A Rant About Cozy Fantasy
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ย. 2024
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Honestly, i read Legends and Lattes, really enjoyed it and went 'well... I think i got everything i wanted from cozy fantasy' and went back to Age of Madness lol
the absolute correct thing to do, well done
There are loads of other Cozy Fantasy books besides L&L. Heck, there's a prequel to the book and not only did I buy it, I read it and loved it.
At the moment, my current read is Emily Wilde and I'm hoping it will be as good as some of the other Cozy titles I've read
After watching the video, I'm still not sure whether you have a problem with the concept of cozy fantasy per se, or just with the particular examples of it that you have read.
I don't think I had heard Small Angry Planet categorized as "cozy," and, having read and enjoyed it, I don't think it would have occurred to me to apply that label to it.
It's my understanding that the label "cozy fantasy" was inspired by the earlier term "cozy mystery" as a subgenre of mystery/detective fiction, with little or no "onscreen violence," a "cozy" setting (like a small town), and an unassuming protagonist who is not a police or professional detective.
yeah when i think cozy, i think of it as lighthearted. i cant read books with heavy topics all the time. im predisposed to heart disease and last thing i want is to be stressed out or traumatized over something fictional.
I’ve seen Small Angry Planet and that author in general on multiple cozy lists but as with all genres and sub genres they tend to mean slightly different things to different people
I think her overall take is she thinks they're boring, but finds a particular issue in said books doing something fucked up and still being categorized as "cosy".
*sits down with a nice cup of tea ready to listen to Liene rip books I liked to shreds once again* 😂
Before I sit down and listen to this rant (yay rant!!), I will express my issue with the recent "cosy fantasy" books I've read. Frankly, they just aren't good books.
Legends and Lattes (the one I've seen people rave about most!) is...fine. It's not a great book, not even good. I like cosy books, yes. But give me a good story, well told! That's what I'm looking for here. And most of these books recently marketed as cosy fantasy? They're not good stories. And they're not well told.
If I want cosy? I'll read Anne of Green Gables. I'll read Little Women. I'll read a book of quality that also makes my heart smile.
I could probably get more into Cozy Fantasy if book prices weren't so damn high. Don't wanna take the risk on something I can comfortably assume will have little plot when I'm paying 30-40 dollars for 300 page hardcover. Imma need these cozy fantasies to start having cozy prices.
Cuz prices lmao 🤣
The library is a great resource
I can really understand the frustration of a 'cozy' book having disturbing concepts and still presenting itself as cozy... it could mean that the writer (and publishers) don't even conceive of particular things are problematic, often from a narrow and biased worldview... or it could mean they fully do realise this and want to push the ideas or worldview as something you don't even need to think of as anything to question, just a given. Great point.
(It's not even a book, but I randomly thought of the BBC show 'Merlin', which had a comedy episode involving people forced to fall in love by magic... and in this ep, for the crime of being a bit stuck-up and mean to one of the male leads, a guest female character was left enchanted to love one of the men, with no way of breaking it forever. So no chance of peace or real love, for the rest of her life, delivered as a joke ending, that you don't even need to think about. Still hacks me off to this day. Didn't finish that show)
I never watched that show but that certainly didn't make me want to start yikes
@@LienesLibrary absolutely you won't miss anything, it was Arthurian myth but done as banal slash fanfic, which used to be thankfully rare except Doctor Who just did that last week so argh
Oh yes, the JK Rowling approach to love potions...
So, are these books that publishers would normally laugh at and reject, but instead saw a cash-in trend?
I don't know that people in SFF were deliberately going for "cozy" until after Legends & Lattes, which is why books like the Wayfarer series are sort of retrospectively labeled that way but absolutely may not qualify in the same way as L&L. I've also noticed that every time I hear a booktuber talk about Emily Wilde or Wayfarers or Can't Spell Treason without Tea, they almost always don't feel it's 100% "cozy." Beginning to think maybe L&L is the only really "cozy" SFF book start to finish? 🤨
I would say the same for The Secret History - every book that gets comped to it just doesn't quite seem to have grasped what dark academia really is
Usually cozy fantasy means "Fantasy where nothing cool happens."
true
I haven't read any of these books so I might pick them up and hate them... but I like the idea of COZY Fantasy.
Does this mean I don't like more serious fantasy? Absolutely not, my favorite series is First Law where the "nice" characters are ruthless killers.
But I like the idea of also reading fantasy where the stakes aren't risk your life and loved ones or else the whole world (or universe or multi-verse) explodes. Sometimes you want to just relax and hangout.
It's why I can love watching Breaking Bad but then want to switch to Friends.
I agree that sometimes I want lower stakes, however, I still want it to be....umm...interesting? lol
So, I DNF'd Legends and Lattes yesterday and started The long way... this afternoon. Thanks for saving me some time.
I DNF'd L&L as well - I think that's how I found Liene's channel.
Why is cozy fiction so frustrating? Is it just because the genre is popular so the barrier to access/success is low?
(General question, not just for Aaron)
@@peterc.hayward8067 I think what's so frustrating about it is the unfulfilled promise. For example , in L&L I want to know more about the main character's adventures. The world sounds interesting. It's clearly on the verge of some industrialization, some integration of species, etc. All of that is set up, but we only (at least about 45% of the way through the book) see like 3 blocks of one city. So, for me I think it's the disappointment of seeing the outline of a compelling story in an interesting world but never having that picture filled in. The characters end up being two-dimensional and flat and aren't really getting a compelling development arc. It's like trying to ride a bike with one tire that's low, but not flat. You can use it, but it just isn't any fun.
@@aaroncook8547 I think this is exactly it! Elements are introduced and then just... ignored. Frustrating!
I also thought about another cozy fantasy favorite -Howl's moving castle! The one that emily wilde really tried to rip off but with little success.
Lolol I'm like the reverse. I loved Emily Wilde but dnf'd Howl's moving castle
I don't care for books that think I'm stupid, either. It pisses me off. 'Cosy' started out as a discriptor for mysteries where the murders are not too horrible and the villain ultimately confesses to the whole thing in a group drawing room interrogation. Then the villain is taken off and decorously hanged out of sight.
You absolutely killed it with this video, Liene! Wonderfully well scripted and thought out. You articulated everything I have disliked about this subgenre but hadn’t been able to put into words coherently or intelligently.
From this sub genre, Legends and Lattes has been the biggest disappointment for me. Just garbage. I mean I love cozy vibes (Gilmore Girls being the best tv show ever), I love coffee, I love fantasy (especially soft or lower fantasy, more character-driven) but L&L was just a big load of nothing.
honestly Gilmore Girls has higher stakes and more action lol
my cozy fantasy is jonathan strange and mr norrell
my god, same!
Yes!
Not Cosy At All, But Very Spiky.
Deep worldbuilding is so cozy to me. For example Wheel of time. Living in the world alongside the characters. Coziness is also experiencing the characters journey and not rushing to the destination.
Do you think that maybe this is a result of the writer wanting to write something more dark, but the publisher promoting it as Cozy Fantasy cause they believe it will sell more?
I love me some ranting
What a great opening. 😂😂
I did like Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Fairies but I do feel like more could have been done with it. This idea of the scientific study of fairies is so interesting but I wanted MORE science, MORE academia.
Friend…..where have you been
Hibernating 😋
You make a compelling argument. 😂 Despite our reading taste being opposites.
lol dang not a good lineup
I
Thank you - likewise in a non-weirdo non-rando way
You aren't wrong about cozy but you are wrong about warbreaker hope this helps ♥
agree to disagree 😛
Nice! She's back
This is interesting since I would not consider Emily WIlde cozy fantasy at all.
I also don't understand why people classify this series as cozy fantasy. For me, this is more of a “historical” fantasy, and quite creepy, to be honest. At least the faeries here aren't a la Sarah J. Maas's.
Cozy fantasy, aka boring fantasy.
No lies detected
I found nothing boring about low stakes.. the cozy fantasy I've read have been rich in character and character relationship development.. just because 'not much' is happening in the world, don't mean the time with the character is 'boring'... I've read many high fantasy BORING as hell books.
I don't know anything about cozy SFF but I do know that I love listening to you talk!
Sounds like the better name would be "Lazy Fantasy" 😁🤣
This being the very first video I've watched on your channel because of the topic covered, I am glad I am not the only one who kind of cringes from the cozy fantasy genre. Not my cup of tea, as I am much more a fan of traditional fantasy in the realm of LOTR and Dragonlance.
Honestly, I did rather enjoy Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, although it did not creep past me that I noticed exactly what you talked about in this video. It would have been much more impressive and interesting (in my opinion) that Heather Fawcett would've pointed to the reasons behind where the lores originated instead of just using the lores as part of the plot.
I just picked up the hardcover copy of Sarah Beth Durst's "The Spellshop" just because of the author, and I really enjoyed her Queens of Renthia trilogy. This was my misdoing, but I did not realize that this book is labeled as cozy fantasy. I was a little bummed about that, but I'll give it a shot and see what goes down. I hope this is not a foreshadowing of what is to come, that being well-known authors (or authors cashing in on popular genre waves) jump on the cozy fantasy bandwagon. Yet again another example of publishing companies somewhat dictating what will be popular. Give me Tolkien, Abercrombie, Gwynne, and Hobb, you can keep your stupid cozy fantasy.
Love the content, new subscriber here!!! I found this channel because of Goodreads!
Happy reading!!
I first became addicted to Cozy Fantasy after seeing Legends & Lattes being recommended by Wee Lass Reacts.
I got curious about the book, looked it up, read it...and LOVED IT! I loved the book so much, I actually went about looking up other titles from the author and pre-ordered the prequel book
Totally agree with everything here. Cosy fantasy is definitely uncanny. The only proper cosy fantasy I like is probably cosy comics and Diana Wynne Jones but those have pretty interesting worldbuilding. My cosy fantasy is usually whimsical literary fantasy like The Night Circus or fairy tales, and those can get DARK 😅 I do like cosy sci-fi like Murderbot or space operas, but those don't necesarily lack stakes entirely. (But that's probably because I prefer soft sci-fi, where I don’t have to be annoyed at the bad "hard" science or turn off my brain to ignore that.)
The only proper modern cosy fantasy I've read is probably House in the Cerulean Sea (it was fine, forgetable) and Emily Wilde Encyclopaedia of Faeries. And I hated Emily Wilde's so much. Also low stakes cosy? Nope. What's cosy about a trumatic self inflicted hand injury/amputation on page! Like, what's cosy about self mutilation?? Nothing! And it's not even important for the plot! Everything happens the same if it hadn't happened. Like what was the point?? And the character acts later like it hardly even happened!! Aside from that mismarketing, it was truly a nothing book. It wasn't interesting fairy lore that contrast human morals, it had shallow neurodivergent and lgbtq+ representation, it was not historical enough, not scientific enough, not a romance, not cosy, not dark enough, not epic, it was nothing!
Yeah Emily Wilde really missed the mark in countless respects ugh
When you mentioned you were going to read Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia a month or so ago, I immediately thought "Liene's going to hate that book", and yep. I Agree. That book is the worst. Excited for the full rant video.
the cover got me....as usual
Some of the ones who mentioned aren't normally on the list of cozy fantasy...
Nice conversation
I'm also not a fan of a Cozy Fantasy, and some books from this list never gave me the vibe I'd enjoy it (and I have no buddy reads that would make me read those).
Ooooooooo she comes ......everyone into the fall out shelters ❤ truly appreciate your rants.
lol!
Will you be doing House of the Dragon season 2 responses? 👀
Looking forward to your in-depth Emily Wilde review … lol, maybe?😅
Indeed I will 😁
I’m pretty new to Fantasy Books and I think you do great work. So! … Correct me if I’m wrong, but based on your description of Cozy Fantasy couldn’t it be called “Lazy Fantasy”?
Glad to see you back and with compelling arguments as usual, Liene! I liked L&L but the “cosy” subgenre got old very quickly for me.
I will never understand the appeal but then again I never seem to understand what appeals to the majority le sigh
“…because I’m a First Law girlie…” - cozy SFF, like Legends & Lattes, is always going to be a watery, tepid brew compared to Joe Abercrombie’s scalding espresso. There’s still a place for it, but your takedown of bad world building and obnoxious themes is right on. On the plus side, does The Haunting of Tram Car 015 count as cozy?
I don’t know, perhaps? But I didn’t care for it so….🙃
Hadn't heard of cozy fantasy but definitely doesn't sound like something i would be into, thanks for the heads up. Sounds like lazy fantasy
These books are just an aspect of publishers capitalizing on mainstream audiences. That may sound stupid, like of course they're going to do that, but considering where SFF publishers came from and how they were running their businesses up until 2010, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In addition to publishing "palatable" books, they're also disguising fantasy books by redoing or toning down covers. They don't want to serve a niche market (though that "niche" is bigger than it's ever been). If they just kept serving hardcore fans, I think they'd make more money than they do trying to blend in with the crowd.
I haven't read anything in this genre, but i dislike too much detail and worldbuilding (I usually ignore most of it in high fantasy) and i love focusing on the characters and like knowing they'll be ok😔 Honestly tho the only worldbuilding i like is Neil's in general and Rainbow's during carry on so is definitely a ME problem haha
Lol. I don’t have the same qualms, I just find the cozy books so dull with few exceptions, but I appreciate the rationale for your rant!
Wandering inn is “cozy fantasy” done right
Is that low stakes? I'd say the stakes are pretty high. I'll agree that it's rather... Extremely... Slow 😅
I only read cozy or romantic fantasy books during Xmas and even then I prefer to watch a cozy anime
Those Snow White Notes is such a good slice of life anime!
I was not aware of this sub-genre.
Hehe a well deserved rant
I also don't like cozy fantasy but, funny enough, I put Kingkiller kind of in that category, and I know you love those books.
I definitely think Kingkiller has some cozy elements, though I think the scope of the story and world, the depth of lore and Worldbuilding go well beyond what “cozy” tends to offer - I think cozy fantasy would give us the Eolian and Denna and nothing else 😂
Love a good Liene rant. I liked Legends and Lattes but couldn't read past a couple chapters the sequel. For me, the cozy genre was nice for the first couple books, but after the novelty has worn off, I too find them boring. Though I'm struggling finding new SFF that doesn't bore me so if you find any new releases that you love, I hope you share that on this channel.
I had completely forgotten about The London Seance Society. Probably a good reason for that lol.
I do try to share worthy reads when l stumble upon them 😋
Some of the coziest fantasy books aren’t even under the genre of cozy.
Name of the Wind was one of the coziest of all. Harry Potter is quite cozy due to nostalgia.
Trilogies like the First Law and Farseer trilogies are so cozy due to living in the shoes of the character. The stories are paced in a realistic and organic manner.
Right now I’m on Wheel of Time book 9. The series is absolutely cozy because it’s such a realistically paced series. The story and characters develop in the most natural way. Moment to moment day to day story telling.
First Law is genuinely so comforting to me lol
Hi! I'm new, this is the first video of yours I've watched (already a fan of you!). I want to just start my comment by saying I actually enjoyed Legends and Lattes' series and Emily Wilde's series (which I do not even classify Emily Wilde to be cozy...I was a bit shocked when I read it!). But I can understand there were some world-building aspects that were missing from these stories. I feel the exact same way about the sub-genre of romantasy - the romance is definitely there, but the world-building is lacking greatly and there are a bunch of plot holes ("Fourth Wing," "Assistant to the Villain," etc.). I also feel like for Legends and Lattes, if the author decided to do this in a "real world" setting rather than fantasy, I feel like there wouldn't be much of a difference, and that's disappointing for a book classified as a fantasy novel.
My personal opinion is since cozy fantasy is still newer in terms of sub-genres, it's still finding its footing, just like the subgenre of romantasy. I feel like some writers or publishers will slap on the "fantasy" term to cozy fantasy and romantasy just to say they are fantasy and make their novels stand out among the rest in their main genres (ex. romance for romantasy; not sure about cozy...maybe contemporary fiction or speculative fiction?), which is why I think it seems to lack the fantasy elements and world-building.
Oh now I'm afraid to read Long way to a small angry planet, I have heard great thing about it but I agree so much with all you said about cosy fantasy so... maybe itsalso not a book for me 😂
I highly recommend not reading it 🤪
@LienesLibrary So I just watched your blog about this book and...yep, it sounds like an absolute piece of garbage 😂 your pain is palpable through the screen! I have been there with some books 😢 But thank you for saving me from picking it up. The bad science would have bothered me so much as a stem student too, I could not believe the bad explanations. She shouldn't have included them at all! And the racism/species thing and undervaluing non-human life yet having a message of vague peace and love ...yikess 😬
Becky Chambers doesn't seem to understand what a sentient AI would actually entail either. (Does she think chat gpt is a person that deserves rights??? Does she feel sorry when we tell Alexa to shup up?? 😅)
Love your channel, and your work. Watching blog video. Paused to comment:
Not that Becky Chambers did her genre history homework (by what you are saying she clearly hasn't) but before "Sentient" became the common term for self aware "creatures" in SF, Sapient as in "Thinking" was used to differentiate between alien "people" and alien "monsters." Perhaps, since she's reinventing the wheel, she is on a journey of parallel development?
Hodgkin's Law?
BTW - Thank You for making this available; I'm not into trolling, but I DO enjoy someone who can point out the Emperor's Clothing gaffes , because I feel insane when NO ONE ELSE NOTICES. Thank you for the low cost Mental health care.
lol glad you enjoyed - and re "sapient" you may be right about that being her inspiration but the rest of the book makes me disinclined to interpret it so charitably
Man, it's so rare that people talk about worldbuilding being just WRONG, off-kilter. I really appreciate you doing so. It just sucks out all the enjoyment out of a book. A lot of recent-ish authors do it too, so casually like, "wouldn't it be cute if... uwu" and nobody even points it out. It ruined Divine Rivals for me and pretty much everything T. Kingfisher has written. I'm looking forward to that video you may post one day.
Cozy fantasy means something entirely different to me and I think no two people's cozy will be the same. For some reason The Library at Mount Char was very cozy-feeling (in spite of all the ludicrous amounts of gore!) and The Night Circus. It's very hard to pin down, and deliberately low stakes, lack of tension and forever downtime for the characters shouldn't make it cozy by default.
yeah worldbuilding is something I'm incredibly nitpicky about haha
bahahahahahaha. No, i do believe you are correct Liene... 'cosy' fantay is most certainly, not in your hitting zone ma'am lmfao. And despite your horrible Warbreaker opinions, Liene is still the best, chuck out the rest.
you misspelled correct Warbreaker opinions 😁
@@LienesLibrary hahahaha No. I did not.
I started reading Legend and Lattes because I loved the pitch and since I love so many slice of life books, and fantasy books I thought I would love it too.
It was so poorly executed that I ended up hating it. wtf you mean "we need to discuss how to bring coffee to this area that doesn't know what it is, let's go to thriving CAFÉ"??????
Noe I immediatly dismiss recomendations from people who say they liked the book, and refuse to read books comp'ed to it as well such was the anger after finishing it
I have rarely been as bored as I was reading that book lol - but at least it was inoffensive
@@LienesLibrary For me the biggest offense is now when I say I disliked the book people often counter with "maybe you just don't like slice-of-life". Which is wrong! I love slice of life! L&L is just boring and a poor atempt at that genre! (also the stew of books that followed it with 0 worldbuilding or interesting arcs that claim that's how slice of life fantasy is suposed to be)
London Seance Society was sooo bad and forgettable that all I remember of it was that it was a waste of my time. I watched the spoiler part of this video and none of your discussion even rang a bell I forgot it so hard.
never heard of it.
It's an interesting topic, this F'd up morality that an increasing number of writers display. I love a little darkness in fiction, or a lot sometimes if it's from Chuck Palahniuk :) But, like you said, authors with proper morals frame it in a way that it has weight and consequence and is understood that it has a negative effect on the world. This casually kill and torture for eternity, idea being presented as the obvious, good thing to do, or for example shows like She-Hulk and Rings of Power having protagonists doing things that are actually villainous, but glossed over as righteous, shows some kind of out-of-touch world view for the writers and publishers, producers, etc. Does it come down to lack of real life experience? Is it a generational thing? Not sure.
oh boy, I almost forgot about genocidal Galadriel yikes
It’s that final POV of the “villain” in eternal torment that’s doing it for me.. like why? are we just going to rub it in now? Wtf???
for real, I do not understand
Swiftly going to the Angry Planet rant next 🚶♀️🚶♀️🥳😁
just because I'm yucking people's yum doesn't mean I can't put it on the menu 😛
My cozy fantasy is Kingdoms of Death.
in the linked video about a long way to a small angry planet you go on a rant about how a character happened to have pink skin.. "you don't become genetically paler because there was less sun around for your parents. that's not how it works".. it does work like that over many generations. chambers was on the right track, pink skin it's an example of regressive evolution, adaptations such as pigmentation or eyesight loss readily happen in animals living in dark environments like caves (look at he olm/proteus for example). she probably took inspiration by this, but granted, this happens over a much longer period of time than what's mentioned in the book (you said "for centuries", i haven't read the book to know the details).. and to say about enceladus "whatever that's supposed to be" in a rant about how the science is iffy...
You’re so right, if I don’t know the name of one of Saturn’s moons how can I know anything about anything…
As for regressive evolution - that still assumes that natural environments are acting upon beings that do not have the power or ability to alter their environments to suit them. cave dwelling might affect animals who cannot alter the cave to fit the current needs of the species as it exists - humans, by contrast, living in an entirely artificial environment designed around the current needs of our species, would not be likely to evolutionarily change over generations, as there would be supplements and facilities designed around our needs - but since we haven’t placed humans in artificial environments over multiple generations to see what would happen because that would be cruel and unusual we don’t know for certain how humans would respond. it seems highly unlikely, however, that humans would become markedly different without the environment being extremely different from what would presumably be created to be optimal for human survival and continued existence. But again, this is coming from someone who doesn’t know the name of every body in our solar system so take it with a grain of salt.
@@LienesLibrary i didn't say or think that you don't know anything about anything, that was your assumption. as for regressive evolution, i was referring only about your comment in the quotation marks and didn't go into how the worldbuilding technology of the novel could affect the changes in pigmentation. however, even though we "don’t know for certain how humans would respond" living in habitats described in the novel and can only speculate, for the character to evolve a pink skin would mean that the artificial habitat they built has to have a dark environment, so i am more inclined to take the position that the same evolutionary processes would act upon them if they were living over many generations in an dark environment as described in the novel despite it being artificial, and generate similar or the same skin and eye adaptations seen in animals.
@@krky86 the novel does not describe it as being a dark environment only sunless - decrease in pigmentation in low sun environments would likely be for the same reason we’ve seen it in humans who historically lived in more northern and therefore more sunless places, but i think you’ll agree that is no longer something that is actively affecting humans, we do not adapt to our environments rather we adapt our environments to our needs. a controlled environment like the one described in the book would support the needs of humans including vitamin d supplementation and whatever else a lack of sun would require.
But please do continue to argue with me about a book you haven’t read, which is not regarded by anyone, even admirers of it, as being scrupulous about its “science”
@@LienesLibrary i know it doesn't explicitly describe it as being a dark environment, but the character evolving pink skin implies to me that the habitations their ancestors lived in had a dark environment otherwise the evolution of pink skin wouldn't make sense. and i presume that the author was inspired for this by the way albinism evolves in cave dwelling animals. i'm sorry you see this as arguing, i'm just chatting about why i disagree with what you said, and reading the book is not a prerequisite for that. i can't say i agree that "we do not adapt to our environments" today.
20:00 what its the US doing in guantamo?
haha Amazon links for books you slagged off
Cute
I just watched the episode about Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I wonder how they supplied oxygen to all those cows on Mars and removed the methane 🤡
lmao!
I had a similar reaction to T. Kingfisher's Nettle and Bone where our protagonists just decide to kill the prince/king. Like, they have this powerful magic and fairy godmothers and they can't come up with some way to stop his Evil Doings other than to just go in and commit good old fashioned hands on murder? And they're the good guys?! I know people who love this book and when I mention this to them they just sort of blink at me. :-) Great video, as usual.
Oh boy yeah I think I probably should carry on not reading that lol
This sentence doesn't entirely make sense to me: "Like, they have this powerful magic and fairy godmothers and they can't come up with some way to stop his Evil Doings other than to just go in and commit good old fashioned hands on murder? And they're the good guys?!"
If your only gripe is that people with magic should be able come up with something more creative, fair. But then you say, ' "And they're the good guys?!" ', in response to them simply committing murder, as if anything they could do with magic to solve the situation wouldn't also come with horrific implications, and therefore be labeled something that "good guys" also wouldn't do.
Yeap! To me the so called cozy fantasy is emphasizing the least interesting aspects of traditional fantasy stories. Sure there are people who like those parts, but I can't imagine that there's so many of them to have a separate sub-genre or even a genre shift.
for me, I always find the "cozy" bits of books so pleasant because of how they contrast with the dramatic, tense, and dark parts - they are pleasant because of the reprieve they offer, but without the contrast, much like in life, they are boring
one of my favorite quotes from Dark Age by Pierce Brown: "valleys make the moutains"
You made me want to read these books, just so I can hate them with you….
lol not worth it, I promise
Awww. I thought you were going to trash Legends and Lattes…. I hated that book. I usually like cozy mysteries…. But cozy fantasy isn’t doing it for me. But I think I’ve only read one cozy fantasy…. 🤷♀️
Cozy Fantasy seems to mean whatever the f people want it to mean. I think some people use it to mean “comfort reads”. As in, whatever personally was nostalgic to them or resembles the YA fiction they used to get lost in for days. Which they haven’t read in so long that they forget all the war crimes it had in it.
We need that disquiet gods review bruh
…..soon
Oh no you are completely correct about the genre, it sucks, and i have nothing good to say about any of it.
Can someone explain what Emily Wilde did that was gross? I haven’t read it
There’s a fairy changeling. Changelings legends in the real world have origins in things like, explanations for what we would call mental illness and post-partum psychosis. Often was a way to just abuse disabled children in rural Ireland. (“That’s not my baby, the fairies took my baby. So everyone knows it’s fine to abandon it in the woods”)
EWEOF is not first fantasy book to ever take changelings and do something with the lore , though. It’s like….there’s also tons of books where they take demonic possession and exorcism seriously as a real thing, that happens in a world with a similar history to our own. Changelings and Exorcisms are in a lot of Urban Fantasy. In general. It’s up to individual taste whether it’s fine to…make fiction about legends that originated from somewhat backwards medieval ideas used to harm people.
I can’t fucking stand it haha
I've really never liked "and then they got what they deserved" as an uncritically-presented-as-positive resolution.
this
cozy fantasy misses the point about fantasy. blame woke sjw times for it.
Real fantasy involves whips and chains and whip cream!