One of the things I have noticed more and more whenever I go to the bookstore when I peruse the new books section and then move onto the used ones is that fantasy novels over the course of the last maybe ten or fifteen years seem to be becoming more and more "normal" as a whole. Titles are similar combinations - we all know the Um, Actually game on Dropout of A __ of ___ and ____ game they play, cover designs and artwork sometimes have very similar poses, a lot of them are these colossal tomes full of lore and worldbuilding and maps and more.

None of this is to say that that is bad, it is absolutely amazing to see the genre exploding in a way that I feel like when I was growing up in the late 2000s/early 2010s wasn't really there - or if it was, it was relegated to the YA section. It feels like an amazing time to be a fantasy lover right now, you have so much to pull from. But, my original point is this: fantasy doesn't feel as weird anymore, weird in that there are those moments where you go "Hold on...are we still in fantasyland?"

The book that specifically comes to mind is Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara, and after that the entire Four Lands and various other series Brooks' did in that setting.

When I first read The Sword of Shannara at the wee age of 12, I think, at first I was very excited cause I was like "Oooh, Dad read this one and said he liked it so now Dad and I can have a book we both like together!" Little did I know that as I read more and more of the story of the Ohmsford boys and Alannon the druid, explored more of the Four Lands, that this fantasy-on-the-surface-setting was in truth an absolute genremash of things that I was not prepared for. The books that follow in the original trilogy - Eflstones and Wishsong being books 2 and 3 - only serve to amplify that as we get more lore about the Four Lands as well as their ancient past, transforming the series from a simple sword and sorcery tale into a majestic post apocalyptic saga for survival.

To me, Shannara sits very much alongside stuff like Dragonriders of Pern, He-Man, Thundercats, and Voltron for just a few options, because while some of them might lean into more sci-fi themes, you could still make a super strong argument that they are all fantasy at their core. And that's what I mean when I say that sometimes it feels like fantasy isn't weird anymore, that the need for marketablility and influencer draw pushes stuff to be more palatable, easier to fit into boxes. That in of itself is a much larger discussion that could have an entire college economics class about it, but, sufficeth to say, I miss it.

If there are those of you who haven't read the original Shannara trilogy, I highly recommend it - some of the later entries in the world get a little confusing, I won't lie, but the first three are absolutely amazing, and I think truly deserve to get more love alongside the big names of today and then.

Here's to more weird fantasy in the future, or, is there a fantasy title you think falls into that fun genremash weirdness? Share below!