by Samantha Pratt-Tyler

Created on: August 21, 2008

No, I do not see fantasy genre being stagnant. I do see where some of the fantasy genre has been mixed in with the paranormal genre and the are sort blending together in the fantasy genre.

There are plenty of new fantasy books coming out, it all depends on what type of fantasy you like for I see different catagories in the fantasy genre. Like there is humorous, paranormal, the cartoon type characters (batman, x-men, etc)there are your faries, dragons, elf, and gnome books, and encloypedias to help you keep mythological creatures straight. And don't let me forget books like Star Trek, Solvient Green, 1984. There are still plenty of the older fantasy or science fiction books around to read.

To me fantasy books are not all about vampires, dragons and super heroes. Fantasy books are books where a different world than ours is presented and where supernatural forces are at work, whether good or evil and usually good wins out! In that defination the fantasy genre has not become stagnant, it has just branched out into sub genres so to speak and there are a lot of good authors out there that you may not consider fantasy genre but I do.

Mercedes Lackey, Terry Pratchett, EL Hubbard, Gene Rodenbury are some very prolific fantasy writers. Books by C.E. Murphy, Robin D. Owens, P.C. Cast, Rachel Cast, Caitlin Brennan,
and Maria V. Snyder are newer authors that are excellent in fantasy books and believe it or not you can find them at www.eharlequin.com. Lindsay McKenna writes excellent paranormal books, based on her Native American heritage.

You can look at books like the Wizard of Oz, Alice and Wonderland, and almost expect them in some ways to be a fantasy book because they take you away from this world to a new world, but they are classified as children's literature. The same can be said of The Lord of the Rings, Narnia, and to some extent the Harry Potter books, they all take you into a world of wonder, exploration, good versus evil and magic.

From what I have seen of some fantasy books, magic is a big part of what is written. And it seems from childhood we all crave a magical fantasy world where things are better, things get resolved where good triumphs and evil gets destroyed. As we get older we still seek out that theme and fantasy, science fiction, paranormal and even some children's literature books give us our fix of good vs. evil, in a wide variety of characters, animals, vampires, and in one set of books I read, a teddy bear detective (very humorous fantasy books). And from what I have been reading (I am new to fantasy books) the themes are not of such that each book by a different author is using it which is good.

I see the fantasy genre as one elvoling and changing, adding sub genres to the regular fantasy books, all of which will give you a good fantasy lift and are a good read. Sometimes change is good. For fantasy takes us places in new realms of reality, the world, with new creatures, animals that speak, toys that talk, and super hereos. And in this day and age when a lot of people are looking for a hero to look up to fantasy gives us that and much more to let us escape the reality of this world and venture forth on a journey in a whole new world or galaxy.

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