Epicly predictable, or epicly delicious?

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Yesterday, Stacey over at YA Fantasy Guide posted what I would consider highly inflammatory remarks about epic fantasy (“inflammatory,” of course, if your world is lucky to have as much karmic zen that a blog post is as disagreeable a thing as you can imagine 😉 ). To sum it up, she says YA epic fantasy isn’t selling because it is all the same boy-meets-fate story that would make even Campbell cringe at how repetitively close it is to the Hero’s Journey.

Now, I’m no expert on “YA” epic fantasy. When I was in the category of Youth Aghast, our library tended to stock the less racy adult fantasy in the YA paperback racks, stuff that didn’t really fit but at the same time, hey, that works. The problem I have with Stacey’s assertion (besides the fact that it isn’t completely true) is that as a reader of this subgenre, I think she’s actually missing the whole point. But let’s start with the first of my contradictory statements.

Epic fantasy is not all the same story. This, of course, is the part where I point out that sometimes its a girl as the protag, or sometimes there are dragons and others orcs, and others, why, both! Especially in the last decade, as the “epic” gets longer and longer, we’re seeing some new trends that defy Stacey’s all encompassing plot summary. Granted, these changes haven’t completely filtered down to the YA level, but in adult books we have folks like Joe Abercrombie, who’s First Law trilogy brought us a cast of despicable characters, not a one of them without some major, often despicable, flaw – and who, by the end of the third book, you were actually rooting for, because the bad guys were even more stomach turning. And he does it with panache, I might add. Or there’s Steven Erikson’s Malazan series, which is certainly a contender for epic – and largely without the stereotype that Stacey asserts is the formula of epic fantasy.

The other half of it is the reason this formula is used so often is because when its done well, its sweet honey for the reading soul. Done well, you slip into this familiar world where you know the way things will flow, generally speaking, and wait for the author to feed you grapes to see which ones are sweet surprises. (Too metaphorical?) The formula is often repeated because handled by the right talent, it is an elixer you can’t generate artificially. I’ve said before that I think Brent Weeks, for all that his Night Angel trilogy fits this stereotype of fantasy, is one of the most underplayed, under-appreciated authors in the genre. What Durzo and Azoth pulled off was magical.

But I’ve strayed pretty far from the original point, which was more focussed on YA epic fantasy and the belief that it doesn’t sell because its too formulaic. To that, I give a tentative “maybe?”. What I think is really happening is that we’re seeing that YA readers will happily read YA epic fantasy when its good (hence the stray successes), but when its just poorly rehashed rote they would rather read “up a level” and get adult epic fantasy instead. (Huh. So maybe buying adult fantasy paperbacks for the YA section at the library wasn’t such a hair brained idea after all?) As more and more authors begin to stray into YA territory, though, I think we’ll see this reading group start to get some talent. We’ve certainly seen talent rising up (with acclaim) in the other subgenres, Cherrie Priest coming to mind immediately.

And wow, that’s more blog posts in two days than in a month. I think I should shove off for a bit now and let you mull that over 🙂