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Nameless Fae Q2: Fantasy
The book is based on an European fairy tale, so borrows heavily from the tropes of generic European folklore. Fairy realm, fairies as half-animal, or connected to the land, iron, magic, true names, all that jazz. But, the characters all have the attitudes of contemporary middle-class Americans. To a great extent their concerns and priorities are the same as modern people.
This could be another feature of the comfortable nature of the book. Having easily-relatable characters helps bring in the reader and keep them comfortable.
But, is that the actual fantasy being portrayed here?
There are hints of economy (buying in food, hiring domestic staff) but no-one has any sort of money concerns. Everyone has a comfortable life. No-one worries about the next meal, the roof over their heads, medical bankrupcy.
Is this a book about what life could be like for middle-class Americans without the crushing weight of late-stage capitalism? About how everyone could be happy with a bit of security and freedom from immediate worry?
Comments
A kind of post-scarcity world, you mean? That's an interesting thought. There's also no over-population and the only ecological damage is done by "nasty people" - even the years of neglect of Malediction's garden appears to be rapidly corrected by a swift afternoon's work by Gisele, together with some nifty refuse disposal (recycling?) by the house. It's OK for Mal to just not bother for ages, since "nice people" come along willingly and help him sort it out. Social action is fine so long as it doesn't involve protest or demands for rights! Kind of enlightened capitalism, I suppose.
Fundamentally I think you're right - it's sort-of about contemporary life but unburdened by the rigours of it. Curious that AJ Lancaster lives in New Zealand and yet (as you say) appears to pitch her book for Americans of a particular stratum. Maybe she (or her publisher) have done their homework and decided that that;s where the market is, and it's totally routine for authors to be instructed to work out their audience and write for (and market to) them.
It's not the kind of book that deals with uncomfortable facts. It's a cozy fantasy. People don't read this kind of book to confront reality.
When I compare this to the Becky Chambers book that I read this month, the "cozy" nature of it seems to try and lean less into some of the post-scarcity thinking, and more into just pure escapism. I didn't get the sense that it was trying to speak to anything really beyond fantastical creatures, romance, and all of the associated tropes that go with those two things. It was very direct in its approach.
I don't think there's anything so sophisticated going on. I don't mean there's coherent world-building, just that it's like the contemporary world with the painful bits removed.
I've been wondering where to place this comment but it's my usual winge about names
There does not seem to me to be any logic to the names - they're just ones which sound nice and are vaguely evocative. Like Zingiver for the cat which is just the Latin for ginger. Or Apfela for the one into fruit. Gisele sounds vaguely French but her brothers' names don't. Now I get that neither AJ Lancaster nor her primary audience really care about linguistic consistency in the way that say Tolkien does, but it did kind of grate on me that there did not seem to be any care about this. Nor about language and communication - I don't recall that anyone, mundane or fae, had any problems chatting with one another. The nerd in me wanted at least some acknowledgement of language...