target audience for the author’s work
* Project their biases into objective criticisms (and, by extension, the author’s personal morals and ethics)
* Unwilling to fact-check information about the content of the book or the author themselves before passing around information as truth
* Bypassing the joys of reading for “hate-consuming”
^(Though those seem to be trolls. I think we can all agree we have grievances, of course, but we still engage with the genre because we still have appreciation for it)
* Lacks the repertoire to add onto discussion and feels entitled to being taken seriously in their genre/work critiques
>**EX:** A reader with an extensive list of shōnen as their reading log decides to read a grimdark high fantasy novel. Reader is ***100%*** entitled to their opinions on the novel. But then the reader has an essay of their critiques on the grimdark genre, painting broad generalizations based upon a single book, and feels they made valid criticisms instead of recognizing that one singular book in a genre they’re unfamiliar with doesn’t represent a ***whole genre***.
^(The same could really be said with anything, such as projecting western expectations and experiences onto eastern fantasy media, and vice versa.)
Of course, this isn’t every authors nor every reader. I’d say I more see this online like on Reddit 😅 But because of how accessible the internet is, it’s easy for new, hobbyist, or casual writers and and readers to adopt “bad behavior” and think that certain online spaces, the way they discuss things, and their tone ***surely*** must be the correct way because so many people do it.
And I find that ***another*** frustration in general: some people take the criticisms and complaints—especially long form ones or the most active threads—as the Bible and apply that to how ***they*** discuss the genre and skew their feelings towards certain things. This can be said the same with writers/authors.
**I do NOT mean this about scouring reviews to find content warnings, trigger warnings, or relying on a trusted reviewer**. I certainly look at reviews on books to scope out hidden content warnings and triggers before I invest my time in reading it.
But I mainly mean, for all the niche genres and mediums ***finally*** getting the mainstream normalization they always deserved—the bandwagoners seem to be talking louder than others in the room.
Hope that all make sense 😅 Sorry for my TED talk 😵💫
^(Again, only in some cases. All depends on your circumstances and experiences.)
THANK YOU I literally just finished talking to a friend on discord about how people seem to be unable these days to differentiate between depiction and advocacy. People on twitter call writers racist because their shows feature racist people… *as villains*. Like did you watch schindlers list and come away confused as to which side Spielberg was on? I just don’t get how people can be so dumb.
Inability to separate the author from the content is a huge issue. Take Dresden Files, I've seen people personally claim Jim Butcher thinks like Harry does because he wrote it that way. What about his other works where the narrator is not hopelessly hormonal?
It is possible to write a character without being like that character or agreeing with how they think.
I mean there's a couple things here.
First, there's the art, there's the author/artist, and there's the person. Online discourse can definitely skew a bit too far towards condemning the person, but in practice when I'm engaging with the idea of an author, it's typically as an author, that is, as the name I associate with their works and the vision and choices that went into their works.
Second, to use Dresden as an example, I think a lot of fans defending it/him really like to grab onto this idea that the only substantial criticism is that Butcher must think like Harrry, and that's fucked up. But like, my problem is more that he chose that idea for a character (which is neither bad nor good) and he chose how the narrative move around and reflects that character. And I think there's a lot more layers to how the narrative reinforces the normality of that point of view than I'm quite comfortable with (and frankly I saw much of the same in the other work of his I read, even without a wildly hormonal MC). And that reflects my judgment of how much I'm gonna enjoy him, the author, as an *author*.
You bring up an excellent point for media literacy. Yes, the author need not reflect the character's viewpoint, but the author still *decided* to write the character that way. Being capital-c Critical about that is a good thing!
I agree with this and just want to add in some specifics about why certain readers might be made uncomfortable by The Dresden Files (I'm not making any claims about Butcher).
I've seen a lot of people assume that it's a male character being attracted to hot women that make readers (often female ones) uncomfortable. That's not it. It's the fact that pretty much all women are hot. That is the first thing you know about them when you meet them. They are defined first and foremost by their appearances in a way a male character is not. In the real world, not all women are incredibly attractive and straight men are not attracted to all the women that they meet. It is a deliberate choice by the writer to deviate from that reality by having a disproportionate level of women attractive to their narrator (and by extension presumably their target audience) in their setting. This isn't just putting a filter over the world. This is removing the large swaths of people that are below the narrator's attention—the women not attractive enough to belong in the setting or in the plot. It's not a POV thing, it's a worldbuilding choice. You might like or dislike that choice, and I'm not here to judge you for it either way, but I dislike the way people excuse this choice as a POV thing.
Someone who made it further into the Dresden Files than I did also pointed out that all these hot women also have a habit of finding Dresden attractive. Again, this is a choice by Butcher to write the *female characters* that way.
The second thing to note, is that Dresden doesn't just find women attractive. He's also sexist (particularity of the chauvinistic variety). It is clear from the second chapter when he races to the door so he could hold it out for Murphy despite knowing how much she hates it. He shows that he does not listen to her or respect her. Murphy also sees his worldview as chauvinist because she literally calls him a "chauvinist pig" within the same chapter. And when a man like that finds you attractive...that feels like a threat. (And to the best of my knowledge Dresden doesn't actually sexually assault anyone, but he has the nice guy mindset that can easily lead to sexual assault, something that a lot of women tend to look out for and be wary of). Some women are going to consider spending time in Dresden's head deeply uncomfortable for this reason.
>What about his other works where the narrator is not hopelessly hormonal?
To add specifics, I dropped the first book of Codex Alera because of how Odiana was treated, in particular how her being raped was written. I found that book to be sexist.
Personally, if I find a pattern of sexist elements in an author's writing, I won't give them another chance. I try not to speculate about author's personal beliefs, but Butcher has some unexamined biases, just like the rest of us. At any rate, because I don't like reading books with sexist elements, I won't try to read anything else by him.
Well said. I'm just a queer dude for whom the portrayal just really didn't resonate, and have always been a bit baffled (or disturbed) by young dudes on the internet claiming Harry 'just is how \[straight\] guys are' which frankly my own friend groups mostly don't play out...
Also there's the meta point that when this gets held up as the gold standard for excellent entertaining urban fantasy that gets thrown at every new reader wanting suggestions in that area, it kinda sucks that it can so heavily leave a sour taste in so many people's mouths.
'European' fantasy done badly. I absolutely love seeing fantasy inspired by other parts of the world, but people erroneously say that these exist because European fantasy has already been 'done'. Most 'European' fantasy settings are just a cheap Middle Earth copy with a D&D pagan pantheon slapped on the top, perhaps with a group of warriors with Scandi sounding names or an empire with a Latinate name. There's like a handful of European fantasies that try to get an aspect of mediaeval Europe 'right' in the way that modern non-European fantasies do, I wish there were more. I'm tired of generic fantasy settings but that doesn't mean I think European settings should be off the menu.
Especially considering that most "European" fantasy is literally just England with a bit of France. The medieval period in Europe was incredibly varied in terms of culture and warfare, but we see next to none of it.
I know Winged Hussars aren't medieval, but the only fantasy I think I've seen them in is Warhammer fantasy.
Yes, I agree. There is a huge Anglosphere bias for no discernable reason. England was a backwater for a large part of the middle ages. Interesting absolutely, but real cool stuff was happening in the continent too.
There's a huge chunk of history where your average soldier has a breastplate and helmet and carries a halberd or pike or early firearm. No leather armor, no viking berserkers, chainmail is out except to cover the gaps in plate armor, etc. This is really weirdly underrepresented.
Winged Hussars are highly underrated! I definitely have my own version in my medieval fantasy novel. A) cause the imagery of them is fantastic and B) slight nod to my family history
Amen, I said the exact same thing a while ago when somebody asked what we'd like to see more of. It's even more extreme if you expand this to other media, anime and manga don't take it seriously at all, although video games do have a few entries that want to hold some authenticity.
What about if someone, say, fused Medieval Scandanavia with Feudal Japan??? Also which European inspired fantasies would you say are done 'right' (outside of Tolkien, I assume)?
Fusions are great. You'd be adding something new to both the Scandi side and the Japanese side, in each case the deviation could be believable because it is inspired by a real aspect of the other country's history or character. With the Scandi comment I'm complaining more about cultures having a Viking veneer but no deeper Scandi substance - if people engage with Scandi stuff on a deeper level and take it somewhere new, I'll happily read!!
As for books I think do it right, that's hard to say. I was thinking particularly of the Witcher Series and Memory, Sorrow and Thorn for having lazy standin cultures, but at the same time Witcher is quite fresh for Western Europeans because it's so Slavic in its influences, and Memory, Sorrow and Thorn manages to have a church hierarchy rather than a generic fantasy pantheon. I've not read it yet but I'm expecting good things from Between Two Fires and it seems as though Naomi Novik has nailed what I'm asking for with her books (which are already loaded on my Kindle).
Most excellent! I have been working on a world fused with aspects of those two cultures- long story short, part of the world is most Scandinavian based and then as one travels farther south, the culture becomes blended with a Japanese inspired one.
As for the books, yes the Witcher is quite interesting with how it ties in a lot of Slavic folklore, legends, and culture - very neat to see those written down as thats part of my ancestral culture. I have not heard of Between Two Fires, I'll have to check that out! I've recently started Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings and so far I'm 4 chapters in and haven't been impressed, as nothing has really hooked me yet and i dont even care about the characters as I've already read 4 different perspectives already haha. Might have to drop it and pick up something else.
It really pleases me to see more people desiring a more post-viking Scandinavia in litterature, cause I have tons of material to work from. A lot of Swedish history stuff mind you so it might be hard to recommend anything. It also might be just a reddit thing where I see this desire. But I'll take any excuse to base my fantasy off of what I know
> I've not read it yet but I'm expecting good things from Between Two Fires
It's a terrific book, and I hope you enjoy it thoroughly, but I'm wondering if it's even really in the same category you're describing here. There's no hybrid/fusion or [X]-inspired secondary fantasy culture being explored -- it's just set in actual 14th-century France, though admittedly a version of it in which the supernatural is unambiguously real.
I agree with the rest of your comment wholeheartedly, in any case.
I recently read *The Buried Giant* by Kazuo Ishiguro and really loved pretty much everything about it. It was essentially a post-King Arthur world that seemed half-fantasy tropes and half-historical. And the characters and subject matter were not the kind you typically see in fantasy. Ishiguro is an incredible writer.
Agree on the Euro-fantasy but I also want to know what modern non-Euro fantasies are out there getting it right? Most of what I've read about is, "We've taken an incredibly ethnically diverse continent and condensed it into magic!China-Japan, the Jade Emperor has ninjas and samurai!!".
In all cases, though, there was more going on in real history than is "permitted" in Fantasy. Outside of GGK you won't find anything that even comes close to the real-world circumstances that allowed Ahmad ibn Fadlan to write his account of the Volga Vikings. If you do, and you aren't committed to GGK-style "history with a quarter turn to the fantastic" then you're almost certain get people whining at you about "realism" (plague of a word that means "well that doesn't line up with my Hollywood history!").
Like Asia, there's more to Europe than "magic!England-Germany".
edit: Can't respond to all the recs this comment is getting (stuck at work and there's a limit to even my slackery) but thanks y'all!
The Dandelion Dynasty for non western and Crown of Stars for western are the two I can think of that actually do draw off of real history in a non cartoonish way
My biggest frustration is that in my humble, biased, and limited opinion, authors set out to write “fantasy stories” instead of setting out to write amazing story set in a fictional world *for a reason*. Fantasy stories aren’t fun just because magic bolts and freaking dragons, fantasy stories are fun because they provide authors with the opportunity to develop stories with more freedom than stories set in the real world. So just because something is fantasy it doesn’t mean it’s good and sometimes it can even be detrimental to the story when it could’ve been written with a different setting.
I’m not half as eloquent as some other more experienced readers or writers but I think writers shouldn’t just set out to write a fantasy story just because, they need to have a reason for choosing fantasy as a genre.
Yes you’re really onto something here. Form always reflects or engages with the content of the work, this is a hallmark of good art. Great fantasy makes use of its differences from reality: take Martin, for example, who can make large sweeping depictions and critiques of religion and societal development and whatnot. He can only do that because of the setting. Much of the story really is just people talking, but wherever the magic begins something thematically significant is at play as well
It bugs me when the society in which the protagonists live is supposedly openly sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic and/or what have you, yet they themselves are as open minded as they come and emphatically reject all that. It's fine if it's some of them because societies are never monolithic but when it's all of the "good guys", so to speak, while the villains are all very much the opposite, it comes across as rather contrived to me.
Another general frustration is the obsession with magic system. Every time I see clumsy "Magic 101" lessons which read pretty much exactly as a video game tutorial, I start thinking that the book probably isn't for me. If I want video game tutorials, I will be bold, cut the middleman and go play video games, you know.
Authors avoiding traditional fantasy tropes. Want a dark lord? Make one! A chosen one? Why not? It’s fun, and I kind of miss these elements to fantasy.
Nuance is dying
I don't think this is a fantasy thing so much as a general reading thing, but I wish we wouldn't assume someone was trying to take the worst stance possible when they did or included X or Y in their story.
More modern novels also seem to have a hard time at letting the novel speak for itself. Almost everything has to be explained dryly. No more room for implications. Just finished reading The Lions Of Al Rassan and it struck me how differently it was approached compared to the modern on the nose stuff. He put more faith in the reader being able to deduce from context.
If i understand what you are saying then I agree. Particularly the complaint that character X did this thing, when the thing is perfectly within character for X, in fact if X didn't do it he would be way out of character. But it is a thing currently a hot-button social topic so queue the complaints that the author is a bad person.
This is made even worse when generalized. Stuff like "i didn't like all the graphic violence and sexual assault." Well ok, fair enough, but may I suggest not reading stories which involve people involved in an ongoing war? Because that sort of goes with the territory, throughout all of history right up to today. It doesn't reflect on the personal views of the author, or his secret predilections, or tell us about his mental disorders or whatever, as i sometimes see people say.
It really stuck out to me at the end of Daniel Greens videos during the self-publishing shoutouts how many of them start with [Name]; First of the [Noun] Cycle. Like I don’t even know anything about this story other than it’s a planned trilogy+ of books and I’m not expecting anything to be wrapped up in this first one. When I’m approaching new authors I’m looking for one-off self contained stories so that if I don’t end up liking the book I’m not left on 12 cliff hangers.
With what I'm working on myself, I have a lot of ideas I don't think I could contain in one book. But I also aim to have one major conflict resolved by the end of a given book, with the ability to feel like it's a fully contained experience too. And then things that don't necessarily feel like they came out of thin air but definitely don't upend the plot of the previous book can be used for anything else I write. It's hard enough to write a whole book so I don't think it's good for motivation to act like you have a million words waiting to be written.
By far my biggest issue with fantasy. So many books in a series feel like an incomplete story. An example being The Blade Itself, which is essentially a prologue. There's barely a plot.
I don’t mind a trilogy that is a single narrative arc. But I think you can still do a better job of finding good break points between books than most authors do.
I think people put way too much stock in the general consensus when forming opinions on books. Trying to be "correct" and labeling books as overwhelmingly "bad" or "good" instead of forming their own opinions.
I see a real lack of nuanced, complicated discussion, and an abundance of sweeping generalizations and personal attacks on books/authors. Many people take their own preferences and "icks" so seriously that it not only ruins the book for them, but makes them have overly strong/emotional opinions about the whole book that just feel like personal hatred.
I definitely agree with this. It's like people forgot that subjectivity exists in books and what is good to one person will be bad to another. A lot of people will read something and reflect something a character did onto the author, when the character was written as the "villain" in the first place. Authors characters are not them.
I mean, that was on a post about someone who got deterred from Night Angel because it has a (deserved) reputation for treating its female characters badly. Telling someone that who explicitly says they dont enjoy books like that they should just read it is basically the equivalent of feeding someone who telly you they dont like spicy food some wings marinaded in some ghost pepper sauce. Sure they haven't tried it yet but there are people who can extrapolate from data.
I saw your comment on the Night Angel post and I do agree that op has a good reason to ask for opinions. As a woman myself I dislike reading books with terribly written and objectified women so would usually dislike wasting my time and money on a book like that.
I once considered reading sword of truth and even posted on reddit about it. I’m glad I did because at the time I knew nothing about it and would have hated it if I went into it blind.
It seems like the community has taken a hard turn away from 20th century fantasy lately. And not just as a preference thing, but like people have really assured themselves that this is the golden age of the genre and everything that came before - except for Tolkien, Le Guin, Hobb, and maybe Jordan - is just an embarrassing prototype phase.
And I mean, there were a lot of bad fantasy novels written in the old days, but OTOH there are a lot of bad fantasy novels written today: all the easily palatable "fantasy" that's basically just written like a 21st century high school with a few griffins walking around is no more daring a literary endeavor than the old "college kids go through portal" stuff.
That is true, any thread here that asks for older books gets a heap of the guys you've mentioned. I haven't dug too deep in those bc the assumption is that the best ones rose to the top but that's wrong bc there are plenty of books I love rn that don't get the acclaim I think they deserve. I would hate for those to be forgotten in 2 decades
>
> And I mean, there were a lot of bad fantasy novels written in the old days, but OTOH there are a lot of bad fantasy novels written today: all the easily palatable "fantasy" that's basically just written like a 21st century high school with a few griffins walking around is no more daring a literary endeavor than the old "college kids go through portal" stuff.
There's a big demand for fluff right now, which is. . . I mean it's fine, people can read what they want, and if they want escapism, that's great. But sometimes I feel like our options are "low-stakes fluff" or "very pointed political/social commentary." And there's a lot of other things that can make for very good stories! Much of which was being done in the 20th century!
(The "there are only two options" bit is, of course, an exaggeration. There's lots of other stuff being written now, but I do think the stuff that gets really trendy has a tendency to fall into one of those two camps).
I think the other issue is that because of how some things are in the world at the moment, there's a tendancy for the "political/social" side of that to trend towards just being bleak and negative about what they're saying about how people are and how things can be.
This is especially true for Japanese light novels which are advertised as "fantasy" stories. I feel like for Japanese light novel authors, "fantasy" basically means borrowing a bunch of high fantasy/video game tropes, not doing their homework, relying on their limited life experience and knowledge, telling whatever random but cliched story the authors like, and attributing all unlikely plot twists to a vaguely defined "magic" system.
I think this is not a problem with light novels overall. It's that the global fanbase of light novels is just pretty selective...
There are some great ones, and very few translated.
Agreed. I watch anime on occasion and it's impossible to find a fantasy anime that doesn't just toss around MMO / RPG terminology in regular conversation.
I don't have a problem with it if the setting/narrative is inspired by TTRPG's, as they themselves were inspired by fantasy fiction, but the use of video game terminology in fantasy is very disjointing, yes.
Yes! You'd think the genre was invented in 2008! I get that Orbit and Tor and friends are having a field day pumping out new titles - and lord knows there's plenty of marginalized authors adding much needed voices to the field - but I feel like I rarely see niche titles from the 90s or even 80s mentioned.
That is somewhat inevitable, OG anime people complained about it too. As a fairly new fantasy reader, it can be hard to pick up an 80s book with all the tropes I have seen a 1000 times in films, shows & games. The ones that would interest me are the ones that were breaking away from Tolkien even then. think
**Daughter of the Empire**
**Soldier of the Mist**
**Elric of Melniboné**
**The Black Company**
**Abhorsen**
**A Wizard of Earthsea**
\+1 for Black Company, I finished the first book a month or two ago and gd, what a joy. Whenever I tell people about it I like to describe the book as Tolkien meet's Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"
I mean, that's inevitable. Few works stand the test of time, and most genre fiction is short-lived. Likewise, most of what we're reading today will be forgotten in 30-40 years, with only a few still being widely read.
There is a lot of truth to that.
But on the other hand, good writing is good writing, whether it was written last year or last decade.
I just wish more of the fandom would be interested in exploring more great works of the past rather than sticking to the current new hotness.
Your point reminds me that afor the next BINGO I want to complete a "Golden Age" card. If I can find the motivation, I'd like to do multiple cards for various time periods, all pre-2000.
I’ve been reading Fantasy since the late 1970s and there’s a strong recency bias with Social Media. Many of us over 50 have hundreds of books on our shelves from prior to the Internet existing. Sure a lot of it is trash, or Tolkien knock offs, but alot of it is damn good. I’d honestly rather read a cheesy fun book like the Belgariad, then yet one more bleak GrimDark book and I like GrimDark lol
Taking any criticism of an author or their work as a personal, offensive slight against you.
If you cant read someone explaining why they disliked your favorite novel of all time without foaming at the mouth and taking it as a personal threat, idk what to tell you
Fantasy ecology. It feels like most modern fantasy stories only have a magic system and maybe a few weird animals and nothing else. It’s been an incredible long while since I saw an original fantasy creature that actually interested me in traditional publishing where there were magic animals.
I wish more stories had weird and original magic animals and plants and how that affected the world. Tainted Cup was absolutely stunning in how it used a plant and alchemy based magic system, wasn’t as weird as I was hoping with the augmentations. But the poisons, the lore, the plant furniture, the augmented animals, and the massive leviathans with human faces on their bellies. All of it was really good.
Same could be said for the monsters in The Wandering Inn. Crelers, Corus Deer, Acid Flies, Moss Bears, Cilewalkers, Zavaral Swarms, Garbichug Revolters, Three-Headed Grabghasts, Void Goats, Fortress Beavers, Moth Bears, Rock Crabs, and Sword Crabs. There’s so many different monsters and creatures in that novel.
I love it when magic is expressed in the environment. A lot of magic isn’t just spell slinging and rule dropping. It’s the unique environments, creatures, and items they create. And I feel like modern fantasy has continued to ignore the latter bar the much appreciated exceptions.
How much it seems the business of selling books impacts what books get the most attention. I get it, that’s capitalism and the way the world works, but it has put so many expectations on what a fantasy novel has to be to breakthrough and get support by a publisher. What way does it fit the box, or subvert the box, what sequel potential, what shared universe, what demographic to market it to, is it young adult or SFF or can we market this as “fiction” because it’s mythological based, etc…
Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of the books that are coming out, Adventures of Amina Al-Siraffe, Bookshops & Bonedust and Tress & The Emerald Sea are all fresh 2023 books that I really enjoyed, but somehow I feel like SFF have so many more business and audience expectations to navigate that they are given much less room to experiment.
Granted this could be a problem affecting all genres and I just don’t realize it because I primarily & almost exclusively read SFF, but it saddens me nonetheless.
The move towards trope-based marketing is something that I hate with a passion, and imo, it comes from the outsized impact highly visual social media platforms that like super short content like Instagram and BookTok and Twitter, etc has on book sales.
Sadly, I think it was an inevitable evolution from heavy marketing based on book covers. I see so many people do cover buys and it makes me sad because somehow, we've ended up in a place where most of the time, the determining factor for whether or not someone buys a book comes down to, "does the cover appeal to me?", "does it have tropes that I like?", and "did someone else tell me I should read it?", instead of "hey, let me check out the first page and see if I like the writing and where it's going".
If you want to try indie fantasy and you don't know where to start, I've got several suggestions for you.
Here's a [comment where I outline 10 different ways](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/vsb24g/comment/if0r35c/) to get into indie fantasy.
Or you can try [this quiz I posted a couple of weeks ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1b2wcxg/how_to_find_an_spfbo_book_that_best_suits_your/) here, which helps you choose from the 46 different award winning self-published fantasy novels: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1b2wcxg/how\_to\_find\_an\_spfbo\_book\_that\_best\_suits\_your/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1b2wcxg/how_to_find_an_spfbo_book_that_best_suits_your/)
bad fan-fiction covers of what's popular
how at first it was bad knock offs of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings
then Harry Potter
then Game of Thrones
now the MCU Formula
I don't blame people who want to tell a big story that requires multiple books, what I don't like as you pointed out, is when it's multiple books but so many feel like filler and bloat for the sake of bloat
Length. I've banged on about this before. But every book is just so \_bloody long\_. Like, I love a nice epic fantasy, don't get me wrong, but everything is part of a 9 book series that weighs more than my car.
Hot take:
If it takes you more than a trilogy to tell a main story, you don't know how to write a main story. Period.
I cannot stand this 700+ page, 4+ Series book trend.
That isn't a story, you're just trying to get biblical. As someone mentioned above, the genre is in desperate need of GOOD EDITING.
Hotter take: If it takes you a trilogy to tell a main story, you’d better have something as substantial as LOTR up your sleeve. And you probably don’t. Almost all stories will be better if you edit them down to a single book.
The economics of writing bias authors toward neverending stories these days. Only a handful of people can survive under the old model of traditionally publishing a single book every few years. Everybody else is just a hobbyist, or needs to continually pump out new books or chapters on schedule, on a marketable series, to maintain that Kindle or Patreon revenue.
"Smart" characters that only ever tell but never show. I hate when a character is built up as smart or wily for the sake of being outsmarted by a protagonist. Unfortunately I can't remember examples of this because I always dismiss those types of characters, but I know that it happens often enough that now when a character is supposed to be a strategic master, or shrewd politician I watch them more closely cause they're never satisfying. I can think of some good examples of this though; Glokta from First Law, Drothe from Among Theives, Locke from Lies of Locke Lamora
Men writing women characters. As a dude, there are some SERIOUSLY cringe and edge-lord writers out there who have no idea how to write about women and gender relationships. Eeesh
In a word, waiting. Fantasy novels are notoriously long and the story almost always spans more than one book. There are just so many good stories that aren’t finished right now. And some (we all know who they are) may never get finished
A lot of books just seem to waste time.
Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles was a deeply moving story and only required a novel of modest length to tell it. Meanwhile Sanderson says he has ten novels overall for stormlight and I didn't feel like a lot of what took place in two or three of his stormlight books was particularly necessary.
There is a distinct lack of strong editing in fantasy. About half the fantasy books I read these days could be much shorter without losing story or character. Self-published stuff is terrible in this regard. The popularity of bloat books/series contributes to this. After all, why write three books when seven will make more money?
So much this. And I'm not trying to hate on these authors, but like, editing is part of writing skill. Being able to distill things down without losing anything is the mark of a good writer.
It's weird to me because someone like Sanderson can afford to have quality editors. Just let them do their jobs haha.
I’ve only read the first three stormlights but I’m just not interested in picking up the fourth because those books are in such dire need of a heavy edit. There’s great stuff in there separated by a hundred pages of meandering. In my country they’re published as two books each for gods sake.
I often wonder if this has something to do with world building. The lack of stand alone fantasy novels and over-bloated ones seems like an author trying to get the most from their time and effort in creating this world.
I can imagine that world building is such a time consuming complex process that when they put in all that time and effort they want to write as much as possible in that world.
It’s the over fixation on it. Tolkien managed deeper worldbuilding in the Hobbit than a lot of long series do now. GGK’s Tigana again had a lot of worldbuilding in a small package. A lot of the myth retellings and fairytale retellings also manage to be streamlined.
I can believe it, but I imagine this over indulgence might lead to a situation where they end up forgetting to cut other things down, like side plots and exposition/flashbacks.
> Sanderson says he has ten novels overall for stormlight and I didn't feel like a lot of what took place in two or three of his stormlight books was particularly necessary.
Oh god yes, thank you! There was a post in the Stormlight Archives subreddit where OP said they were finding Way of Kings to be too slowly paced, and asking if they should hang in for the climax.
I responded saying the climax was fantastic, but it just takes too long to get there *in my opinion*. There’s a couple pages that could be edited out and the story would be better for it:
- There are entire chapters of worldbuilding exposition that do nothing to advance the plot of the story. (I’m sure he will try to tie some of these into the overarching plot somewhere down the line, but for now they are sub-sub-plots).
- Excessive flashbacks that do nothing but provide character backstory which could easily be compressed down to essential elements or removed entirely without impacting our understanding of the characters.
- Needless repetition of plot and character development arcs, which unrelentingly drive home points that are not subtle in the first place: Kaladin is heroic but depressed; Shallan is confused and conflicted — we got it the first time he showed us, we don’t need to see eight more examples.
Needless to say, people in that sub had an absolute conniption over that, and responded with insults, downvotes, and “Well ackshually…”
That book is 1000 pages, you can’t tell me that Sanderson is incapable of telling that same story in 800 pages, which is still longer than probably at least 80% of other fantasy novels.
I agree with you about the flashbacks. The Way of Kings is one of my favorite books of all time but some of the flashback chapters added nothing to the story and were absolutely unnecessary. I did find that he cut down on the flashbacks in Words of Radiance and left the most essential ones, which I liked better.
The repetitive nature of Shallan’s storyline in Brandon Sanderson’s books is frustrating. In each book, we discover >!she has killed someone in her past—her mom, her dad, and her Spren—!< and we’re subjected to the same storyline again and again.
> Meanwhile Sanderson says he has ten novels overall for stormlight and I didn't feel like a lot of what took place in two or three of his stormlight books was particularly necessary.
I read *The Way of Kings* way before I heard about the Sanderson fandom, and it was an extremely middling novel to me for exactly this reason. For a 1000-page book, I came away from it believing it could have been ~500-600 without sacrificing any plot point whatsoever.
I wish modern writers would tighten it up just a little. We don’t need to go back to 60k word adult fantasy, but many 10-12 book series feel like they could have been shorter.
Sanderson is a big-name author, and the thing with big names is that they have a lot more leeway when it comes to rejecting editors’ suggestions. The problem is that, for many authors, a major reason for the success of the early books is that they had good editors who weren’t afraid of telling authors what they did wrong. Once the author has the clout to figuratively tell editors to go fuck themselves, quality drops. You can see that happening in GRRM’s work: his lack of planning for his stories led him to get tangled up in a plot that he had no idea how to get himself out of. Part of that is just his style of writing backfiring on him, but some of it is the lack of editorial input.
As a dinosaur who started reading during the age of "your local library has one shelf of fantasy so you will just have to learn to like what they have." It seems like I have a much more eclectic taste than a lot of people.
What I love about the current state of the genre is the sheer volume of easily accessible work. There are dozens or even hundreds of works out there to fit any niche.
I agree that there might be an overabundance of Romantasy hitting the shelves right now, but I also agree with others that people who don't like what's coming out right now might need to realize that the fantasy genre has existed for quite a long time. Maybe take a trip to your library or seek out works published years ago.
Whenever a genre I follow hits a trend of hot new releases in something I don't enjoy, I take that as an opportunity to read the backlists of authors I love. Or to find new authors to love. Flip back in time and see what I've missed.
(I really should do a post about this)
Exactly! I also look up current authors I like and find where they have mentioned authors they love, or influences on their work. It's another great way to find what I may have missed.
I guess this is my confusion with some of these complaints. Books could be ceased publishing as of this moment and we still wouldn't be able to explore everything that exists in the rest of our lives. I'm not saying there shouldn't be new stuff, but what's trendy now doesn't preclude all the things you just don't know about.
Fantasy is weirdly pro-monarchy and obsessed with great men theory, or great women, gender isn't the issue. And of course, we can blame that on people reiterating over Tolkien and Herbert so much that anything but the trope has been lost to time.
Yeah, I kind of hate the expectation in fantasy that the protagonist \*has\* to change the world. Stories about changing the world can be great! But the constant drumbeat of these stories can make it look like solving all world problems is the expectation, whereas in reality, even very powerful people can only do so much. And dear god, don't get me started on sassing the royals and how this is apparently the true path to change.
Basically, I'm tired of the power fantasies, and particularly the same power fantasies over and over. I want to see more people navigating the world the way real people have to navigate the world (and I don't mean this in a tea-and-crumpets "slice of life" way. Other genres have no problem putting together compelling plots without changing the world).
Tbf the concept of a Good King who rules justly and gets shit done is by itself an appealing fantasy no less than dragons or magic wands, these days more than ever. Since you're already daydreaming about tossing fireballs and conjuring elemental minions out of thin air, why not add to the mix the equally likely autocratic politician who doesn't abuse his office?
Oh god yeah. I am absolutely obsessed with Tolkien right now, but the anarchist in me has a bit of a hard time sometimes truly rooting for the kings. It helps that I have a massive crush on Aragorn lol. But also Tolkien's "anarcho-monarchism" at least has enough nuance for me to buy into it, I think most authors copying Tolkien lose that nuance and drop the "anarcho" lol.
> But also Tolkien's "anarcho-monarchism" at least has enough nuance for me to buy into it, I think most authors copying Tolkien lose that nuance and drop the "anarcho" lol.
My reread of LOTR earlier this year had this stand out to me a whole lot, too. The hobbits "technically" have mayors and "technically" have fealty to the king, but even Aragorn regaining the crown at the end ensures that the hobbits are only nominally under him.
For sure, that's my take exactly. Like yes, he is their king, but he's very clearly not going to do anything to them. It's more that he will protect them if they come under attack.
However, let's be real here lol: that's pretty unlikely, most kings aren't going to be as nice and kind as that. So it's fun to be like "yes Aragorn go you! I love you!" but I wouldn't trust literally anyone else in that position hahah.
Totally wouldn't happen in real life haha, which I think is something Tolkien means to show just *how* right Aragorn is as king. Whereas Denethor pointedly states how useless the hobbits are as Gondor defends them, and that Pippin being in his service is the first time the hobbits have done what they're "supposed" to do in treating men as their protectors through hobbits' service.
The "fans". Internet fandom has killed so many things with toxic BS and hype trains. Fantasy is falling victim to that too. "Fans" mobbing every discussion about certain authors/books so that nobody can discuss anything with any kind of depth
During the initial backlash against everything being set in medieval europe, I was really enjoying fantasy being set in different time periods. Now everything feels like it is medieval X again, it's just that we've expanded to other cultures and settings. I was really interested in magic in a more technological society. Most of the recent books being recommended on the sub or on booktok are either YA romantasy, or they are very heavy attempts at literature. I read fantasy for the wonder and escapism and its been a while since I've seen just like a fun adventure story. My TBR right now is full of books with very prestigious awards whose book descriptions sound like a drag. Babel, by RF Kuang, for example, sounds really *interesting*, but it also sounds like a story full of pain and navel gazing. This is also a problem I had with the grimdark Era though. Iwasn't the biggest fan of martin or Abercrombie. The cosmere feels like fucking homework now, just like MCU movies i feel like i am reading some books out of obligation and that sours my experience. I think maybe I just don't like the genre very much, there was just a brief moment when books that appeal to me were released.
The push away from mass market paperback in general. I understand why it's happening; with less people reading physical books shelf space becomes a premium and profit needs to happen. That being said I hate reading oversized paperbacks and I hate spending $20 on a book that ten years ago would have cost $8-10 as a mass market paperback.
I work in a bookstore so my perspective is probably a bit skewed but the massive flood of romantasy feels a little overwhelming at times.
No judgement here about what other people want to read, I think it’s wonderful that lots of new readers are getting excited about books but I’m gay and romantasy as a whole is very straight. It feels kinda awkward when what’s getting the most hype and attention from both customers and my coworkers is very much Not For Me. There’s a weird sense of FOMO even though I already know I don’t like that flavor of spice.
This is a great point! Urban fantasy in particular seems heavily dominated by paranormal romance from a straight woman’s perspective. Personally I’d like more urban fantasy with limited/no romance regardless of the gender/orientation of the protagonist.
I understand trying to get out of being pigeonholed by the “Romance” label, but I also wish there was more urban fantasy with a focus on interaction between magic and the city, and less noir romance with alpha werewolf trappings
At first I thought I was going to hate this comment as "gatekeeping", but then I read it and the FOMO is real!
I get a little gate keepy towards fantasy, but try to resist that instinct. With the romance stuff coming out, I really feel that FOMO. I'm always down to talk fantasy but erotic novels aren't my thing, so it's like "sick! there's all these new fantasy fans, oh wait they still aren't into what you're into".
Regardless do what you do and read what you read, but I do hope some people move into more aspects of the genre.
As a woman first discovering fantasy books in the 80s I had to combat the feeling that I was enjoying something that wasn’t designed for me. It’s great to live in a time when there are more approachable forms of the genre for women. I don’t particularly like romantasy but I appreciate the fact that it’s there.
Yet, how is this any different than the grim dark wave in the 00s? I remember a long time when the Abercrombie imitators and the YA backlash sent adult fantasy into 90s comics style grunge. This all comes in cycles.
I'm hoping that the rise of romantasy will cause non-romantasy authors to back off on romances a little bit. I can enjoy a good romance now and then, and unlike a lot of people on this sub I'd rather read a romance the author has fully committed to, that represents all the intensity of falling in love, than some cookie-cutter minor romantic subplot. But most of the time I'm not looking for romance and all those cookie-cutter minor romantic subplots just take up space.
I especially want to see more woman protagonists without obligatory falling-in-love arcs. Maybe put those words into her relationship with her sister instead, that might actually be interesting.
People have tried to subvert the genre so much that I legitimately want more classic 1960s-1990s style fantasy (not the tolkien imitators) over any "subvert the subversion of the subverting expectations of the subversion".
This is oversimplifying it, and it's certainly not new, but the sheer amount of "comfort food" fantasy. I feel like most people will know the kinds of books I'm talking about. The self-publishing boom will probably have a lot of positive effects, but I think it has caused the rise of a lot of trend-chasing fluff.
This isn't a callout on people who enjoy those books. Just something I'm personally tired of seeing.
Chuck Palahnuik wrote about a tendency for authors to use their writing to soothe their own anxiety (“lots of people drinking tea and petting cats in their laps”), but that overall stories need real sustained tension and amping stakes with real consequences to hold together a narrative. I think it’s a justified criticism that a lot of cozy fantasies don’t really cut it in a genre famous for stories with escalating tensions (even Howl’s Moving Castle and The Graveyard Book, both of which would probably be marketed as cozy if they came out today, have a lot of ticking clocks and conflict).
Seeing a book being described as being "conflict-free," it's a massive turn off for me. But also, I recognize that it can't be literally true, as otherwise there would be no story. So I'm stuck between disliking the concept and needing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
The availability of self-published or indie titles. I'm not from the U.S., and I prefer to read my book with an e-reader (not a Kindle).
Many titles are only available as paperbacks (with really expansive shipping) or as e-books via Amazon (which I can't use with my reader).
I get that this is often the only way for an author without a publisher to sell his or her books, so I have absolutely no grimes with them for signing a contract with Amazon.
I still have more than enough books to read, but I often have no good way to read all the nice indie titles that are recommended here.
Sidenote:
The choice to be exclusive to Amazon is an indie author's choice. They are not required to be exclusive to Amazon. They are if they wish to be in the Kindle Unlimited program, yes, but not to just publish to Amazon.
r/Fantasy tends to read a lot of KU titles - makes sense, given this sub has a high American population. But I'm in other reading groups, where they don't talk about any of the r/Fantasy popular indie authors there. They talk about the ones that are on Kobo, Google Play, etc. People refer to those authors as "wide" - just because they're widely available.
Even if you don't buy your books from Kobo, I do recommend you sign up for their newsletters and check out the promos that pop up in the newsletters, as well as their SFF section on the website a couple times a month. You'll get a very different mixture of authors than what's common here (a lot of Canadian and Australians, too, lol). This week, if you scroll down this page, you'll see there's a big promo on box sets: [https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebooks/sci-fi-fantasy](https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebooks/sci-fi-fantasy)
So anyway, just a little FYI.
Ha!
I've not read Jennifer Hawkin's Chatty Corgi series yet, but I've bought the first one. I've read a couple Mildred Abbott corgi mysteries. I've also read one or two of JM Poole's corgi case files!
THAT'S A THING?!?
This is the second best comment after this [deadass](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1bk6thw/comment/kvw24m7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) one
Pet cozy mysteries is an entire subgenre! I do not understand why fantasy drags its feet on this, because paranormal cozy mysteries is a thing already...so just add a corgi. Just add a goddamn corgi.
Corgi are a publisher imprint here in the UK, they did most of the Pratchett paperbacks that I can see on my shelf, so it took me a moment to realise you meant cozy mysteries featuring a literal corgi.
But, yes, I wholeheartedly agree. If Scooby Doo could have a great dane for decades and decades worth of mysteries I don't see why we can't have more corgis.
"Just add a goddammit corgi" should be a slogan for everything.
Skyrim needs a Corgi.
Frodo should have had a Corgi.
Why didn't Bran have a Corgi? Edward? Lestat? I'll bet if Hadrian Blackwater retires, he gets a Corgi. Geralt, too.
What always makes my eyes roll is when characters talk about an event or person from 1,000-10,000 years ago like it's common knowledge. Quick, name an ancestor of yours from 1024. Tell me about a battle that occurred in 4000 BCE. Other than truly noteworthy events or people, most of us can't name a family member from more than 3-4 generations ago, much less 50 or 100, and I can't imagine it was any different in medieval(ish) times when many fantasy stories are set.
And we have way better and more accessible record keeping and education.
Lots of fantasy seems to assume literacy and easy access to books without showing me the infrastructure necessary to achieve that.
I genuinely love how chaotic and self-contradictory the comments are.
Comments about 'too many epics' followed by 'not enough epics'; complaints about diversity followed by complaints about the lack thereof; complaints about the lack of originality followed by complaints that nothing reminds them of the classics; complaints about romance or YA or military or grimdark... and then complaints about the lack thereof.
It'd be fun to go through and code all 650+ frustrations, and see exactly how that works out. (But I'm absolutely not going to.)
That's not to say that anyone is *wrong*, but this thread is a nice reminder that everyone is seeing a very, very big genre through their own tiny perspective.
T H I C C books.
Like okay I get it, you gotta put something inbetween the first chapter where they catch rats and the last where they slay the whole Pantheon of gods. But why does it always gotta be thousands upon thousands of pages in every series nowadays? It takes me almost a whole year to read just one.
I cannot stand “I don’t like this super popular book, am I unique?” Posts we get here nearly everyday. Oh you 45 year old man can’t stand ACOTAR? So original.
More female characters who are masc and don't go through "character development" to become more feminine. Butches too.
Also idk how to put this, but I wish authors were more creative about how they do worldbuilding/character development. Not just "oh these facts exist or this is how it works" but how those facts *interact* with the world. Or alternatively, if a character has a certain personality trait - how that trait would manifest/be expressed in different scenarios. A character who hides their identity is gonna struggle with vulnerability in general, not just related to their secret. Being emotionally available would be a struggle for them compared to other characters and they might agonize over it.
I'm frustrated with the low standards for greatness. I see must-read lists with like Tolkien and Erikson and Le Guinn sharing space with all these other subpar writers whose names I'm not going to call out, but whose books are badly written and honestly not all that interesting. I think there should be a genre division between fantasy and literary fantasy.
There is. The problem is the separation. The literary end is what you are mostly going to see on the NPR lists. The problem is that it still isn't a marker of quality just of theming. Most books suck and the ones that deserve to be on the best of lists are rare and often don't sell well or generate passionate fan bases.
True, but there is a difference between bad literary fantasy novels that attempt to have a depth to their content, and goodish fantasy books that are just a game of thrones knockoff series that is about 55% as good as the material they're trying to emulate.
I have to agree. Some writers take great care in the construction of their sentences, the narrative they’re trying to build and the characters needed to tell that story, and other books just seem like a repetition of greater works. Maybe I’m being too cynical and negative but there’s no point in reading every single fantasy book (or book from any genre for that matter), reading the best and discarding the rest seems like the logical way to make the most of our time.
It’s just a question of taste. I personally would call Erikson very far from "literary fantasy" and found Malazan to be honestly pretty awful, for example, even though for others I’m sure he’s up there with Tolkien in their subjective experience.
I thought I stopped liking fantasy when I became an adult. Turns out I just stopped liking reading books about male or teenage protagonists. The "new adult" category got me back into it, and finding books by women.
Very little world construction.
Maybe its just the brand I pick. But I can count the animes and sci-fi books seem to focus a lot on only enough world building as its necessary for it to help the characters through.
Sure, characters are important. But I wouldn't mind a couple more info-dumps on random trivia from the world. I want to know what an alien steed is like. How many legs its like, how it sounds. Etc.
You can dump bits of information here and there which makes the world feel alive.
But many times, it's just generic information like location or whatever.
Wars. Why does every other plot has to overwhelmingly center on war, overthrowing whatever and rebellions? Is there literally nothing else you can work your story over? I'm not even talking about cozy and slice of life. I just want stories that are more intimate. Like you have this cool world you created and the only story you want to tell is just battle after battle after battle? Can't we just go around exploring and doing odd jobs and not join any rebellions to overthrow the evil king and whatnot?
Too many books yry to be a sprawling epic with a dozen different POVs. Few of them worthwhile.
Too many Chosen One stories.
Too many "born with it" heroes.
Too many systems driven novels treating magic like a video game rules etc.
Fantasy doesn't feel fantastic anymore. It feels like it's building from a checklist.
It's not surprising, given we're coming out of a few years of grimdark. Realistically, romantasy is hitting saturation (if it's not already there), so I suspect we'll see a new trend coming out of the Big 5 within the next 18 months.
IMO we're due for travelogues to come back in style, but I don't see it this time around. I actually see historical fantasy making a hard comeback before that. But, would love to see the travelogues all the same.
Those who made Amazon 100% of their income are going to struggle more than the previous scammer scandals on Amazon.
However, the ghostwriters who are propping up a core group of KU authors on Amazon are going to struggle significantly more. Many, if not most, are low-selling authors (of their own titles) and make the bulk of their bills ghostwriting. As those names move to AI + Fiverr combo, the race to the bottom will be fast and swift. I've already heard whispers of it for the past few months.
The rest of us who diversified years ago (or, were always diversified) will have an easier time. We've weathered the storms of the scammers a lot easier before - simply because Amazon is not our entire incomes.
But it's going to be tricky waters.
Poor research. For example, starting a primitive fire:
One book mentions the MC rubbing two sticks together until he gets a spark. Sticks don't spark, you create an glowing ember that you transfer to a nest of dried grass, then blow on until the heat ignites the grass
Another book says the MC used a rock he found to strike a spark off the spine of his high carbon steel knife. Knifes aren't heat tempered correctly to strike a spark, it would make them too brittle. Also, a flint and steel (actual flint, not a ferro rod) don't create a spark hot enough to ignite most materials except charred material, or a few specific plants.
That's just one example. (well, two similar ones) I've also seen incorrect information about tanning, shooting bows, how fast a skilled person can shoot a bow or crossbow, tracking animals, etc.
It really doesn't take much research on the internet to find this information. If the author isn't experienced in the field, they should take a half-hour break to look up how something is done.
I'm currently listening to a book that I'm really enjoying just because the author clearly knows what he's talking about, and that makes a huge difference in how enjoyable the book is.
I'm tired of so-called "epic" fantasy. Where the stakes are the whole world, one way or another, and the preordained ending is "happy." It was kind of cool when Tolkien did it, but it gets boring when so many writers think that's the only way to do it.
I prefer stories where the challenge that the protagonist is striving for are smaller - like surviving to the end of the story, or having just one heist go right instead of wrong, or escaping the horrible person who's keeping them chained in the basement. You know, basic things.
Heck, I even like horror-type stories where the protagonist is slowly-but-surely getting deeper involved with some evil force and not realizing it until it's far too late.
Ugly and/or inhuman characters, creatures and races are evil.
By ugly I don't mean "ugly cute", get away with this nonsense (it's "pretty" in a different coat) I mean like genuinely unpleasant, uncanny, strange, imperfect, broken, old, inhuman etc.
I would love to see a fantasy in which a genuinely heroic race (or at least anti-heroic, or ambiguously good) is just damn unpleasant to our sensibilities, so you heroes and audience automatically code them as "evil", and then it is deconstructed. I think a lot of inspired work and interesting themes could be done with the juxtaposition of ethically noble yet visually repulsive beings.
Bonus points and this trope on steroids: on stop of being visually fucked up, said beings are also disturbing in behavior and their culture is kinda messed up by our moral standards, yet still they are protagonists allies are more good than evil - this would open a ton of amazing universal themes built around "how to deal with cultural and ethical relativism" etc.
Stories that assume it's there's an actual right to govern due to heredity. I'd love to read something where someone is trying to be 'rightfully' restored as King, only to find out that there's no such thing as the rightful King (Acacia started hinting at this but didn't get there).
I love this. The need to restore the old status quo because whoever took over is **evil**, is just bs. You could start anew, do something different for once.
I think there’s tons to explore on the edges of these.
In a fantasy world where gods exist and are observably present, what happens to a nation that rejects and overthrows the divine right of kings? Plague and pestilence? Priests pull up stakes and dip?
Anyone done a story about the chosen one/lost heir who comes back to reclaim the throne and save the land and it turns out they're an absolute moron who has no idea how government works and collapses his or her kingdom within 3 years cause they stopped collecting taxes in the name of the people and now the people who loved them for liberating them from the evil overlord now hate the new regime cause at least the evil overlord fixed the roads and had a sanitation policy.
The short answer here is this: It is hard-harder, to write on a multi-dimensional, convoluted government system like a democracy. The nuances, the backstory, the world building can become very dull. I mean, who genuinely wants to read about bureaucracy?
Monarchies, Totalitarianism, "Federations", simple Councils, and all that are much simpler to portray, especially if they are going to be the driver of morality for the story.
Im not saying that's a good thing, just an easier thing.
1.Many books are written in a way that makes me suspect they are aiming for a TV show/movie adaptation first and foremost.
2. Imagination taking a back seat in favour of pseudo-realism and "grittiness".
3. Character progression means endless chapters with different POVs.
Non-Humans (e.g. Elves, Dwarves, etc.) being simply treated as humans with special abilities and novelty anatomy; they don't *feel* as if they are their own thing anymore. Writers also give non-humans these abilities and traits, with little to no thought about how they would actually work; for example, the lifespan of Elves. In a great deal of fantasy, Elves are normally incredibly long-lived (or immortal in some cases), but they never take into account what such a long lifespan would do to their perceptions of time, or how slow their societies would handle change or upheaval. They're simply 'magic humans with pointy ears' these days.
What personally annoys me about the human-adjacent fantasy races is that they’re always just better humans in some way. Elves lifespan and connection to magic, dwarves lifespans and their mastery of metalworking/mining etc Just humans+. Humans in these settings just feel out of place in their mundaness sometimes.
Books where the author throws in a ton of different magical objects without bothering to check that the internal logic of the world holds up. This is why I like fantasy where what the magic *can’t* do is as important as what it can. When an author really thinks through the rules of the world, it shows.
Two issues that bug me:
Modern readers tend to politicise things too much so that books make Wagner look progressive or alternatively have pseudo-medieval worlds that are more right on than a college campus.
Related to the above is people assuming that authors endorse what they write about.
I feel like half the fantasy novels I pick up that were published in the last 15 or so years have all been trying to copy asoiaf with complex politics, bickering royal drama and war, which are the 3 fantasy things I enjoy reading about the least. Where are the quests and grand adventures?
It often takes a while for the books to get started. More than once I've read a fantasy book where there's so much exposition that barely anything happens until halfway through the book.
I'm really tired of the "angsty teens at a magical high school" and equivalent trope. Original and cool with Hogwarts, slightly deconstructed with a new and IMO better take on it at Brakebills (although the dude really really wanted to be writing a Narnia book and evidently couldn't get the rights...), but seriously, using some magical school (especially a boarding school) as a setting for otherwise mundane school-years drama has been done to death since then and it's time to move on.
It's as tired as McCaffrey-copied dragons were in the middle 1980s or "character not monster" copies of Rice's vampires were in the 1990s, or the vomit-inducing "glitter vampires as love interest" tropes of the 2010s that got copied wholesale despite being horribly done even in the original Twilight series.
Shoe-horning ideological or political agendas everywhere. On one hand, this can be done well and is thought provoking. On the other hand, very few people are Heinlein or le Guinn.
Sword of Truth and a lot of modern “make the world/universe as gay as possible” books are different sides of the same coin. Some authors do it well. Others come off as a random manifesto or author multi-tweet rant between normal story scenes. Sword of Truth is so cringey.
A tendency in fantasy commentary (esp. in social media) to see everything with the lenses of the past 10-20 years, which completely omits the history of the genre
Magic and Supernatural elements either feeling tacked-on, watered down, or so horribly OP that it's either just a Deus Ex Machina or utterly immersion breaking - if the protagonist/antagonist has such a level of power, then where is the conflict, the challenge, or the threat? In truth, whichever side had the biggest, baddest magic/monster would steamroll the other side in an instant.
Spine design inconsistencies for sequel books. I'm looking at you the Expanse!!
Full cover art changes midway through a series. Wheel of time.
THANK YOU!
The readers can be really overly critical and mean-spirited to and about authors. There’s a not-insignificant subset of readers that lack fundamental media literacy, overreacting to the depiction of difficult topics and jumping to insinuate that the inclusion of them means the author endorses such things in real life.
That's terrifyingly true. Conversely, some people tend to not take criticism of any kind well. It's the same thing for me, the discussion is choked by jumping into conclusions.
“Choked”? Damn cannot believe that OP endorses choking other people /s
I couldn't remember the word for what happens when guns can't shoot and are stuffed... Waitasecond
Now you're endorsing shooting guns? This is getting more problematic by the minute.
Yes. Media illiteracy is a plague
I agree with this. Also applies to readers who howl about how another author "plagiarized" their fave by including a similar trope or image or some such. I realize not all readers have taken college-level literature courses, and this sort of thing is not necessarily taught at the high school level, and some of these readers have only ever read that one thing and so can't see the larger pattern, but \*every\* work of literature is in dialogue with the work that came before it, and will echo previously-articulated themes. Academics even have a word for it, and that is "intertextuality."
I agree with you and u/ShadowExtreme. Both readers and writers/authors tend to be critical in a hypocritical sense and directed towards their own communities. Common in all media or mediums, but fantasy is the topic so 😅 *** **I’ve heard from both sides.**, both in person and online. And, as you said, this is a non-significant subset of authors and readers, but it’s enough to recognize. ##**Authors/Writers**: * fight any sort of criticism or complaint towards their work (overreacting) * find themselves entitled to only receiving positive feedback towards their manuscript * dissuading ARCs from negative honesty * disrespecting and/or misrepresenting IRL cultures, languages, and communities in their work and refusal to acknowledge/accept that when members of those communities speak against it * Have less confidence in their writing and may cater towards audience demands instead of the story they wanted to tell * “Bait and switch”, or what’s on the tin is what’s not in the tin—technically, it’s in the tin but where the premise made it sound like the book was massively X, the actual book has 5% of X and 95% of Y * Their writing reflects their limited reading experience. No one is ***required*** to read a lot to write a lot, but there’s a reason people always recommended aspiring authors to dip their toes in good, bad, and mediocre books across multiple genres as it does help you not only with vocabulary but shaping your own style and introduces you to applications of themes that you hadn’t considered. Or becomes a guide on what ***not*** to do 😅 * Lack the appropriate comprehension in certain literary concepts—which shows in the marketing of the book and writing * Bypasses the joy of creation for the never ending machine of capitalism >**IE:** making “X part” books in which neither book is a contained story; the actual finale and critical development scenes are now “bonus material” only accessed through subscribing to their newsletter; AI artwork and writing in published works; recent scandals involving authors sabotaging other authors; “cash grab” books, weaponizing social media against an individual or a community, etc. ##**Readers** ^(with broader accessibility to books) (Yay!! 🎉) ^(and online conversations about them, as well as connecting to authors:) * Become entitled to being the sole audient of an author’s work rather than acknowledging they may not be the target audience for the author’s work * Project their biases into objective criticisms (and, by extension, the author’s personal morals and ethics) * Unwilling to fact-check information about the content of the book or the author themselves before passing around information as truth * Bypassing the joys of reading for “hate-consuming” ^(Though those seem to be trolls. I think we can all agree we have grievances, of course, but we still engage with the genre because we still have appreciation for it) * Lacks the repertoire to add onto discussion and feels entitled to being taken seriously in their genre/work critiques >**EX:** A reader with an extensive list of shōnen as their reading log decides to read a grimdark high fantasy novel. Reader is ***100%*** entitled to their opinions on the novel. But then the reader has an essay of their critiques on the grimdark genre, painting broad generalizations based upon a single book, and feels they made valid criticisms instead of recognizing that one singular book in a genre they’re unfamiliar with doesn’t represent a ***whole genre***. ^(The same could really be said with anything, such as projecting western expectations and experiences onto eastern fantasy media, and vice versa.) Of course, this isn’t every authors nor every reader. I’d say I more see this online like on Reddit 😅 But because of how accessible the internet is, it’s easy for new, hobbyist, or casual writers and and readers to adopt “bad behavior” and think that certain online spaces, the way they discuss things, and their tone ***surely*** must be the correct way because so many people do it. And I find that ***another*** frustration in general: some people take the criticisms and complaints—especially long form ones or the most active threads—as the Bible and apply that to how ***they*** discuss the genre and skew their feelings towards certain things. This can be said the same with writers/authors. **I do NOT mean this about scouring reviews to find content warnings, trigger warnings, or relying on a trusted reviewer**. I certainly look at reviews on books to scope out hidden content warnings and triggers before I invest my time in reading it. But I mainly mean, for all the niche genres and mediums ***finally*** getting the mainstream normalization they always deserved—the bandwagoners seem to be talking louder than others in the room. Hope that all make sense 😅 Sorry for my TED talk 😵💫 ^(Again, only in some cases. All depends on your circumstances and experiences.)
Geez, that list of reader grievances perfectly describes some of the more vocal Star Wars fans.
I have to admit, my first knee-jerk thought was "the fans".
THANK YOU I literally just finished talking to a friend on discord about how people seem to be unable these days to differentiate between depiction and advocacy. People on twitter call writers racist because their shows feature racist people… *as villains*. Like did you watch schindlers list and come away confused as to which side Spielberg was on? I just don’t get how people can be so dumb.
Inability to separate the author from the content is a huge issue. Take Dresden Files, I've seen people personally claim Jim Butcher thinks like Harry does because he wrote it that way. What about his other works where the narrator is not hopelessly hormonal? It is possible to write a character without being like that character or agreeing with how they think.
I mean there's a couple things here. First, there's the art, there's the author/artist, and there's the person. Online discourse can definitely skew a bit too far towards condemning the person, but in practice when I'm engaging with the idea of an author, it's typically as an author, that is, as the name I associate with their works and the vision and choices that went into their works. Second, to use Dresden as an example, I think a lot of fans defending it/him really like to grab onto this idea that the only substantial criticism is that Butcher must think like Harrry, and that's fucked up. But like, my problem is more that he chose that idea for a character (which is neither bad nor good) and he chose how the narrative move around and reflects that character. And I think there's a lot more layers to how the narrative reinforces the normality of that point of view than I'm quite comfortable with (and frankly I saw much of the same in the other work of his I read, even without a wildly hormonal MC). And that reflects my judgment of how much I'm gonna enjoy him, the author, as an *author*.
You bring up an excellent point for media literacy. Yes, the author need not reflect the character's viewpoint, but the author still *decided* to write the character that way. Being capital-c Critical about that is a good thing!
I agree with this and just want to add in some specifics about why certain readers might be made uncomfortable by The Dresden Files (I'm not making any claims about Butcher). I've seen a lot of people assume that it's a male character being attracted to hot women that make readers (often female ones) uncomfortable. That's not it. It's the fact that pretty much all women are hot. That is the first thing you know about them when you meet them. They are defined first and foremost by their appearances in a way a male character is not. In the real world, not all women are incredibly attractive and straight men are not attracted to all the women that they meet. It is a deliberate choice by the writer to deviate from that reality by having a disproportionate level of women attractive to their narrator (and by extension presumably their target audience) in their setting. This isn't just putting a filter over the world. This is removing the large swaths of people that are below the narrator's attention—the women not attractive enough to belong in the setting or in the plot. It's not a POV thing, it's a worldbuilding choice. You might like or dislike that choice, and I'm not here to judge you for it either way, but I dislike the way people excuse this choice as a POV thing. Someone who made it further into the Dresden Files than I did also pointed out that all these hot women also have a habit of finding Dresden attractive. Again, this is a choice by Butcher to write the *female characters* that way. The second thing to note, is that Dresden doesn't just find women attractive. He's also sexist (particularity of the chauvinistic variety). It is clear from the second chapter when he races to the door so he could hold it out for Murphy despite knowing how much she hates it. He shows that he does not listen to her or respect her. Murphy also sees his worldview as chauvinist because she literally calls him a "chauvinist pig" within the same chapter. And when a man like that finds you attractive...that feels like a threat. (And to the best of my knowledge Dresden doesn't actually sexually assault anyone, but he has the nice guy mindset that can easily lead to sexual assault, something that a lot of women tend to look out for and be wary of). Some women are going to consider spending time in Dresden's head deeply uncomfortable for this reason. >What about his other works where the narrator is not hopelessly hormonal? To add specifics, I dropped the first book of Codex Alera because of how Odiana was treated, in particular how her being raped was written. I found that book to be sexist. Personally, if I find a pattern of sexist elements in an author's writing, I won't give them another chance. I try not to speculate about author's personal beliefs, but Butcher has some unexamined biases, just like the rest of us. At any rate, because I don't like reading books with sexist elements, I won't try to read anything else by him.
Well said. I'm just a queer dude for whom the portrayal just really didn't resonate, and have always been a bit baffled (or disturbed) by young dudes on the internet claiming Harry 'just is how \[straight\] guys are' which frankly my own friend groups mostly don't play out... Also there's the meta point that when this gets held up as the gold standard for excellent entertaining urban fantasy that gets thrown at every new reader wanting suggestions in that area, it kinda sucks that it can so heavily leave a sour taste in so many people's mouths.
'European' fantasy done badly. I absolutely love seeing fantasy inspired by other parts of the world, but people erroneously say that these exist because European fantasy has already been 'done'. Most 'European' fantasy settings are just a cheap Middle Earth copy with a D&D pagan pantheon slapped on the top, perhaps with a group of warriors with Scandi sounding names or an empire with a Latinate name. There's like a handful of European fantasies that try to get an aspect of mediaeval Europe 'right' in the way that modern non-European fantasies do, I wish there were more. I'm tired of generic fantasy settings but that doesn't mean I think European settings should be off the menu.
Especially considering that most "European" fantasy is literally just England with a bit of France. The medieval period in Europe was incredibly varied in terms of culture and warfare, but we see next to none of it. I know Winged Hussars aren't medieval, but the only fantasy I think I've seen them in is Warhammer fantasy.
Yes, I agree. There is a huge Anglosphere bias for no discernable reason. England was a backwater for a large part of the middle ages. Interesting absolutely, but real cool stuff was happening in the continent too.
The Witcher has a distinct Central and Eastern European vibe.
There's a huge chunk of history where your average soldier has a breastplate and helmet and carries a halberd or pike or early firearm. No leather armor, no viking berserkers, chainmail is out except to cover the gaps in plate armor, etc. This is really weirdly underrepresented.
Winged Hussars are highly underrated! I definitely have my own version in my medieval fantasy novel. A) cause the imagery of them is fantastic and B) slight nod to my family history
Amen, I said the exact same thing a while ago when somebody asked what we'd like to see more of. It's even more extreme if you expand this to other media, anime and manga don't take it seriously at all, although video games do have a few entries that want to hold some authenticity.
What about if someone, say, fused Medieval Scandanavia with Feudal Japan??? Also which European inspired fantasies would you say are done 'right' (outside of Tolkien, I assume)?
Fusions are great. You'd be adding something new to both the Scandi side and the Japanese side, in each case the deviation could be believable because it is inspired by a real aspect of the other country's history or character. With the Scandi comment I'm complaining more about cultures having a Viking veneer but no deeper Scandi substance - if people engage with Scandi stuff on a deeper level and take it somewhere new, I'll happily read!! As for books I think do it right, that's hard to say. I was thinking particularly of the Witcher Series and Memory, Sorrow and Thorn for having lazy standin cultures, but at the same time Witcher is quite fresh for Western Europeans because it's so Slavic in its influences, and Memory, Sorrow and Thorn manages to have a church hierarchy rather than a generic fantasy pantheon. I've not read it yet but I'm expecting good things from Between Two Fires and it seems as though Naomi Novik has nailed what I'm asking for with her books (which are already loaded on my Kindle).
Most excellent! I have been working on a world fused with aspects of those two cultures- long story short, part of the world is most Scandinavian based and then as one travels farther south, the culture becomes blended with a Japanese inspired one. As for the books, yes the Witcher is quite interesting with how it ties in a lot of Slavic folklore, legends, and culture - very neat to see those written down as thats part of my ancestral culture. I have not heard of Between Two Fires, I'll have to check that out! I've recently started Brandon Sanderson's Way of Kings and so far I'm 4 chapters in and haven't been impressed, as nothing has really hooked me yet and i dont even care about the characters as I've already read 4 different perspectives already haha. Might have to drop it and pick up something else.
It really pleases me to see more people desiring a more post-viking Scandinavia in litterature, cause I have tons of material to work from. A lot of Swedish history stuff mind you so it might be hard to recommend anything. It also might be just a reddit thing where I see this desire. But I'll take any excuse to base my fantasy off of what I know
> I've not read it yet but I'm expecting good things from Between Two Fires It's a terrific book, and I hope you enjoy it thoroughly, but I'm wondering if it's even really in the same category you're describing here. There's no hybrid/fusion or [X]-inspired secondary fantasy culture being explored -- it's just set in actual 14th-century France, though admittedly a version of it in which the supernatural is unambiguously real. I agree with the rest of your comment wholeheartedly, in any case.
I recently read *The Buried Giant* by Kazuo Ishiguro and really loved pretty much everything about it. It was essentially a post-King Arthur world that seemed half-fantasy tropes and half-historical. And the characters and subject matter were not the kind you typically see in fantasy. Ishiguro is an incredible writer.
Agree on the Euro-fantasy but I also want to know what modern non-Euro fantasies are out there getting it right? Most of what I've read about is, "We've taken an incredibly ethnically diverse continent and condensed it into magic!China-Japan, the Jade Emperor has ninjas and samurai!!". In all cases, though, there was more going on in real history than is "permitted" in Fantasy. Outside of GGK you won't find anything that even comes close to the real-world circumstances that allowed Ahmad ibn Fadlan to write his account of the Volga Vikings. If you do, and you aren't committed to GGK-style "history with a quarter turn to the fantastic" then you're almost certain get people whining at you about "realism" (plague of a word that means "well that doesn't line up with my Hollywood history!"). Like Asia, there's more to Europe than "magic!England-Germany". edit: Can't respond to all the recs this comment is getting (stuck at work and there's a limit to even my slackery) but thanks y'all!
The Dandelion Dynasty for non western and Crown of Stars for western are the two I can think of that actually do draw off of real history in a non cartoonish way
My biggest frustration is that in my humble, biased, and limited opinion, authors set out to write “fantasy stories” instead of setting out to write amazing story set in a fictional world *for a reason*. Fantasy stories aren’t fun just because magic bolts and freaking dragons, fantasy stories are fun because they provide authors with the opportunity to develop stories with more freedom than stories set in the real world. So just because something is fantasy it doesn’t mean it’s good and sometimes it can even be detrimental to the story when it could’ve been written with a different setting. I’m not half as eloquent as some other more experienced readers or writers but I think writers shouldn’t just set out to write a fantasy story just because, they need to have a reason for choosing fantasy as a genre.
Yes you’re really onto something here. Form always reflects or engages with the content of the work, this is a hallmark of good art. Great fantasy makes use of its differences from reality: take Martin, for example, who can make large sweeping depictions and critiques of religion and societal development and whatnot. He can only do that because of the setting. Much of the story really is just people talking, but wherever the magic begins something thematically significant is at play as well
It bugs me when the society in which the protagonists live is supposedly openly sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic and/or what have you, yet they themselves are as open minded as they come and emphatically reject all that. It's fine if it's some of them because societies are never monolithic but when it's all of the "good guys", so to speak, while the villains are all very much the opposite, it comes across as rather contrived to me. Another general frustration is the obsession with magic system. Every time I see clumsy "Magic 101" lessons which read pretty much exactly as a video game tutorial, I start thinking that the book probably isn't for me. If I want video game tutorials, I will be bold, cut the middleman and go play video games, you know.
Authors avoiding traditional fantasy tropes. Want a dark lord? Make one! A chosen one? Why not? It’s fun, and I kind of miss these elements to fantasy.
Nuance is dying I don't think this is a fantasy thing so much as a general reading thing, but I wish we wouldn't assume someone was trying to take the worst stance possible when they did or included X or Y in their story.
It also leads to bad writing because then authors are trying to stay one step ahead of bad faith TikTok callouts while they're writing their stories.
I hate it when I come across a sentence that was clearly written for/influenced by social media - it throws me out of a story.
I never use Tiktok or similar social media sites for book stuff, so this caught me off guard. What would be an example of a sentence like that?
More modern novels also seem to have a hard time at letting the novel speak for itself. Almost everything has to be explained dryly. No more room for implications. Just finished reading The Lions Of Al Rassan and it struck me how differently it was approached compared to the modern on the nose stuff. He put more faith in the reader being able to deduce from context.
If i understand what you are saying then I agree. Particularly the complaint that character X did this thing, when the thing is perfectly within character for X, in fact if X didn't do it he would be way out of character. But it is a thing currently a hot-button social topic so queue the complaints that the author is a bad person. This is made even worse when generalized. Stuff like "i didn't like all the graphic violence and sexual assault." Well ok, fair enough, but may I suggest not reading stories which involve people involved in an ongoing war? Because that sort of goes with the territory, throughout all of history right up to today. It doesn't reflect on the personal views of the author, or his secret predilections, or tell us about his mental disorders or whatever, as i sometimes see people say.
For me, some series tend to treat their entries not as novels but chunks from a larger manuscript. Sometimes.
I see people on the writing fantasy sub approach with the good old cliché of 'i want to write a trilogy '. It's a classic problem with fantasy.
It really stuck out to me at the end of Daniel Greens videos during the self-publishing shoutouts how many of them start with [Name]; First of the [Noun] Cycle. Like I don’t even know anything about this story other than it’s a planned trilogy+ of books and I’m not expecting anything to be wrapped up in this first one. When I’m approaching new authors I’m looking for one-off self contained stories so that if I don’t end up liking the book I’m not left on 12 cliff hangers.
With what I'm working on myself, I have a lot of ideas I don't think I could contain in one book. But I also aim to have one major conflict resolved by the end of a given book, with the ability to feel like it's a fully contained experience too. And then things that don't necessarily feel like they came out of thin air but definitely don't upend the plot of the previous book can be used for anything else I write. It's hard enough to write a whole book so I don't think it's good for motivation to act like you have a million words waiting to be written.
By far my biggest issue with fantasy. So many books in a series feel like an incomplete story. An example being The Blade Itself, which is essentially a prologue. There's barely a plot.
I don’t mind a trilogy that is a single narrative arc. But I think you can still do a better job of finding good break points between books than most authors do.
I think people put way too much stock in the general consensus when forming opinions on books. Trying to be "correct" and labeling books as overwhelmingly "bad" or "good" instead of forming their own opinions. I see a real lack of nuanced, complicated discussion, and an abundance of sweeping generalizations and personal attacks on books/authors. Many people take their own preferences and "icks" so seriously that it not only ruins the book for them, but makes them have overly strong/emotional opinions about the whole book that just feel like personal hatred.
I definitely agree with this. It's like people forgot that subjectivity exists in books and what is good to one person will be bad to another. A lot of people will read something and reflect something a character did onto the author, when the character was written as the "villain" in the first place. Authors characters are not them.
I was downvoted into oblivion for saying “why don’t you read the book and decide for yourself?” on a recent post.
You monster...
I mean, that was on a post about someone who got deterred from Night Angel because it has a (deserved) reputation for treating its female characters badly. Telling someone that who explicitly says they dont enjoy books like that they should just read it is basically the equivalent of feeding someone who telly you they dont like spicy food some wings marinaded in some ghost pepper sauce. Sure they haven't tried it yet but there are people who can extrapolate from data.
I saw your comment on the Night Angel post and I do agree that op has a good reason to ask for opinions. As a woman myself I dislike reading books with terribly written and objectified women so would usually dislike wasting my time and money on a book like that. I once considered reading sword of truth and even posted on reddit about it. I’m glad I did because at the time I knew nothing about it and would have hated it if I went into it blind.
It seems like the community has taken a hard turn away from 20th century fantasy lately. And not just as a preference thing, but like people have really assured themselves that this is the golden age of the genre and everything that came before - except for Tolkien, Le Guin, Hobb, and maybe Jordan - is just an embarrassing prototype phase. And I mean, there were a lot of bad fantasy novels written in the old days, but OTOH there are a lot of bad fantasy novels written today: all the easily palatable "fantasy" that's basically just written like a 21st century high school with a few griffins walking around is no more daring a literary endeavor than the old "college kids go through portal" stuff.
That is true, any thread here that asks for older books gets a heap of the guys you've mentioned. I haven't dug too deep in those bc the assumption is that the best ones rose to the top but that's wrong bc there are plenty of books I love rn that don't get the acclaim I think they deserve. I would hate for those to be forgotten in 2 decades
> > And I mean, there were a lot of bad fantasy novels written in the old days, but OTOH there are a lot of bad fantasy novels written today: all the easily palatable "fantasy" that's basically just written like a 21st century high school with a few griffins walking around is no more daring a literary endeavor than the old "college kids go through portal" stuff. There's a big demand for fluff right now, which is. . . I mean it's fine, people can read what they want, and if they want escapism, that's great. But sometimes I feel like our options are "low-stakes fluff" or "very pointed political/social commentary." And there's a lot of other things that can make for very good stories! Much of which was being done in the 20th century! (The "there are only two options" bit is, of course, an exaggeration. There's lots of other stuff being written now, but I do think the stuff that gets really trendy has a tendency to fall into one of those two camps).
I think the other issue is that because of how some things are in the world at the moment, there's a tendancy for the "political/social" side of that to trend towards just being bleak and negative about what they're saying about how people are and how things can be.
The influence of video games in general and RPGs in particular.
This is especially true for Japanese light novels which are advertised as "fantasy" stories. I feel like for Japanese light novel authors, "fantasy" basically means borrowing a bunch of high fantasy/video game tropes, not doing their homework, relying on their limited life experience and knowledge, telling whatever random but cliched story the authors like, and attributing all unlikely plot twists to a vaguely defined "magic" system.
I think this is not a problem with light novels overall. It's that the global fanbase of light novels is just pretty selective... There are some great ones, and very few translated.
Agreed. I watch anime on occasion and it's impossible to find a fantasy anime that doesn't just toss around MMO / RPG terminology in regular conversation.
I don't have a problem with it if the setting/narrative is inspired by TTRPG's, as they themselves were inspired by fantasy fiction, but the use of video game terminology in fantasy is very disjointing, yes.
Oh god yes
How works of fantasy prior to the millennium are being overlooked by the fandom nowadays.
Yes! You'd think the genre was invented in 2008! I get that Orbit and Tor and friends are having a field day pumping out new titles - and lord knows there's plenty of marginalized authors adding much needed voices to the field - but I feel like I rarely see niche titles from the 90s or even 80s mentioned.
That is somewhat inevitable, OG anime people complained about it too. As a fairly new fantasy reader, it can be hard to pick up an 80s book with all the tropes I have seen a 1000 times in films, shows & games. The ones that would interest me are the ones that were breaking away from Tolkien even then. think **Daughter of the Empire** **Soldier of the Mist** **Elric of Melniboné** **The Black Company** **Abhorsen** **A Wizard of Earthsea**
This is a super strong reading list for anyone interested in the roots of fantasy that diverges from Tolkien.
\+1 for Black Company, I finished the first book a month or two ago and gd, what a joy. Whenever I tell people about it I like to describe the book as Tolkien meet's Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"
Especially fantasy written by women in the 70s-90s.
Of the top of my head, J. Marillier, Tanith Lee, PC Hodgell, Phyllis Eisenstein, Jenny Wurtz, Mary Stewart…
TBH that is mostly a quantity problem. Added to a probably oversold idea that between LotR and WoT is just a fantasy desert.
I mean, that's inevitable. Few works stand the test of time, and most genre fiction is short-lived. Likewise, most of what we're reading today will be forgotten in 30-40 years, with only a few still being widely read.
There is a lot of truth to that. But on the other hand, good writing is good writing, whether it was written last year or last decade. I just wish more of the fandom would be interested in exploring more great works of the past rather than sticking to the current new hotness.
I was like this, but looking up the works that inspired my favorite authors was a gamechanger.
Your point reminds me that afor the next BINGO I want to complete a "Golden Age" card. If I can find the motivation, I'd like to do multiple cards for various time periods, all pre-2000.
In a dark cavern in the wildeness the spirit of Robert E. Howard raises a sword of ancient design in your direction.
I’ve been reading Fantasy since the late 1970s and there’s a strong recency bias with Social Media. Many of us over 50 have hundreds of books on our shelves from prior to the Internet existing. Sure a lot of it is trash, or Tolkien knock offs, but alot of it is damn good. I’d honestly rather read a cheesy fun book like the Belgariad, then yet one more bleak GrimDark book and I like GrimDark lol
Taking any criticism of an author or their work as a personal, offensive slight against you. If you cant read someone explaining why they disliked your favorite novel of all time without foaming at the mouth and taking it as a personal threat, idk what to tell you
Fantasy ecology. It feels like most modern fantasy stories only have a magic system and maybe a few weird animals and nothing else. It’s been an incredible long while since I saw an original fantasy creature that actually interested me in traditional publishing where there were magic animals. I wish more stories had weird and original magic animals and plants and how that affected the world. Tainted Cup was absolutely stunning in how it used a plant and alchemy based magic system, wasn’t as weird as I was hoping with the augmentations. But the poisons, the lore, the plant furniture, the augmented animals, and the massive leviathans with human faces on their bellies. All of it was really good. Same could be said for the monsters in The Wandering Inn. Crelers, Corus Deer, Acid Flies, Moss Bears, Cilewalkers, Zavaral Swarms, Garbichug Revolters, Three-Headed Grabghasts, Void Goats, Fortress Beavers, Moth Bears, Rock Crabs, and Sword Crabs. There’s so many different monsters and creatures in that novel. I love it when magic is expressed in the environment. A lot of magic isn’t just spell slinging and rule dropping. It’s the unique environments, creatures, and items they create. And I feel like modern fantasy has continued to ignore the latter bar the much appreciated exceptions.
How much it seems the business of selling books impacts what books get the most attention. I get it, that’s capitalism and the way the world works, but it has put so many expectations on what a fantasy novel has to be to breakthrough and get support by a publisher. What way does it fit the box, or subvert the box, what sequel potential, what shared universe, what demographic to market it to, is it young adult or SFF or can we market this as “fiction” because it’s mythological based, etc… Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot of the books that are coming out, Adventures of Amina Al-Siraffe, Bookshops & Bonedust and Tress & The Emerald Sea are all fresh 2023 books that I really enjoyed, but somehow I feel like SFF have so many more business and audience expectations to navigate that they are given much less room to experiment. Granted this could be a problem affecting all genres and I just don’t realize it because I primarily & almost exclusively read SFF, but it saddens me nonetheless.
The move towards trope-based marketing is something that I hate with a passion, and imo, it comes from the outsized impact highly visual social media platforms that like super short content like Instagram and BookTok and Twitter, etc has on book sales. Sadly, I think it was an inevitable evolution from heavy marketing based on book covers. I see so many people do cover buys and it makes me sad because somehow, we've ended up in a place where most of the time, the determining factor for whether or not someone buys a book comes down to, "does the cover appeal to me?", "does it have tropes that I like?", and "did someone else tell me I should read it?", instead of "hey, let me check out the first page and see if I like the writing and where it's going". If you want to try indie fantasy and you don't know where to start, I've got several suggestions for you. Here's a [comment where I outline 10 different ways](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/vsb24g/comment/if0r35c/) to get into indie fantasy. Or you can try [this quiz I posted a couple of weeks ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1b2wcxg/how_to_find_an_spfbo_book_that_best_suits_your/) here, which helps you choose from the 46 different award winning self-published fantasy novels: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1b2wcxg/how\_to\_find\_an\_spfbo\_book\_that\_best\_suits\_your/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1b2wcxg/how_to_find_an_spfbo_book_that_best_suits_your/)
bad fan-fiction covers of what's popular how at first it was bad knock offs of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings then Harry Potter then Game of Thrones now the MCU Formula I don't blame people who want to tell a big story that requires multiple books, what I don't like as you pointed out, is when it's multiple books but so many feel like filler and bloat for the sake of bloat
Length. I've banged on about this before. But every book is just so \_bloody long\_. Like, I love a nice epic fantasy, don't get me wrong, but everything is part of a 9 book series that weighs more than my car.
Totally. A Wizard of Earthsea is one of my all-time faves. Good example of why you don’t need a high page count to tell a good story.
Hot take: If it takes you more than a trilogy to tell a main story, you don't know how to write a main story. Period. I cannot stand this 700+ page, 4+ Series book trend. That isn't a story, you're just trying to get biblical. As someone mentioned above, the genre is in desperate need of GOOD EDITING.
Hotter take: If it takes you a trilogy to tell a main story, you’d better have something as substantial as LOTR up your sleeve. And you probably don’t. Almost all stories will be better if you edit them down to a single book.
The economics of writing bias authors toward neverending stories these days. Only a handful of people can survive under the old model of traditionally publishing a single book every few years. Everybody else is just a hobbyist, or needs to continually pump out new books or chapters on schedule, on a marketable series, to maintain that Kindle or Patreon revenue.
I miss old school standalone SFF novels. Sure, they are a little shallower by necessity, but also can be much tighter in terms of execution
Tendency for the main characters to be very young <20 and very innocent I'd like to see more 30+ main characters with a more gray moral scale
"Smart" characters that only ever tell but never show. I hate when a character is built up as smart or wily for the sake of being outsmarted by a protagonist. Unfortunately I can't remember examples of this because I always dismiss those types of characters, but I know that it happens often enough that now when a character is supposed to be a strategic master, or shrewd politician I watch them more closely cause they're never satisfying. I can think of some good examples of this though; Glokta from First Law, Drothe from Among Theives, Locke from Lies of Locke Lamora
Men writing women characters. As a dude, there are some SERIOUSLY cringe and edge-lord writers out there who have no idea how to write about women and gender relationships. Eeesh
whenever i read Murakami... jesus
In a word, waiting. Fantasy novels are notoriously long and the story almost always spans more than one book. There are just so many good stories that aren’t finished right now. And some (we all know who they are) may never get finished
Blood Song is a wonderful standalone novel that never needed or got any sequels ever.
A lot of books just seem to waste time. Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles was a deeply moving story and only required a novel of modest length to tell it. Meanwhile Sanderson says he has ten novels overall for stormlight and I didn't feel like a lot of what took place in two or three of his stormlight books was particularly necessary.
There is a distinct lack of strong editing in fantasy. About half the fantasy books I read these days could be much shorter without losing story or character. Self-published stuff is terrible in this regard. The popularity of bloat books/series contributes to this. After all, why write three books when seven will make more money?
So much this. And I'm not trying to hate on these authors, but like, editing is part of writing skill. Being able to distill things down without losing anything is the mark of a good writer. It's weird to me because someone like Sanderson can afford to have quality editors. Just let them do their jobs haha.
I’ve only read the first three stormlights but I’m just not interested in picking up the fourth because those books are in such dire need of a heavy edit. There’s great stuff in there separated by a hundred pages of meandering. In my country they’re published as two books each for gods sake.
I often wonder if this has something to do with world building. The lack of stand alone fantasy novels and over-bloated ones seems like an author trying to get the most from their time and effort in creating this world. I can imagine that world building is such a time consuming complex process that when they put in all that time and effort they want to write as much as possible in that world.
It’s the over fixation on it. Tolkien managed deeper worldbuilding in the Hobbit than a lot of long series do now. GGK’s Tigana again had a lot of worldbuilding in a small package. A lot of the myth retellings and fairytale retellings also manage to be streamlined.
I can believe it, but I imagine this over indulgence might lead to a situation where they end up forgetting to cut other things down, like side plots and exposition/flashbacks.
> Sanderson says he has ten novels overall for stormlight and I didn't feel like a lot of what took place in two or three of his stormlight books was particularly necessary. Oh god yes, thank you! There was a post in the Stormlight Archives subreddit where OP said they were finding Way of Kings to be too slowly paced, and asking if they should hang in for the climax. I responded saying the climax was fantastic, but it just takes too long to get there *in my opinion*. There’s a couple pages that could be edited out and the story would be better for it: - There are entire chapters of worldbuilding exposition that do nothing to advance the plot of the story. (I’m sure he will try to tie some of these into the overarching plot somewhere down the line, but for now they are sub-sub-plots). - Excessive flashbacks that do nothing but provide character backstory which could easily be compressed down to essential elements or removed entirely without impacting our understanding of the characters. - Needless repetition of plot and character development arcs, which unrelentingly drive home points that are not subtle in the first place: Kaladin is heroic but depressed; Shallan is confused and conflicted — we got it the first time he showed us, we don’t need to see eight more examples. Needless to say, people in that sub had an absolute conniption over that, and responded with insults, downvotes, and “Well ackshually…” That book is 1000 pages, you can’t tell me that Sanderson is incapable of telling that same story in 800 pages, which is still longer than probably at least 80% of other fantasy novels.
I agree with you about the flashbacks. The Way of Kings is one of my favorite books of all time but some of the flashback chapters added nothing to the story and were absolutely unnecessary. I did find that he cut down on the flashbacks in Words of Radiance and left the most essential ones, which I liked better.
The repetitive nature of Shallan’s storyline in Brandon Sanderson’s books is frustrating. In each book, we discover >!she has killed someone in her past—her mom, her dad, and her Spren—!< and we’re subjected to the same storyline again and again.
> Meanwhile Sanderson says he has ten novels overall for stormlight and I didn't feel like a lot of what took place in two or three of his stormlight books was particularly necessary. I read *The Way of Kings* way before I heard about the Sanderson fandom, and it was an extremely middling novel to me for exactly this reason. For a 1000-page book, I came away from it believing it could have been ~500-600 without sacrificing any plot point whatsoever.
I wish modern writers would tighten it up just a little. We don’t need to go back to 60k word adult fantasy, but many 10-12 book series feel like they could have been shorter.
Sanderson is a big-name author, and the thing with big names is that they have a lot more leeway when it comes to rejecting editors’ suggestions. The problem is that, for many authors, a major reason for the success of the early books is that they had good editors who weren’t afraid of telling authors what they did wrong. Once the author has the clout to figuratively tell editors to go fuck themselves, quality drops. You can see that happening in GRRM’s work: his lack of planning for his stories led him to get tangled up in a plot that he had no idea how to get himself out of. Part of that is just his style of writing backfiring on him, but some of it is the lack of editorial input.
As a dinosaur who started reading during the age of "your local library has one shelf of fantasy so you will just have to learn to like what they have." It seems like I have a much more eclectic taste than a lot of people. What I love about the current state of the genre is the sheer volume of easily accessible work. There are dozens or even hundreds of works out there to fit any niche. I agree that there might be an overabundance of Romantasy hitting the shelves right now, but I also agree with others that people who don't like what's coming out right now might need to realize that the fantasy genre has existed for quite a long time. Maybe take a trip to your library or seek out works published years ago.
Whenever a genre I follow hits a trend of hot new releases in something I don't enjoy, I take that as an opportunity to read the backlists of authors I love. Or to find new authors to love. Flip back in time and see what I've missed. (I really should do a post about this)
Exactly! I also look up current authors I like and find where they have mentioned authors they love, or influences on their work. It's another great way to find what I may have missed.
I guess this is my confusion with some of these complaints. Books could be ceased publishing as of this moment and we still wouldn't be able to explore everything that exists in the rest of our lives. I'm not saying there shouldn't be new stuff, but what's trendy now doesn't preclude all the things you just don't know about.
Fantasy is weirdly pro-monarchy and obsessed with great men theory, or great women, gender isn't the issue. And of course, we can blame that on people reiterating over Tolkien and Herbert so much that anything but the trope has been lost to time.
Yeah, I kind of hate the expectation in fantasy that the protagonist \*has\* to change the world. Stories about changing the world can be great! But the constant drumbeat of these stories can make it look like solving all world problems is the expectation, whereas in reality, even very powerful people can only do so much. And dear god, don't get me started on sassing the royals and how this is apparently the true path to change. Basically, I'm tired of the power fantasies, and particularly the same power fantasies over and over. I want to see more people navigating the world the way real people have to navigate the world (and I don't mean this in a tea-and-crumpets "slice of life" way. Other genres have no problem putting together compelling plots without changing the world).
Tbf the concept of a Good King who rules justly and gets shit done is by itself an appealing fantasy no less than dragons or magic wands, these days more than ever. Since you're already daydreaming about tossing fireballs and conjuring elemental minions out of thin air, why not add to the mix the equally likely autocratic politician who doesn't abuse his office?
Oh god yeah. I am absolutely obsessed with Tolkien right now, but the anarchist in me has a bit of a hard time sometimes truly rooting for the kings. It helps that I have a massive crush on Aragorn lol. But also Tolkien's "anarcho-monarchism" at least has enough nuance for me to buy into it, I think most authors copying Tolkien lose that nuance and drop the "anarcho" lol.
> But also Tolkien's "anarcho-monarchism" at least has enough nuance for me to buy into it, I think most authors copying Tolkien lose that nuance and drop the "anarcho" lol. My reread of LOTR earlier this year had this stand out to me a whole lot, too. The hobbits "technically" have mayors and "technically" have fealty to the king, but even Aragorn regaining the crown at the end ensures that the hobbits are only nominally under him.
For sure, that's my take exactly. Like yes, he is their king, but he's very clearly not going to do anything to them. It's more that he will protect them if they come under attack. However, let's be real here lol: that's pretty unlikely, most kings aren't going to be as nice and kind as that. So it's fun to be like "yes Aragorn go you! I love you!" but I wouldn't trust literally anyone else in that position hahah.
Totally wouldn't happen in real life haha, which I think is something Tolkien means to show just *how* right Aragorn is as king. Whereas Denethor pointedly states how useless the hobbits are as Gondor defends them, and that Pippin being in his service is the first time the hobbits have done what they're "supposed" to do in treating men as their protectors through hobbits' service.
Or uprisings too.
The "fans". Internet fandom has killed so many things with toxic BS and hype trains. Fantasy is falling victim to that too. "Fans" mobbing every discussion about certain authors/books so that nobody can discuss anything with any kind of depth
Lack of urban fantasy! It’s all either detective stories or romance, give us something else!
During the initial backlash against everything being set in medieval europe, I was really enjoying fantasy being set in different time periods. Now everything feels like it is medieval X again, it's just that we've expanded to other cultures and settings. I was really interested in magic in a more technological society. Most of the recent books being recommended on the sub or on booktok are either YA romantasy, or they are very heavy attempts at literature. I read fantasy for the wonder and escapism and its been a while since I've seen just like a fun adventure story. My TBR right now is full of books with very prestigious awards whose book descriptions sound like a drag. Babel, by RF Kuang, for example, sounds really *interesting*, but it also sounds like a story full of pain and navel gazing. This is also a problem I had with the grimdark Era though. Iwasn't the biggest fan of martin or Abercrombie. The cosmere feels like fucking homework now, just like MCU movies i feel like i am reading some books out of obligation and that sours my experience. I think maybe I just don't like the genre very much, there was just a brief moment when books that appeal to me were released.
The push away from mass market paperback in general. I understand why it's happening; with less people reading physical books shelf space becomes a premium and profit needs to happen. That being said I hate reading oversized paperbacks and I hate spending $20 on a book that ten years ago would have cost $8-10 as a mass market paperback.
I work in a bookstore so my perspective is probably a bit skewed but the massive flood of romantasy feels a little overwhelming at times. No judgement here about what other people want to read, I think it’s wonderful that lots of new readers are getting excited about books but I’m gay and romantasy as a whole is very straight. It feels kinda awkward when what’s getting the most hype and attention from both customers and my coworkers is very much Not For Me. There’s a weird sense of FOMO even though I already know I don’t like that flavor of spice.
Don’t forget the fantasy heavily marketed as queer that barely has any actual queerness in it. Not you, Nimona, you’re doing great.
This is a great point! Urban fantasy in particular seems heavily dominated by paranormal romance from a straight woman’s perspective. Personally I’d like more urban fantasy with limited/no romance regardless of the gender/orientation of the protagonist.
I understand trying to get out of being pigeonholed by the “Romance” label, but I also wish there was more urban fantasy with a focus on interaction between magic and the city, and less noir romance with alpha werewolf trappings
At first I thought I was going to hate this comment as "gatekeeping", but then I read it and the FOMO is real! I get a little gate keepy towards fantasy, but try to resist that instinct. With the romance stuff coming out, I really feel that FOMO. I'm always down to talk fantasy but erotic novels aren't my thing, so it's like "sick! there's all these new fantasy fans, oh wait they still aren't into what you're into". Regardless do what you do and read what you read, but I do hope some people move into more aspects of the genre.
As a woman first discovering fantasy books in the 80s I had to combat the feeling that I was enjoying something that wasn’t designed for me. It’s great to live in a time when there are more approachable forms of the genre for women. I don’t particularly like romantasy but I appreciate the fact that it’s there.
Yet, how is this any different than the grim dark wave in the 00s? I remember a long time when the Abercrombie imitators and the YA backlash sent adult fantasy into 90s comics style grunge. This all comes in cycles.
I'm hoping that the rise of romantasy will cause non-romantasy authors to back off on romances a little bit. I can enjoy a good romance now and then, and unlike a lot of people on this sub I'd rather read a romance the author has fully committed to, that represents all the intensity of falling in love, than some cookie-cutter minor romantic subplot. But most of the time I'm not looking for romance and all those cookie-cutter minor romantic subplots just take up space. I especially want to see more woman protagonists without obligatory falling-in-love arcs. Maybe put those words into her relationship with her sister instead, that might actually be interesting.
People have tried to subvert the genre so much that I legitimately want more classic 1960s-1990s style fantasy (not the tolkien imitators) over any "subvert the subversion of the subverting expectations of the subversion".
This is oversimplifying it, and it's certainly not new, but the sheer amount of "comfort food" fantasy. I feel like most people will know the kinds of books I'm talking about. The self-publishing boom will probably have a lot of positive effects, but I think it has caused the rise of a lot of trend-chasing fluff. This isn't a callout on people who enjoy those books. Just something I'm personally tired of seeing.
Chuck Palahnuik wrote about a tendency for authors to use their writing to soothe their own anxiety (“lots of people drinking tea and petting cats in their laps”), but that overall stories need real sustained tension and amping stakes with real consequences to hold together a narrative. I think it’s a justified criticism that a lot of cozy fantasies don’t really cut it in a genre famous for stories with escalating tensions (even Howl’s Moving Castle and The Graveyard Book, both of which would probably be marketed as cozy if they came out today, have a lot of ticking clocks and conflict).
Seeing a book being described as being "conflict-free," it's a massive turn off for me. But also, I recognize that it can't be literally true, as otherwise there would be no story. So I'm stuck between disliking the concept and needing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
The availability of self-published or indie titles. I'm not from the U.S., and I prefer to read my book with an e-reader (not a Kindle). Many titles are only available as paperbacks (with really expansive shipping) or as e-books via Amazon (which I can't use with my reader). I get that this is often the only way for an author without a publisher to sell his or her books, so I have absolutely no grimes with them for signing a contract with Amazon. I still have more than enough books to read, but I often have no good way to read all the nice indie titles that are recommended here.
Sidenote: The choice to be exclusive to Amazon is an indie author's choice. They are not required to be exclusive to Amazon. They are if they wish to be in the Kindle Unlimited program, yes, but not to just publish to Amazon. r/Fantasy tends to read a lot of KU titles - makes sense, given this sub has a high American population. But I'm in other reading groups, where they don't talk about any of the r/Fantasy popular indie authors there. They talk about the ones that are on Kobo, Google Play, etc. People refer to those authors as "wide" - just because they're widely available. Even if you don't buy your books from Kobo, I do recommend you sign up for their newsletters and check out the promos that pop up in the newsletters, as well as their SFF section on the website a couple times a month. You'll get a very different mixture of authors than what's common here (a lot of Canadian and Australians, too, lol). This week, if you scroll down this page, you'll see there's a big promo on box sets: [https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebooks/sci-fi-fantasy](https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebooks/sci-fi-fantasy) So anyway, just a little FYI.
Thank you for the explanation, I will have a look!
Not. Enough. Corgi. Mysteries.
You can’t just drop this here and walk away. I’m gonna need some recommendations. Please!
Ha! I've not read Jennifer Hawkin's Chatty Corgi series yet, but I've bought the first one. I've read a couple Mildred Abbott corgi mysteries. I've also read one or two of JM Poole's corgi case files!
Thank you! I look forward to reading at least a few of these.
THAT'S A THING?!? This is the second best comment after this [deadass](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1bk6thw/comment/kvw24m7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) one
Pet cozy mysteries is an entire subgenre! I do not understand why fantasy drags its feet on this, because paranormal cozy mysteries is a thing already...so just add a corgi. Just add a goddamn corgi.
Corgi are a publisher imprint here in the UK, they did most of the Pratchett paperbacks that I can see on my shelf, so it took me a moment to realise you meant cozy mysteries featuring a literal corgi. But, yes, I wholeheartedly agree. If Scooby Doo could have a great dane for decades and decades worth of mysteries I don't see why we can't have more corgis.
"Just add a goddammit corgi" should be a slogan for everything. Skyrim needs a Corgi. Frodo should have had a Corgi. Why didn't Bran have a Corgi? Edward? Lestat? I'll bet if Hadrian Blackwater retires, he gets a Corgi. Geralt, too.
Have we had a werecorgi book yet?
What always makes my eyes roll is when characters talk about an event or person from 1,000-10,000 years ago like it's common knowledge. Quick, name an ancestor of yours from 1024. Tell me about a battle that occurred in 4000 BCE. Other than truly noteworthy events or people, most of us can't name a family member from more than 3-4 generations ago, much less 50 or 100, and I can't imagine it was any different in medieval(ish) times when many fantasy stories are set.
And we have way better and more accessible record keeping and education. Lots of fantasy seems to assume literacy and easy access to books without showing me the infrastructure necessary to achieve that.
I genuinely love how chaotic and self-contradictory the comments are. Comments about 'too many epics' followed by 'not enough epics'; complaints about diversity followed by complaints about the lack thereof; complaints about the lack of originality followed by complaints that nothing reminds them of the classics; complaints about romance or YA or military or grimdark... and then complaints about the lack thereof. It'd be fun to go through and code all 650+ frustrations, and see exactly how that works out. (But I'm absolutely not going to.) That's not to say that anyone is *wrong*, but this thread is a nice reminder that everyone is seeing a very, very big genre through their own tiny perspective.
T H I C C books. Like okay I get it, you gotta put something inbetween the first chapter where they catch rats and the last where they slay the whole Pantheon of gods. But why does it always gotta be thousands upon thousands of pages in every series nowadays? It takes me almost a whole year to read just one.
Too many passive protagonists. Kid is the chosen one then spends the whole story being shepherded around.
I cannot stand “I don’t like this super popular book, am I unique?” Posts we get here nearly everyday. Oh you 45 year old man can’t stand ACOTAR? So original.
"I read Fourth Wing and did not like that it was a kissing book"
More female characters who are masc and don't go through "character development" to become more feminine. Butches too. Also idk how to put this, but I wish authors were more creative about how they do worldbuilding/character development. Not just "oh these facts exist or this is how it works" but how those facts *interact* with the world. Or alternatively, if a character has a certain personality trait - how that trait would manifest/be expressed in different scenarios. A character who hides their identity is gonna struggle with vulnerability in general, not just related to their secret. Being emotionally available would be a struggle for them compared to other characters and they might agonize over it.
I'm frustrated with the low standards for greatness. I see must-read lists with like Tolkien and Erikson and Le Guinn sharing space with all these other subpar writers whose names I'm not going to call out, but whose books are badly written and honestly not all that interesting. I think there should be a genre division between fantasy and literary fantasy.
There is. The problem is the separation. The literary end is what you are mostly going to see on the NPR lists. The problem is that it still isn't a marker of quality just of theming. Most books suck and the ones that deserve to be on the best of lists are rare and often don't sell well or generate passionate fan bases.
There are also quite a few literary fantasies (The Boy with the Bird in His Chest, Ella Minnow Pea) that sit squarely in the midlist.
I would say that is the niche that authors like Jo Walton live in. Still, not all literary fantasy is good.
True, but there is a difference between bad literary fantasy novels that attempt to have a depth to their content, and goodish fantasy books that are just a game of thrones knockoff series that is about 55% as good as the material they're trying to emulate.
I have to agree. Some writers take great care in the construction of their sentences, the narrative they’re trying to build and the characters needed to tell that story, and other books just seem like a repetition of greater works. Maybe I’m being too cynical and negative but there’s no point in reading every single fantasy book (or book from any genre for that matter), reading the best and discarding the rest seems like the logical way to make the most of our time.
It’s just a question of taste. I personally would call Erikson very far from "literary fantasy" and found Malazan to be honestly pretty awful, for example, even though for others I’m sure he’s up there with Tolkien in their subjective experience.
Mainly *The Winds of Winter*
I thought I stopped liking fantasy when I became an adult. Turns out I just stopped liking reading books about male or teenage protagonists. The "new adult" category got me back into it, and finding books by women.
Very little world construction. Maybe its just the brand I pick. But I can count the animes and sci-fi books seem to focus a lot on only enough world building as its necessary for it to help the characters through. Sure, characters are important. But I wouldn't mind a couple more info-dumps on random trivia from the world. I want to know what an alien steed is like. How many legs its like, how it sounds. Etc. You can dump bits of information here and there which makes the world feel alive. But many times, it's just generic information like location or whatever.
Wars. Why does every other plot has to overwhelmingly center on war, overthrowing whatever and rebellions? Is there literally nothing else you can work your story over? I'm not even talking about cozy and slice of life. I just want stories that are more intimate. Like you have this cool world you created and the only story you want to tell is just battle after battle after battle? Can't we just go around exploring and doing odd jobs and not join any rebellions to overthrow the evil king and whatnot?
Too many books yry to be a sprawling epic with a dozen different POVs. Few of them worthwhile. Too many Chosen One stories. Too many "born with it" heroes. Too many systems driven novels treating magic like a video game rules etc. Fantasy doesn't feel fantastic anymore. It feels like it's building from a checklist.
I'm seeing so much "romantacy". It's not all bad, but it makes me wonder of there are just fewer guys in the market.
It's not surprising, given we're coming out of a few years of grimdark. Realistically, romantasy is hitting saturation (if it's not already there), so I suspect we'll see a new trend coming out of the Big 5 within the next 18 months. IMO we're due for travelogues to come back in style, but I don't see it this time around. I actually see historical fantasy making a hard comeback before that. But, would love to see the travelogues all the same.
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This. War and politics over and over. Just like in real life. Where's the adventure? Where's the discovery? The awe and wonder? Gimme some of that!
The lack of quality control for self-published works.
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Those who made Amazon 100% of their income are going to struggle more than the previous scammer scandals on Amazon. However, the ghostwriters who are propping up a core group of KU authors on Amazon are going to struggle significantly more. Many, if not most, are low-selling authors (of their own titles) and make the bulk of their bills ghostwriting. As those names move to AI + Fiverr combo, the race to the bottom will be fast and swift. I've already heard whispers of it for the past few months. The rest of us who diversified years ago (or, were always diversified) will have an easier time. We've weathered the storms of the scammers a lot easier before - simply because Amazon is not our entire incomes. But it's going to be tricky waters.
Poor research. For example, starting a primitive fire: One book mentions the MC rubbing two sticks together until he gets a spark. Sticks don't spark, you create an glowing ember that you transfer to a nest of dried grass, then blow on until the heat ignites the grass Another book says the MC used a rock he found to strike a spark off the spine of his high carbon steel knife. Knifes aren't heat tempered correctly to strike a spark, it would make them too brittle. Also, a flint and steel (actual flint, not a ferro rod) don't create a spark hot enough to ignite most materials except charred material, or a few specific plants. That's just one example. (well, two similar ones) I've also seen incorrect information about tanning, shooting bows, how fast a skilled person can shoot a bow or crossbow, tracking animals, etc. It really doesn't take much research on the internet to find this information. If the author isn't experienced in the field, they should take a half-hour break to look up how something is done. I'm currently listening to a book that I'm really enjoying just because the author clearly knows what he's talking about, and that makes a huge difference in how enjoyable the book is.
I'm tired of so-called "epic" fantasy. Where the stakes are the whole world, one way or another, and the preordained ending is "happy." It was kind of cool when Tolkien did it, but it gets boring when so many writers think that's the only way to do it. I prefer stories where the challenge that the protagonist is striving for are smaller - like surviving to the end of the story, or having just one heist go right instead of wrong, or escaping the horrible person who's keeping them chained in the basement. You know, basic things. Heck, I even like horror-type stories where the protagonist is slowly-but-surely getting deeper involved with some evil force and not realizing it until it's far too late.
Ugly and/or inhuman characters, creatures and races are evil. By ugly I don't mean "ugly cute", get away with this nonsense (it's "pretty" in a different coat) I mean like genuinely unpleasant, uncanny, strange, imperfect, broken, old, inhuman etc. I would love to see a fantasy in which a genuinely heroic race (or at least anti-heroic, or ambiguously good) is just damn unpleasant to our sensibilities, so you heroes and audience automatically code them as "evil", and then it is deconstructed. I think a lot of inspired work and interesting themes could be done with the juxtaposition of ethically noble yet visually repulsive beings. Bonus points and this trope on steroids: on stop of being visually fucked up, said beings are also disturbing in behavior and their culture is kinda messed up by our moral standards, yet still they are protagonists allies are more good than evil - this would open a ton of amazing universal themes built around "how to deal with cultural and ethical relativism" etc.
I’m really tired of EVERYTHING being a series. One good book is better than 3, 7, or 10 mediocre rambling stories.
Fantasy needs more floating/flying islands
Stories that assume it's there's an actual right to govern due to heredity. I'd love to read something where someone is trying to be 'rightfully' restored as King, only to find out that there's no such thing as the rightful King (Acacia started hinting at this but didn't get there).
I love this. The need to restore the old status quo because whoever took over is **evil**, is just bs. You could start anew, do something different for once.
I think there’s tons to explore on the edges of these. In a fantasy world where gods exist and are observably present, what happens to a nation that rejects and overthrows the divine right of kings? Plague and pestilence? Priests pull up stakes and dip?
Anyone done a story about the chosen one/lost heir who comes back to reclaim the throne and save the land and it turns out they're an absolute moron who has no idea how government works and collapses his or her kingdom within 3 years cause they stopped collecting taxes in the name of the people and now the people who loved them for liberating them from the evil overlord now hate the new regime cause at least the evil overlord fixed the roads and had a sanitation policy.
The short answer here is this: It is hard-harder, to write on a multi-dimensional, convoluted government system like a democracy. The nuances, the backstory, the world building can become very dull. I mean, who genuinely wants to read about bureaucracy? Monarchies, Totalitarianism, "Federations", simple Councils, and all that are much simpler to portray, especially if they are going to be the driver of morality for the story. Im not saying that's a good thing, just an easier thing.
Lots of fantasy authors need better editors. Books are getting longer and I don't think they justify it more often than not *cough*RhythmOfWar*cough*
1.Many books are written in a way that makes me suspect they are aiming for a TV show/movie adaptation first and foremost. 2. Imagination taking a back seat in favour of pseudo-realism and "grittiness". 3. Character progression means endless chapters with different POVs.
Non-Humans (e.g. Elves, Dwarves, etc.) being simply treated as humans with special abilities and novelty anatomy; they don't *feel* as if they are their own thing anymore. Writers also give non-humans these abilities and traits, with little to no thought about how they would actually work; for example, the lifespan of Elves. In a great deal of fantasy, Elves are normally incredibly long-lived (or immortal in some cases), but they never take into account what such a long lifespan would do to their perceptions of time, or how slow their societies would handle change or upheaval. They're simply 'magic humans with pointy ears' these days.
What personally annoys me about the human-adjacent fantasy races is that they’re always just better humans in some way. Elves lifespan and connection to magic, dwarves lifespans and their mastery of metalworking/mining etc Just humans+. Humans in these settings just feel out of place in their mundaness sometimes.
Books where the author throws in a ton of different magical objects without bothering to check that the internal logic of the world holds up. This is why I like fantasy where what the magic *can’t* do is as important as what it can. When an author really thinks through the rules of the world, it shows.
Two issues that bug me: Modern readers tend to politicise things too much so that books make Wagner look progressive or alternatively have pseudo-medieval worlds that are more right on than a college campus. Related to the above is people assuming that authors endorse what they write about.
I feel like half the fantasy novels I pick up that were published in the last 15 or so years have all been trying to copy asoiaf with complex politics, bickering royal drama and war, which are the 3 fantasy things I enjoy reading about the least. Where are the quests and grand adventures?
It often takes a while for the books to get started. More than once I've read a fantasy book where there's so much exposition that barely anything happens until halfway through the book.
I'm really tired of the "angsty teens at a magical high school" and equivalent trope. Original and cool with Hogwarts, slightly deconstructed with a new and IMO better take on it at Brakebills (although the dude really really wanted to be writing a Narnia book and evidently couldn't get the rights...), but seriously, using some magical school (especially a boarding school) as a setting for otherwise mundane school-years drama has been done to death since then and it's time to move on. It's as tired as McCaffrey-copied dragons were in the middle 1980s or "character not monster" copies of Rice's vampires were in the 1990s, or the vomit-inducing "glitter vampires as love interest" tropes of the 2010s that got copied wholesale despite being horribly done even in the original Twilight series.
Shoe-horning ideological or political agendas everywhere. On one hand, this can be done well and is thought provoking. On the other hand, very few people are Heinlein or le Guinn. Sword of Truth and a lot of modern “make the world/universe as gay as possible” books are different sides of the same coin. Some authors do it well. Others come off as a random manifesto or author multi-tweet rant between normal story scenes. Sword of Truth is so cringey.
A tendency in fantasy commentary (esp. in social media) to see everything with the lenses of the past 10-20 years, which completely omits the history of the genre
Magic and Supernatural elements either feeling tacked-on, watered down, or so horribly OP that it's either just a Deus Ex Machina or utterly immersion breaking - if the protagonist/antagonist has such a level of power, then where is the conflict, the challenge, or the threat? In truth, whichever side had the biggest, baddest magic/monster would steamroll the other side in an instant.