Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
One of my friends has a 9-year-old niece, and she's a fairly precocious reader (to his delight). She apparently, and I'm quoting here, "rips through books and has outgrown Highlights." He's asked for recommendations for a monthly magazine or book-club that is age appropriate and steers clear of culture war fodder/is non-woke. Any suggestions from the Motte?
My go to strategy as a kid was to walk through the library looking for Unicorn stickers (which signaled fantasy) in the children and/or young adult section (and later the adult section when I became a teenager). And then look at the cover, read the synopsis, and pick out books that sound interesting. (I eventually picked up intuition based on the cover art too, since that's correlated with... something something target demographic and sub sub genre, but I can't really articulate any of that in words other than to avoid books which look too much like other books you've read and disliked, and try to read books that look like other books you really liked).
However this was like 20 years ago and I have no idea to what extent the woke has penetrated fantasy. And also don't know what your niece's preferred genres are. So my actual advice is 1: have her just browse through the library and pick things out, and 2: don't be afraid to go slightly over age range. A Precocious 9 year old can handle books intended for 14 year olds, they're unlikely to have anything truly inappropriate, it's mostly an issue of word complexity and character age.
I haven't read as much fantasy recently as I wish I had, but from what I have read, my impression is that while I don't agree that it's as extreme as @YoungAchamian makes out, there's usually at least some element of wokeness in most things. For example, here's a list of some of the things I've read over the past few years and what stands out in each of them as particularly culture-war driven:
1/ The Chronicles of Castellane (Cassandra Clare): Everyone seems to be bisexual by default, although the main characters look at this point to all be ending up in heterosexual relationships, making the bisexual angle come across as oddly token in retrospect.
2/ The Library Trilogy (Mark Lawrence): One villain is the rabidly racist, anti-immigrant king of the city where the events of the story take place (whose name happens to be one letter away from "Donald"). Also involves inter-species romance.
3/ Where You Must Not Go (Emil Haskett): A Swedish urban fantasy book. Of the five main characters, one is gay and one is a straight male SJW who sometimes wears makeup. One of the villains is a violent, racist, homophobic ex-mercenary who's also a repressed homosexual. Nothing too extreme but all together a collection of profiles that would be quite statistically improbably IRL.
4/ Age of Madness trilogy (Joe Abercrombie): By far the most high-profile name on this list and also the only grimdark series mentioned here, which you'd think would be particularly resistant to woke influences. Arguably woke features include universally hyper-competent female characters whom everyone is in love with, a racist country lord who's also a repressed homosexual and finally a memorable scene where the urbane and sophisticated prince lectures this same country lord on the merits of diversity and multiculturalism during a visit to the capital (and truthfully speaking makes a much more articulate case than Sadiq Khan ever does). That such elements were noticeably absent from the same author's previous books, e.g. The First Law trilogy, does throw into sharper focus the exogenous changes that seem to have occurred in the broader genre.
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Every extent. It's really dominant. What's made worse is that a new set of "fantasy" fans are really insistent that their magical dragon school romance with 86 interspecies love triangles is actually really fantasy!
It seems like “romantasy” has become the default genre for young women, it's pretty startling. I also have met people who seem to be basing their conception of what romance should be like on these sorts of books. I know a young lady who's desperate for a man who also reads romantasy, which is particulary bizarre because these are books written with female protagonists from the perspective of women. I'm not sure what she expects her dream man to be getting out of these books.
Maybe that kind of thing has been around for a long time. But I know older women who like romance books, and they were never like that. My mother is an avid reader of romance, and a shipper before shipping was cool (there were, in fact, fan forums that shipped Anakin Skywalker with Padme Amidala, and yes, my mom is still sad he turned into Darth Vader).
But my father is certainly no romance novel protagonist, yet my mom talks about how funny he was when she met him, and how all the girls thought he was cute, and talks lovingly about going on drives in the country with him and listening to music, and says that even when there was tension in the relationship, it didn’t matter — “I loved him.” They’ve been married for 40 years. That’s my parents.
My mom is just a sweet lady, she likes love stories because she loves people, and romance novels are about people connecting with each other and sharing vulnerability.
I worry that maybe the market for romance stories has shifted from, “sweet story about people overcoming adversity for true love” to “escapist experience where you get to imagine yourself being seduced by one of Snow White’s magical creatures.” Also, please do not look up "scenting."
I get the feeling that older generations viewed these stories as an enjoyable narrative with an inspiring message about the sacrifices that lead to love, which could be tempered by the actual lived experience of seeing your mother and father, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, go through the reality of marriage and as such understand that the reality isn’t like books — and yet still worthy.
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