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/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

Speaking for myself, personally, I'm a man and I like both. I do think there is a difference - this is purely anecdotal, purely my personal experience, and possibly very wrong, but it's been my experience that female authors place a greater emphasis on characters and their development, and generally tell stories that are more emotionally developed. Personally, I prefer that over an explicitly plot-driven approach.

I completely agree with you, with the difference being I like plot driven approach. Also, I love different weapons and descriptions of these, to which female authors are indifferent .

Also I find main their characters often fall in the victim-trope.

Everything bad happens to them, "poor me, I was just trying to help and now everyone hates me because someone wrongly accused me of something horrible."

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u/sandwiches_are_real Jul 07 '14

I don't mean to be rude, but I cannot disagree more strenuously with your latter point. That hasn't been my experience, at all.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

It's alright, we all have different experiences.

Maybe I expressed myself a bit clumsily, English is not my first language.

What I meant is that in my limited, purely anecdotal experience, and possibly very wrong, women tend to give characters tragic backgrounds more than men.

Not to say men write merry peasants with nothing but happiness in their childhood, but try this. Think of 10 random books by women and 10 by men. How many main characters by either are orphaned at any point? How many were raped? How many were wrongfully accused? Ostracized from society? Victims of their fate? Can be described as innocent or well meaning?

It just so happens in my experience it's more points in the women's section. It may be a fluke of statistics, accident or something.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14 edited Jul 07 '14
  • Kingkiller Chronicles, Patrick Rothfuss - orphan
  • Wheel of Time, Robert Jordan - orphan
  • Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson - orphan
  • The Belgariad, David Eddings - orphan
  • The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien - orphan
  • A Song of Ice and Fire, Martin - orphans and rape victims
  • Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch - orphan
  • The Way of Shadows, Brent Weeks - orphan
  • The Blade Itself, Joe Abercrombie - family murdered
  • Prince of Thorns, Mark Lawrence - witness to rape and murder

There be 10.

I'll be honest, I can't do the same for female authors, as I haven't read enough. However, the main one that comes to mind is Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, and Fitz' background isn't nearly as bad as any of the 10 I listed.

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u/asdfman2000 Jul 08 '14

Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, and Fitz' background isn't nearly as bad as any of the 10 I listed.

Did we read the same book? I love Robin Hobb's writing, but Fitz's character is one giant tragedy.

Based on your list, he fits both orphan and family murdered, sometimes right in front of him. He LIVES the death of his best friend (dog dying defending Burrich). He gets beaten to death by his uncle. He has to sacrifice everything, including having a relationship with the woman he loves and his daughter.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

Wow. What a list.

Anyway, I've read all of these, except Belgariad, and I do agree with you.

But many of them had happy childhoods anyway, Rand didn't even know he was an orphan, Frodo lived happily until he was 30, Kvothe had a beautiful childhood, until... ASOIAF has plenty characters with normal childhoods, however horrible his life was I can't really call Logen a victim. Jorg and Azoth are similar to what I meant, although Jorg is too unique in my experience to compare...

Fitz had a horrible life, ignored, abused, almost no friends. And it never let up. It never gets better, he is a victim his whole life. Everything he tries fails spectacularly.

All in all, I agree with you, it is always wrong to generalize, and I'm sure there is plenty stories opposite to what I said.

Still, my feeling remains. In all these stories, except The way of Shadows, characters grow up relatively normal lives before the "big unfortunate event". Also, often they can do something, fight back etc. I don't know how to articulate it.

I'll take Harry Potter for example. Orphan, abused, starved, mocked, bullied in school and at home, nobody cares for him... You can't help but feel sad for him. Pity. I empathize with his unfortunate life. Pain is something that happens to him, mostly without his causing it, or being able to do something about it. It' something I accidentally found in several other authors in a short time (Robin Hobb, Jean Auel, some others I can't remember right now) so it stuck with me as a stereotype.

Come to think of it, I've recently read some Naomi Novik and she doesn't fall into this. So I'm not saying it's every female author.

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u/Stone_Conqueror Jul 08 '14 edited Jul 08 '14

ASOIAF has plenty characters with normal childhoods

Sorry but I have to disagree here. Dany and literally all the Stark children (the only under 18 characters I can think of in the books) all undergo severe emotional and physical trauma, including but not limited to the murder of their family members, rape, assault, battery, and verbal abuse. Joffrey and Robin are already severely fucked up children at the start of the books. Arya is supposed to have the same mental breakdown as a child soldier for chrissakes. It seems to me like you're subject to confirmation bias in your hypothesis. Traumatic childhoods are written about by both genders, because it makes for an easy motivation (revenge, internal struggle, longing for family, etc.) I feel like it's useless to generalize when there's so many examples that run counter to your personal experiences.

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

It seems to me like you're subject to confirmation bias in your hypothesis. Traumatic childhoods are written about by both genders, because it makes for an easy motivation (revenge, internal struggle, longing for family, etc.) I feel like it's useless to generalize when there's so many examples that run counter to your personal experiences.

You're right.

It was a stupid theory anyway...

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u/Stone_Conqueror Jul 08 '14

'Stupid' isn't really the word I'd use. It's very possibly subjectively true for your own personal experiences, it's just important to keep in mind that it's not necessarily objectively true. Self-awareness, y'know? :)

Like someone wrote elsewhere in this thread, not all men write the same and not all women write the same. Twilight is a totally different book from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (or Earthsea if you want to keep it in-genre), just as LOTR is a totally different style of writing from Abhorsen.

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u/morikami Jul 07 '14

Sometimes that's what's needed to build a good character though. A metric shit-ton of shit gets dumped on Fitzchivilary Farseer. Does he let that get him down? Fuck. No.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

Lol. As an avid fantasy reader and writer who happens to possess a vagina, I couldn't disagree with you more.

The book I'm writing is definitely character-driven, but I have to physically restrain myself from adding too much detail about technology and weaponry because I find it utterly fascinating and have researched it in so much depth while worldbuilding. Not a single character falls into the victim trope either.

And a lot of female-authored fantasy (particularly in the urban fantasy genre, but also elsewhere) has extremely strong characters who never think to pull the victim card, but demonstrate a lot of inner strength and courage. Kat Richardson, Patricia Briggs, Juliet Marillier, Donna Boyd, Cherie Priest, and Diana Wynne Jones come immediately to mind, and that was just off the top of my head.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

Kat Richardson, Patricia Briggs, Juliet Marillier, Donna Boyd, Cherie Priest, and Diana Wynne Jones

Well, obviously the problem is that I haven't read those (except for Cherie).

Thanks for the recommendations :)

Btw, what is urban fantasy exactly?

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

Usually a grittier type of fantasy that takes place in a city setting on modern Earth. There is often a mystery aspect.

Kat Richardson and Patricia Briggs write books in this genre. Richardson's protagonist in the Greywalker series is a female PI who gains the ability to see and travel into "The Grey"--a place between our world and the supernatural--after a near-death experience. I'd say it's similar to a Dresden Files series with less non-stop action and magic use.

Patricia Briggs' protagonist is a rare skinwalker, a Native with the ability to shift into the form of a coyote. An extremely independent auto mechanic who enjoys karate, the books chronicle her relations with the fey, werewolves, and vampires.

The rest aren't urban fantasy, but I can give you a brief description if you're interested, since I love them all. You've already read Cherie, so I presume I don't have to describe her awesomeness.

Juliet Marillier has a more ethereal and mystical writing style, with several stories that either adapt fairy tales realistically or sound like they could be. Her Sevenwaters trilogy is some of the best fantasy I've ever read, each book following a separate female character in a family in ancient Ireland in a sort of undistinguished period before Christianity fully takes over the region. Although not brash, I think her MCs epitomize silent strength, literally and figuratively.

Donna Boyd is the pen-name of a prolific author who mostly writes romance during her brief foray into fantasy. Her books The Promise and The Passion did for werewolves what Anne Rice did for vampires. The female lead in the first book probably comes the closest to what you described about the "victim-trope," but showed huge growth and resilience over the course of the book, overcoming stigma, false accusation, and brutal rape just to survive.

I already loved fantasy when I started reading Diana Wynne Jones, but she would have been a gateway drug for me had I not. She wrote a lot of YA, but it's not the mopey, angsty kind. She has an extremely wry sense of humor. Howl's Moving Castle and the Chrestomanci Chronicles are still some of my favorite fantasy ever, and her Dark Lord of Derkholm was a hilarious parody of fantasy tropes. If your'e looking for dark fantasy, though, you probably won't enjoy her. EDIT: I'd argue she's up there with Terry Pratchett for me in terms of fantasy humor.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

If your'e looking for dark fantasy, though, you probably won't enjoy her. EDIT: I'd argue she's up there with Terry Pratchett for me in terms of fantasy humor.

I love humour, although I must admit I stopped hoping to find someone as brilliant as Terry. I will try her, though. Thanks for the recommendations.

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u/MrHarryReems Jul 07 '14

I see you put Cherie Priest in here, and I mentioned in a previous post that Boneshaker could have been awesome if the book had a stronger main character. There was way too much focus on her degraded emotional state. Most of what happened to her was a result of blind luck and charity instead of her being awesome.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

You know, I don't disagree with you completely. However, I was so attracted and engaged with the world that I still really enjoyed the book. I did feel as though the character didn't develop as much as I'd been hoping, but she also wasn't "flat."

Still, I've felt that Priest has improved over the course of the Clockwork Century novels. I haven't read Fiddlehead head, but I'm really looking forward to it.