A Month of Books :: Fantasy Novels

Last updated on 27 February 2017

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Like I mentioned a few days ago, my favourite genre used to always be fantasy, until recently when I discovered the Dystopian genre. While I have two favourite genres now, I thought we’d stick with my first love today, fantasy, and look at some of the main story elements and their fantasy characteristics, and how they, in my opinion, make a great fantasy novel.

Setting

One of my most favourite things about fantasy novels are the worlds they are set in. I’m going to post more about this later on in the month, but just briefly, I think the imagination and creativity of some authors is absolutely incredible. The worlds that are created in people’s minds are often so immense and detailed that is extremely hard to remember that these places don’t actually exist.

What I love to see in fantasy novels is a map. I love maps, a lot. For my own NaNoWriMo story last year (and that I’m working on this month for NaNoEdMo), the first thing I did was draw out a map of the world I was creating. I like to see those maps in the front or back of the book, so when the characters venture out into their worlds (it’s a fantasy novel, you know they will!) I can see exactly where’s their off to, which road they are taking etc. I think that’s awesome.

Characters

Like most, if not all, novels, there’s a good side and a bad side. This is something that is often the key element in a fantasy novel, and the fight between the two. Because of this, characters on both sides are needed, so their personalities and … well, character, are often so vastly different that they polar opposites. I often find that fantasy characters are sometimes too weak, or they are too kind etc etc.

What I do love about fantasy characters is that they could be human…or they could be elves, or dwarves, or magicians, or a creature of the author’s imagination. I think it’s a lot of fun reading books that have new species in them, and the characteristics that the authors write into them.

Plot

While most fantasy novels include an adventure of some sort, or a journey that needs to be completed, or something that needs to be taken, I like the unpredictability of some fantasy books. With fiction books, or even crime novels, especially ones that are set in the world we know and live in, there’s a line that I think has to be drawn between what’s plausible and what’s just downright ridiculous.

For example, if you were reading something like a Jodi Picoult novel (books which I really enjoy every now and then), you would really question everything you had read so far and, perhaps, even the sanity of the characters or the author, if a herd of unicorns came storming onto the scene. In a fantasy novel, you would welcome that. Unicorns have interrupted this scene!? All good! No worries. That’s allowed. And I love that about fantasy stories. Authors can throw pretty much anything in there, and as long as there’s a reason or a little bit of background story to it, then it’s all fine and dandy. It makes for exciting and unexpected, keep-you-on-your-toes reading.

A Glossary

Now this may seem silly, but there’s nothing worse than beginning a book and having the5th word you come to some unpronounceable name that the author has invented and then flipping to the back of the book to find out how exactly you say that word, and discovering that there’s no glossary. The.Worst.

You then spend the entire rest of the book just calling that character a) how you think it’s pronounced, b) by just the first letter of the name, or c) something entirely different like ‘Bob’ because your brain hurts. When they then make a movie of this book, they will most likely pronounce that word entirely differently, and your whole life just shatters around you. Dear authors of fantasy novels that invent names, please
include a glossary. It really super duper helps.