Epic Fantasy... my favourite genre?

There is no doubt that my favourite books fall into the genre of Epic Fantasy. However, I’m not certain that Epic Fantasy is my favourite genre. I grew up with The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien), moved onto Memory, Sorrow and Thorn (Tad Williams) before flirting with The Riftwar Saga (Raymond E. Feist) and finding my ultimate favourites. So what are my top picks – if I’m choosing with my heart it’s The Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan), if with my head it’s A Song of Ice and Fire (George R. R. Martin).



The current leader in the
Epic Fantasy genre?



Although I can’t begin to imagine composing a multi-book epic, the majority of my writing will probably be in this genre of Fantasy. Yet, I remain unsure that this is my favourite genre, primarily because I’m not especially enthused to launch into another series. They’re just so damn long.

I have the first books of The Malazan Book of the Fallen (Steven Erikson) on my bookshelf waiting for me, but frankly I find the idea of committing to such a series intimidating. Giving one author so much reading time, when there is so much to read, feels impossible. Frankly, even knowing how much I love it, if I was confronted with 14 books of The Wheel of Time I probably wouldn’t start reading it. I feel like a trilogy is about as much as I am willing to give my time to, so Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law Trilogy is an example of an ideal recent read.



You can kind of see
why my wife doesn't want
our shelves dominated by

books that look like this...

Ironically, I recognise that one of the reasons why I love The Wheel of Time so much has been the anticipation between books. I know there will be a let-down when the books are over, even if A Memory of Light is the greatest Fantasy book of all time. I’ll be glad to have A Song of Ice and Fire to turn to, and I am currently trying to dump myself in the middle of a bunch of other series so that there will virtually always be a book for me to be anticipating.



I’m hoping Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive will be a worthy replacement for The Wheel of Time. I haven’t finished reading The Way of Kings yet so I can’t say much more at this stage. The good thing about Sanderson’s work is that I’m getting in at the ground floor, as was more or less the case with Jordan and Martin. In an ideal world I would tear through The Malazan Book of The Fallen in time for The Crippled God, but I can’t see that happening.

I’ve just finished devouring Towers of Midnight, and intend to move on to The Way of Kings and The Black Prism (Brent Weeks). Firstly, I’ll be finishing up Shadow’s Son (Jon Sprunk) which snuck to the top of my ‘to read’ list by virtue of its brief length.



The grey area of Speculative Fiction genres and sub-genres

When I first thought about starting a book review blog I put together a guide to the prominent Speculative Fiction sub-genres. I have since edited it somewhat and posted it here. My intention was (and still is) to identify the genre and sub-genre of each book that I review. I have written a number of novice reviews on Goodreads but haven’t previously tried to label books in this way, so unsurprisingly I was sand-bagged on only my third review on the blog (now posted here). Fortunately it isn’t just me who struggles.

I was inspired to think more on sub-genres a few weeks ago while listening to this episode of the SF Signal podcast. While the SF Signal crew pointed out most of the recognisable categories they emphasised the very blurry boundaries that separate sub-genres.

Enter Lou Anders (Editor at Pyr, involved in numerous anthologies and other projects, including the recent Swords and Dark Magic) who falls into the category of ‘someone who should know.’ In this recent episode of Adventures in SciFi Publishing Lou described sub-genre labels as “nebulous, nebulous terms.” Further, since these terms are vague, “you shouldn’t split hairs too finely in any sub-genre arguments, they’re just bookstore categories.”

Lou’s position isn’t controversial. It's fairly representative of the feelings of industry professionals. In a discussion over at Babel Clash, Jeremy Lassen (Editor at Nightshade Books, involved in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl), another ‘someone who should know,’ wrote “The marketing categories that books are shelved in, and the kinds of sub-genre tags we apply to books exist for one purpose, from my point of view as an editor and publisher.  They exist to help readers find the books that they will be pre-disposed to like.” Jeremy went on to describe sub-genre labels as “a bit arbitrary.”

So why am I bothering? Ultimately my aim in reviewing books will be to direct readers to stories they will enjoy (when some people actually read my blog), as is the aim of bookstores when they shelve books in different sections of the store. However, I’m hoping my labels will be a bit more informative than the broad category of ‘Science Fiction and Fantasy’ that is as far as most Australian book sellers take things.

Noird...

Finally, I wonder how authors feel about the categories that get applied to their work. Some very clearly embrace it. I’m sure Cherie Priest loves being identified as a producer of Steampunk. Brandon Sanderson happily describes his work as Epic Fantasy. China Miéville calls his writing whatever the hell he wants (he describes The City and the City as ‘noird’ – don’t worry, there’s context). I have to imagine that there are some writers who don’t like having their work pigeon-holed, and others who deliberately combine elements of sub-genres (and tropes from outside the Speculative genres) in order to defy convention and create very original stories.