Genre Deep Dive- Fantasy🧚🏻♀️
I was reintroduced to the fantasy genre in 2023, and since then, it has become something I often reach for. I have many in my go-to recommendations list for friends, and also on my list of books I have my eye on. It is a genre that I often overlooked, but I realise was a highlight of my childhood reading experiences and is now having that effect again. When I think about it, I am reminded of how much fantasy we are surrounded by as children and find myself reflecting on why so many of us feel connected to the imaginative stories, moving staircases, fire-breathing dragons, princesses, pirates and fairies. So this is where I start my deep dive into the fantasy genre.
Childhood:
I will start by assuming that the majority of young children have been exposed to fantasy. When I think of children’s fantasy books, my mind goes straight to things like Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Narnia or Twilight. I know that I can’t say that every child has read the Harry Potter series, as, although I am sure many have, my best friend is an example of someone who has only watched the movies and watched them for the first time in her 20s! As a lover of the series, who has watched the movies and read the books multiple times, this is a bit crazy to me! But it got me thinking about other examples that may have been more widely read. My mind went to Roald Dahl. Although, by mega fantasy fanatics, his books may be more described as magical realism, books set in the real world with fantastical elements, they are bracketed under the fantasy genre. With a quick Google search, I found that Dahl’s books often appeared in school curricula. This suggests that a large proportion of children would have been exposed to the fantasy genre at a young age. Why did we enjoy these books when we were younger? I suppose they were a great form of escapism, and the idea of magic as a child was super exciting. My next question is, if I enjoyed Harry Potter so much, how did I end up becoming so sceptical of fantasy that I didn’t pick up a fantasy book again until I was in my 20s and saw them being talked about again online? I’m going to try and figure this out!
My fantasy journey:
As I mentioned, I picked up my first fantasy book of ‘adulthood’ in 2023, when I saw a book recommended on TikTok called ‘The Atlas Six.’ With the number of videos that I had seen about this book, it felt like everyone in the world had read it apart from me! There was an element of FOMO in my decision to pick it up, as well as the parallels that the description had with Harry Potter. Although they are vastly different, at first glance, they seemed to have similarities which felt important to me. I think I put off fantasy growing up as I just expected it to be extremely complicated, violent and 1000 pages long like The Lord of the Rings or A Game of Thrones! It had always felt intimidating, so seeing so many people read a book that felt familiar drew me to it. I enjoyed reading it, and it sort of kick-started my interest in the fantasy genre again. I went on to read 6 more fantasy books that year and 6 more the following year! I feel much less intimidated by it now and enjoy the escapism and excitement that a fantasy book has. I find that the characters and plot are detailed and fleshed out, meaning I often feel invested in the series and want to keep reading. I like that I feel kept on the edge of my seat, guessing where the plot is going to go and feeling connected to the characters. Many of the fantasy books that I have read are also set in really beautiful places with balls, castles and dragons! The maps in the front engage me in the story straight away, as I feel instantly impressed with how much detail the author has come up with for their fantasy world. I have mentioned my favourite things about the fantasy genre, but what are the scientific reasons behind it being such a popular genre, as well as being good for you to consume?
Scientific backing:
Deepak Thomas talks about 5 reasons why fantasy is good to consume. I am going to cover a few of them now. Firstly, ‘reading fantasy exercises our ability to suspend disbelief, a valuable skill to develop creative problem solving.’ Because you are consuming settings and characters that are out of our human experience, we temporarily forget that these things aren’t real, and invest ourselves in the stories regardless. He also mentions that reading fantasy helps you to learn new subjects fast. Because of the intricacies and detail often present in fantasy worlds with complex settings, rival kingdoms and lengthy family trees, reading these books can increase your memory abilities. He references ‘a study that compared vocabulary retention between a set of children who read fantasy and those who read realistic stories. The ones who learnt through fantasy stories could remember the meanings of words better than the other set.’ Finally, he talks about fantasy providing its readers with an optimistic worldview. This is because, often, good beats evil in these fantasy books, but not without the characters going to hell and back to eventually prevail! Thomas suggests that this helps readers to adapt their perspective on life, in the sense that we all have hardships and challenging times, but in the end, things will work out. I resonate with these points and am not surprised how connected we are to fantasy as young people, and why, now, I have rediscovered this connection.
BookTok:
Before closing up with a few recommendations, I wanted to hop back to my re-introduction to fantasy and the importance that BookTok has played, and continues to play, in encouraging past readers to pick up a book again, or new readers to pick up a book for the first time. BookTok is a section of TikTok which has users sharing book recommendations that often spike in popularity, leading to specific BookTok shelves online and in bookstores. It shares many different types of books, but the impact that it has had on the fantasy genre is impressive. Beck (2022) writes, ‘#fantasybooks has 562.8 million, #fantasybooktok has 61.3 million, #yafantasybooks has 34.5 million, and countless other similar variations add up to nearly 1 billion views. And that's not including videos that aren't tagged.’She also says that ‘print fantasy books within the adult fiction genre saw a 45.3% increase in 2021, making it the genre with the second largest sales increase.’ Publishers are saying that BookTok has become a ‘major force in the market’, which they recognise and are starting to use to their advantage, sending books to creators to review and post about. I recognise the influence that BookTok has had on the reader community and myself, personally. I discovered so many of my favourite books from BookTok. Although the recommendations are not always the best or most advanced at times, I don’t think that matters. The important thing is getting people into reading, whatever that looks like, and reintroducing people to books as a whole, and the fantasy genre and all its benefits. I started by finding fantasy books on BookTok and eventually branched out and used other platforms like Booktube, where I found specific creators that had a similar taste to me, or picked things up in a bookstore that looked appealing. I think that BookTok has had a huge impact on the reading community, and this impact cannot go unnoticed. However good you think the recommendations are, the way that books have gone viral and are being read by people who haven’t picked up a book since their GCSE set readings is so impactful.
Recommendations:
To finish, I thought I would give a few recommendations of some fantasy books that I enjoyed.
- The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton- fun, imaginative, lighthearted story with flying houses and female pirates!
- The Crimson Moth and Rebel Witch by Kristen Ciccarelli- The story of a witch's fight for survival in a world where witches are burned! Action-packed, amazing setting, great characters.
- Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross- a war-torn world and love letters delivered by a magical wardrobe!
- One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig- a monster lives in her head! So unique and intriguing to read.
If you give any of these a go, let me know what you think. Thank you for reading!
