Where Fantasy literature stands: the Rise of Romantasy and Asian-inspired Fantasy

"No eye can see the pattern until it is woven." - Moiraine Aes Sedai 

I have written extensively on the History (& Golden Age) of Fantasy as well as my opinion of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and the Grimdark Fantasy sub-genre it founded. I have written on how Fantasy literature has for decades fought cross-eyed monster that is sexism, the first blow dealt by Éowyn, White Lady of Rohan, and that we need for female Gandalf-figures to successfully slay it. I have written about Race in Fantasy, how real-world racial stereotypes do not exist in Fantasy literature and yet characters in Fantasy literature tend to be White (Caucasian) while the worlds they inhabit are at least partially rooted in European culture. I have written about LGBTQ+ & Autism in Fantasy, how when I go to a bookstore, pick a book and begin reading it, I should find gay or lesbian romance between characters no less often than heterosexual ones and no more remarked upon or played up. I have written about a lot and am not shy about giving my opinion, yet being historian-trained means I known that history does not stand still. As said Robert Jordan, the "Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass". So I ask myself, where does Fantasy now stand? How is the genre shaping and changing as the years go by? That is the question I will now attempt to answer.

I ended my the History (& Golden Age) of Fantasy page noting how said Gold Age began with J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, a global phenomenon that equal to that of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: forging generations of readers and pushing genre forever into the canon of Great Literature. A process aided by the international popularity of other works such as Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle and John Flanagan's Ranger's Apprentice.

Winterfell

Then, for all that the first book was published in 1996, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin broke into the scene. A work as stunningly original as it was skillfully written, it paved the way for a new type of Fantasy perfectly characterized by GRRM's Cersei Lannister: "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." A subgenre of Fantasy soon named the Grimdark which Tor Fantasy reviewer Liz Bourke characterizes as "a retreat into the valorization of darkness for darkness's sake, into a kind of nihilism that portrays right action (...) as either impossible or futile". This, according to her, has the effect of absolving the protagonists as well as the reader from moral responsibility. Finally, British journalist Damien Walter wrote in The Guardian his own view of GRRM’s Grimdark brand of Fantasy: "bigger swords, more fighting, bloodier blood, more fighting, axes, more fighting," and, he surmised, a "commercial imperative to win adolescent male readers." He sees this trend as being in opposition to "a truly epic and more emotionally nuanced kind of fantasy" that delivered storytelling instead of only blood and porn. In this I also utterly agree, for Fantasy literature is not supposed to revolve around the concept of constantly dodging death. Granted that, in Grimdark books, the possibility of character deaths in far greater and thus the suspense is higher. Mark Lawrence, author of the The Broken Empire Trilogy, attributes his own inspiration from George R. R. Martin. “I was impressed by how ruthless he was with characters we were invested in and how exciting that made reading the series,” Lawrence states. “Because you never felt safe and never knew for sure that things would work out in the end. It felt real and powerful.”  

Powerful indeed, enough that, for a time, it seemed to take over the genre, A Song of Ice and Fire – aided by its HBO Game of Thrones show adaptation – seeming to match the global popularity of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. And, like Tolkien, GRRM's work spawned a host of authors who followed his example: Mark Lawrence's Prince of Thorns trilogy, Stephen R. Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane, Anna Smith Spark's The Court of Broken Knives, and the works of Joe Abercrombie and so many others. A subgenre perfectly described as Fantasy author Genevieve Valentine, who called Grimdark a "shorthand for a subgenre of fantasy fiction that claims to trade on the psychology of those sword-toting heroes, and the dark realism behind all those kingdom politics." Valid considering how court/political intrigue is the beating heart of the Grimdark. More to the point, however, its popularity soared. Filling bookstore shelves at so stunning a rate, and staying there, that for a while it seemed unconquerable. Though it should be noted that, given its inherently gritty nature, the Grimdark never crossed over into Middle Grade Fantasy – staying firmly on the YA and Adult shelves.

This lasted a long time, and I would compare the struggle between High and Grimdark Fantasy to the 19th century one between  Transcendentalism and Dark Romanticism. The former being belief that people and nature are inherently good, while the latter emerged as both the inverse of and reaction against Transcendentalism – questioning the inherent goodness of humankind and focusing on the less-noble aspects of humanity such as sorrow, sin, insanity, guilt, corruption, and madness. Not unlike how the Grimdark was a reaction against the Tolkieneque/Rowling approach.

Then, after many years, a shift occurred – one partly owed to an unsettled world and the fact that GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire remains floundering and unfinished while end of the HBO version left a soar taste on many mouths.

Until seemingly overnight between 2022 to now, the Grimdark has been overthrown by the almost simultaneous rise of Romantasy and Asian-inspired Fantasy.

What is Romantasy? A new word that, in brief summation, is the fusion of Romance and Fantasy which gives each equal importance. Yes, yes, yes, all the best Fantasies usually have a strong romantic subplot, yet in Romantasy there is nothing sub about the romance. These are tales where slow-burn love stories unfold alongside a sweeping Epic Fantasy adventure, each no less critical than and in fact complimenting the other. A harmonious wedding of high-stakes fantasy world-building with compelling romance plotlines. A subgenre that is as likely to have LGBTQIA+ protagonists as otherwise, which is called Queer Romantasy.

Then there is Asian-inspired Fantasy. Back in 2017 I said that "the lore of Eastern cultures remains a largely untapped goldmine within the Fantasy genre. A goldmine that, when used, tends to immense popularity." No longer is that mine untapped. Oh no. From Tasha Suri's Burning Kingdoms trilogy to the Song of the Last Kingdom by Amélie Wen Zhao, to Axie Oh's The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea to Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan, to Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, to Elizabeth Lim's Spin the Dawn and Six Crimson Cranes and truly countless others, Asian-inspired Fantasy has uncoiled like the Azure Dragon of the East – wrapping Fantasy literature in its shinning and unique scales.

"Yin and yang. Good and evil. Great and terrible. Two sides of the same coin, Lián'ér, and somewhere in the center of it all lies power. The solution is to find the balance between them." - Dé’zì, grandmaster of School of the White Pines.

And then there is when the two meet in Asian-inspired Romantasy, which in some ways seems to be more prevalent than either of the other two. Indeed, now when I go to bookstores the shelves are packed with Romantasy and Asian-inspired Fantasy, thus making these two the unquestionable current co-monarchs of the Fantasy genre. Is Grimdark gone? Hardly. But its stranglehold is broken and I like to think that the Rise of Romantasy and Asian-inspired Fantasy was and remains a direct reaction against its dark cynicism and naked brutality. For in an unsettled world, they offers readers a powerful form of escapism to alternate universes where magic exists and love can conquer all.

Which shows that, for all the Fantasy genre is changing, it still remains loyal to the ideals of its founder:

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

"I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which “Escape” is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter." – J.R.R. Tolkien

And of course, the works of Tolkien, Brandon Sanderson, Robert Jordan, Ursula K. Le Guin and many of the old guard remain on shelves and popular.