Who reads epic fantasy?

[rachelmanija]

This post was not only prompted by a remarkably stupid NY Times review of the "Game of Thrones" TV series, in which the reviewer thought the story was a polemic against global warming, claimed that women don't like fantasy, and further claimed that women do love sex, so the sex was gratuitously crammed in to please them

Comments

[lnhammer]

Mercedes Lackey counts as best-selling, fwiw -- she still commands 5-figure advances, last I heard. Not sure where Michelle Sagara (West) fits -- probably mid-list?

As a data-point, I read very little epic fantasy these days, and what I do is all written by women. I prefer my fantasy domestic, contemporary, or urban.

---L.

[mme_hardy]

Ms. West's recent work -- which I very much love -- is urban fantasy, unless there's more that I've missed.

Lacking actual data and basing my opinion only on bookshelves, I would say that publishers have figured out/decided that heroic fiction with female protagonists who have interiority* will find its audience in YA and in romance, but not so much in mainstream epic fantasy, and that sort of epic is often what women write. (Did the Deed of Paksenarrion, which qualifies under the above, ever reach the bestseller heights?)

* Is that a word? I'm groggy. I mean that the character's reactions and processing of those reactions are a significant part of the plot.

[lnhammer]

As West (for Daw), the House War books, companions to the Sun Sword books, are still epic fantasy. As Sagara (for Luna), the Elyantra books are secondary-world urban fantasy. I think the latter sell better, but Daw does publish her in hardback first.

I'm only reading the latter, natch.

---L.

[mme_hardy]

I'm in love with the Elantra books; their publication is one of the highlights of my reading year, and I finished them even when I couldn't concentrate to finish other novels. (I should probably reread the last one and see what I overlooked, though.)

[badnoodles]

There's also Margaret Weiss/Tracy Hickman, if you're willing to count Dragonlance as epic fantasy. This pair is odd, as it has one clearly female name and one that is ambiguous. I had always assumed Hickman was female until I looked it up just now.

I don't know the readership breakdown on that series, but if you count the series as a whole, they have sold a trainload of books.

Marion Zimmer Bradley, too.

[rachelmanija]

Good points. Did Dragonlance exist as a popular RPG before the books, or did the books make it popular, I wonder.

[mme_hardy]

ER. D&D, the first mass-market RPG and the one that provided the mechanisms that were the basis of most of the others?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonlance

[rachelmanija]

I meant Dragonlance specifically, not D&D in general. The article makes it sound like the Dragonlance novels caused the popularity of the Dragonlance gaming subset of D&D, actually.

[swan_tower]

It's a telling point that I would not have thought to put either Carey or Lackey in the "epic fantasy" camp, even though when you list the usual characteristics of that sub-genre they both do pretty much fit the bill. I find myself reflexively disqualifying them -- Carey because of the romantic layer, Lackey because of the YA sheen -- which says a lot, right there

[asakiyume]

there's a pretty well-documented shift that as the proportion of women in an activity increases, the societal valuation of that activity decreases. --I hate this fact.

[barbarienne]

Could we arrange for more women to become enormous, visible fans of pro football (American)? I wouldn't mind that getting societally devalued.

[asakiyume]

LOL!! (literally)

[asakiyume]

That NYT review was *so* stupid; the woman so clearly had been compelled to watch and review it, that it made me wonder what the parameters are for a reviewer, at the NYT and elsewhere. It seems pointless to have someone who has no interest in or sensitivity to the genre review something. If you think that liking Lord of the Rings is a kind of deviance, you are not a suitable reviewer. Recuse yourself!

Or maybe someone was holding a gun to her head.

I think plenty of women like epic fantasy. I was waiting to pick up my younger son from a flute lesson, and there was a girl there, about 13, waiting for her music lesson. She was reading one of the books in either the Wheel of Time series or Song of Ice and Fire series (honestly, I can't recall which it was), and when I asked about it, she was completely with it. ... Which is to say, young female readers are still picking up these sorts of books too.

[rachelmanija]

Definitely, many women like epic fantasy. What I am curious about is if there's a gender split at all in readership, and if so, what it is. Like, what if 70% of all readers of epic fantasy are women? (I think that's the percentage of fiction readers in general.) Then what's the point of hiding female names, or selecting male authors for the huge promotional push?

[asakiyume]

Good question/point.

[sarahtales]

I guess there's women with internalised sexism to cope with: I've seen a lot of people on the internet recently wondering 'why male writers are less sexist and overall better than female writers' (face*palm*, which is not to say that female writers can't be sexist) and of course, internalised sexism springs up everywhere. A good friend, and one of the smartest women I know, once casually said 'Guy writers are just better than girls' and I was so very taken aback and I sat there staring for so long that the conversation had moved on before I could respond.

Epic Fantasy Bounces Back

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