Fantasy fiction doesn't need reclaiming for women – they already write and read it
I was disappointed to read your view on romantasy fiction (Editorial, 7 February), which seemed to imply that the fantasy genre needed reclaiming for women. This does a huge disservice to the many excellent female fantasy authors – some recent, some around for decades – who have been a mainstay of the genre despite not writing romance or teen fiction.
These women do not seem to get the recognition, and readership, that they deserve – despite some, such as NK Jemisin, Ann Leckie, Charlie Jane Anders, RF Kuang or Martha Wells, dominating genre awards. These authors also have to fight the continual misperception that they only write romantic or young adult fiction, which is exactly the fantasy that your article perpetuates. And this also erases all the female fantasy readers who are not (solely) here for the romantasy, and have always been here.
While I am glad that romantasy has sparked more interest in fantasy fiction, made the genre more inclusive, and made fantasy publishing more lucrative (though usually for the publishers rather than most authors), perpetuating the myth that the (non-romance) genre is only for boys – and that romance is only for girls – is unfair.
Sorry to have to mansplain this to you, but from what I've seen the writers themselves are too tired and appalled at having to continually wage the battle of the sexes to take up arms once more. Dragons are easier to defeat, it seems.James LatimerSwindon, Wiltshire
Like most genres, romantasy is nothing new. Readers of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight (1968) and subsequent Pern novels will immediately recognise the synergy of dragons and sex. Beowulf fans will see this resurgence as a sellout, even dragon-sploitation. But times move on and the sagas once popular with the male warrior class have to make way for the commercially dominant female consumer.
Perhaps it's time then to throw off the snobbery that dominates newspaper reviews, especially if editors want to attract new younger and female readers. Critics might be more widely read if they were more fully conversant with achievements in this massively popular genre.
After all, the bestselling genres of the past, such as gothic novels, have made it into the canon and serious scholars are discovering literary merits that contemporaries must have overlooked.Yvonne WilliamsRyde, Isle of Wight
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