Fantasy with Friends – hosted by Pages Unbound – poses questions each Monday about fantasy, either as a genre as a whole or individual works.
I’m going to an indie book fair in November! And I am very excited. The event is run by SugarPages Author Events (aka author Raven Leithe Harlow), and the events take place across South West England and in Cardiff. I am, of course, attending the Cardiff event. I’m hoping to come home with some fantasy, romance and horror books, and I’ll definitely do a post on the blog after!
Fantasy with Friends:
How Fantasy Has Changed
How do you think the fantasy genre has changed over the years? Is there a particular time period of fantasy writing that you particularly enjoy?
I think fantasy has become more open and inclusive. It’s changed so much since I was a kid, and I think the late 80s through to the 90s and 00s saw a rise in children’s fantasy, urban fantasy and paranormal romance. The UK has a long history of children’s fantasy, but I think when I was a kid, we saw more of it emerge in ways that were more modern and perhaps appealing towards a younger crowd.
At the same time, there was a rise in Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy. I remember coming across books as a teenager (pre-Twilight) where vampires were dangerous love interests and werewolves prowled city streets. Vampires cycle in and out of fashion, but it felt like a shift, a nudge towards the vampires that would soon take over (swiftly followed by zombies), starting in adult Paranormal Romance and landing with a bang in YA with Twilight. I think we’re seeing the effects of this now, with the authors who grew up with this influx of different types of fantasy, which shifted the typical ‘male’ space into something more inclusive. There was more available that didn’t sound like an imitation of Tolkien or Lewis, and authors built on that (as authors usually do). And as readers aged out of the YA Fantasy bracket, they found even more to greet them on the adult side, as well as more recommendations thanks to the rise of the internet.
This isn’t to criticise earlier fantasy, but much of it was a (white) boy’s club, where women were outliers. The same could be said of horror, but in both genres we’ve seen the types of authors writing it widen, and with that comes new and interesting approaches, different characters and settings, and instead of fantasy being much of the same, there’s now pretty much something for everyone within the genre.
I don’t know if there’s a particular time period of fantasy I enjoy – two of my favourite ever series in any genre are fantasy (ASOIAF and The Dark Tower) and both older series’, however close behind them are works like like The Folk of the Air trilogy and The Ex Hex books and The Shadow Histories duology, and that’s me limiting myself to series I’ve completed. But that said, I enjoyed LOTR (though I um never did finish the third book…) but wouldn’t return to it, even though I loved The Hobbit, and Narnia was a book I adored as a child. So although occasionally I enjoy more classic/epic fantasy, I definitely think the genre has changed for the better and in 2026 we get more variety than ever, with more diverse voices in the genre.
