Happy Monday!

It’s time for more Fantasy with Friends: as always, the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about fantasy series:

Do you currently prefer standalone fantasies or series? Is there a certain number of books that seems like “too much,” whether that means the series feels intimidating to start or just that the author might need to move on to something else? Is there a point at which you worry that a series is just a “cash grab?”

At the moment, I definitely lean toward standalones, or loosely-connected series which don’t require that you grab the next book right away in order to find out how the story ends. There’s something very satisfying about knowing the story has reached a happy-ever-after (or miserable-ever-after, though I’m not so keen on that) or at least a happy/miserable-for-now. And you don’t have to worry whether the remainder of the series will ever come out at all, or that the series will get cancelled before it all comes out.

That said, there are some amazing series out there, and authors I absolutely trust with that — I’ve probably mentioned Marie Brennan’s Lady Isabella Trent books a few times so far, but she’s definitely one example where I was thrilled to hang on and wait for the next instalment, eagerly reading each as it came out, and I’d trust her for the same now. I had a similar feeling about Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde books, too. I think it comes down to a certain amount of trust that the story’s going somewhere and that there’s a plan to get there.

There are some series where I find myself having my doubts and finding the sheer number of volumes daunting, though I don’t want to go as far as calling anything a “cash grab”. Seanan McGuire’s books seem to spawn apparently-infinite series, for example. I’m aware that she has a game plan for Toby Daye, for instance, but… I don’t know. It is definitely getting to daunting lengths, and the degree to which hardcore fans breathlessly greet each new story does make me a little worried it’s become too big for McGuire to wrap up.

As far as “cash grabs” go… well, authors need to make money, they have bills to pay, etc, and ongoing series with enthusiastic followings are a good way of guaranteeing a certain amount coming in, the induction of new fans, and the sales of backlist books. Authors have to be businesspeople because we don’t have worldwide universal basic incomes. If an author is looking at a series thinking “the books have to keep coming”, no shade for that except inasfar I think it’s possible for the world/story to end up suffering for it, and that would be a shame… and, well, my ability and desire to follow a series like that at the moment are somewhat limited, so I’m not the ideal audience.

There have been times in the past where I was absolutely into epic series, so it might happen again in time. At the moment I’m even reading Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, which is coming out in translation a volume at a time. What helps there is that I know the story is finished, and it’s just waiting on translation… so it’s already finite. Same goes for a lot of the danmei I’ve picked up lately (though also they’re often just four volumes or so, so not too intimidating).

So in conclusion: mostly standalones or at least short/loosely connected series for me at the moment, but I can’t say I won’t get into an epic sometime in the future.

Iiiit’s Monday, and thus time for more Fantasy with Friends! The prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, and this time we’re talking about fantasy tropes we love:

What are some of your favorite fantasy tropes that you never get tired of?

Naturally, as is tradition, as soon as I’m asked that question, I immediately forgot any trope I’d ever known about, so I went ahead and searched for “fantasy tropes” and we’re gonna pick ten or so from the appropriate Wikipedia category and go from there. It’s far from a complete list, but it at least gets me unstuck, ahaha.

So, first up, accidental travel, and I’m going to assume that refers to accidentally travelling to another world. I’ve always enjoyed stories like this, from C.S. Lewis’ Narnia through to Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar, and have recently been indulging in it more via some Japanese isekai stories like The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter and A Gentle Noble’s Vacation Recommendation. The former plays with the trope quite a bit, with a young girl being summoned to the other world and accidentally bringing along a 30-year-old salaryman. He’s a workaholic who immediately asks for a job, settles in, and ends up arguably doing more for the world than she does by making her job unnecessary for the future. Along the way he ends up in a romance with a magic-wielding knight who despairs about his workaholic tendencies, saves his life multiple times, and supports his scheming.

The latter features a guy getting transported to an alternative magical kingdom where he proceeds to consider it an extended holiday, and simply dabble in anything that interests him, making friends along the way.

I’ve also been enjoying transmigration stories in the danmei, which are similar — so far The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish and Mistakenly Saving The Villain, all of which I’m enjoying. Because they transmigrate into fictional stories, you’ve got Shen Qingqiu in SVSSS being too genre-savvy and not realising when the genre changes, Li Yu in TDTBPF not realising the direction his choices are taking him, and Song Qingshi in MStV just completely not understanding genre fiction at all, and thus screwing up the whole story by saving the beautiful but doomed and somewhat villainous Yue Wuhuan.

And of course, a shoutout to Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, where one obsessive reader suddenly finds the apocalyptic webnovel he’s been the only reader of for years is coming true…

Okay, that’s a lot for the first trope I looked at… so let’s nod quickly to the Chosen One, which I’ve previously written about enjoying when it’s done right, and let’s throw in the enchanted forest trope just because it’s cool (and there are so many ways for a forest to be enchanted). Fire-breathing monster definitely gets a nod too, because hello, dragons.

I think occult detective fiction gets in, too, since I love my fantasy mysteries (though fantasy mystery is a lot wider than just this meaning), and portal fantasy is already sort of covered by accidental travel and my associated musings. That brings us to sentient weapon, which is definitely a trope I enjoy: I really need to get on with reading T. Kingfisher’s Swordheart, which I’ve only read the first chapter or so of, though Travis Baldree’s Brigands & Breadknives probably hews closer to the definition here.

Shapeshifting is a pretty general trope, but it can be really fun; I’m currently partway through Finn Longman’s The Wolf and His King, for instance, which is a retelling of Marie de France’s ‘Bisclaveret’, and thus really fascinating to me.

Finally, let’s end at the thieves’ guild: I have a lot of nostalgia around this kind of prompt, thinking about various fantasy novels I read as a kid and teen… and some I’ve been fond of since. It’s a trope that makes a certain amount of sense, allowing people to band together and protect each other, and there are a lot of ways to jump from there to a fun adventure story.

Okay, so that was a bit of a whistlestop tour apart from my extended stay with accidental travel (ironically, perhaps), but I had fun!

Once more it’s Monday, and time for Fantasy with Friends! The prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, and this time we’re talking about movie adaptations:

Are there any fantasy books that you think had a movie adaptation that was even better than the book? If not, what are some of your favorite and least screen favorite adaptations?

I don’t really watch movies (or TV), so I am poorly equipped to answer this one! I did watch more when I was younger, but nowadays I’m lucky if I watch a single movie in a whole year (and I’ve watched one for 2026: Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man, which is great but not fantasy). Sooo this will be a short post.

We’ve discussed The Lord of the Rings before, and I think that’s a broadly good adaptation that made a couple of choices I didn’t love (e.g. regarding Faramir’s character, but also the omission of Glorfindel in order to give Arwen a bigger part to play). There were reasons those choices were made, often really good reasons, and I’m not a purist about it: adaptations are adaptations, and can change things without that being a bad thing.

Another example, though not a movie, is the BBC radioplay adaptation of The Dark is Rising — the one that aired when I was a kid, not the more recent one — which cut out most of Will’s brothers and simplified his family significantly, but managed to nonetheless capture the sense of threat, struggle and wonder of that book beautifully. The casting was amazing, especially Merriman and the Rider. I love Will’s family, but I accept the need to adapt and the ways that was good for the story.

On the other hand, we don’t speak of The Seeker, which I never even tried to watch because it was apparent even from trailers that it completely mangled the story.

Studio Ghibli have mixed examples for me: their adaptation of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books just isn’t worth watching to me, as it didn’t stay remotely true to the spirit of the story. Buuut though their adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle is completely different from the book, losing aspects that are deeply important to me (Howl’s Welshness, for instance), I love that one — even though it adds in themes that I don’t think are there in the original. Maybe it’s because Howl and Sophie are true to their book-selves, despite all the changes, as is their relationship.

I had more to say than I thought, though not about any recent movies! I’m kinda curious to see what other people think and what adaptations they think have been worth the time.

Time for another Fantasy with Friends discussion post! As ever, the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, and this week’s is about what got you interested in the genre:

Is there a particular fantasy that got you interested in the genre? Do you remember any of the earliest fantasy books you read?

Given that my mother’s a fantasy reader as well, I think fantasy stories were just stories to me, rather than thinking in terms of genre. Lots of the books I had as a kid were fantastical in some way, some more so than others; I read a lot of Enid Blyton’s work, for instance, where the Famous Five books are not fantasy, but she also wrote The Magic Faraway Tree. I know I had a box set of the Narnia books, too, with cover art that I personally prefer to all the others I’ve seen, but which hasn’t been reused (alas).

That said, I know that after I read The Hobbit, I pestered Mum for more like it, by which I think I meant fantasy (and she certainly took it to be so). She didn’t let me read The Lord of the Rings until I was a bit older, to make sure I would understand and properly appreciate it, but I have vivid memories of many of the fantasy books she lent me from her shelves. Raymond E. Feist’s Magician was definitely a major early player, along with David Eddings’ work. There’s a lot of nostalgia there, though I doubt I’d revisit David Eddings’ work now, being aware of his extensive child abuse directed at his adopted children. I can’t remember quite when I got A Wizard of Earthsea for Christmas, but probably somewhere around 10-11 years old.

I can’t quite picture where I started seeking out and choosing fantasy books of my own, either — probably in a small way I was doing that all along, but often following Mum’s suggestions and recommendations to help me choose. I know that by the time I was in my mid-teens, Mum and I were both reading Robin Hobb’s Farseer books, and visiting the Waterstones in town for their SF/F section (and to attend a reading and Q&A session by Robin Hobb). At the same time I was reading Neil Gaiman for myself for sure (sadly he’s also tainted his own legacy), Tad Williams, Sarah Zettel…

I can definitely remember when it started becoming more the other way round, too, which was probably most marked from when I was 18 or so: I’d discover the authors and get Mum interested, in my turn. I borrowed Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora from the library when I was at university, and persuaded her to read it. (No, I still haven’t read Republic of Thieves, though. Someday. If people don’t nag me.)

Overall, definitely heavily influenced by Mum’s taste in books, especially until I went off to university and spent more time browsing in bookshops on my own, exploring via library books and second-hand sales, etc.

A new week, and a new Fantasy with Friends discussion post! The prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, and this week’s is about fantasies that have inspired you to do further reading:

Has reading a fantasy book ever inspired you to do further research into something else? (ex. Read a classic the book is inspired by/read a history text/read nonfiction writings by the author/research a specific topic)

Almost certainly, but I’m having trouble dragging anything to mind! Tolkien’s an obvious one for me: I actually studied Tolkien for a taught module during my MA, and we read a lot of stories which were… “sources” is the wrong word, but “inspirations” and “patterns” that Tolkien borrowed little bits from and did tribute to in creating his world. I wrote the assignment on “Northern courage” in his work, so I was reading stuff like ‘The Battle of Maldon’, the Prose and Poetic Eddas, and also a lot of the posthumous volumes that got pumped out with his notes, letters, etc. But I don’t think that quite counts here, since it was for a class!

I guess one example that fits is Vivian Shaw’s Strange Practice, in which Greta Helsing (yes, a descendent of that van Helsing) is a GP, and tends to the medical needs of London’s supernatural community. The story features several famous public domain characters, like Lord Ruthven and Varney the Vampyre. I’d read a few of the source texts before and was on nodding acquaintance with some others, but I’ve sought out a few more since plunging into this series.

Other than that, I can’t think of any right now, but maybe I’ll have to edit some in if I remember. Definitely curious to hear what fantasy novels might have inspired others to go further afield and do some extra reading!