All Books Aloud

Looking to escape into another reality? Join us for a deep-dive into the fantasy genre!

• Elizabeth Brookbank & Martha Brookbank • Season 2 • Episode 3

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Romantic fantasies have taken the book world by storm in recent years, but fantasy stories that allow us to break free of the rules and limitations of our own world and reality are as old as human history. We wanted to learn more about the genre's history and its variations and sub-genres. 

What's the difference between fantasy and science fiction? Between high fantasy and low fantasy? What about all the sub-genres? Are Romantasy really something new or are they just a marketing ploy? How about cozy fantasy? Join us as we take a deep dive into fantasy and add lots of books to our TBR that will help us escape the current reality!
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Books we're reading in this episode: 
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Just for the Summer by Abby Jiménez
Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler
The House Witch by Delemhach
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Sources:

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Intro and outro music: "The Chase," by Aves.

Do you have thoughts, questions, or ideas for future episodes? Email us at allbooksaloudpod@gmail.com. And if you want to learn more about the podcast, visit our website at allbooksaloudpod.com.

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Read on!

[All Books Aloud intro and theme music]

Martha: Hey Liz.

Elizabeth: Hi, Martha. How are ya?

Martha: I'm doing well.

How are you? 

Elizabeth: I'm good. Yeah. Yeah. What are you reading right now? Oh,

Martha: books that I am obsessed with. One of them is a reread. It's Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmas. The reason why I'm re listening is because it [00:01:00] is our pick for the Fireside Book Club.

Elizabeth: Oh,

Martha: , we picked it just as general fiction for those of you who have never heard of it, it's about a woman in the fifties named Elizabeth Zott, who is a chemist. And it follows her journey in that obviously very male centered world. And being in the fifties, she's fighting, heavily against the patriarchy and what's expected of women for the time, and there is a love interest subplot.

It's not the main focus of the book, I wouldn't say, and it's just such a great read. You'll laugh, you'll cry. There's an adorable dog named 630 who has his own personality, and I love him so much.

Elizabeth: I love 630 more, I think, than any, I'm going to say more than any fictional animal I've ever read. And that is saying something because I, you know how much I love [00:02:00] animals and I love when they're in books. Oh God. I love 630.

 I just absolutely love that book. Five stars all the way from me.

 There's a series of it on Apple TV. Did you ever watch it?

Martha: I started watching it and I did think it was really good, but , it just didn't capture my interest. I think because I already know the story so well, I was kind of like, yeah, yeah, I know. I know what's going to happen. You know,

Elizabeth: I do. I watched all of it. probably just because I loved the story so much, but 

I didn't think that it was a, , really great adaptation. . What's the name of the lead actress who plays Elizabeth Zott?

Martha: Brie

Larson, 

Elizabeth: oh yeah, yeah. Brie Larson. That's, yeah., she's just not how I envisioned Elizabeth Zott. I feel like that casting is a little bit weird. And, , the casting of 630, speaking of 630, I thought was completely wrong.

I mean, the dog was adorable, but it's just not the type of dog that's [00:03:00] described in the book. So, 

That was a little bit of a tangent. Sorry.

Martha: I digress. But yeah, it, the book is fantastic. The adaptation is okay, , my physical book that I'm reading right now is Just for the Summer by Abby Jiménez. And I've read two of her other books. I've talked about it before on the podcast. The first one I read was called Part of Your World, and then the second one is Yours Truly. And I love how Abby Jimenez writes because , all the characters are in all of the books, but they're just side characters.

So you stay in the same world, in the same setting. in all three of the novels. I'm not sure about her other ones because I haven't read them, but as at least these three, that's the case. And I really like that. And her characters are so good. She, similarly to Emily Henry, has the knack for really quickly introducing you to the characters and [00:04:00] you feel like you know them right off the bat and you fall in love with them right away, she gives them real problems, real trauma that's very relatable. , it's not all just fluff, Justin, who is the main male character in this book, I think he's my new favorite book boyfriend. I fell in love with him right off the bat. It's so cute. 

, and she always includes a pet in her

books too. In Part of Your World there's a goat that's heavily featured

and in this one there's a Brussels Griffon mix rescue dog that he names Brad after his best friend who screws him over so he names his dog Brad. And it's like a whole thing.

It's, I don't know, it's cute. So

yeah, she always sprinkles in something for the animal lovers.

Elizabeth: I like that.

Martha: Anyway, so what are you reading? 

Elizabeth: My physical book is called Adelaide by Genevieve Wheeler and I just started [00:05:00] it a few days ago so I'm not super far, I would say I'm like 70 or 80 pages in. I'm still going with it though, I'm gonna, I'm, I don't 

Martha: Uh oh. Oh, 

Elizabeth: The way that it's described is as a love story. It's not described as a romance, I wasn't under the impression that it's a romance, but it definitely is a lot darker and grimmer in terms of, the main character has gone through a lot of trauma and it's pretty raw.

The story that she's describing is her realizing how much all that trauma has seeped into her relationships. It's the type of thing that you, in your mid twenties, you're like, oh, maybe I need therapy, kind of a thing, you know? And I just wasn't expecting that, I think, and , on the very first page in the prologue is her going to the hospital because she attempted suicide.

And so I was like, Oh, this is [00:06:00] not, this is not the book that I was expecting, but I did keep going. It was compelling enough and interesting enough that I kept going. I will also share that the reason that I put it on my TBR in the first place and picked it up is because I Saw her tweet when she was announcing that she got her publication deal And the description of the book sounded almost exactly like the book that I was writing at the time which made me, , kind of upset and freak out a little bit.

 And the reason I'm talking about this is just because I think it's, it's something that happens a lot in books is that, and we talk about on this podcast, is that we try to distill books down to, , these pithy little sentences or tropes or, , whatever.

, So this story is about an American that's living in London. She's like a fish out of water. She meets a British guy and falls in love, but then heartbreak ensues. And so that on the surface is similar to the book that I was writing. But in actuality, the books could not be more different.

 They're completely [00:07:00] different books. And so I just found it really fascinating that . I was so sure that this book was going to be, like, the book that I had written to the point where, , it made me almost want to give up on writing my own book because I was like, oh, well, someone already wrote this book.

 And I don't know. , there's something about it that , just made me start thinking about the way that we talk about books and the way that we categorize them and try to describe them to each other and, genres, reading doorways, all that stuff that we talk about.

And it's so hard to really capture the essence of a book with any of those things. you know. So Yeah, 

Martha: gotta read them. you just, gotta read them and see. 

Elizabeth: it really does come down to that sometimes.,

the other book that I'm reading, however, is really fun. I'm listening to The House Witch by Delemhach, which was a recommendation from you, and I know I was listening to it the last time we talked, I think, and so I'm going really slow with it, as I tend to do with audiobooks. But that is not an indication that I'm not enjoying it.

I am very much enjoying [00:08:00] it. It's a cozy fantasy, which I've never read before,

and I'm not going to describe it because I think I described it on a past episode, . But, , speaking of cozy fantasy, 

Martha: yeah, the House Witch was a recommendation that I gave Liz because I read the series. last month or the month before and I've been using StoryGraph, which we've talked about on a previous episode.

It's kind of like an indie alternative to Goodreads. It's a way to keep track of what you're reading and it puts into graph form some of the statistics about your reading preferences and it helps match up books that it thinks you might like based on what you've already read. So I was scrolling through my story graph, and of the 46 books that I've read this year, 30 of them were categorized as fantasy.

Elizabeth: Mmm.

Martha: And specifically, I've been reading a lot of cozy [00:09:00] fantasy, Even though we're big proponents of choosing books by story doorways and not just genre, there's no doubt that genre plays a big role in someone's preferences a lot of times. So it just got me thinking about fantasy and I wanted to do a deep dive into the genre.

Elizabeth: Yeah, sort of how we did with romance. So, we're gonna talk about , the history, how it's evolved, all that stuff.

Martha: And the state of it now.

Elizabeth: Right, and I, I mean the state of it now, I feel like is the, you know, place where I come in with most of my interest. I'm not a huge fantasy reader, though I definitely wouldn't say that it's historically been a genre that I didn't like in the way that I would say that about some other genres that I since have opened myself up to, right?

I always have sort of liked fantasy. I've talked on the podcast about how my husband and I read Lord of the [00:10:00] Rings together, the whole series of Lord of the Rings, and I really love that. And when I was a teenager, I read Mists of Avalon, which we'll talk about a little bit later when we're talking about the history, which is basically a feminist retelling of King Arthur stories.

And I remember really, really loving that. And so it's not like I have read fantasy that I haven't liked, but for some reason it's just not something that I am really quick to pick up. It's hard to know why that is, but something that I have been really fascinated with in the last few years, especially since we've been talking more about our reading to each other, is , this romantasy trend.

 You were really into, , the Sarah J. Maas books and the Rebecca Yarrow's books, and I don't know that I would have even, , picked up on those books as early as I did if it wasn't for the fact that you were reading them. And we've talked a few times , about , [00:11:00] those books and that trend of romantasy on the podcast, and I just felt like After we talk about things several times, it becomes a like, well, should we do a whole episode on this, you know?

, and coincidentally, I just read an article in the New York Times when we were thinking about doing this topic that is about romantasy, that I thought was really strange, as sometimes articles in the New York Times are. But because it's in such a big publication, mainstream publication, definitely worth talking about.

We'll talk about it later, we'll get into some of the more fundamental, , definitions in history first. But just to tease , what you might think about this article, it's, the title of it is A 481 Year Age Difference? For some readers, that's hot. the subtitle is Disappointed by Swipe Culture and Perhaps Reality.

Some Readers Pine for the much, much older shadow daddies, quote unquote, of romantic [00:12:00] novels, . As you can tell from the title in the subtitle, the writer thinks that this trend is very much about women and gender dynamics and the reality of dating right now. . And I'm obviously always interested in talking about that stuff.

So,, we'll get into all that. 

Martha: lots, lots to get into with fantasy. But let's just start by defining what exactly is fantasy, what makes something fantasy. And the Encyclopedia Britannica defines it as Fantasy, imaginative fiction dependent for effect on strangeness of setting, such as other worlds or times, and of characters, such as supernatural or unnatural beings. And then I found a blog on Masterclass that defined it as, Fantasy is a genre of literature that features magical and supernatural elements that do not exist in the real world. So it's different from sci [00:13:00] fi in that it's not really based. on anything that's actually possible, right? Whereas sci fi, there's more of a foothold in something that is based in science and could potentially be real, even if it's not right now. Do you agree with that?

Elizabeth: Yeah, I do. And this actually helps me because since we've been talking about things like genre, I've wondered why sci fi and fantasy have been grouped together so closely like they are, because Because,, thinking about a fantasy like Lord of the Rings and a science fiction novel that's very scientific about space travel, , like The Martian or something, those books seem so different to me.

I've never really understood, , why are these? lumped into the same category and talked about in the same breath. But I think that it is exactly what you just said both of them [00:14:00] are things that are not real right now, , as opposed to general fiction which is usually set in our contemporary society in reality or historical fiction which is set in the past in a time that actually existed.

And even if the story isn't. with real characters or based on real events, it still strives for accuracy to what reality was really like, whereas science fiction and fantasy are the two genres where you sort of get to make a story about things that don't really exist, but science is things that could exist, 

Martha: Yes. 

Elizabeth: whereas fantasy is things that couldn't exist, basically.

Which is what you just said, yeah.

Martha: Yeah. And when we're talking about preferences and lumping the two together, Although I am trying to challenge myself to read more sci fi, I prefer fantasy heavily over sci fi , because it's about [00:15:00] escapism. , it's not based in reality. It's probably never gonna be real. I don't think magic actually exists.

 I want to escape. I don't want to be thinking about the real world. Whereas I find sci fi a lot of times to be somewhat dystopian. It's a future that we don't necessarily want to see. And that can kind of trigger my anxiety and , get me worrying and thinking about like how all the things could go wrong, if that makes sense.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it does. That's a great way to, to distinguish between the two. fantasy that half of the genre is a lot older than the science fiction part.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: Some of the sources that I was reading trying to figure out the beginning of fantasy were talking about how it's actually kind of hard to pin down because fantasy is , in one culture is myth or religion in another culture, right?

, it goes back so far. Things like the Epic of Gilgamesh for [00:16:00] the people at the time, , they might've thought that this was based on a not that distant past that was closer to reality where, you know what I mean? , this idea of these mythic.

Supernatural almost esque stories that get told , in cultures all around the world. And so , it can be a little bit hard to say what

the first fantasy is or where did it begin, but that's part of why it's so, , satisfying and like you were just talking about, that's why, there's something about it that's built into our human psyche almost.

Martha: It's been around basically since the beginning of humanity, right?

But what I found so interesting when we were researching for this episode, I was trying to find, , what was the first fantasy novel? And I don't really think that anyone can say for certain, but there are a few that are cited as being some of the first.

But, A good quote I found, again, in that Masterclass article, and we'll, , link everything in the show notes, it said, Fantasy as a literary genre is much [00:17:00] more recent, and it differs from its predecessors because its authors are known, and both they and their audiences understand the works to be fictitious.

So there was a turning point where There wasn't a question about whether people believed in it almost like a religion or that sort of thing. It's like, no, everyone's on the same page. We know this is a work of fiction.

And that's where I think the genre as we know it got started.

Elizabeth: yeah, that totally makes sense. Because also about the authors being known, no one knows who wrote Gilgamesh. And people know that someone named Homer wrote the Odyssey, but there's debate about , was that one person? Was it more than, you know, , we don't actually know, 

, so that makes a lot of sense.

Another definition that I found, even though I think that the definitions that you've already talked about are really good, is I thought it was interesting.

I found that , Samuel Taylor Coleridge, , had a connection with this type of [00:18:00] literature, which I didn't. associate with him before? , I think of him as a poet and as a philosopher. , but he said apparently that, , fantasy exists, if your willingness to suspend disbelief is required.

So, like you were saying with science fiction, and people get really caught up with this when they're reading science fiction, right? , we've heard Alex and Michael talk about books that they haven't liked reading because they notice something in them that wasn't actually possible, or that didn't make scientific sense.

Which to me, I'm like, why? I don't want to be thinking about that when I'm reading a book. But , for people who enjoy it, that's part of reading the books, is that you don't have to suspend disbelief. , it's all something that is scientifically possible. Whereas fantasy, like we were just saying, you have to be willing to suspend disbelief because it's not things that are possible.

Martha: Yeah, it's so funny, , preference is just such an interesting thing because that's for me exactly what makes it fun. And for someone like [00:19:00] Alex or Michael, it's

just different.

So when I was trying to find what the quote unquote first fantasy novel was, the first place I went to was ChatGPT, because I figure, , it's a crowdsourcing of all of the search engines, and so I asked ChatGPT, and it said, you know, it's kind of like a crowdsourcing of all of the search engines, and so I asked ChatGPT, and it said, Pretty much with its full chest that this book called, and I don't know how to pronounce it, but it looks like Fan Tastes, the way it's spelled, it's P H A N T A S T E S, by George MacDonald, was the first published novel that was geared towards an adult audience.

And it was published in 1858, 

Elizabeth: I have some very complicated feelings about ChatGPT, especially being a librarian. I don't love using ChatGPT for stuff like this. I love using [00:20:00] it for, , idea generation or, I don't know, there's lots of things that it's good for, , but. I don't like using it for these type of research questions because you don't actually know where it got its information, or if it's actually even basing it on information, or if it's just basing it on, this sounds like the type of answer that you would be looking for, for this, right?

 It's not really crowdsourcing all the search engines. It got fed all of the internet up to whatever it was, 2021. And It's almost been described to me as auto complete, it gives you an answer that sounds like it should be right sometimes it's not right.

So I'm not saying that this isn't right, because as we were just talking about, it's hard to really pin it down. But when I was looking into it, I actually found, some people say that the first self conscious fantasy was by a woman, actually, In 1837, Sarah Coleridge, who was Samuel Taylor Coleridge's daughter, wrote a book called Phantasmian.

So I thought that was [00:21:00] really interesting because I'm starting to wonder, why Chat GPT chose this other book that was written later. By a man and not the earlier book by a woman. I don't know. I don't know.

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: , we'll do our, AI episode later in the season. But yeah, I thought that was really interesting.

But one or both of those or maybe neither of them could 

have been the first fantasy novel.

Martha: hmm. 

So this novel by Fantase. The description says Fantase follows the journey of a young man named Enados. A N O D O S, who on the eve of his 21st birthday discovers a magical world after opening an ancient desk left to him by his father. He's transported into fairyland, a mystical and dreamlike realm where the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur.[00:22:00] 

Elizabeth: Hmm.

Martha: Sounds, sounds like a fantasy.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. , Phantasmian by Sarah Coleridge. It says, is prose interspersed with lyrical verse. The hero encounters spirits of the earth and storm has many adventures, including being transformed into a flying serpent. And finally triumphs over the forces of darkness.

Martha: Hmm.

Elizabeth: So again, that pretty much sounds like a fantasy novel, 

Martha: Yeah. And then obviously since the 1800s, it's evolved there's a ton of fantasy subgenres and these are just a few. There's high or epic fantasy. So think Lord of the Rings, low fantasy, magical realism, sword and sorcery, all those Arthurian tales, dark fantasy, fables, fairy tales, superhero fiction, could even be classified as fantasy,

[00:23:00] romantasy, and cozy fantasy.

Elizabeth: What is low fantasy as defined against high fantasy?

Martha: I found a good article on Book Riot that defines the difference between high fantasy and low fantasy. High fantasy is usually set in a totally alternative fictional world with magical elements, sometimes called epic fantasy, and the hallmarks of the subset of the fantasy genre include a high page count, lots of characters.

There's usually a quest involved and. Most importantly, an alternative or secondary world as opposed to the real or primary world. So

lots of world building, a lot of different elements, a lot of moving parts, , usually like a good versus evil situation and lots of high stakes involved. Whereas low fantasy is otherwise set in a normal world. It says some readers refer to low fantasy as [00:24:00] intrusion fantasy since magical and fantastical elements intrude into the real world.

It's related to urban fantasy or contemporary fantasy, magical realism, and paranormal genres. So not as much world building.

Elizabeth: , you read it more than I do, so what are some of the common tropes? We talked about tropes a lot in the romance episode. Are there tropes in fantasy?

Martha: so I think one of the most obvious ones is good versus evil.

We see this all the time, Voldemort versus Harry Potter, , Lord of the Rings. Sauron and all the orcs and all of his little dark creatures versus, , everyone else essentially. Another big one is the reluctant hero. So Frodo Baggins, perfect example. , the anti hero. A lot of the shadow daddies come to my mind for the antihero. 

Elizabeth: Something that people on TikTok talk about a lot with [00:25:00] these books is like a morally gray character. So maybe they're the hero, but they're also not that good of a person. Is that what that 

Martha: Yeah, yeah, I think so. That's what I would say. The Chosen One. So again, Harry Potter is a great example of that. The Mentor. Gandalf would be a good example of the Mentor. The Tragic Backstory.

Elizabeth: Yeah, there always has to be a tragic 

Martha: yeah, I keep just thinking about Harry Potter. It just fits all, all,

of these. , The Quest and or The Prophecy. The Arthurian. Stories are a really great example of this. There's usually always a quest involved. The Middle Ages. That's a huge trope in fantasy, and one that I really like.

Even if it's, , set in a fantasy world with fairies and stuff, it's more fun if it seems like it's in the Middle Ages somehow.

Elizabeth: That's what I was gonna kind of say when you were talking about it's a world that doesn't exist because I totally get that as the difference between [00:26:00] high and low fantasy. That was explained in a way that is really easy for me to understand that. I feel like I've never had it, explained that easily before, but I do sometimes get a little bit annoyed when people talk about it being not annoyed, but it's not a totally different world.

It's basically a fictionalized version of medieval time.

Martha: It

Elizabeth: A lot of times, right? it can

Or I mean, at least it has elements. Like Game of Thrones. to the point where people would argue that something needed to happen in Game of Thrones, like, , there needed to be all the rapes because it was historically accurate.

And I was like, wait a minute. I thought it was a world that doesn't actually exist. So , there's definitely a crossover there between, yes, it's a world that doesn't exist, but we have to have something that tethers us to it, right? It has elements of a world that we can at least recognize.

And so that, that's a little bit of a permeable barrier, 

Martha: Yeah, we're constrained by what our imagination is capable of,[00:27:00] 

Elizabeth: Yeah. Right.

Martha: it still has some basis in something known for sure. 

So a few other tropes, the lost heir, a magical school, and, um, Ancient magical object, forbidden magic, royal politics, and kingdoms at war. So Game of Thrones, perfect

example of that. And then a parallel world or veiled magic. So I think of the Chronicles of Narnia, you're going through a wardrobe into a parallel world.

Mm

Elizabeth: hmm. Yeah, that makes sense, that exists alongside the real world, where, well, that Harry Potter too.

Martha: hmm.

Elizabeth: Okay. Interesting. Because we've talked before about how, when it comes to things like science fiction, sometimes we don't know what to expect because we're not as conversant with the tropes, 

, , people who read it a lot could be able to pick up.

a book and know, oh, this is the equivalent of , there's only one bed or whatever for romance, or , we were talking about the, , this is how to lose the time war in one of our episodes [00:28:00] and we both felt like we were completely at sea with that in the beginning, but then our brother who reads a lot of science fiction and fantasy felt more comfortable with that.

world. And so I think that is all part of, being conversant with the genre tropes 

and Yeah, 

So we mentioned some of the big well known books, but , what are some of the other big fantasy books so that people who are maybe not as familiar with it have , some ideas of where they could go if 

Martha: Yeah, I also think that a lot of people don't realize that they have read fantasy because , it's something like C. S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia that maybe they read when they were a kid. , so yeah, some of the notable authors, obviously we've already touched on J. R. R. Tolkien. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, George R. R. Martin, who wrote A Song of Ice and Fire, the series, which is better known as Game of Thrones, that's what the show was from,

[00:29:00] ursula K. Le Guin, who was one of the earlier prominent women authors in the genre, and she wrote the Earthsea series. Robert E. Howard, who wrote the Conan the Barbarian series.

Terry Pratchett, who wrote the Discworld series, and a lot of other stuff. J. K. Rowling, who wrote Harry Potter. Michael Moorcock, who wrote Elric of Melnabone series, which I probably just butchered that pronunciation.

 Neil Gaiman, American Gods, The Sandman series, and Stardust. And Philip Pullman, who I loved as a young reader. Who wrote his Dark Materials, which was a series that had the Amber Spyglass, the Golden Compass, and The Subtle Knife.

Those were the

books in the series.

Elizabeth: There are definitely some that I Not that I don't understand now are fantasy, but that I wouldn't immediately. I think that probably when I think of fantasy, I mostly am thinking of high [00:30:00] fantasy.

Martha: Mm-Hmm. 

, and this is by no means a complete list of, , big hitters in fantasy. Brandon Sanderson 

I would consider him to be a very prolific fantasy author. Sarah J. Mass, of course, so yeah, not a comprehensive list. So if we didn't shout out your favorite fantasy author, don't come for us, but we would be

curious who they are. So send us an

Elizabeth: Yeah. You can email us, just don't get mad at us. No, none of this will be exhaustive, the way that the romance episode wasn't exhaustive. We're just talking about examples and, trying to figure it out for ourselves, right? I think some of this is, expanding what I thought fantasy was and, , trying to figure out.

, what it's all about.

Martha: Mm hmm.

 When I was researching, I got really curious about how many fantasy readers there are worldwide. But I really don't think there's a good way to calculate that.

But there's probably

other metrics that can gauge how popular the genre is.

Elizabeth: yeah, I did find some statistics in [00:31:00] my research. I will caveat these by saying that statistics about book publishing are notoriously hard to get reliable, and more than reliable, complete. statistics because sales numbers from the big, , three or four publishers that still exist are of course proprietary and bookstores often , will share their sales numbers but that only is going to give you part of the picture.

You can get some stuff about Amazon but not all of it so Take it all with a grain of salt, is I guess what I'm saying. I didn't find anything about how many worldwide readers there are. But, one source that I looked at, said that fantasy genre is the most popular genre among young adult readers, which when I started looking at the evolution of the genre over time, which we'll talk about in a little bit, that actually made a lot of sense.

, but this said that even still it [00:32:00] makes up about 30 percent of young adult, , book sales. It's the top selling genre in the UK. of any for adults and young adults for the past five years. Which I really thought was interesting because it's only for the UK, it's not for the US. And I always want to think of the US and the UK book markets as being really similar, but there are some definite differences.

So apparently fantasy is even bigger there than it is here.

Martha: That's so interesting.

Elizabeth: Or possibly other genres aren't as big there as they are here. And so that push, it's hard to say which, right?

Martha: yeah, 

Elizabeth: , in terms of, genres that generate the most sales in dollars. I was not surprised to find that romance is yet again at the very top of this pile and really blows everything out of the water. , it's 1. 4 billion with a B for the past year. [00:33:00] I think that was 2023.

And the next biggest genre is crime slash mystery, which is 728. So it's like half

Martha: Yeah,

Elizabeth: of romance. Romance is just. Yeah, romance is the elephant in the book publishing industry. , and then after that it's religious inspirational, , the Bible is always the highest sold book in history. Whether you want to say it's fiction or non fiction, it's up to you.

 I'm saying that because this list is otherwise, it's fiction genres. So obviously I said that at the beginning so I just wanted to caveat that that's not me saying that. It's. the source that I got it from. Categorized as religious inspirational with all these other ones.

, it's also around 720 million, interestingly. , , almost the same amount as mystery. And then science fiction fantasy is number four at 590 million. That's still a lot of money, , 

Martha: Well, and they group, the two together.

So it's hard to say exactly, 

Elizabeth: yeah, it's hard to find it uncoupled from [00:34:00] science fiction, really.

Martha: And horror was 79. 6 million.

That was 

Elizabeth: which is so much lower the next highest, 

Martha: Wow, Yeah, that's quite a jump. 

Elizabeth: so when you think about it that way, even though it's number four, , it's still definitely one of the most popular genres, just not the most popular.

Martha: Well, , I don't know what it would take for any genre to catch up to romance at this point.

Elizabeth: , which I think explains, partially at least, why romantasy is so popular, because it's romance and another genre blended together. basically romance and any other genre is going to be popular, 

because romance is so popular.

Martha: point.

So I've been reading so much cozy fantasy lately that it really got me thinking About cozy fantasy as a sub genre. And I had this hypothesis of it must be somewhat new or [00:35:00] relatively new.

I can't imagine that cozy fantasy has been around all that long. So I was wondering how the genre has evolved in the last decade or two.

Elizabeth: Yeah, that is an interesting question. I did look into the history of fantasy with the perspective of how did it evolve from being basically completely dominated by white men, 

which all books and publishing were to a certain extent, , in the past, just because of the way that Western society is ordered.

we've made that caveat before that we're talking about these things from our own positionality, we're not experts on every region of the world. But in terms of western culture, fantasy was definitely dominated by white men. And I would 

say science fiction fantasy as a whole has, , even a bigger reputation, at least in my mind, and what I've read, as being [00:36:00] really heavily patriarchal?

Would you say that that is the feeling that you've gotten than other genres? 

Martha: Yeah,

, I think because of some of the tropes, like the fight of good versus evil and the damsel in distress and, , that sort of thing lends itself really well to a patriarchal lens.

Elizabeth: like the hero's journey is

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: what all, what almost all fantasy was, 

basically. hmm. Mm So I did look into it from that perspective of trying to figure out when did this start changing, because it certainly has changed. I mean, we've talked about the mainly women authors that write romantasy, and then, , I think we've talked before about this cozy fantasy, , The House Witch series that we've both been reading is written by Delemhach, who's non binary, uses they them pronouns.

 And so, yeah, it certainly has changed. . I just want to caveat this a little bit because the Martha's smiling because, , I'm a little bit self conscious about this. So the research that I was [00:37:00] able to find on it, it's not that I think it's bad, but it's just not very many scholarly sources exist to give me the information that I wanted about this.

And that in and of itself is actually really interesting to talk about the history of this genre and of genre books overall, because Another caveat that I'll give is that I'm not an expert in literature. I don't have a PhD. I'm not an expert in literary criticism. But it was my major in college, and I was the humanities librarian at my university for several years.

So I do know more about it than, Joe Schmo off the street. But there really isn't much written about science fiction and fantasy as literature, or even any other genre, like romance as literature, or. Crime or mystery novels as literature anything that you would think about as a genre book as opposed to Literary fiction or general fiction or classical fiction was not really taken seriously as a subject in academia [00:38:00] until the last 20 or 30 years.

, and in fantasy specifically, I think that part of this is that fantasy was not only put in this genre fiction bucket, but specifically was seen as being for children. So we talked a little bit earlier about how it's one of the most popular genres for children. And, that was part of the reason why it was kept out of serious consideration.

I'm doing quotes around serious with my fingers. , because I'm not certainly saying that this is how I feel, , but how academia felt about it, certainly. So , for example, when I was in college, which granted was a long time ago, was about 20 years ago, and was an English major, there were no classes about science fiction.

So, Whereas now, in any university, including my own, you could take an English class about science fiction and study it from an academic perspective, 

you know. And that just didn't exist when I was an English major 20 years ago. So things definitely have changed in that [00:39:00] respect. but that means that it was a little bit difficult to find research that was more, than 10 years old, basically, , about this when I was looking into it.

 There is a book, if you're really interested in this, called A Short History of Fantasy by Mendelssohn and James, which was published in 2009. And it makes the argument that fantasy novels , can and should be considered literary works, , enjoyed by both adults and children and should be taken seriously within the academy.

I then also found some reviews of that book that are pretty critical of it, which maybe isn't surprising given that was, , a pretty controversial idea that science fiction would be, taken seriously in this way. , but I just wanted to put that out there about that book.

, I did get some of my information from that book and from, , other essays that I found, in various places, some of them in the library databases and some of them online. Part of what actually opened this up so that this change happened over the [00:40:00] past couple of decades is the introduction of things like feminist criticism , or those crossover, quote unquote, academic disciplines like gender studies or communication studies that look at a certain phenomenon across what would be considered traditional academic disciplines.

 It's all, related, right? , Women being let into the academy and women's Topics of interest or the study of gender and how it influences people in society being taken seriously also led to all of these other topics being able to be given that treatment in academia.

 Once you open up one thing, other things start opening up, it's when you hear people talking about rising tides lifts all boats kind of a thing. , in gender studies, you're looking at the phenomenon of gender as a construct across all of the different disciplines.

So you look at women authors, you look at women in history, you look at the way that contemporary economics are, influencing women , [00:41:00] are unequal , and all of that stuff is part of what you're looking at. And so this idea that you would. broaden that academic lens a little bit.

Is part of what started to open up the study of fantasy as a serious thing. So anyway, that was a long caveat before I actually started talking , about the history, but I felt like it was important because it's related to how all of this stuff started to open up and be more accessible for different kinds of people in the last few decades.

Until about the 1960s, the genre was very male dominated. , Even though Sarah Coleridge might have been the first fantasy novel, which is interesting. , in the same way that a lot of people say that Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was the first science fiction novel, but then, of course, science fiction.

similarly is 

very dominated 

by men. Yeah. The slight exception to this was children's literature. . There was an author called E. Nesbitt who wrote children's books. , that would [00:42:00] definitely be called fantasy, but like a lot of other authors, earlier than 1960, she used her initial so that you couldn't tell right off the bat that she was a woman.

, she wrote earlier than 1960s, I want to say. I didn't write that down, but I want to say it was maybe the 30s or 40s. , and then in adult fantasy, there are very few women before that time period of the 1960s, but , again, the ones that there were, it's hard to say for sure which authors were and weren't, unless we know for a fact that they were women, because a lot of them used initial pseudonyms or even legally changed their names.

One example I found was C. L. Moore, who wrote 40s, for science fiction and fantasy magazines. , another is this writer called Andre Norton, whose name at birth was Alice, and, changed her name to hide her gender, not for any reason of gender identification, but just to hide her gender because she was writing in this genre that [00:43:00] was so dominated by men.

So I thought that was really interesting.

Martha: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting that you just said there was a slight exception in children's literature, but of course it would have been more acceptable for a woman to be writing for children,

 Right?

Elizabeth: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, anything to do with children is always more acceptable and more seen as the woman's 

realm. 

? 

Yeah. 

And this is not just fantasy where this pseudonym thing was common. The Bronte sisters all used pseudonyms when they first started publishing so that people wouldn't know that they were women.

, Jane Austen published anonymously as a lady her first couple of books. So even though people knew she was a woman, they didn't know who she was because it was not something that would have been good for her reputation. So this is definitely not just in fantasy that this was a phenomenon.

It's just part of the Society at the time, but around the 1960s, not [00:44:00] coincidentally at the same time as second wave feminism, there started to be more women in fantasy, both as authors and protagonists. Something that I didn't realize that I found really interesting is that actually some of the early women who were writing in this genre, namely Ursula Le Guin, who I always thought of And who was a very feminist, , author and a woman who talked a lot about gender equality 

she initially wrote a book that conformed in a lot of ways , and so did other women , who started to break in around this time, conformed to a lot of those tropes that we were talking about, conformed to a lot of the existing. structures in fantasy where, , her wizard was male. She followed a lot of the same tropes that people would expect, right?

Because she wanted them to read the book. But , this essay that I read pointed out that. the same time as Ursula and some of these other authors were following those tropes, they were [00:45:00] presenting the story from a very clearly female perspective on the world.

 The relationships and the emotions between the characters were a lot more well drawn, 

for instance, was one of the examples that they used, which is of course not universally a woman's trait, but it a different perspective on that world than the stereotypically masculine perspective that, eschews those things.

So I thought that was really interesting that, , as a way of subverting that, some of these early women authors, like Ursula K. Le Guin, who wrote the Wizard of Odyssey series, as you said, in 1968, and then also the woman who wrote the Witch World series, oh, that was Andre Norton, the woman who changed her name from Alice. , they both wrote books that, kept some of those tropes, but subverted them.

Martha: I love that I think that's so smart too I mean I don't know if we can say they were doing it 100 percent intentionally or not, but what a great way [00:46:00] to ease people into like Okay, i'll give you all the same tropes it's going to be something that you recognize but it's going to have a different perspective that is Valid and it's going to bring in some change to the genre

Elizabeth: Yeah. And again, it's something that, you see in all sorts of, areas at that time, , I was talking about gender studies and the way that that studied by looking at all of these different disciplines, right? So you get to see the patterns. And certainly there were women at that time in the 60s that were the initiators of second wave feminism that had different strategies.

But there were women across disciplines and across sectors whose strategy was gender studies. You I'm going to slip in under the radar and then before you know what hits you things are going to change, Whereas there are women whose strategy was more, I'm going to break down the walls.

And in a social movement you need 

all of those different strategies.

Martha: Well, and it's so interesting because, [00:47:00] even in the romance genre, which we think of as being very heavily dominated by women, this was a time where women were trying to break out of that Mills and Boon format. And

they were trying to bring something different into it that women would actually like and relate to, not just this formulaic thing that was thought up by a man, right?

Am 

Elizabeth: Yeah. 

Martha: that correctly?

Elizabeth: Yeah, you are. Totally.

Martha: So,

Elizabeth: Yeah. , that's a good comparison. It's the same, it's the same thing, but just in a different 

way. 

so the first book that I found, again, in these essays that I read, , that actually presented a powerful main character that was a woman, , as opposed to going along with the same.

plot and tropes and structures, , and just presenting a woman's perspective. , was Patricia A. McKillop, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld in 1974, was a [00:48:00] tale of the kind and powerful female wizard Sybil. This was the first book that had a strong, powerful heroine at its center. , when you even just read a kind, powerful wizard, , that subverts that traditional stereotypical masculine idea of what power is immediately,

yes, you can be both powerful and 

kind. Yeah, so that is one that I've never heard of. I've heard of the Earthsea series, but I'd never heard of that one. But apparently that was one of the, if not the first, one of the first. popular fantasy novels where you have that female protagonist.

Martha: It makes me wanna read it.

Elizabeth: Yeah, me too.

Martha: A lot of these books now I'm like, man, I wanna , read these. I've never heard of

Elizabeth: I, yeah, I actually did add quite a few to my TBR as I was going through and doing this. And then I already mentioned The Myths of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I read that when I was young. It actually came out in 1982, I want to say I read it when I was a[00:49:00] 

the legend of King Arthur and all of the different stories that are involved in that world. And it makes the women characters, the main characters, basically. , Morgan Le Fay is the main character, I would say, of the series , in what I can recall. And in the traditional tellings of those stories, she's a very minor side character, , and I loved these books when I was a kid. I feel like I can't talk about them, though, without acknowledging that ten years ago, right around the time that Zimmer Bradley died, her daughter actually accused her of abuse. when she was a kid, said that she molested her when she was a child.

, similar to the way that, that recently happened with Alice Monroe, her daughter, , revealed that her stepfather had abused her when she was a kid, and that Monroe was complicit in it. And we did a whole episode about this idea of separating the art from the artist, and so, I encourage people to listen to that if you haven't already, , for a fuller treatment on this topic, but.

. , , I remember [00:50:00] when that came out in 2014 and it really sent the people who are interested in books, the book world reeling for a while. And there are certainly some people that don't read her books anymore because of that. Just the same way that there are people who don't read Harry Potter, who have said that they're not going to read Monroe anymore.

, so yeah, I felt like I had to acknowledge that. But I did love those books when I was a kid. I don't know if I would reread them, but I did love them.

Martha: Yeah. And it's certainly understandable if anyone makes the choice not to read those books, I certainly understand and empathize with that, 

Elizabeth: Mm hmm. The last one that I found that's in this beginning couple of decades of when fantasy shifted is a book that was co written by a woman and a man. At least that's what their names make their gender sound like. Jani Wertz and Raymond Feist, it's called The Daughter of the Empire, and it tells the story of a young woman that becomes the leader of her people and works to change the course of a nation.

And I included this one, it was in the essays that I read, so I included it, but also [00:51:00] I included it because I think it sounds so similar to The Hunger Games.

Martha: Interesting.

Elizabeth: It's just interesting to me how and I think this is probably the case in a lot of genres, but , it seems very much like even as the genre is evolving, it has these main stories that it tells.

Like a young person who mostly was a young man, but now has opened up to be a young woman, but there's still this sort of story of we were talking about those troops, the lost heir, the one who saves the world, 

That's what fantasy is. And so even in diversifying it, , it's still going to fall within 

those boundaries.

Martha: I think that's why sub genres and these cross genres books are so interesting. But I think that's why romantasy, for example, is so popular because it does give a little twist, so it's not just the same old story that we've heard a thousand times. It just gives a new little fresh [00:52:00] element to it.

Elizabeth: Yeah, right. A little something 

different. So let's get into talking about romantasy and cozy fantasy. The only other thing I was going to say about the history is, that's basically where I stopped, , in the late 80s. Because in the 90s and since then, is when we've seen this open up a lot.

Not only in fantasy, but in all genres. Like we talked on the romance episode about how the last couple of decades, especially, you have. romances that are representative of every type of person. , and it's the same with fantasy. , every type of person, every, , race, every ethnicity, every sexuality, , you can find 

a fantasy that is representative of you, basically, at this point.

Which is certainly not to say that there shouldn't be more. There should be, because a lot of times it's like we talked about in the romance episode, it's like, oh, well, we have one of those diverse fantasies already. We don't need another one, right? Which 

 

Elizabeth: Certainly should not be the 

Martha: And just like I was saying with adding a cross genre or a different sub genre or whatever, [00:53:00] it makes it so much more interesting. , oh my gosh, putting some diversity into the genre is like, thank you. We needed

something different. 

Elizabeth: I think that that's important because , you're a person who really romantasy and cozy fantasy, especially. And so it shows that. Even someone who loves this genre can be thirsty for these new takes on it, right? So let's talk about romantasy and cozy fantasy, as we near the end of this.

Let's talk about two of these specifically. So what would you say romantasy is? I looked into this a little bit to try to find a definition, but I'm not totally happy with what I found. So what would you say makes romantasy unique that it stands out from other fantasies? 

Is it real or is it just a marketing thing?

Martha: I think a lot of it has to do with sex, honestly, and sex scenes, and not fade to black, it's not necessarily YA, it's not made for kids, there are explicit sex [00:54:00] scenes, it's not just a romance subplot It is heavily focused on the relationship, but it's based in a fantastical world with all the tropes of a fantasy novel.

Elizabeth: Hmm. I like that so much more than anything that I found. So, would you say that the romance is the main story and it's just set in a fantasy world? Or is the romance plot and whatever the fantasy plot is, , like saving the world or saving the fairies or whatever, , is that equally important?

Martha: Yeah. I think a lot of times , they run very parallel, hand in hand.

We could just talk about A Court of Thorns and Roses because it's one that a lot of people are familiar with. So the main female character, Feyre, she starts outthis isn't a spoiler, I feel like everyone knows this she starts out being a human, and through the course [00:55:00] of the books is turned into a fey, and then becomes thisshe's the first High Lady, quote unquote, so this world is still patriarchal.

There's high lords of all these different courts and she becomes the first high lady and she really has a hand in saving their world from the good versus evil.

, but she is elevated in part by her relationship because she becomes high lady through her with the high lord of the night court.

Elizabeth: got it. And that's also like a chosen one 

Martha: Yes. Yeah. And so. It's very much that her partner, her spouse, would not have been able to do it without her, but they do it together. So , in my mind, it's , all, very parallel. And they have,

there's a will they, won't they [00:56:00] element to it in the first couple books too, and all that. So,

Elizabeth: Okay. I like that much better than what I found because what I found, the Wikipedia page for instance, which there wasn't a Wikipedia page for romantasy two years ago, but there is now, says that it's a, it is a subgenre of fantasy fiction that has a romantic element, basically, that features romantic relationships, social and political and romantic issues.

But my problem with that is Lots of fantasies have romance in them. The Mist of Avalon has romance in it. It totally turns on , the love affair between Guinevere and Lancelot. That's one of the main ways that the plot moves forward. But there's no sex that I 

remember. Right. 

And , there's a ton of graphic sex in Game of Thrones, right?

But

Martha: It's not empowering. 

Elizabeth: It's not romance.

Martha: It's [00:57:00] not romance. Yeah. I think that that definition is so reductive and the difference, like I'm thinking about Sarah J. Massa's other series, Crescent City, where the female main character. Is powerful on her own, and she would be powerful without her romantic partner, but he gives her a safe harbor in a way, it's very much like we're working together, we're better together, we're stronger together, at least in Sarah J Maas universes. And then I'm thinking about Fourth Wing and Rebecca Yaros, and it's very similar, , The two main characters that are romantically involved, when they use their powers together, are a lot more effective than when they're apart.

Elizabeth: Okay, I feel like this is the best argument that I've heard yet for why it deserves to be its own thing that has a separate name, and that it's not just a [00:58:00] romance that happens in a fantasy world, and it's not just a fantasy novel with a romance subplot. It's ,

Martha: It's all intertwined.

Elizabeth: It's, well right, and both are equally important and they're inextricable from one another, right?

Like you couldn't take the romance out of it and have it still work. You couldn't take the fantasy out of it and have it still work. Whereas in my mind, a romance novel that's set in a fantasy world, you could take the fantasy world away and the romance would still work in theory, that's the part where I never got it, but now that you've explained it that way, I feel like I 

get it., 

Martha: and , you could potentially take the sex out of it and it would still work, too. But, I think when you're developing these really strong relationships, romantic relationships, adds a lot to it to be able to see how they're intimate together, too. 

Elizabeth: Well, , in the way that a lot of people feel like that adds to romance.

Martha: There are YA romantasy books that are fine, that are more like fade to black style, like Throne of Glass, Sarah J Maas [00:59:00] other series. She started writing it when she was 16. So it's not, as explicit. There's maybe like one spicy scene in that

eight book series, but it still has all those other elements that I was talking about.

So

Elizabeth: Okay. so I feel like, I like that. And , it makes me feel even more, by the New York Times article.

Because in the same way that when we were talking about romance, we were talking about how it's reductive to just say, This is basically when a women's replacement for reality. Right? Which is not to say that if that's how you're using it that's bad. But it's It's just, it's reductive to say that, it's.

more than a replacement for reality. It could be aspirational. It could be a way that you think about issues in the real world. But we don't have to make everything that women do

Martha: Yeah.

Elizabeth: about their love lives, or their marriage, or lack of marriage, or children, or lack of children in the real world, [01:00:00] right?

, why does it have to be about that? , this writer's main thesis is basically that women are using these books as a replacement or respite from the reality of online dating culture. And it's a woman who wrote it, and she has quotes from all of these women who read these books that say things like, I've made poor decisions with regular men, and so I decided to just replace those with immortal men with magical powers, right?

Or that, I like to read about these 500 year old men because they'd be more mature and experienced and so they'd be able to share the mental load with you and you wouldn't have to ask them to do things to help with the children or their partners. You can see where I'm getting annoyed by it.

It's like everything that women do has to be defined in this way. It can't just be that it's something that they, and these are quotes from real women, so obviously some women. feel this way about it. But to talk about it as if [01:01:00] this is the way that all women feel about it and that of course this is what it is, that men in the real world are disappointing women and so they're turning to this, these books.

There's something about that that just really,

Martha: Annoys you. Yeah.

Elizabeth: it rubbed me the wrong 

Martha: It annoys me too. Like you said, of course, I'm sure there's some women out there who are using dating apps and are fed up with the state of modern dating and are like, I should have stayed home and read ACOTAR. That would be more enjoyable, right? , that's totally, that's valid, but that's not the whole point of the genre. Of course, it's not. , but , like I said, some of these relationships do feel very, , empowering. And aspirational. And like, this is what you want in a partner is someone who

supports me and makes me better and we make each other better, right? Who wouldn't want that, but it's not

because of online dating.

Elizabeth: Or it's not a way that women are opting out of their real 

Martha: No, we know [01:02:00] that we're not going to find a 500 year old Faye if we go hunting and accidentally shoot a wolf. 

Elizabeth: Even if you did, you'd still probably have to tell them to do the 

Martha: Or, or, Yeah,

exactly. We're not gonna write off all real men because we have books. That's not, I feel like that's always a fear with romance. Regardless of whatever genre it falls under. It's like, oh, women are gonna give up on real men because they just have these books. 

Elizabeth: Right. Which we talked about with the romance episode, and it's like, A, it's ridiculous, but also B, if you can be replaced by a character in a book, Maybe that's something that you should consider about yourself, Like, 

Martha: that says more about you than the book or the woman

Elizabeth: yeah, or the woman, , maybe the problem is somewhere else. Yeah. And that, that, what you just said makes me think about this other quote that I had written down from the article, by, Maddie is their name.

 Says [01:03:00] that, after all the swiping and the having to present yourself in a certain way to be desired, , she says, seeing someone so wanted and being able to put yourself in those shoes, there's something magical about that. So it's aspirational, like you were saying, being in a relationship where you are so valued or you would be elevated in the way that the character in that book was.

Martha: Sure, but that's still not really a great argument because, you know, romantasy is not a perfect thing. It's not a perfect genre. It does have its flaws and one of them being that these women who are the female main characters oftentimes are like 20 years old, conventionally beautiful, thin, long hair, you know, It's not like reading these romantasy books is gonna , really transport you away from all of those conventional beauty standards, either, 

Elizabeth: Yeah, 

Martha: of women.

Elizabeth: well that's a very good point and is actually I would say the [01:04:00] secondary focus of this article is about the age 

gap between the female main characters in these 

books and the quote unquote shadow daddies. And, , she talks about Sarah J. Maas, but also Jennifer Armentrout, who I think that you've read, , Leigh Bardugo, , there's a lot of these books where it's a man who, or a, a male like creature of some kind that is hundreds of years old and then the woman, but , , that the woman is young, right, is in her twenties.

But what she says in this article is that actually the protagonist being in their 20s even is Progress because she draws a comparison with Twilight where, , Edward was like 104 or something like that, right? And Bella Swan was a teenager. She was like 16 or 17, 17. And so some of the women in the article are talking about how they felt uncomfortable with that type of an age gap, but [01:05:00] that.

 If they think back to their early 20s, they feel like, well, you're an adult at that point. Like, that's not as egregious.

Martha: , I do agree that , it's less, problematic if they're in their 20s. But the age gap of hundreds of years, it's just purely a fantasy. It's not real. Trying to draw these real.

comparisons. It's irrelevant to me because , that's part of the fantasy. It's,

and being that old and experienced.

Yeah. It's taught them things. It's made them wiser. But when you're actually reading these books, these men still act like they're 30.

They're not acting 

Elizabeth: They're not acting like someone who's 500 years 

Martha: age gap is usually more about because they know the history of the world and its problems and the political war games and that sort of thing, right, that's a way to make this historical issue of whatever's going [01:06:00] on relevant now, and they'll be like, Oh, Feyre, this has been since 500 years ago, what we've had going on, right?

 That's more of what they're using it for.

Elizabeth: Yeah. That makes sense. I see. So I think that basically explains what was annoying to me about this article is that the, the author is trying to make. two clear cut of comparisons to real life about these books that are intentionally meant to be fantasy. So like you said at the very beginning, they're meant to be escapists.

They're meant to be untethered from the real world. So why are you trying 

Martha: Make it real. 

Elizabeth: associate them so closely with the 

Martha: Yeah. That's like saying, if someone casts a spell, that's not real. And it's like, yeah, that's the point.

It's that's the whole point 

Elizabeth: it's supposed to be. Yeah, it's fantasy. So that's fine. We can just dissense with that article. It was silly. But , I do think that it is interesting to talk about because it's in, arguably the biggest news outlet in the world. One of the biggest, certainly. Which I think means it [01:07:00] has reached a certain cultural relevance, if they're talking about it in the New York Times, 

Martha: I think what is so annoying about it is because it's just another example of people trying to make what women like silly.

Elizabeth: Mm.

Martha: Or trying to, make it look like it's stupid or take it down a notch or whatever, you know.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And forcing it to be somehow about men 

still. 

Martha: hmm.

Elizabeth: , about women being disappointed with men or, yeah, yeah. I think you're totally right. Because romanticity there's no getting around the fact that it's marketed towards women. It's for women. Women are the readers. And fine, women buy 80 percent of the books.

So you want women readers.

Martha: Right. But there's so many men now, at least who I see on my For You page, who are reading Sarah J.

Maas and Rebecca Yaros and loving it. I mean, whether it's because their girlfriend [01:08:00] wanted them to read it, if that's how they started, or for any other reason, there's a lot of positive reviews of these books made by men now, which I love to see.

Because if we're all consuming the same thing, we can all talk about it, and It's just fun.

Elizabeth: Yeah, and I also just, goes back to one of the tenets of feminism, which is that the patriarchy is bad for 

everyone. , why shouldn't men be allowed to enjoy these books too, if they want to? , you don't have to enjoy them, but there certainly are some men or people of all genders that would enjoy these books.

It doesn't need to be so 

bifurcated. So, continuing on with Martha schools Elizabeth, , which is what this episode really has turned into. What about cozy fantasy? What makes something cozy?

Martha: It usually has to do with something about the home or some domestic occupation like cooking, [01:09:00] baking. Oftentimes it's about bringing life back into a space, there will be an abandoned bookshop or a rundown tavern that they fix up and breathe new life into and then they start selling books. Coffee or jams or that sort of thing and it's usually low stakes So it's usually not in that high fantasy epic world, but something more low stakes it's a world where you want to live there and stay a while It feels kind of like a warm hug

Elizabeth: When I was researching it, basically everything that you just said, I found. , that it involves magic and adventure, gives a feeling of comfort, warmth, and relaxation, light or low stakes fantasy, sometimes people call it. There's magic, but there's little violence. I haven't finished reading The House Witch yet, so we can't talk about that too much because I'm not to the end of it.

But , there is some violence in that, but it is pretty light. Like, [01:10:00] people get , blown through the air by Finn's lightning, right? , it's, yeah, because at first I was like, well there's violence in the house, which, but it is actually pretty tame. , so that makes sense because there is a lot of violence , in those epic high fantasies.

Does it always have to do with the kitchen? Baking cooking. I guess it makes sense that it would, because when you think of cozy, you think of your home. where are you cozy? Where else are you cozy except for your home? Or somewhere that you're trying to make home 

like, right? 

Martha: Well, there's a ton of examples of ones that I've read recently, like Bakers and Magic by Jay Penner. That one, I think it was self published and I found it on TikTok, but it was really cute. It was basically a great British bake off scenario, but with magic and with a romance element to it.

Elizabeth: Oh my god, I want to read that immediately.

Martha: it was really cute. I really enjoyed it. I listened to it and the narrator was [01:11:00] really great. And then of course, legends and lattes and bookshops and bone dust by Travis Baldry. That's a duology that is about an orc, a female orc who used to be a mercenary. And so. She has this past that was violent, but that's not the focus of the story.

She retires and finds a town to settle down in and opens up a coffee shop because no one knows what coffee is. So it's this novel thing. And she restores this building, opens the shop, gets to know all the townsfolk. They all rally around to help her. She falls in love with another female character.

They run the shop together. It's so cute.

Elizabeth: cute. That's 

adorable. And 

, that's not the home, right? , a coffee shop isn't the home. But I feel like cozy almost has to have some element of either food or the

Martha: Well, and [01:12:00] I think the home. is above the shop. That's often a trope, I guess you could say is , they live above the coffee shop and in the spell shop. So that was another one I read recently. The female character ends up returning home after there was a political battle in the city where she lived.

She was a librarian. She flees the city. She goes home to an island. . She finds her parents old cottage that was deserted. She cleans it up. Magic is outlawed at the time, so she tries to create a cover for what she's doing by opening a jam shop out of her cottage. So it's very similar. They all have similar themes. Even T. Kingfisher, who's more well known for horror, she wrote a cozy fantasy called A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, and the baker animates [01:13:00] their baked goods, so their baked goods end up being

anthropomorphic. She will bake a gingerbread man and he move around and do things. And so they end up using her baked goods as soldiers kind of in the conflict. So there's conflict, but they're baked goods that are fighting.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it's like 

gingerbread men fighting. That's pretty tame. Yeah, that's funny. I feel like that the lack of Any real violence or gruesome violence element is a big part of the cozy thing too, because there's cozy mystery of course. And that's why I like cozy mysteries, but I don't like horror, and I don't usually like thrillers.

And people who know me and know that I don't like violence tend to be confused when I tell them that I'm reading a murder mystery. But I'm like, well, no, it's a cozy murder. It's a cozy murder. So , there is a dead body, but you don't , see the person being killed.

There's no , gruesome violence.

Martha: It's more palatable for people who don't like that kind [01:14:00] of thing.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And it's like Miss Marple, there's knitting and there's tea, , it's something about those two elements. The lack of any real violence and the, home and food connection. Well whatever it is, I like it. I , before you had all these that you'd read, I only had heard of the house witch, and so I looked up , recent cozy fantasy books to read.

And I added a ton to my TBR.

Martha: Mm hmm.

Elizabeth: that I found, 11 must read cozy fantasies in the show notes, because I basically put every single one that's on that list on my TBR. There's some really cute sounding ones.

Martha: It also seems like there's a connection between cozy fantasy and LGBTQ plus stories.

Mm , like I already said in Travis Baldry's books, the main characters are in A queer relationship. , we talked before about how , the house, which was written by [01:15:00] Delemhach, who is a non binary author can't spell treason without T by Rebecca Thorne.

That's another example where the two main characters are women in a relationship together, a romantic relationship. So I don't know.

It, just seems like there's a connection.

Elizabeth: and in Housewitch, , the main character isn't queer, but there are LGBTQ plus characters in it. More so than I feel like I would expect to see in a fantasy, but again, I don't read them, so maybe that's not fair to say.

Martha: Well, it does make me wonder if it's this correlation between what we were talking about with, , the evolution of the genre in the last 20 years, that being more inclusive, cozy fantasy seems like a newer sub genre. And so those two kind of go hand in hand because they are more modern stories

that they're becoming more diverse.

So there could be a correlation there.

Elizabeth: Yeah, it seems like it could be a place, like you said, because it's new, [01:16:00] where more diverse authors have been able to break in because there's just less competition, because of the unfortunate state of publishing, in a genre like epic fantasy that's already so populated it might be harder to I don't know.

That's just a theory. But with a subgenre that's new, , maybe it's a place where people are given a chance more. 

Martha: Yeah.

it could be. And I also think it's just such a great genre to illustrate queer people just want what we all want, which is like a cozy, lovely existence with the people that they care about. And it's such a great way to highlight those stories, I think, for. a lot of readers. I don't know.

I love it. I'm obsessed with the genre. I can't stop reading it. Give me all the

cozy fantasy. 

Elizabeth: yeah, that is a really good point. That is a really good point. Because you hear people say that, all [01:17:00] different types of people, right? , I remember hearing, a lot in the last, , decade or so, especially, it came to my attention anyway in the last decade, a lot about, , people of color and Black people specifically talking about wanting stories that show Black people being joyful and show them having good lives.

, it doesn't always have to be, , a horrible tragedy. Yes, those things were real and existed in the past, and we don't want to forget that they happen. But people are people. And, all people want a lot of the same things, even if they look slightly different from one to another.

, everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants a comfortable home, 

right? So yeah, I think that that makes a lot 

Martha: And the fantasy lens is great to have available for those sorts of stories, It's a lens to experience it through, maybe for the first time, do you know what I'm getting at? 

Elizabeth: I do, yeah. It makes me think, I was talking about in The Evolution, the history of it, about how it didn't start to be more diversified until the 60s. And actually, that's pretty late when you look at other genres and when they [01:18:00] started to have more diversity of authors , more women authors, more people of color, more women who are people of color.

, it happened earlier with other genres. Science fiction and fantasy was a little bit of a late bloomer in the 60s. It's not happening until the 60s, 70s. And I was thinking when I was researching it that that doesn't make that much sense to me because by definition it's a world that doesn't exist so it can be anything.

So it feels like exactly what you just said, it should lend itself to a releasing of all of these expectations and stereotypes of everything, including gender and race and ethnicity and sexuality, so I'm glad, even if it's taken this long, that that is finally happening, because it does really seem like it should be a genre where that is not only possible, but part of the definition of 

the 

Martha: hmm. Mm hmm. Absolutely.

Elizabeth: Yeah. So my final question for you with this is, this part of the episode with the [01:19:00] romantasy and the cozy fantasy was if we actually thought that they were both an example of a genre being a little limiting. Because that I think is how I felt coming into it, that we had to put all these things into a box because of the limitations of genre.

But I actually think that you've convinced me now , that that is not the case. I feel like through our conversation I've gained an appreciation for why they're both. their own unique things and that I'm glad that they both exist for those reasons. But do you have any other thoughts about that, about the way that they exist as sub 

Martha: Mm hmm. I certainly think that it could be stifling. , especially if we look at fantasy before the 1960s, but I think that if people are willing to step outside the box and use the tropes in a new way, That,, it's led to what we see now in cozy fantasy and romantasy and the way that the genre is evolving and it can be something different than what it's always been, we just have to

Elizabeth: Mm hmm. [01:20:00] Mm 

Martha: go outside the line sometimes and not get so hung up on it. Well, that's not fantasy then, because it's not what it's always been. And it's like, no, things can change, things can evolve, and it only makes it better when we add more diversity and we change the story a little bit.

Elizabeth: Yeah, exactly. I feel like that is what has changed about my outlook on it, is that it's, it felt limiting at first because I was like, oh, we just have to , get more and more granular in defining these things because they have to be subgenres of fantasy and, , , couldn't we talk about them in a different way?

But actually, I think the opposite now. , I feel like it's freeing to have these subgenres. subgenres that are just their own thing. And yes, they're still part of this larger fantasy world. And you can still talk about them with reading doorways. , you could talk about any book with both the genre and the reading doorways.

But yeah, I think that what you were getting at just there is that it's actually freeing if you open your mind to the possibilities of it.

Martha: [01:21:00] Absolutely. Yeah, and the story doorways, , we could have a whole other episode about, how they relate to the genre, but. Obviously, setting is a huge thing in fantasy. Plot, that's why , I tend to like fantasy in general the plot moves pretty quickly usually. But there's a lot of great characters too and language , I don't know if this counts for language, or if we're just, Thinking of language in terms of the poetry of it.

But if they're making up their own words or

phrases, the language could be part of that, but that might go into setting too. But yeah, there's a ton of crossover and something for everyone, whether you want to frame it as a genre or what story doorways it fits into.

Elizabeth: Yeah. I like it. I feel like I'm, I feel like a 

convert. Not that I was set against it. Like I said in the beginning, I certainly read it, but I wouldn't have called myself a big fan. And now I am motivated to read more of them , and really dive into , that [01:22:00] fandom possibly.

Martha: That makes me happy. All right. 

So we'll end this episode by reminding everyone that we are in no way experts on fantasy as a genre. We're fans of it. We want to learn more about it. But if we. left anything out, or you want to just give us some more background about anything we talked about that we're not aware of, you can email us at allbooksaloudpod@gmail.com. We'd love to hear your thoughts. We'd love to learn more about the genre. And if you want even more bookish content, you can follow us on Instagram and TikTok at allbooksaloudpod. And leave us a positive rating and review because it will help more people find us and read on my friends.

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