Why Read Fantasy Novels?

If you didn't already know, my favorite genre of fiction is the fantasy novel (and sometimes sci-fi as well). Though I do like to read anything with an engaging set of characters, fantasy novels have always been my favorite.

Why?

Part of the magic of fantasy is that there is a level of escapism - that there's a distinct layer between the reader and the page, since the reader most likely does not live in a world with dragons, mages, and several different species of bipeds. On the most vague of surface levels, I read fantasy to get away from my normal life.

On another level, reading fantasy or science fiction allows for exploration of real-world themes. Ursula K. LeGuin is amazing at doing this. She writes sci-fi, but she structures many of her societies in a very recognizable way, except for one major point. In The Left Hand of Darkness, humans live on a cold planet called Winter, and everyone is a hermaphrodite until it comes time to reproduce. This allows for some exploration of themes of gender and sexuality, but not deliberately. If The Left Hand of Darkness was set on Earth, the themes would be too blatant. Put it in the context of genderless society, and LeGuin makes the reader look at both Winter and Earth in a different light.

Of course, world-building is another factor in why fantasy is so appealing. How each author conceives of their built societies and their interactions with each other is fascinating for me to read. The author's context has an influence on world-building as well. Bram Stoker had a different conception of vampires when he wrote Dracula than Stephenie Meyer did when writing Twilight. Deborah Harkness has a different way of exploring the existence of non-human creatures in The All Souls Trilogy than Stephenie Meyer did when writing the Twilight Saga.

Reading fantasy, for me, is more about thinking about new and old things differently. Tropes of fantasy have been around for a long time, and re-examining things in a new light is fascinating.