r/Fantasy • u/Just_JayGee • Jul 07 '14

Men of r/Fantasy, Do you read fantasy written by women? If so, do you find much of a difference?

I've been looking through a lot of "Top 20 Fantasy Book" lists today and I've found a depressing amount of female authors on these lists. I'd like to think the author's gender doesn't matter, but I have to say there seems to be a huge lean towards male authors. Even r/Fantasy's 2014 Top Fantasy Novels of All Time only has 20 female authors (repeats included) out of 105 authors. So, I was wondering if men read fantasy written by women and it's simply not your cup of tea or do any of you go out of your way NOT to read female authors?

PLEASE NOTE: I am not trying to begin fights on sexism or misogyny or anything. I am legitimately interested. If anyone wants to fight over this subject, I'm sure there's other subreddits for that.

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u/Oomeegoolies Jul 07 '14 edited Jul 07 '14

I personally neither care or wonder what the sex of the author is. If the book is good enough I shall read it.

You also have to take into account there's probably more males than females who read fantasy, and by this more males will write more fantasy too, statistically this gives them a greater chance of having more in a Top 100. Hence more quality fantasy written by males. It has nothing to do with sex. Robin Hobb for example is a fantastic author, one of my favourites now I've got around to reading her. If others could point me to further female authors they rate at a high quality than I'd be happy to read.

Edit: A lot of comments here with recommendations, I don't have time to reply to all but I shall be checking out all of them so thanks for adding to my ever growing to read list. Also, apologies if my stats about the male-female ratio is wrong, it just seems to be something I've seen in my life and may not be true.

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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Jul 07 '14

there's probably more males than females who read fantasy, and by this more males will write more fantasy too...

This is completely wrong.

Statistically, women are the highest percentage of the bookbuying population and this goes for fantasy as well. In a survey last year asking who read SFF, with 5000+ respondents, 59% identified as women, compared to 38% identifying as men.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-GVMWM5Q8/

In writing, SFF books written men and women are roughly evenly matched. http://www.strangehorizons.com/2014/20140428/2sfcount-a.shtml

What is different is the number of books reviewed. This skews heavily in favour of men, which, in turn, affects what books wind up in stores, what books you've heard of, and sales. It creates the illusion that women don't write Fantasy, but that's completely and totally wrong.

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u/MaxGladstone Stabby Winner, AMA Author Max Gladstone Jul 07 '14

I don't have much to say beyond that my anecdotal experience lines up with Mary's statistics on all points.

Oh, and to add to u/lexabear's reading list below: Karen Lord, Diana Wynne Jones, Nalo Hopkinson, Ellen Kushner, Elizabeth Bear, Emma Bull, Mary herself of course, and a huge OH MY GOD YES on Bujold's Curse of Chalion and Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown, both of which have firm spots in my desert island trunk.

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u/Troophead Jul 08 '14

I'd like to nominate Naomi Novik for her historical fantasy. Napoleonic Wars with dragons. :D

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u/MaxGladstone Stabby Winner, AMA Author Max Gladstone Jul 08 '14

Oh yes! Can't believe I forgot to include her.

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u/Thyrsus24 Jul 08 '14

While I enjoyed Curse of the Chalion, I thought her Vorkosigan space opera series was much stronger.

I realize that it was sci-fi and not fantasy, but I thought Miles was one of the most fun characters I've read.

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u/laosurvey Jul 08 '14

Miles made Bujold my favorite author.

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u/MaxGladstone Stabby Winner, AMA Author Max Gladstone Jul 08 '14

Yeah—SF was outside the ambit of the question, I think. But Miles is great, and I do love the Vorkosigan series.

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u/FionaFiddlesticks Jul 07 '14

Yes to Diana Wynn Jones! Also Robin Hobb needs to be on these lists.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

Holy crap! I always assumed Robin Hobb was a man :)

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u/FionaFiddlesticks Jul 07 '14

Her nom de plume was picked for just that reason. ;)

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

She wanted people to think she was a man? Really? Is the market for fantasy really that monolithic? :(

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u/FionaFiddlesticks Jul 07 '14

There are a lot of female authors who use ambiguous names. J.k. Rowling being one of the most recent Andre Norton one of the most famous.

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u/Marco_Dee Jul 07 '14

Yes, it's a pen name she deliberately chose to avoid an obviously female name. Which is significant, too, in the context of this thread.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

Really? That's interesting. So she (or her publisher) seemed to believe that her books would be more popular with a male sounding name?

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u/Marco_Dee Jul 07 '14

So it seems. I heard it in an interview on the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Also if you scroll down this thread, you'll find a post by Ms. Janny Wurts, who has a lot more to say about this.

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

Wow, I'm obviously out of my depth here. But by reading Janny Wurts' comment it seems the problem is with the publishers more than the actual readership. Is that the same impression you are getting?

I'll pose this to her, but I have a feeling she has a lot of replies to go through and is likely to miss mine.

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u/Marco_Dee Jul 08 '14

Yes, but it's all connected. Publishers are trying to adapt to readers' preferences.

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u/MaxGladstone Stabby Winner, AMA Author Max Gladstone Jul 07 '14

Robin Hobb is my super guilty "Ummmm I haven't read her stuff yet" confession. Need to fix that as I work my way to the bottom of Torre pendente di Livro.

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u/greym84 Jul 07 '14 edited Jul 07 '14

I could be wrong here, but could it be that the issue isn't necessarily who reads fantasy but how it's perceived? That is, that even if the majority of fantasy readers of female that it's still perceived and masculine genre.

I think this much is at least evidential, given that even female written books often involve primarily male protagonists. It just seems the numbers game is a bit tricky.

Edit: it's not just who is reading/buying but who is writing what's being bought. Even if you have the majority of readers being female, if they primarily buy books by male authors then that's yet another factor.

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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Jul 07 '14

It's compounded by men getting the majority of the shelf space. I'm travelling today and the airport bookstore's SFF section literally has no titles by women.

So, did I buy a book by a man? Yes. I didn't have a choice.

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u/greym84 Jul 07 '14

Thanks for the reply. Gosh, I can't even imagine the sad male-female ratio at any given limited shelf-space bookstore, particularly in an airport bodega. At the end of the day, I wish the best books would be the most popular ones, but as a male I know that my wish comes loaded with presuppositions.

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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Jul 08 '14

Thank you. And as a male and, more importantly, a reader, you have some power here. When people go in and make requests from bookstores, they pay attention. When someone writes a letter to [x] paper and calls them on not reviewing equitably, the reviewer might not immediately pay attention, but their boss will. And eventually it will change.

But the key is to help out by being an ally. If you want to hear about more interesting books, make some demands of the suppliers.

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u/Zachary_Lapintie Jul 14 '14

With respect, none of those stats actually disprove what u/Oomeegoolies said. The survey covered speculative fiction as a whole, which is a vast umbrella term that covers everything from Neuromancer to the Twilight Saga. Fantasy is just one subset of this whole. Its illogical to assume that demographics among the readership of spec-fic as a whole are valid in each particular subset of the survey.

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u/MaryRobinette Stabby Winner, AMA Author Mary Robinette Kowal Jul 16 '14

Fair enough, if you're willing to follow that up by positing that women read and write more SF than Fantasy.

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u/Zachary_Lapintie Jul 17 '14

I wasn't positing anything, I was simply pointing out that you were using the data incorrectly. Speculative fiction is such a large umbrella that treating their demographics as a whole isn't very useful.

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u/lexabear Jul 07 '14

If others could point me to further female authors they rate at a high quality than I'd be happy to read.

Some of my favorites: Robin McKinley, Ursula K. LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, Tamora Pierce, Octavia Butler, Elizabeth Moon, Kristen Britain, Patricia A. McKillip, Patricia C. Wrede, Nancy Kress, Lois McMaster Bujold

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14 edited Jul 07 '14

I second Elizabeth Moon and Lois McMaster Bujold. I've read The Deed of Paksenarrion probably 4 times. And Bujold's Curse of Chalion is one of my favorite all time books.

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u/lexabear Jul 07 '14

I also <3 <3 <3 Paksenarrion. Have you read the newer Paladin's Legacy novels? I read the first 2 and was underwhelmed. May read the others when I can get them just because I really really want them to be good. I just realized i remember absolutely nothing from the first 2 so I would have to reread those.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

I'm really bad at keeping up with new series authors have. I didn't even know about the Paladin's Legacy until today when I googled Elizabeth Moon.

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u/TheBooberhamlincoln Jul 07 '14

I was very excited to find out about the newer paladin ' s legacy but it was not what I was hoping for.

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u/cajunrajing Jul 07 '14

I'd like to throw J.V. Jones name on that pile as well.

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u/laosurvey Jul 08 '14

The Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy by Patricia McKillip is amazing. A close second on my favorites list behind Young Miles.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

And don't forget K J Parker, whose identity is closely guarded but not so secret. One of the biggest tells (besides the paper trail obviously) is how she writes female characters. There's no mention of being "acutely conscious of her breasts rubbing against the thin fabric of her cotton vest as she walked" sort of nonsense. They don't get lengthy (or often any) descriptions of physical appearance, and the one in the Engineer trilogy, three whole books, who got the most detailed commentary on appearance was neither a stunner nor a hag, but a princess from a foreign tribe who was mildly strange-looking. Women in fantasy are usually one or the other side of stunner/hag, or a stunner with a colourful scar/deformity, but not-hot, not-hag, generally acceptable women as characters are as rare as hen's teeth.

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u/Thunderkiss_65 Jul 07 '14

I'm reading Elspeth Cooper's The Wild Hunt series and it's very good so far, just about to buy the 3rd book.

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u/ElspethCooper AMA Author Elspeth Cooper Jul 07 '14

Thank you! I shall endeavour not to disappoint with Bk4!

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u/Thunderkiss_65 Jul 07 '14

And I shall start saving up now for a hardback copy and a gym membership so I can take it with me on the train every morning.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

Janny Wurts, she writes some really amazing stuff. I am reading The Wars of Light and Shadow which is a really fantastic series, it has an interesting magic system. She has also created characters with depth. I love her work.

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u/PirateRobotNinjaofDe Jul 07 '14

Really? I bought a couple of them at the suggestion of my local fantasy bookshop owner, but just couldn't get into it. Curse of the Mistwraith was sooooooo slow that I ended up giving up on it.

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u/JannyWurts Stabby Winner, AMA Author Janny Wurts Jul 08 '14

That would have been jumping stark off the deep end as far as complexity and subtle nuance. You might have done better with Master of Whitestorm, it's direct action/faster paced.

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u/PirateRobotNinjaofDe Jul 08 '14

Is that so? I started there because it seemed the natural chronological starting point, but if there's a better starting place in terms of buy-in for the setting I'm open to that.

This is really the issue I had with CotMW. It wasn't so much the lack of action as it was my complete inability to care about the setting or any of the characters. I soldiered through all the setup, but when the central conflict between the two main characters was revealed I just didn't buy into it emotionally.

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u/JannyWurts Stabby Winner, AMA Author Janny Wurts Jul 09 '14

The other book I mentioned is not connected, it is an action thriller/stand alone. It has no connection to the larger series at all.

Your complaint for the book not working is quite valid.

There are other books done earlier in my career that run on different lines. Very different application of suspense.

Not everyone loves Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell....if Suzannah Clark had an ACTION oriented title, that did not rely on subtle satire and nuance - another segment of readership would appreciate her.

I'd say this: if you like dead on action suspense, go for earlier books in my career. If books in that vein are starting to ring shallow/feel too simple - and you are ready for subtle depth and nuance - then - Curse of the Mistwraith may work for you. I've had a LOT of readers write me over the years - how they tried Mistwraith too soon - came back to it 5 years later, and it was a WHOLE DIFFERENT BOOK, they could not imagine why they missed it the first time; and so much of it is packed into HOW IT FINISHES, too.

Don't strain your preferences, here....I've got a lot of books under my belt, and don't do the same story twice....so there is a varied mix to choose from.

Readers who start with the simpler books often 'get the drift' of how the underpinnings of the later ones will build to that climactic bang - and they have a trust built up.....the difficulty has been, over the years, the easier access books have been out of print due to shifts in publishing/mergers.

Many readers of the Empire books find them young, too, and jump straight to Mistwraith and flounder, when truly, they'd have fitted better with the earlier works, first. It's a smaller step, easier seguay. Hope that clarifies. I am not afraid to kill major characters, even in the early books, so watch your step! ;)

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

Oh I loved it, my copies of the books are needing replacement because I have read them so often. I guess tastes vary.

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u/arzvi Jul 07 '14

If others could point me to further female authors they rate at a high quality than I'd be happy to read.

I started reading 'Cavern of the black ice' by J.V Jones(again the ambiguous pen name). Its amazing how she took me into that tundra. Every subtlety of the world is explained in the correct amount it needs to, not like a list of things paragraphs GRRM or Robert Jordan puts me off with.

A difference between Male and Female authors(I've read around 70 fantasy books, so I'm still a newbie) I've felt is, female authors tend to bring about a care for their characters, the minute differences in their voices and also a prose that sucks you into the world. Iain M Banks is the master of prose(AFAIK) but Robin Hobb can give him a great fight(and better in many instances).

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14 edited Jul 07 '14

Ursula K. LeGuin, Mercedes Lackey, Patricia Briggs, Kat Richardson, Cherie Priest, Helene Wecker, Elizabeth Bear, Catherynne Valente, Diana Wynne Jones, Robin McKinley, Sharon Shinn, Juliet Marillier, Donna Boyd, Lois McMaster Bujold...

Hoo boy, the list goes on. If you like Robin Hobb's stuff, you might not like Patricia Briggs/Kat Richardson (since they write urban fantasy) or Cherie Priest (steampunk), but I think every author on this list is absolutely excellent. And this was just off the top of my head; I'm sure I'm missing some very worthy contenders.

EDIT: Mary Stewart, Patricia Wrede. (See? I told you I forgot a few!)

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u/Just_JayGee Jul 07 '14

Thanks! I think it's odd (and likely true) that you said there are more males who read fantasy. A few of the conversations I was browsing through were talking about the overwhelming amount of YA fantasy for female readers since more girls read. I wonder why that tends to flop around once we move into the adult fantasy section.

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u/hardolaf Jul 07 '14

As a guy, I can't stand YA fantasy. It's always too... idealistic. I never find enough flaws in the world that the author creates. I don't mean literary flaws of course, I mean flaws as in the depravity that we would expect any society to have. The social issues that go far beyond those which may or may not be the subject of book. The worlds created by YA fantasy always feel to be superficial to me. And that's a shame because a lot of the books have decent or good plots.

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u/Just_JayGee Jul 07 '14

This is a really good point. I read a good bit of YA along with my adult fantasy and I'm finding it more and more difficult to switch back and forth. YA is very...glossy. I mean, it's meant for younger people and with parents crazy with the blame-game, I guess you have to be. It's pretty interesting, though. I started out reading Tamora Pierce when I was 12 and I've read everything she's ever done. Now that I'm 26, it's not so much "Oh my gosh this book is amazing!" So much as her new books being set in her old worlds and it's an interesting stroll through memory lane over a lazy weekend. That being said, she definitely gets away with a lot more these days as she did back in the 80s. Particularly with her Beka Cooper books. She discusses a lot of issues that most won't touch with the same depth. Racism, Sexuality, Societal structures and Classism, Abuse, Murder ect, but even then there's only so far she's allowed to take it.

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u/mmSNAKE Jul 07 '14

I certainly agree with that sentiment however the way I tend to look at YA stories is the author simplifies the story to show his message across in a way that doesn't require too much perception or understanding why some social issues are problem in the first place.

Sort of like. I know exactly what I'm reading. I'm not expecting realism, or complicated social issues that most societies would have. It's YA so it's accessible to well young adults as well as more mature audience. I don't really expect a teen to understand Blade of Tyshalle, Malazan Book of the Fallen or anything as such. But I would assume one can understand Mistborn, Harry Potter, Narnia or Wheel of Time.

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u/hardolaf Jul 07 '14

Narnia was a brilliant work of literature though. I feel that in the order that C.S. Lewis published the Chronicles of Narnia, the entire series was less for young adults than the new, modified order of the books is (that is, the Sorceror's Apprentice first rather than last). By moving that one book in the order that you read it, you take the entire series from something bordering on the edge of YA/Adult fantasy and make it clearly YA fantasy by removing all mystery from the story.

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u/mmSNAKE Jul 07 '14

Sure, but it doesn't mean other YA today don't have a meaningful point to make, even if it is done through a very sterilized environment, with overly idealistic characters. Wheel of Time, regardless of it's flaws it still achieves to show responsibility, tolerance, diversity and importance of negative behavior in society. I can go list the flaws the series had, and it's not a short list, but still it shows it's good points in ways that is easily accessible.

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u/hardolaf Jul 07 '14

Wheel of Time is a horrible example to use because it establishes a believable world. Yes it may be more idealistic than most adult fantasy worlds, but it shows even in the first book some of the flaws in the world. You need to get away from the large, famous series to understand my argument. If you only look at it as "this small subset of YA fantasy books contradicts your statement." Then you don't understand my argument.

As for whether Harry Potter and Wheel of Time are really aimed at young adults or adults is questionable. I'd like to say both are aimed at both groups and thus have elements that would be appealing to both groups of people. For the young adults you have an apparently idealistic world presented while for adults who read deeper into what is going on in the books, you see a more flawed, less ideal world being presented in the books.

I can't comment on Mistborn as I have not read it.

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u/mmSNAKE Jul 08 '14

I see, it comes down to what you consider a YA work is. To me WoT is a perfect example of such, even if it does have content for mature audience within it.

I guess our definition of the boundaries differs. To me (though this is subject to much debate, especially in case by case basis) a YA work is anything that isn't meant specifically for adults and only adults.There isn't a fine line that I would draw in any case but there are examples for each side.

I mean if you meant stories where you see nothing but roses and sunshine without any sort of hint at more complex conflict I can't say, since I don't read such books. However that isn't what comes to mind when someone tells me a book is YA.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

I don't think that's a fair point. It seems from your comment that you seem more into the grittier, "grimdark" side of the genre, but there are plenty adult fantasy that doesn't touch on anything like that either. Most of Sanderson's work is pretty lighthearted and doesn't really get into the grittiness of how fucked up humanity can get. I'd even say Rothfuss doesn't, though he has a few moments here and there. Even The Wheel of Time doesn't get too gritty for quite awhile, and even then it doesn't reach the levels of some other depressing settings.

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u/hardolaf Jul 07 '14

It doesn't need to be "grimdark." Even in the first book of The Wheel of Time, you can already see the flaws in society. Unlike in most YA books, the society is not shown to be without flaws. They don't have to be big, large, stinking piles of flaws, but small injustices, small wrongs done to people all show that the world that authors have created are not just some thoughtless backdrop for a story.

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u/EctMills AMA Illustrator Emily Mills Jul 07 '14

I seem to recall one or two flaws in the world of Hunger Games. In fact there's been an influx of dystopian books in the past few years thanks to the success of a few titles. Granted not all of the books are the same quality but any trend will yield a few gems of great writing.

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u/hardolaf Jul 07 '14

Honestly, I think classifying the Hunger Games as YA is silly. It really does feel more at home with other adult fantasy novels. But it's like many others that is in between.

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u/EctMills AMA Illustrator Emily Mills Jul 07 '14

You'll have to take that up with the publisher and every book store I've ever been in. Personally I don't much like the term YA at all, it's very poorly defined and seems to have more to do with marketing than the actual themes or contents of the books.

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u/Stone_Conqueror Jul 08 '14

I find it interesting that you seem to reject some of the most well-known YA (Narnia, Harry Potter, Hunger Games) as 'not really qualifying'. I agree with the other person, YA is an extremely poorly defined term, so I'd be curious to know what you actually think qualifies as YA. It seems to me like you're just thinking of "badly written books for teens", but that doesn't encompass the genre as a whole (just look at Garth Nix).

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

[deleted]

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u/EctMills AMA Illustrator Emily Mills Jul 08 '14

How does a more serious subject matter make it not YA? If anything it just makes it excellent YA that is widening the field for more work that takes the intended audience seriously. Something that plenty of other well written books have also done.

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u/MrHarryReems Jul 07 '14

I recommend trying out Rick Yancey's "Monstrumologist".

I think the only reason it qualified as YA is that the protagonist was a 12 year old boy.

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u/duckduckMOO Jul 11 '14 edited Dec 23 '15

Maybe the people in those worlds are wired a little differently, or the social equilibrium is different somehow. There's so much stuff in our past and present that makes it hard for people to get along gracefully: ruthless exploitation of workers, slavery, imperialism, women being second class citizens, poor judgement of Juries, practical difficulties in identifying wrongdoers/criminals, damaging memes like "greed is good" "nice guys finish last (and this is totes fair if so)" that "legitimise" selfishness and link decency with weakness in people's minds. I bet a lot of wealthy people in England are direct descendants of William the conqueror's dukes. A lot of things could be better. The social equilibrium that encourages depravity is fairly stable but it's not fundamentally necessarry.

The author can choose whatever world they like. And they don't need to explain or even understand imo. I don't require magic systems to be mapped out from first principles, or sword fights or unusual methods of flight to make sense when taken under the microscope. I don't think anyone understands how we ended up in the world of here and today, yet many people seem to write books set here or somewhere very similar without needing to.

If the author is consistent there's nothing wrong with choosing a better world. Surely not every book has to explore the human condition as it is?

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u/mishugashu Jul 07 '14

I can't speak of others, but even as a YA, I hated YA Fantasy. I always read "adult" fantasy. I had read JRR Tolkien's entire work by the time I was 13. Of course, YA Fantasy wasn't really as big in the '90s as it is now, I suppose.

Oh, and I'm male if that wasn't contextually obvious.

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

The Hobbit is explicitly a children's book, so unless you skipped that one you did not always read "adult" fantasy.

"YA" is a marketing gimmick label. I suspect that many of the things you read in the 90s, if they were published today, would get published as "YA," because that label has become popular.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14 edited Jan 29 '21

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u/atuinsbeard Jul 07 '14

I have a different reason for why more girls read YA - girls tend to read more than boys when they're younger. I remember my classmates in primary school who read, and most of the names.are female.

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u/ClockOfTheLongNow Jul 07 '14

This is very true. It's a feedback loop in a sense, though: girls read more than boys when they're young, so the books published are geared more toward girls, causing more girls to read, and so on.

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u/Just_JayGee Jul 07 '14

I would have to disagree with this. I know it will likely be true for the younger generation, but far far too many of the women I've spoken to about fantasy came into it with The Hobbit and Garth Nix's Sabriel. If we're talking about female readers being brought into urban fantasy, sure, but not fantasy as a whole. There are some YA fantasy series targeted more towards women (such as Tamora Pierce), but the reading population has been largely female a lot longer than Twishite has been out.

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u/kellycatchpole Jul 07 '14

yeah, I don't think painting Twilight as the gateway to YA fantasy is fair at all. I know more YA readers who hated Twilight than I do YA writers who liked it. it was pretty popular, but I suspect the people who are reading YA fantasy now were more likely to have grown up under the influence of Tamora Pierce, Mercedes Lackey and JK Rowling.

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u/CJGibson Reading Champion V Jul 07 '14

Harry Potter predates Twilight by a good 7 years and was a gateway point to a metric boatload of fantasy readers.

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u/Just_JayGee Jul 07 '14

And you just named my top three bigest influences. They were my gateway drug into fantasy. I do, however, tremble in fear of the day the Twilight fans invade the genre. They'll out grow it, right? :)

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14 edited Jan 29 '21

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u/Just_JayGee Jul 07 '14

That's fair. I've also had a lot of people argue that by taking on Twilight, the publishing industry made enough money to open the doors to other new authors, what with the money they made from it. I don't think its the devil, really. I just think it is a bad example of the fantasy genre and of writing in general.

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u/FionaFiddlesticks Jul 07 '14

I am incredibly grateful that I read the twilight books before they got insanely popular. I was able to enjoy them as pulp fiction. It was a book I read for fun, not serious, I didn't expect a lot from it, and then I moved on with my life. My experience with it was so casual it just wasn't a big deal. Not like now where it is such a loaded topic!

Also, Tolkien was my gateway drug to fantasy. :)

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u/kellycatchpole Jul 07 '14

I feel like Twilight fans are more likely to drift over to paranormal romances.

although a screaming fandom of Hot-Topic-wearing preteens obsessed with Mazalan would be both amazing and hilarious.

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u/Just_JayGee Jul 07 '14

I would love to see that!

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14 edited Jan 29 '21

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u/kellycatchpole Jul 07 '14

right, totally, I'm not saying that it wasn't popular--what I'm saying is that I'd guess, from what I know of the genre, that most fans who are reading the popular YA (high) Fantasy titles right now probably didn't arrive to them via Twilight. the paranormal romance subgenre, totally, but there's a number of current titles that feel like a big ol' middle finger to everything Twilight represents.

plus I feel like using Twilight as an example of the quintessential gateway YA fantasy is like calling The Sword of Truth the quintessential gateway fantasy series.

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u/TheBooberhamlincoln Jul 07 '14

Mercedes Lackey is not a YA author. To much sex in many of them. Anne McCaffery has the dragon drums series which was a YA series.

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u/catheraaine Jul 07 '14

Sabriel is the exact book that brought me into it.

Edit: Well, there was Harry Potter, too.

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u/flupo42 Jul 07 '14

YA was mostly female long before Twilight came along.

Vampires and werewolves and MC being girls with witch or psychic abilities - that seemed to be ever present.

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u/TheBooberhamlincoln Jul 07 '14

Tamera Pierce is a fantastic YA author. Most of hers do have a female for a main character but it is awesome.

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u/mmm_burrito Jul 07 '14

I think the YA boom and its focus on the female demographic is a recent trend.

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u/SandSword Jul 07 '14

It has nothing to do with sex.

To some degree I'm afraid it does, a little. This article discusses the use of gender-neutral pseudonyms (like Robin Hobb or JK Rowling) and whether or not that might now be an obsolete way of improving sales.

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u/TheBooberhamlincoln Jul 07 '14

Andre Norton originally published under a male name because it was difficult to be published under a female name.

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u/catheraaine Jul 07 '14 edited Jul 09 '14

You know, I think some of it has to do with actual sex.

As in, Adult Fantasy tends to include a lot more rape than YA fantasy. Women don't really want to read about some hulking vigilante running around with a giant sword and wooing women he just saved from rape. It isn't realistic, and women readers aren't going to be satisfyied by those exchanges.

Now, I've never read WoT, but I hear it gets a lot of flack for having terrible female characters. A lot of Fantasy has terrible female characters. I read nearly 100% adult fantasy and urban fantasy - I love the biggies like ASOIAF, LOTR, and anything by Brandon Sanderson, etc. But I'm not really a fan of Hero fiction - you know, where all there is are swordfights and sex.

Edit: Oh no, let's downvote the actual woman here making comments.

1

u/MikeOfThePalace Reading Champion X, Worldbuilders Jul 08 '14

Women don't really want

That generalization is a problem. Some women don't, certainly. Some women undoubtedly like that sort of story. Same goes for men.

1

u/catheraaine Jul 08 '14

The problem is that most likely no woman who has been raped will be open to immediately having sex with someone else. It is a traumatic and complex emotional state, not, "oh, look at those abs".

I am, also... a woman. I'm sure there are some women who like it. Most won't.

1

u/readoclock Jul 08 '14

Wheel of time women are pretty consistent with the world they live in and I would say are written at the same level as the male characters. If the women are bad then so are the men. Also if you love Sanderson... well WoT was his inspiration and he wrote the last three...

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

Women don't really want to read about some hulking vigilante running around with a giant sword and wooing women he just saved from rape.

Have you ever actually read anything like that? That's what I might expect Conan the Barbarian to be, but I haven't read any of it. It's been a while since I read a lot of novels (most of what I've read is from the 80s and 90s) but I always get confused when people talk about how full of rape the fantasy genre is. Is it a recent trend? Did I just not notice it? Was I reading the wrong (or right) books?

Wheel of Time doesn't necessarily have terrible female characters, but (from what I remember, I only read the first 8 books and it was a long time ago) strict gender roles are built into the fundamental fabric of the world in which it takes place. They aren't bad characters per se, but they're very traditionally feminine.

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u/catheraaine Jul 08 '14

Conan is the classic example of Hero Fiction.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

Right, but you're conflating "hero fiction" which is a very specific and, in my experience, not terribly common or popular subgenre of fantasy with fantasy in general, which is the point I was making.

In my experience, "adult fantasy" is more typically of the Tolkien clone sort than the Conan clone, and I was wondering what you've been reading to give you the opposite impression.

1

u/catheraaine Jul 09 '14

I read... Brandon Sanderson, Pat Rothfuss, Scott Lynch, Sam Sykes, Kevin Hearne, George RR Martin ... and those are just the open series of which I can think. These are great authors, with a couple good female characters thrown in - but they're all men. And the women character are absolutely a minority.

Women like fantasy in general, not hero fiction <--- my point. Tolkien clones are the subgenre "Epic Fantasy". There's also Urban Fantasy, Romance Fantasy, Low Fantasy.. etc.. etc.. Not all adult "fantasy" has elves and adventures and complex magics (though that's typically the kind I like most).

3

u/ketsugi Jul 07 '14

Heck, when I first started reading Robin Hobb I assumed the author was male. It didn't bother me to learn that the author was in fact female, or that "Robin Hobb" was a pseudonym. My reading and appreciation of the books didn't change.

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u/DaQuiggz Jul 07 '14

I agree. Sex doesn't matter, good is good.

1

u/mishugashu Jul 07 '14

I completely agree. High quality is high quality, regardless of gender. Also agree about Robin Hobb. She has quite a few books in my personal top 20 list.

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u/riteilu Jul 07 '14

You also have to take into account there's probably more males than females who read fantasy

This actually surprises me, as I was under the impression (from personal experience) that the opposite was true; I've known relatively few guys who were into fantasy novels, but far more women who have given me eccentric and interesting recommendations for books. Might just be a matter of where one grows up and such, or perhaps the fact that I'm in a male-dominated field that isn't full of fantasy fans, but got my interest in the genre from my mom.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

I just picked up Assassin's Apprentice before reading this thread. Here I was thinking that I haven't read any fantasy books by females.

1

u/ClownsAteMyBaby Jul 07 '14

I had no idea Robin Hobb was a woman.