Good morning!
You may look at this and think; «What? I thought you were not into the fantasy reading !!», which is true, but lately i’ve found myself loving the fantasy genre i’ve been having two review requests for and *gasp* both of them were part of a serie !! So how about we talk a little more about thoses 🙂
First and foremost, I should explain why i’ve been kind of avoiding them, shouldn’t I?
It’s not because of the genre in itself, but rather because of me. Now, i’ve already talked about this, but after 2014 my brain «developped» deeper anxiety and depression. This event has a huge negative impact on my reading; i’m one to not wanna read further if the novel do not make me slip into that world and forget the earth is turning, which sadly was really hard to do anymore. Thoses two mental illnesses are also tend to go with concentration issue, which of course I had also, and didn’t made it too easy for me to concentrate enough on the words on my pages to be able to slip away to their reality.
Back when I was a child, i was one to read alot and went to summer “camps” at my local library where mom would drop me at maybe 9am and come pick me up at 5pm everyday. We would do activities and if there was remaining time, we could read. Upon the inscription, we had a little booklet with our goal of how many we wanted to read; which then we would record which book we did read inside that booklet. I was always way beyond that goal ahah! Fast forward to high school, I always had a book in hand to read after tests and such; and for the first two years of it, I would spend my diner time at the school’s library (as I was alone anyway – what better to do then?).
As you would probably guess, it was hard for me to cope with how my reading had been affected by my own brain. It took me a while to accept that it changed, and felt alot of fear that I would actually lose it and stop. It was something passed to me by my most favorite person in the world, my godmother ! How was I suppose to let it slip away?? So I hang onto it as hard as I could, and somewhere in summer 2017 I decided to start a bookish tumblr! I didn’t do much of it, but moved onto wordpress in November – and my reading really increased alot from last year already, which I am so pleased!! ❤️❤️
Now back to fantasy, I purposely didn’t wanted anything even close to that from my fail attempt at reading «the night circus» by Erin Morgenstern, which I ended up DNFing as the world building was too complicated for me to imagine and I got lost in the many POV of the story, to where I didn’t knew what was even happening! 🙈
Perks of having a book blog however, I got approach by two lovely author to ask me if I would kindly like to review their book ; «Heavenward» and «The gilded king». To thoses two authors, thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Knowing it was fantasy, and how my brain wasn’t liking them too much, I was a bit scared. The synopsis looked SO. GOOD. However that I decided ahh why not, let’s give it a shot regardless. And surely enough, both ended up a 5stars read ! To the point where i’m kinda tempted to go reach for more 😘
- It did gave me more of a hard time than my usual genres, needing me to be slower and sometimes reread a sentence two or maybe three times to really understand though, but this is why I read in the middle of the night!
- I felt some new sensations while reading!! Next thing I knew, my heart was racing and I would at times hold my breath when characters were facing a difficult or dangerous situation
- More blogging ideas!! Ahaha every time I would stop reading, my head would be bubbling and my little “spinning weels” working so much I did write a whole post in my notebook. Twice.
Are you a fantasy reader ?
What’s your favorite “trope” ?
Any recommendation on which I should read/look into ?
Do you read middle-grade books? Some of the very best children’s book authors have written books with a fantasy setting and those tend to be shorter and have a less convoluted plot. Many are also truly excellent. I mostly read adult fiction but I make an exception for some of these. I’m thinking of Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass), Joan Aiken (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, no magic but alternate history), Astrid Lindgren (Ronia the Robber’s Daugther) or Lene Kaaberbøl (The Shamer Chronicles).
I’ll check thoses out, Thank you !
I mostly don’t read middle grade, but not because of the genre itself – I just don’t find anything I wanna read I guess..
I mostly go for modern classics when it comes to middle grade literature. If I am to read about 10-12 year olds I want to make sure that the writing is really good and the chance of that is greater if it has stood the test of time. An extra advantage is of course that the very best children’s book authors are still easy to read, which is not always the case with the best authors of adult fiction.
Yes. Thats correct! Specially if one suffer from concentration issue, i dont know why I never thought of it .
I hope you find some you enjoy! It is a while since I read Kaaberbøl but the rest of them I’ve read as an adult and enjoyed.
I love fantasy. Since I love romances, one of my favorite tropes even in fantasy is enemies to lovers. Some books I recommend is Percy Jackson and Magnus Chase (if you like middle grade books) by Rick Riordan. Then There’s The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare, The Dark Elements and Lux series by Jennifer L. Armentrout, A Court Of Thornes And Roses by Sarah J. Maas etc.
I need to give thoses a closer look, Iknow the Sarah J Maas ones even got translated in french if I remember correctly !
yeees, I love enemies to lovers too !
I’m glad you’ve found a new to you genre 🙂 fantasy is not my favorite genre – at least, not the high fantasy (elves, castles and faeries and stuff). I do like different kinds of fantasy, non-medieval 🙂 I hope you find loads of cool books to enjoy in the genre!
Thank you! ❤️
So far ive read Angels and vampire crossed with humans ahah
I’m back and forth with fantasy. I have to really be in the mood to enjoy a fantasy book. Glad that you’ve found a new genre to love! 🙂
yeah.. I really need all the peace I can get so I can concentrate properly, so I understand ! ahah perks of reading at night ..
Yay, I’m so glad you’re enjoying fantasy! I completely understand about the difficulty concentrating. My chronic illness gives me difficulty concentrating too, plus sometimes just being so worried and stressed makes it even harder. So I find it difficult to read high fantasy too, especially when my concentration is super bad. But maybe that’s one of the reasons I love urban fantasy so much. I don’t have to learn and understand and memorize a bunch of new words and society and world and fantasy names—it’s just our world, but with supernatural creatures! And series are great too because you don’t have to learn a whole new world, you can just jump right back into the world and characters you already know with each sequel 🙂
yes, I totally agree !
If it’s in a totally imagined world I will most definately get lost somewhere ahah and that wont be good xD
Welcome to the fantasy genre! I am so glad you were able to break into it and enjoy it. I especially love good world building and the fantasy genre has that a lot, so it makes me happy. I don’t think there is a genre I don’t read, though.
world building is too complicated for me yet ahah starting with more “easy” ones..