I find it incredible how different I feel about certain books/series now vs how I felt about them 15 or 20 years ago. What sort of major changes have happened to your tastes during your fantasy journey?
I used to own every single Wheel of Time book and spent all my time on wotmania.com, but I have zero desire to read them ever again. Honestly, classic epic fantasy just doesn’t do it for me in general anymore.
I don’t tend to get excited about the next Brandon Sanderson novel, but I was a huge proponent of him when he was signing copies of Elantris in my tiny Idaho mall.
It’d be great if Rothfuss, Lynch or Martin finished their series, but I used to rant and rave about wanting them and now I just move on to things that are done. I can wait, and in the case of Rothfuss I’m not 100% sure those books are going to finish nearly as strongly as I first thought.
I more or less grew up reading High Fantasy, so I very much wanted stories with dragons and magic users and the like. Then I fell out of it for a long time (missed HP and GoT completely) and came back very recently to find my tastes are much different now. I want interesting characters and emotional impact and ideas to ponder more than wizards, swords, goblins and elves and epic quests.
I also find that my taste in prose is different than it used to be. Or rather my awareness of its role in drawing me in or putting me off has risen.
Main change is that my taste has matured. 10+ years ago I was all in into “you are the chosen one” fantasy, good vs evil, protagonists are always perfect, always happy ending etc.
Then around 2013 I decided to to buy Garden of the Moon by Steve Erikson. Malazan Book of the Fallen changed my tasty completely. World is not black or white, usually everything is grey. Every action has its consequences, death is waiting for everyone no matter how important you are for the story and also sometimes death is worse then staying alive. Main character is who you decided to be. You as a reader need to expler and get to conclusions alone, writer is not holding your hand and explaining everything. I can go on and on.
If anyone has read this series they will know how it changed them.
Speaking of Sanderson. I loved Mistborn the first time I read it. It was one of the first modern fantasy books I’d read at the time mostly being a science fiction aficionado. I was super attracted to something that wasn’t elves, dwarves, and generic wizards.
Fast forward a few dozen more series and a few years later I re-read it, and was thoroughly unimpressed. Tired character tropes, overwrought magic system, unrealistic interrelations, and little substance beneath the glitter. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad series, just not the revelation I felt like it was the first time around.
Malazan on the other hand, I don’t think I’ll ever tire of re-reading. Though, I haven’t really gotten much into the books outside of the main, ten-book series.
I definitely became more critical with time and there are a few books I wouldn’t quite enjoy today. Then again, I tend to seek out some ‘childish’ settings and ideas more now, maybe as an escape to my evermore serious (and sometimes boring) adult life. In general, while I enjoy fewer stories now, I also enjoy them more deeply.
Here’s my personal opinion.
A lot of us get into fantasy and sci-fi when we’re young. In my case, maybe well before I was ten. While there are many good authors, I do feel that many authors ride on the existing world-building and tropes to write their novels. The actual writing quality of many books is suspect.
When I read over the books I enjoyed as a child or young adult, I’m pretty surprised at how poorly some of those are written. I honestly didn’t care too much when I was young and I just inhaled books. As I get older, I’m much more critical of poor writing. I know enough now to criticise pacing, or development, or eloquence.
Finally, of course our personal taste changes over time. Many of us read these books at a super early stage of our development.
