A Short Rant On Popular Women's Fantasy Books
Fandom Pulse wrote this in one of their articles.
"Recent sales data shows the top of the fantasy charts are now dominated by women writers like Rebecca Yarros and Sara J. Maas, who write glorified pornographic romance novels in fantasy settings rather than fantasy itself. It appears romance simply took over the genre to allow women writers in.
"Unfortunately, it's about all that bookstore stock anymore for the genre. John A. Douglas, author of The Black Crown, has been posting about his trips to bookstores and showing direct evidence that real fantasy isn't getting shown."
It goes on to say that bookstores are not catering to men anymore either. My question is this. WHY are the books women reading filled with porn? And now it's skyrocketing in Walmart, Target, etc.
The other thing I find even more disturbing is when you start reading these books, there's a pattern these books fall into. The porn imagery within the pages aren't actually romantic. It's rape. It's abuse. And it's glorified as though the woman wants it. THAT is what is being sold. And women are eating it up. Somebody on Substack wrote a lengthy article on Sara J Maas' books and basically said it was a camouflaged rape porn story for women. And somehow, they accept this as normal.
You don't have to go very far back in time to see how "Fifty Shades of Grey" dominated women's reading. Even the BDSM community condemned the books. But it still sold and women ate it up like candy. This is a disturbing trend that makes one wonder what exactly are women craving that makes them ok with torture and rape being seen as good. You've got your thousand books about Beauty and the Beast twisted into dark romance novels filled with episodes of sex scene after sex scene and its written for women to indulge their fantasies with the ruggish and brutal beast of a man who she somehow falls in love with despite his treatment of her is anything but kind. And in the telling, she has the insatiable drive to have sex with him? In what world is this ok? And more importantly, what message is this sending women?
But these are the books that dominate the fantasy book charts, destroying any chance for an actual real fantasy book to top the charts and get known. They've gone to the Independent side, the internet and word of mouth, self promoting. All because these twisted pretenders dominate the polls. And most importantly, it’s because women are buying it. Why?
I imagine it's a disordered desire in the same way men's desires are disordered by visual pornography. An unattainable masculine ideal is fetishized, romanticized, and radicalized. I could go on and on about an ingrained need for complementarianism in both women and men that gets twisted beyond recognition...
You wrote, "But these are the books that dominate the fantasy book charts, destroying any chance for an actual real fantasy book to top the charts and get known. "
I think that this is the best time for an actual, real fantasy book to top the charts and get known. Sure, sex sells. It always has. But for a lot of the market, it's always trumped by better storytelling. So we'd better get busy! If the Halflings can overthrow Sauron, we can overthrow porn.