I love the fantasy genre. I write in the fantasy genre. You have so much room–as either a reader or a writer–to breathe, to explore, to wonder and wander. To experience joy or grief or hope or conviction and walk away enchanted, thrilled, and sated. Whether you love cool magic systems, strange cultures, epic battles, conflicted characters, stunning landscapes, philosophy-coated plot or plot-coated philosophy, this is the place for you!
But there’s just one problem. Fantasy–particularly high or epic fantasy–is more or less made from scratch. Unlike historical fiction, it is not a plausible story painted on the already existing background of real events. Unlike non-fiction, it is not inherently informative. Unlike contemporary fiction, it does not have the touchstones of daily life on the actual third rock from the sun and the realistic pathways of the commonplace.
It has none of the guarantees of romance, and none of the clear objectives of a mystery. These two genres are particularly beloved because you know what you’re getting into to a certain degree, and that is often exactly what we want.
I do not think one genre or the other has any special claim to greatness. In the hand of a fantastic author, it hardly matters.
But in some strange ways , Fantasy is most like Literary Fiction, despite most people thinking they are polar opposites. Fantasy is nonsense and popcorn, while Literary Fiction is cerebral and high-brow, right? Right? Maybe, maybe not. But that’s not what makes them similar to a cautiously approaching reader, wondering what they are about to get themselves into.
In literary fiction, you walk in knowing nothing. The back of the book tells you “a soaring debut” “Joe-schmo pierces the soul and examines the contradictions of our inmost thoughts” “a harrowing examination of existential focal points” or whatever. And maybe it really is all those things, or hopefully something a little more coherent than that because I was just making stuff up.
You don’t know if it will bring you joy, or disgust you. You don’t know if it will tell a story or just convey a metaphor. You don’t know if it will end hopefully, tragically, or in plain, bland, exasperating neutrality. Will it even answer the questions it poses? Who knows? It certainly doesn’t promise to. You could love it or you could hate it. But you really have to dive in to find out. And often you find yourself reluctant to do so, because these things are so terribly hit-or-miss. If you are going to invest in that odd style of prose, those loosely woven vignettes, that lopsided angle of sight–you want to know that it’s going to be worth it. And you kinda can’t know that for sure, reviews notwithstanding.
Now with Fantasy, you do usually get an idea of the surface of what you’re getting into. The back of the book will give you something to work with. End of world stakes. Farmboy to hero pipeline. Grimdark. Morally gray characters. Cool magic. You get the idea.
But those are mere bullet points extracted from a whole entire world that has been built from the ground up, barely more helpful than the phrase “soaring debut” or “poignant and necessary for our times.” Indeed the tropes may be the only touchstones you have to orient yourself in your new surroundings, which is why I think authors sometimes rely a little too heavily on trope-marketing. Marketing a whole, complex, world of the likes of Tolkien is a touch harder than marketing “chosen one” or “honorable bastard” or “Greek-inspired”
The question becomes, how hard am I willing to work to understand a brand new world if that world is ultimately going to disappoint me? Am I willing to invest in the ongoing discovery of something constructed completely from scratch if, come book 3, it all falls to pieces and none of it comes to meaninful fruition? It was stuck together with elmer’s glue and when the pressure of the needed character development and the convoluted plot became too much, it collapsed.
Even an amazing world will not be guaranteed to satisfy, because there is such a thing as differences in taste. And you might not be able to figure out if this is a place you want to spend a lot of time just by looking at reviews. You have to dive in.
Is this relationship with this world and the characters born and raised there going to be heartbreaking in the worst way, or heartbreaking in the best way?
And there really is only one way to find out. Big risk, big reward.
J. L. Odom 