Greetings and salutations. It is I, Graham.

I read a lot of fantasy. Not as much as I would like, but that is because I don’t read as much as I would like. I’ve talked about why I like fantasy, what it offers, and why it checks so many boxes for me. But surprisingly, sword and sorcery, epic fantasy is not necessarily the biggest genre that I read. That is because I read for the characters. You can design the greatest magic system, the grandest world, and the coolest monsters. But if I don’t latch on to your characters, I am going to put the book down halfway through it. This happened with Mistborn. It happened with Lies of Loche Lamora, and with Black Tongue Thief. It even happened with The Dresden Files. But it didn’t happen with Fellowship of the Ring. It didn’t happen with Lost Souls, Drizzt Do’Urden, Harry Potter, Anita Blake, or, the Gods help me, The Sword of Truth.

So much with modern fantasy has distilled the genre down to kind of a lowest common denominator style mentality. Many of the authors have stripped out everything that is “fantasy” other than the weapons, the magic, and occasionally some monsters. I miss Dwarves, and Elves. I miss the more cosmopolitan feel of “alien” races running around Human-centric cities. I mean, I have seen “fantasy” books that don’t even use magic, much less non-human races. But I have noticed that as I am less invested in the modern genre, I tend to have more difficulty latching onto the characters as well.

I would like to read more epic fantasy. That’s why I am writing, with Clevenger, the kind of books I wish I could find on the book shelf in the fantasy section. Instead, a lot of what I end up turning to is urban fantasy, YA, and science fiction. I look where I can find the characters, genre be damned. Like I mentioned last week, I have a tendency to be drawn to more Gothic flavors quite often. I loved Anita Blake, even if it started shifting hard (haha) into heavy erotica in the second half of the series. I mean, eventually her books moved to multi-chapter sex scenes. Nothing wrong with that, except that is not what the first half of the series promised. I really got into Sookie Stackhouse, the books that the True Blood series was based on. I really enjoyed them, until after 9 or 10 books, there was a serious shift in mood.

I loved Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles for the most part. The mood was excellent, there were many characters to fall in love with. She did have Tolkien’s habit of over-describing backgrounds and scenery, but I can get around that. But the characters. Sure, LeStat and Louis, they are nice. But in the books, you get Armand, one of my favorites, but Santiago, Marius, and Maharet. Beautiful characters. Lost Souls and The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod are both vampire stories, the first a standalone novel of a story that would easily be rated R, the second is a YA series. Both deal with a high school age vampire trying to survive the situation he is handed.

Then there is the entire area of confusion around the works of Orson Scott Card. He writes amazing stories. He creates engaging plots with incredible, well thought out characters. I identify easily with the way he creates those characters. I have read most of what he has written. I hate, hate, hate (can I add a dozen more “hate”s in here?) how toxic he is due to his connections with the Mormon church. When you read his stories, you get a feel for his true morals. He even has gay characters in his books. He has two types of religious characters that appear in any of his books. Either they hold rank and power, and are cruel, despicable people, or they hold no real power, but have amazing faith and help everyone they can, without judgment. Unfortunately, his church is a cult that uses anyone with power and influences in their ranks and bullies them into being spokespeople for their bigotry and hatred. I wish he had the strength and conviction to get out of their influence, but I don’t see that happening.

So now to wrap up this twisting, convoluted mess of a blog post. I really don’t read specific genres. I look for key topics, character types, or moods in books I read. So what is my favorite non-fantasy genre to read? I guess I am taking the cheat that Clevenger used this past week, and turn sideways, giving an answer that doesn’t necessarily answer the exact question asked. I’ll let you decide.

Don’t forget to love one another.

Graham