Fantasy books for "older" adults
I have always liked to read fantasy novels. I loved Tanith Lee and these days I enjoy books like "Uprooted" by Naomi Novik or the Farseer Books by Robin Hobb. It seems to me like 99% of the new books are for young adults and also feature very young heroines (and male protagonists). I don't mind reading those but I do mind reading ONLY those. So are there fantasy books out there that feature older main characters? Why are most fantasy novels YA books? I'm sure that there are lots and lots of readers out there who are 30 plus (or a lot older like me, I'm 59). Anybody have any ideas about this? #fantasy #books #literature
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Maria Petersen
in reply to Petra • •I figure they thought we would grow out of it. It seems to be what happened to most people I know. They got a job, got married, had children, and started chasing promotions, bigger houses, and washing machines, instead of dragons and dreams.
Mind you, I haven't read these yet, but they are on my wishlist:
“The Long Price Quartet” by Daniel Abraham
“The Blade Itself” by Joe Abercrombie
"Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands" by Heather Fawcett
“The Buried Giant” by Kazuo Ishiguro
"City of Blades" by Robert Jackson Bennet.
Lastly, it might not quite fit the classical fantasy moniker but "The Dark Tower" series by Stephen King is, to this day, one of my favourite reads. I might be biased though, I am a Constant Reader 😀
Petra
in reply to Maria Petersen • •In the meantime I found a lot of threads on Reddit that deal with similar requests and they had quite a few suggestions.
My theory is that it is easier for publishing houses to simply classify fantasy as a YA genre. It's a nice categorization that works most of the time. I hope they don't turn down many good manuscripts that feature older female protagonists. In the fantasy novels that are popular with men there are many older male protagonists but that's something that is also a well known topic with movies. It has gotten better though, especially in tv series where there are many women 40 plus (mostly very slim and beautiful though). But I digress. 😉
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Maria Petersen
in reply to Petra • •Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg would certainly qualify as older female protagonists, and heroes do not get much older and more decrepit than Cohen the Barbarian and The Silver Horde.
I'll have a look around my library and see if something else interesting falls off the shelves. It's mostly science fiction, but there are little pockets of fantasy hiding out.
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FR Nina Pescatore
in reply to Petra • •Or they get catagorized as such? I know from a Dutch fantasy writer that they put her books in the YA section. They are definitely not 😉
YA sels better it seems.
I like CJ Cherryh, who writes mostly SF, but also fantasy (Fortress serie).
Uprooted was really hilarious. I like it when there is a bit of humor as well.
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Petra
in reply to FR Nina Pescatore • •FR Nina Pescatore
in reply to Petra • •Petra likes this.