On Fantasy

A few weeks back, I posted two covers for one book, the Advance Readers’
Copy and the final public release. The ARC had an illustration of the title
location of the book, the Floating Island. The final published version had a
dragon, with the island relegated to a cameo in the corner, for no apparent
reason, because the only dragon the book contained was drawn on the door of
an inn and only mentioned in a passing description. There started a conversation
on marketing, fantasy, dragons, and the merits thereof, where I admitted that
the presence of dragons in a story is a pretty good indicator that it’s
the type of fantasy I don’t like. This raised all sorts of hackles (not
just on this blog) and the subsequent challenges have been rattling around in
my head ever since. I’ve been sorting out where I stand on fantasy, what
works for me and what doesn’t and why, with the aim of eventually writing
it all down and tacking it up in the shop window of the internet so everyone
knows exactly what I mean. Since I can’t find my paintbrushes, it looks
like tonight is the night to do just that.

First I must reiterate: I DO NOT HATE DRAGONS. There is nothing inherent in
the large scaly flying saurians that sets my teeth on edge or makes me want
to burn things. My grudge is not against dragons themselves, but against the
type of fantasy they usually appear in. Before getting in a huff (or at least
before getting in a huff about that) please know that I have not read
all that much fantasy. This is probably due to having a few run-ins with fantasy
in my early years that I couldn’t get into or that was just plain bad;
it has pretty much turned me off the genre and has made me wary of any fantasy
recommended to me ever since. I only read fantasy that’s been recommended
because it’s too vast and terrifying a world to wander through unguided
and, like I said, I’m wary. Obviously, though, I do read fantasy –
in fact, almost all the fiction I read and own could be classified as fantasy.
So it’s not like I hate the whole diverse genre just because of a few
airborne reptiles. However, the sub-genres I connect with are the ones in which
dragons, if they appear at all, do not feature prominently.

Some examples:

LIKE

DISLIKE

Watership Down Redwall Harry Potter (most of the time) Discworld (and other Pratchettings The Bromeliad and Johnny Maxwell) Thursday Next The Dark is Rising The Bartimaeus Trilogy Roald Dahl's books

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Dragonriders of Pern Dragons: Fire and Ice The Hobbit (please allow me to explain myself) Harry Potter (sometimes) Anything with Dark Lords, stupid lizard- or pig-men, animate skeletons, magic crystals, mystical destiny, psychic visions of the past or future, telepathy, scrying, glowy fantasy weapons, names that read like randomly selected Scrabble tiles, ordinary Words that are capitalized to make them Special, or extensive use of deus ex machina.

( The Gory and Long-Winded Details )

In case you have any questions about the list above, I'll now address each
book individually: ( More Details )