"Boy Fantasy" vs. "Girl Fantasy"
Less sexy than it sounds.
Hello, friends!
Happy almost-Thanksgiving! I hope you all get loads of time off and the chance to eat your favorite foods. And I hope the nice weather we’ve been having on the East Coast holds through Thursday, and then plunges to temperatures that are actually normal for this time of year.
Meanwhile, I am over here methodically working my way through the ol’ edits.
I think I mentioned earlier that I’ve been calling this book a “horror-tinged literary novel.” That’s how I think of it, anyway, and while editing it, I have found myself much less interested than usual in reading horror novels or literary novels. Instead, I have been reading a lot self-help (which I always find strangely soothing), a lot of nonfiction, and a lot of high-genre stuff. On the nonfiction side, I’m halfway through an out-of-print true crime book called The Minds of Billy Milligan, by Daniel Keyes, the author of Flowers for Algernon, which is pretty good — I think it would be a big hit if it came out today instead of in 1981, although apparently it was adapted into a terrible Apple TV+ series called The Crowded Room.
And on the fiction front, I’ve been reading a lot of romantic fantasy: A Court of Thorns and Roses, Spark of the Everflame. Over the summer I read Fourth Wing. And these books have got me thinking.
Spark was originally self-published in, I think, 2023. It was a huge hit and got picked up by Atria Books for a print-only deal; the print version came out in October and promptly hit the NYT bestseller list. (I also hear the author is super nice.)
It’s funny, though, because when I was reading Spark and Fourth Wing and even to a lesser extent ACOTAR, I couldn’t stop noticing elements that struck me as incredibly amateurish — I’m talking super-basic worldbuilding in what’s supposed to be a high fantasy novel, I’m talking plot twists you can see from a mile away, I’m talking characters doing stuff out of convenience that doesn’t feel like it makes any sense. This struck me, I think, because I have always been taught to subvert or play with tropes, and these authors are not doing that. They are leaning as far into the tropes as you can without falling over.
And they’re having tremendous success.
When I’ve talked to the people who love these books, a lot of them say that they read a lot of romance and mostly don’t read a lot of fantasy. So at first I thought, maybe these books are just using romance beats and getting marketed at a romance audience and that’s the whole thing right there. But I don’t think that’s the full story! I think clearly these readers are reading fantasy — it’s just not the same kind of fantasy people think of when they imagine fantasy novels, which is to say, The Lord of the Rings or, like, Sword of Shannara.
And I was thinking about how “traditional” fantasy is marketed more at boys, and “romantasy” is marketed more at girls. And I feel like there’s a cultural understanding — one that has insidiously seeped into my own framework, like above, when I used the words “amateurish” and “basic”! — anyway, there’s a cultural understanding that the “boy” version is better, but I don’t think that’s true. I think the “girl” version is just doing something different.
A theory:
Girl Fantasy has: low worldbuilding and typically a strong romance arc. But more important than the romance, these are coming-of-age stories focused on one person — usually a girl or a young woman — coming into the fullness of her power. Obvious examples: Fourth Wing and Spark of the Everflame and any Sarah J. Maas book, as above, but also Uprooted, Shadow & Bone… probably, like, Kushiel’s Dart… Tanith Lee’s Claidi Journals… and so on. (These are NOT the same as YA books, but I think YA novels often also have low worldbuilding, big romance, and a coming-of-age primary structure, so people get confused.)
Boy Fantasy, on the other hand, has: lots of worldbuilding (too much?), usually a political intrigue plotline, and either a lack of focus on character or a focus on character that’s spread out across a large ensemble cast. See: The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, those books by Patrick Rothfuss, Wheel of Time, anything by Brandon Sanderson.
Obviously there are loads of books that don’t fit into either category, and/or that also have more gender crossover in terms of their marketing. I’m thinking here of books that combine big worldbuilding with a strong single-character coming-of-age arc. I think these are also often, though not always, children’s books. Consider: Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, maybe The Traitor Baru Cormorant. (I think the later Baru books become boy fantasy, even though the main character is a lesbian — but the gender of the book in my dumb little definition has nothing to do with the gender of the book’s characters or author. It’s very Heroine’s Journey that way.)
Anyway, once I developed this incredibly simplistic dichotomy, I was obviously off to the races:
Temeraire: Boy fantasy.
Gideon the Ninth: Uncategorizable in every way by its very nature. Sorry for the cop-out.
Garth Nix’s The Seventh Tower: Girl fantasy, despite the lack of a romantic arc.
Interview with a Vampire: Girl fantasy, despite the male protagonist.
The Song of the Lioness: Girl fantasy despite the worldbuilding, because it’s so focused on Alanna’s arc.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: Boy fantasy, I guess!
Piranesi: Tbh I would say this one is not a fantasy novel at all, but a locked-room thriller! Deceptive!
OK, your turn. Pick a novel! Categorize it!
News
My short story “Cassandra Takes the Plunge,” originally published in 2022 in Shoreline of Infinity and recently reprinted, is now free to read in Trollbreath Magazine. Back in the day, this was recommended by Nerds of a Feather on their Hugo Awards reading list. Now you can decide for yourself whether they were right!
My short story “St. Thomas Aquinas Administers the Turing Test” will be published in Diabolical Plots in December 2024 — or sooner, if you join Diabolical Plots’s Patreon. (But the free version comes in December.)
And my essay “‘Selfish or Annoying’: Etiquette, Gender, and Race in Oops!: The Manners Guide for Girls” will be published in An American Girl Anthology (University Press of Mississippi) in mid-2025.
Have a wonderful holiday, friends! See you in December for an end-of-year-recap!
this really aligns with my theory that I could convince Susanna Clarke to transition
This is very interesting and I think hits at a true difference in readership preference (even if its not strictly gendered). There is another article out now about narrative distance, and how many of the classics had a more distant lens where later books have a closer lens. Most of the "girl" fantasies you mentioned all have extremely close narrative distance where the "boy" fantasies don't. My gut tells me "boy" fantasy has an appeal to a more male coded readerahip bc it mimics videogames. Like appeals to like. That would have interesting applications in how we can keep young men reading books. But a true study would be fascinating to see.
Sorey, a lot of meandering here. This was an excellent artilce.