literary criticism – Everything Is Better With Dragons

296 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2009 by
Middlesex University Press
ISBN 9781904750680 (ISBN10: 1904750680)

Blurb

A history of the fantasy form, this work traces the genre from the earliest years with The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey through to the origins of modern fantasy in the 20th century with such acclaimed writers as Terry Pratchett and J. K. Rowling. An exploration of the great variety of fiction published under the heading “fantasy,” this engaging study seeks to explain its continuing and ever-growing popularity.

My Review

I bought myself this book because I am interested in fantasy as a genre. I have been reading fantasy seriously for almost thirty years, and I have joked that I learnt to be human by reading fantasy. I’ve learnt a lot about why people do what they do by reading fantasy. I am interested in the history and theory of the genre because I want to know why it is so popular, yet so disdained by the literary establishment*.

This book covers the development of fantasy as a genre up to 2008. It goes into detail in some areas but not in others. They cover Pratchett and Tolkien, of course, but also children’s fantasy and the cross-over between fantasy and sci fi. It is a comfortable balance between the popular and the academic.

I have only one problem with this book: I keep buying books. Oh, and it needs updating to 2022. Lots has happened in the last 14 years.

*Snobbery, the answer is snobbery.

42129087 — Hardcover, 240 pages
Published May 21st 2019 by
New York University Press
ISBN:1479800651 (ISBN13: 9781479800650)

Reveals the diversity crisis in children’s and young adult media as not only a lack of representation, but a lack of imagination

Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic, the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children’s publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence, reinforcing for audiences that not all lives matter.

The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her experiences as YA novelist, fanfiction writer, and scholar of education, Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most popular stories of the early 21st century: Bonnie Bennett from the CW’s The Vampire Diaries, Rue from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Gwen from the BBC’s Merlin, and Angelina Johnson from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter. Analyzing their narratives and audience reactions to them reveals how these characters mirror the violence against black and brown people in our own world.

In response, Thomas uncovers and builds upon a tradition of fantasy and radical imagination in Black feminism and Afrofuturism to reveal new possibilities. Through fanfiction and other modes of counter-storytelling, young people of color have reinvisioned fantastic worlds that reflect their own experiences, their own lives. As Thomas powerfully asserts, “we dark girls deserve more, because we are more.”