Cozy fantasy borrows
Jul. 14th, 2023 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutI really loved Legends and Lattes. Loved loved loved. But rather than just reread it, I was like, let’s find more like it! And there are people out there producing low-stakes fantasy. So far, I have — via kindle unlimited, fortunately for me — attempted Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea, which didn’t feel low-stakes enough, and was honestly quite bloody for the first few chapters. Perhaps it improves. The Golden Chance was released, so I read that, and when I went back for something to read, I couldn’t bring myself to return to “Key” (Kianthe) and Rain (Reyna). If your sapphic couple includes a woman who was raised from birth to be a guard to a queen, and the other woman has Special (pseudo)Divine Magical Powers that primarily manifest as riding around on a Griffin (really, no healing spells, which would have been helpful, just resentment at being pressured to do magically what ordinary humans could do with ordinary human labor), I’m just gonna struggle unsuccessfully to find them relatable on any level.
Next up: The Bookshop and the Barbarian: A Cozy Fantasy Novel. Lots of snark and breaking the fourth wall. That’s fine, but honestly, I just couldn’t get past the ride in the pig wagon. A farmer was transporting pigs in a wagon. Why. When you “drive” pigs to market, you don’t have a driver. You have a drover. And the pigs walk. Come on. I kept going for a few more chapters, but the bookshop had been closed for 20 years, but was still filled with organized, saleable books, no damage other than dust. The biggest problem was kicking the goblins out, and that felt like the worst mashup of gentrification, stereotyping and anti-endangered species legislation. Maribella cleans the place out with the help of a giant woman who she hired to get rid of the goblins, and then is surprised no one walks in the door in the first half hour, so Maribella and the _already established as mostly-illiterate giant_ “spent most of the morning filling small sheets of parchment with various kinds of advertisements”. The author having noticed that she had established Asteria as mostly illiterate adds, “Asteria offered her a crudely-drawn flier. “Um,” said Maribella. “We’ll put it in the maybe pile.”
Then they nail up the _parchment_ fliers around town.
I suppose having parchment be cheap makes sense in a world in which people are putting pigs _in_ the wagon. But I just can’t.
Next up: The Bookshop and the Barbarian: A Cozy Fantasy Novel. Lots of snark and breaking the fourth wall. That’s fine, but honestly, I just couldn’t get past the ride in the pig wagon. A farmer was transporting pigs in a wagon. Why. When you “drive” pigs to market, you don’t have a driver. You have a drover. And the pigs walk. Come on. I kept going for a few more chapters, but the bookshop had been closed for 20 years, but was still filled with organized, saleable books, no damage other than dust. The biggest problem was kicking the goblins out, and that felt like the worst mashup of gentrification, stereotyping and anti-endangered species legislation. Maribella cleans the place out with the help of a giant woman who she hired to get rid of the goblins, and then is surprised no one walks in the door in the first half hour, so Maribella and the _already established as mostly-illiterate giant_ “spent most of the morning filling small sheets of parchment with various kinds of advertisements”. The author having noticed that she had established Asteria as mostly illiterate adds, “Asteria offered her a crudely-drawn flier. “Um,” said Maribella. “We’ll put it in the maybe pile.”
Then they nail up the _parchment_ fliers around town.
I suppose having parchment be cheap makes sense in a world in which people are putting pigs _in_ the wagon. But I just can’t.