This week, Jonathan and Gary sit down and talk some new and forthcoming books, including our mutual choices for favorite book of the year so far.
Gary starts by describing a book which he just finished and found particularly moving: The Illuminated Man: Life, Death and the Worlds of J. G. Ballard, Christopher Priest and Nina Allan, which he says reads more like a novel than a biography, with Priest’s final illness becoming a significant theme in portions written by Allan. They also discuss The Recollections: Fragments from a Life in Writing, a collection of Priest’s writings from Briardene Books.
Gary then goes on to recommend Frances Spufford’s Nonesuch as his book of the year so far, Jonathan recommends S.L. Huang’s new novella The Language of Liars and then talks about what it’s like to reread The Fellowship of the Ring after a long tome.
Of course, there are the usual digressions into things like the New Wave, the popularity of romantasy, the immense length of some literary classics, and other matters.
As always, we hope you enjoy the episode!
Hi! I’m actually a first time listener but I found your thoughts on romantasy really interesting and wanted to share my take! I’m 25 so I’m one or the aforementioned readers who grew up in the YA boom, I would say I’m generally a down the middle SFF reader but I’m in a book club with a lot of booktokers who read a lot of romantasy and have read a lot myself through that.
I agree that much of romantasy is commercial fiction, there’s a huge audience there and they’re willing to throw a lot of money at their hobby. I have friends who try to collect every special edition of books they love and sometimes pay extortionate amounts for them on vinted or enormous shipping fees for international editions for example. And there is a certain aesthetic to it, from my experience romantasy readers aren’t just reading the books, they’re getting tattoos for them, jewellery, clothes, stickers, e-reader cases, you name it. It’s not just about being a reader it’s about being recognised as such and seeking that sense of community.
I think things get a bit more interesting in the cases of Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros specifically, there’s some really great romantasy out there (Hazel Mcbride’s debut comes to mind) but I find these names being The Big Ones particularly interesting. Personally, I loved Throne of Glass and some of the later books are my favourites but they start getting really long as they go on . This kind of continues in A Court of Thorns and Roses, as the series goes on the books get longer and longer to the extent that the upcoming two books were actually one book that was too large to print. More noticeably in ACOTAR though is the shift in editing, as time goes on SJMs books lower in quality because it honestly doesn’t seem like she’s getting anything more than the minimum pass in editing.
I haven’t read the third of Yarros’ books and I doubt I will because I found similar fault with her second. Fourth Wing is one of those books that is good because it’s so enjoyable, the writing isn’t great but it’s buoyed by the drama and tension, I had a great time reading it. However the second book again seems to suffer a lack of editing and is repetitive and often boring, where the first book felt tight the second book feels nothing in particular.
I think this is a growing issue in romantasy, because publishers know the market is there and will buy anything with a beautiful special edition they aren’t all giving these books the editing they deserve, I believe the quality of writing is actually way higher than it gets credit for but publishers are doing the genre dirty with a cynical lack of care. As soon as the first book in a series sees success there seems to be less need to make sure the second is polished. We’ve also seen this in standalone and debuts, they seem to be littered with spelling and grammar errors and scenes that it feels would have been cut in any other circumstance.
I don’t really have a conclusion to draw here other than that I enjoyed hearing you discuss this and as you both said you found it interesting so I thought you might enjoy my more inside perspective. I’ll be sure to listen to more episodes as I enjoyed this one :)