Beginner's Guide To Fantasy - Plots & Themes // 2021

hey guys welcome back if you're new here my name is becca and today we are going to be talking through some more fantasy subgenres [Music] so this is the second part of a little mini series that i've been doing i have no further parts planned so in the comments if there are any particular areas of fantasy fantasy terminology that you would like me to cover in a further installment of this kind of video then please do drop those suggestions down below but essentially i've been making like a little beginner's guide to fantasy just understanding the terminology that is currently used because that is quite a lot and it can be intimidating if you are unfamiliar with the genre so i've been mainly covering subgenres in the first installment of this series i explained that the way that i see subgenres is that the majority of them in my mind are split between identifiers of the setting and identifiers of the plots and themes of the book or series in the last installment we covered settings and i will link that video up here for you guys if you are interested and i would also recommend that you do go and check that out ahead of watching this one as i will be referring to some of the things i covered in that video as identifiers without going into further explanation but this is the video where we are going to be tackling the genres that i see as relating to the plot and the themes of the novel this is not every fantasy genre because if i did that then i would be here all day but this is seven of what i would consider to be the most popular identifiers and subgenres of the fantasy genre and the ones that i believe that i read the most of so i am naturally the most familiar with those types so the first one we are going to be covering is one of the most common ones that i read especially recently and that is epic fantasy as i mentioned in the last video this often goes hand in hand with high fantasy sometimes they are used interchangeably a lot of the time and epic fantasy will be a high fantasy but that is not the case 100 of the time so epic fantasies tend to be incredibly expensive oftentimes they are extremely long books and there will be multiple really long books in a series there's always multiple characters there's large-scale quests you tend to have either an extremely complex political system an extremely complex magic system or a lot of the time there is both you also tend to have multiple plot threads in my mind as a reviewer epic fantasy is always hard to explain when i'm trying to give you a cohesive breakdown of the plot because there is so much plot in there that if you gave a brief description of every single element it would really take a long time as well as that what i have found with epic fantasy from personal experience is that the series do tend to be very hard to explain because the bulk of the series has nothing to do with the synopsis of the first book a classic example of this would be game of thrones just to start us off the actual plot of game of thrones is that there are multiple factions vying over the throne and control of the kingdom however the plot of the first book is that we have a man called ned stark who is from the north of the country who has been called to be the advisor of the king who is his best friend from his younger years now that original setup plot which is what the majority of the first book about is actually only the setup and the catalyst for the true plot of the series and that is something that i have found common with epic fantasy so some of your main identifiers of epic fantasy a big one is multiple points of view as i mentioned you will tend to have a lot of characters in epic fantasy and if you are reading a book and you're following a lot of main characters it tends to be epic fantasy we also have maps maps are always a key indicator because there's a lot of world to cover so you have something to reference the same goes for glossaries that isn't always the case but either like character indexes or glossaries in there and you also tend to have a lot of development per book so like i said the first book is not an indicator of what actually happens in the rest of the series so for your examples of epic fantasy the most expansive the most epic fantasy i've read today is the stormlight archive by brandon sanderson this is also part of an extended universe which you will also find a lot with epic fantasy as this is one of the series in brandon sanderson's cosmere so the actual synopsis of the stormlight archive is that we are following a group of legendary knights who have had to rebound and reestablish themselves to tackle an oncoming apocalypse in a very stormy landscape however that is not how the first book way of kings starts out but these are incredibly large books in the uk all the paperback editions are split into two sections all of the installments in this series are over 1000 pages each and there are also novellas that add additional content to this series one that i haven't read yet but i'm very excited to is the rage of dragons by evan winter and this takes place in a world where one in every like 100 men has like super strength and is a really good warrior and one in every 200 women has the power to call their dragons that's as far as i understand the synopsis to be i don't know because i haven't read it yet but i've heard excellent things about this and the books are also quite chunky next up we have swords and sorcery now this is a categorization i do not commonly use i rarely ever refer to a book as being swords and sorcery and it's not something that i hear a lot either i believe that it is a term that is more common in like your classic fantasy but as it is a very prominent subgenre that i believe formed the backbone of fantasy as we see it today i thought that i would cover it here because there are a lot of books i read that are swords and sorcery it's just the term itself is not something that i use the swords and sorcery is pretty self-explanatory like it is usually a high fantasy world but you have swords and you have sorcery so you'll find like your epic battles there'll be a lot of magic you'll have like dragons maybe you tend to have your strong central hero maybe plots of either save in the world or like saving a kingdom or a civilization now historically you would have like your big squash brooklyn hero like a big strong prominent male presence and he identifies that the genre would be tropes like the damsel in distress now as we have moved forward with fantasy we are seeing a lot more fantasy with female leads so some of those tropes are a little bit outdated so a couple of books that i personally interpret to be swords and sorcery we have throne of glass by sarah j maas this is an eight book series it is also epic fantasy and i would say that this story does not necessarily start off as sergeant sorcery but as you get a little way into the series i believe that it does definitely have a lot of the key tropes and themes of swords and sorcery we have a lot of epic battles there's a lot of magic a lot of different factions of magic in here and while we have multiple characters and multiple perspectives we do have our strong central hero character in the form of the main character selena sardothien so this one is a young adult fantasy series that matures as the series goes on we start off following a young girl called selena who is an assassin that has been imprisoned in the salt mines of endovia and the crown prince comes to release her so that she can compete in a competition and if she wins the competition she will win the contract to become the king's assassin that doesn't sound very swords and sorcery but trust me the further you get into this series the more it heads in that direction something a little bit different we have a comic book series and that is rat queens by rock up church now this is your classic like medieval high fantasy like quest in swords and sorcery kind of story you are following four boozy battle maidens for hire who have been thrown into jail after starting one bar fight too many and to earn their freedom they have to perform quests for the realm so as this is a comic as well you have a lot of like small isolated quest stories in here that always include these women going out and like slaying the dragon or finding the lost artifacts or saving the tone from malevolent presence so yeah strong sword and sorcery themes in here and as a fantasy comic series i would just generally recommend it next up we have grim dark fantasy which is a particular favorite of mine grim dark fantasy is grim and it is dark we tend to have quite gritty grim settings you tend to have lots of themes of grey morality your main characters may be anti-heroes the focus of the setting or like your main group of characters may be part of a criminal underworld i also find in grimdark that you have like a lot of brutality a lot of god there can be themes of like murder sexual assault and it is just a very dark setting a lot of the time you will also have like a lot of messy morality your main character will go and murder people sometimes innocent people depends on like what kind of story your author is telling but your indicators of grim dark fantasy tend to be the level of graphic detail and gore the amount that they dive into really dark topics if the set in is like really dark and kind of gruesome as opposed to your very pretty magical world and your main characters do tend to be things like thieves or assassins which are some of my favorites to follow so for my recommendations the first one i have is the poppy wall by rf kong this one is an east asian inspired fantasy that does actually have a recounting of the historical event which was the rape of nan king where during the second sino-japanese war a group of japanese soldiers went into china to an undefended city that was full of civilians and just completely like slaughtered murdered and raped everybody in there now that is a real historical event that has been incorporated into this series but in this book we are following a morally great character called rin who is trying to escape from the circumstances that she has found herself kind of like born into so she studies for a test that will gain her what is essentially a scholarship to a prestigious military academy just so she can escape from her life however everything is upended when the country unexpectedly goes into war and all of these essentially children they are young adults but they're in their like late teens very early 20s they have their lives appended and everything they know and think they know about war when they suddenly have to go to war and actually fight battles and notice the difference between how it's portrayed in like a safe controlled training environment and how it actually is one that i have not read yet that i'm very excited to read is the lies of lock lamora by scott lynch in this series we are following a notorious thief called lock lamora and his trusty band of thieves he's quite a notorious character he gets up to a lot of antics to the point where his reputation is like part myth part legend and this is the story of what he actually does and i've heard great things about this one as well and i love stories that follow like a band of thieves next up we have retellings now retellings have become increasingly popular especially over the last 20 years or so and retellings are an odd one because they can be any subgenre of fantasy they don't even have to be fantasy but a retelling is essentially a story that is retelling something else and putting a new spin on it so you can retell pretty much anything but i would say the most common ones we have are fairy tales mythology legend history and shakespeare the only real indicator of a retelling is that it has directly retailed something else but i have some examples for the different types that i've just mentioned so for your shakespeare retelling we have the queens of innis leah by tessa gratton this is a very queer adult retelling about king lear who is growing more and more sickly and he has to decide who is going to inherit the crown there are three daughters of leah they all have very distinct personalities the eldest one is more like a warrior princess the middle one is more into politics and the third one is a priest and isn't really interested in the crown however she is the king's favorite so this is an extremely beautifully told very slow move in fantasy that mainly deals with like quiet types of drama like betrayal and backstabbing and is very heavily political for legendary telling we have spin the dawn which is a young adult fantasy is marketed as being part mulan part project runway and this tells the story of a girl who wants to become the imperial tailor however she can't do this because of her gender so she heads to the palace one day dressed as a boy with the dream of becoming this imperial taylor and also saving her family from ruin for history we have the kingdom of back by marie lu this is another young adult and this tells the story of wolfgang mozart's sister so in this book mozart's sister is incredibly gifted with music however this is 18th century europe and she is a woman and society expects different things from her one day a mysterious stranger from a magical realm turns up and tells nano mozart that he can help her achieve her dream however that must come at a cost for mythology we have a touch of darkness by scarlett saint claire this is a new adult fantasy romance hades and persephone retelling as the goddess of spring persephone's gift is supposed to mean that anything she touches will grow however for some reason everything she touches actually shrivels and dies but hades doesn't know this and tempts persephone into a bargain where she must bring life to the underground and if she cannot do that she will be trapped there forever and finally for a fairytale retelling we have malice by heather walter this is a queer new adult sleeping beauty retelling told from the perspective of an evil fairy who falls in love with aurora getting into one that is kind of self-explanatory we have fantasy romance which is my favorite genre as a lot of you guys will know and this can also be referred to as romantic fantasy now there is a difference between fantasy romance and a fantasy with a romance essentially fantasy romance is a fantasy story with a lot of romance in it so you will have a focus on a main character and a love interest there's different tropes within romance as a genre that bleeds into fantasy romance so you can have all different like types like you can have reverse harem where there's like multiple love interests and all kinds of stuff like that but fantasy romance to me is a fantasy story that is equal parts plot and romance so you will still have your kind of not necessarily epic but there is still a strong fantasy plot line in there and then you also have a strong romantic plot line as well now i am going to be getting into paranormal and paranormal romance in just a second but the common differentiator between a paranormal romance and a fantasy romance is that a fantasy romance is in a high fantasy world and paranormal romance tends to be in a low fantasy world so of course one of the most popular examples of fantasy romance is the occult of thorns and roses series by sarah j maas this is a young adult although arguably new adult beauty and the beast retelling that follows a young woman called pharah who accidentally kills a faye wolf shifter and as a punishment for her crime she's dragged off to live the rest of her days in the fairy world by the high lord of spring another one that i've really enjoyed is the bridge kingdom by danielle l jensen this one is more of a political fantasy and we are following a young woman who has been raised and trained to be an assassin with the purpose of marrying and then murdering the king of the bridge kingdom so for paranormal you have paranormal and paranormal romance the difference between them of course is the romantic element in paranormal romance and as i've just explained that tends to be in a low fantasy world but paranormal as a genre is still fantastical although it tends to run adjacent to fantasy as being referred to as see if that makes sense is still solidly fantasy because we have fantastical creatures in there but paranormal while not always the case does tend to take place in a low fantasy world and your signifiers of paranormal are the fantastical creatures that we all know and love that are popular across many forms of media now but they tend to be like vampires werewolves witches ghosts psychics you do sometimes have other creatures as well like i've seen merfolk in paranormal i've also seen faye sometimes as paranormal now paranormal is not something i read a whole ton of i am getting into paranormal romance a little bit more as i'm getting into fantasy romance a little bit more so i don't have the best examples for you guys but one that is a paranormal with some romance but romance not being a key theme is the dresden files by jim butcher the first book being stormfront and this is a very long series that isn't finished yet actually i think they're on like book 15 or maybe more than that but it is a paranormal story that takes place in chicago following a detective who takes the cases from the police that they can't solve because it deals with supernatural elements a paranormal that i've read recently that isn't currently overly romantic but i believe it does head that way is dark fever by karen marie moaning and this is an adult story that follows a young woman whose sister was studying abroad in ireland where she was brutally murdered the police have given up on the case and the main character mark then heads to ireland to investigate and while she's doing that she discovers the realm of the fae and finally the last sub-genre we are going to be talking about today is like barely fantasy but it is a very popular genre that has a fantastical element and that is magical realism or surrealism so magical realism or surrealism tend to in my experience be shelved with literary fiction as opposed to being shelved with fantasy but they do all have a slight fantastical element now there is a difference between magical realism and surrealism and the difference lays in the origins so the magical realism genre originated in latin america that is where it was invented where it grew and surrealism is very similar to magical realism they have very similar themes and like definitions but surrealism originated in europe no magical realism is the term that has most commonly been adopted by the publishing industry to describe the whole genre but technically if the story is not latin american then it is not magical realism it is surrealism so magical realism and surrealism tend to take place in extremely realistic settings they can be historical or they can be contemporary but they are in the real world and they tend to have a very small magical or fantastical element that is normal and is never explained so i personally do not read a lot of this genre because there is a level of acceptance going into this story that your magical or fantastical element is commonplace and as a reader i want to know like where this magical element came from but that is not the point of the story so in terms of examples there are tons out there and i'm not especially knowledgeable because i don't read a whole lot of it but we do have her body at other parties by carmen maria mercado and this is a collection of short stories about women and the horrors that women have to suffer and the violence that is often done to them emotionally and physically and every story has like a slight magical twist and then we also have the wind up bird chronicle by haruki murakami i believe that a lot of if not all of murakami's books are surrealism and this is a very very bizarre story with a whole lot of strange happenings but the catalyst for this story is that the main character's cat disappears and from the moment of his cat going missing he starts to experience a string of increasingly bizarre events so there you have it that was my explanation of seven fantasy subgenres with examples as i said at the beginning of this video please leave in the comments if there's any areas of fantasy that you'd like me to cover any terminology that you'd like me to make a video on and i will do my best but aside from that please do let me know if this video was helpful please don't forget to like if you liked it and subscribe if you wanna and if you enter my description box you'll find a link to my goodreads instagram twitter if you'd like to follow me on any of those as well as a link to my bookish candle website the instagram for that and attempt off discount code but that's it for me today guys bye oh you bite your friend like chocolate you say you will go where nobody knows [Music] though

Channel: Becca and The Books

Views: 3,590

Rating: 4.9679146 out of 5

Keywords: books, booktube, reading, fantasy 101, guide to fantasy, beginner's guide to fantasy, epic fantasy, fantasy books, Becca and the books, swords and sorcery, grimdark fantasy, retellings, fantasy romance, paranormal, paranormal romance, magical realism, surrealism

Id: l4igHAO-wVo

Length: 20min 58sec (1258 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021