The Slow, Limping Death of Fantasy as a Legitimate Genre- part 1

So-Called "Romantasy" is Sending Fantasy Literature Back to the Genre Ghetto

I might get a lot of hate for this, assuming anybody reads it. But I am nothing if not passionate about the world of speculative fiction and, since I’ve carved out my own tiny place in it, I feel justified in sharing my views on what is essentially a cancerous growth on the field. Feel free to rip my work to shreds after you’ve read this, as it’s only fair. I ask only that you try to be as objective as possible rather than simply piling on like locusts. I know most of you won’t abide by that request, but that’s between you and your loathsome taste in reading material.

“Romantasy” in Meme Form, Credit: Yours Truly

I suppose the best place to start is by defining terms. It comes from an obvious hybridization of “Romantic Fantasy” because apparently combing those two terms into one nonsense term saves the reader more time to engage in a world of mediocre writing, laughable world-building, and a sad glimpse into the frustrated sex lives of both the author and her readers. “Romantasy” is defined as a sub-genre wherein the romance and fantasy elements are given equal prominence in the story. Considering how many novels out there already did that, it’s obvious that this is a marketing term and that, dead reader, is where the problems truly begin.

Much like the term “Grunge,” the made-up word doesn’t really mean anything. Don’t believe me? Fair enough. Maybe you’ll believe her.

Regardless, this nonsense term has been floating about since around 2008. And try as they might to dignify it with a supposedly cool-sounding name, it’s really just softcore porn with dragons for sad, lonely women. Don’t get me wrong. Those individuals deserve to have something to read, too. But as with so many things, too many of them have no idea what good writing is and often mistake a story they enjoy with quality storytelling. This started becoming an issue with my generation but Millennials took it and ran with it until we became glutted with sub-standard junk passed off as riveting, thought-provoking entertainment.

It can be traced back to the Harry Potter franchise, an overwrought, overrated foray into mediocrity that sadly defined an entire generation of, frankly, weird and annoying pains in the ass. It wasn’t necessarily their fault but the damage was done. Publishing companies picked up on the burgeoning Young Adult fiction movement, each seeking out the next Potter with wildly varying results. By the time these kids became actual young adults, they saw zero value in anything that wasn’t aligned with the tiresome tropes they grew up reading about. Creative writing professors had a hell of a time getting their students to write something that didn’t involve wizards and mystical lands.

Now those kids are entering middle age with all the requisite disappointments and letdowns that go along with it. They’ve experienced stuff. Death, loss, childbirth, job loss, various betrayals. Probably some good stuff, too. But we all like to escape from time to time, right? Nothing wrong with that.

I take that back. There is something wrong with it when the escape leads to utter and unrepentant crap that floods the market and prevents quality work from getting noticed. (See Grunge.)

That is, after all, the point of this piece. It isn’t concerned with the readers. Most of them are not trained and experienced professionals who practiced their craft until they screamed into the night, scaring the living shit out of whatever pets cohabitated with them. Contrary to what some think, an English degree does not automatically mean someone knows good writing. Don’t get me started on how dry and identical the writing of academics can be when they tackle genre fiction.

No, this is a thinly disguised hit-piece about the marginally talented charlatans who pass off their twisted desires and limited imaginations on a vastly uninformed public. Let me clear the air first when it comes to sex in fiction. It’s fine. It can even be graphic if the plot calls for it.

IF. THE PLOT. CALLS. FOR IT.

However, sex as a plotting technique is no better than gore for its own sake (Splatter Punk was and it its own issue). It’s designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator and at that it can be disturbingly successful. It’s the constantly waged war of quality over commerce that all capitalist societies succumb to eventually. Fiction has become a commodity and some so-called “authors” are more than happy to jump on the Sellout Express.

Sara J Maas is the ringleader of this current ruining of a once proud if unfairly maligned literary genre. Who is she, those of you with taste ask? She’s the author of the terribly titled, “Throne of Glass,” which features the ridiculous conceit of a reimagined Cinderella who is now a girl boss, er, I mean assassin sent to kill Prince Charming. There is no greater reward out there than the one handed to someone with a terrible idea based on somebody else’s original work (Remember all those god-awful mashup novels of the 2000s and 2010s featuring classic works of literature and zombies?) and Maas has gone on to become an insanely successful author of…you know, those fantasy novels with romance in them.

Then there’s Rebecca Yarros. Imagine Stephanie Meyer without the self-imposed morality and you have some idea who she is. For want of a better term, she is the other “giant” in the sub-genre and she makes Maas look like Margaret Atwood by comparison. Maybe it’s the Mormonism (yes, she’s one too) or the fact that she writes like a person who just learned English, but her “Empyrean” series (note the customary pretentious spelling) reads like a series of bizarre pull quotes. How do I know this?

In brief, I am currently surrounded by people who are obsessed with reading this shit. They clearly knew better than to approach me with it but they have some strange need to get others reading it like it’s the Church of Romantology or something. Never one to allow myself to be excluded, I started looking into this author and series because I wanted to know why this group of people was so enthusiastically into it. It remains a mystery to me but I did come away knowing they have absolutely horrific taste if they think this woman can write, let alone that her concepts are anything but insipid and dull.

Here’s a taste of some of her awesome prose, sadly not in context. But good writing doesn’t need context to read well, now do it?

Excerpts below:

“Lies are comforting. Truth is painful.”
― Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing

“One generation to change the text. One generation chooses to teach that text. The next grows, and the lie becomes history.”
― Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing

“Because love, at its root, is hope. Hope for tomorrow. Hope for what could be. Hope that the someone you’ve entrusted your everything to will cradle and protect it. And hope? That shit is harder to kill than a dragon.”
― Rebecca Yarros, Iron Flame

“Don’t borrow tomorrow’s trouble.”
― Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing

This beautiful young lady points out the terribleness of Yarros’ dialogue very well.

So, those are all examples of her rancid dialogue. Does her prose fare any better? It’s hard to say because like any hack, she employs far too much expository dialogue when simple lines of description would do. Wait, I found one:

Metal clangs beneath us, the pitch varying from the ting of colliding blades to the ear-grating rasp of steel scraping against stone. But it’s the maniacal laughter mixed with grunts of pain that has me hurrying faster, has power rising, crackling along my skin.

Now, I’ve never been a fan of traditional fantasy for the most part. I respect its place in the literary pantheon but I’ve always looked at it as science fiction’s less intelligent cousin. It rarely deals with any type of extrapolation, with notable exceptions, and it tends to appeal to people who can’t or don’t understand complicated scientific concepts. But there are plenty of examples of quality fantasy writing that don’t read like a middle school dropout wrote them.

I’m not alone in my assessment of Yarros’ drivel either. Click here for an excellent overview of everything that’s wrong with her material. You can also watch this rant on how terrible of a writer Yarros is. If those aren’t enough, there’s an entire Tik Tok page devoted to her awfulness.

This person is a human disservice to fiction writing and, even worse, a large part of why the speculative fiction genre’s impressive gains towards increased credibility in recent years is taking a huge tumble back into the genre ghetto. It’s crap with zero redeeming qualities and I feel so strongly about this that I don’t care if it affects me negatively down the line.

Why does someone who isn’t a traditional fantasy fan care so much? Simple. People don’t know the difference between science fiction and fantasy. They get conflated constantly. Where one goes, the other often follows. All the goodwill excellent authors have achieved in the field is being dismantled by crap merchants like Maas and Yarros and I will continue using my relatively tiny platform to point it out.

To Be Concluded~