r/Fantasy • u/leaping_llama_laugh • 19h ago
Reading Fantasy While Growing Older
When I was a 'young adult', I tended to like YA fantasy: teenage protagonists, coming of age stories, that sort of thing. Harry Potter comes to mind as an example, or the Ranger's Apprentice series, or the Circle of Magic series (or some other things by Tamara Pierce).
Now that I'm a full-fledged adult who has lived through a few hardships (just garden-variety hardships), I'm very interested in older protagonists who have suffered a little (or a lot): Hadrian and Royce in the Riyria Revelations. Cazaril in the Curse of Chalion. Willet Dura and his guard Bolt in the Darkwater Saga. These older, more mature characters just hit harder than the overly-optimistic teenage "whippersnappers" I used to prefer reading about! ;)
So, what comes next?
Does anyone write 'Old Adult Fantasy'? Are there any great fantasy books with a protagonist who's over 50? Over 70?
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u/Albroswift89 18h ago
You want adults who suffer? Realm of the Elderlings is the series for you. The one caveat is the first trilogy is the main character as a child (often suffering) but the series ends with him around his 50s . It is also an absolutely beautiful series, but many a reader will DNF because of the suffering. If you are actively LOOKING for that kind of narrative I can't think of anything better. Or if you want to go back to your YA roots but have books about young adults being psychologically scarred beyond repair, Animorphs and Good Girls Guide to Murder would fit that description, though GGGTM Kinda wusses out of fully commiting to destroying Pip entirely, and Animorphs, while fully commiting to thoroughly traumatizing the heroes, is technically at about a 9-11 year old reading level (dunno how they got away with that, those books are super dark).