(no subject)

[skygiants]

You know that thing where no matter what hobby you have, you can write a cozy themed mystery novel series about it? Like, there's knitting-themed cozy mysteries and gardening-themed cozy mysteries and accounting-themed cozy mysteries and so on?

I don't think 'cozy themed series' is a thing for fantasy novels, because it's kind of been subsumed by urban fantasy which is a whole separate thing, but maybe it should be a thing? Actually I would kind of love if that was a thing. (ACCOUNTING-THEMED COZY FANTASY NOVELS BY THE DOZENS.) And if it was a thing, then Barbara Ashford's Spellcast and its sequel Spellcrossed would fall squarely into that subgenre.

So the basic premise is that Our Heroine Maggie goes on a road trip and accidentally gets sucked into a tiny community theater in a charming small town in Vermont, which is full of charmingly eccentric theatrical types and wacky theatrical hijinks, and also it turns out powered by the charming and angsty fairy director who uses his MAGICAL FAIRY POWERS to help all these charmingly eccentric characters put on successful musicals while coming to terms with their personal hangups and growing as people. The first book is about Maggie getting over her low self-esteem by performing as the clambake lady in "Carousel," and the second book is about Maggie getting over her parent issues by directing "Into the Woods." While falling in love with/sorting out relationship status with the charming and angsty fairy director, of course. They are basically the coziest damn things I've ever read.

And, like, OK:
- it's wish fulfillment up the wazoo
- there are all kinds of ethical problems with fairy magic cheerfully being used to futz with people's emotional states and ability to perform high-quality theater that are really very BARELY glancingly addressed
- don't go in looking for numinous because there's really very little numinous to be found
- also many of the charmingly eccentric theatrical types verge on stereotype (I cringed, for example, at the subplot about the gay actor playing Neville Craven who kept accidentally giving off incest vibes during his scenes with Archibald in "The Secret Garden") (although actually the loud and intimidating but good-hearted Chinese choreographer who SPEAKS IN ALLCAPS was my favorite and I would very happily read all about her romance with her mild-mannered Swiss-German stage manager husband)

So if you're likely to be irritated by those things, stay away, but I had massive amounts of fun. The books just kind of exude comfort -- at least if you are a person who loves musicals and loves cheesy fantasy novels, which, I mean, there's no denying I am the target audience. There is an X painted on my chest. HERE I AM.

But also I think I'm a bit cozy comfort fantasy-starved? Seriously, cozy theme fantasy can become a thing any time now.

Comments

[hebethen]

Oh my. /flutters

Thank you, encyclopedic fount of knowledge on that most intriguing of subgenres, the cozy mystery!

[hebethen]

That's the second rec of it, so I am basically required to check it out now :P Funny thing is, I met Donna Andrew once -- she had some kind of a writing circle thing, and a family friend who knew her and also knew my writing-hobby kindheartedly whisked me into a meeting of it, at which I sat in awkward and intimidated silence while various local mystery writers humorously shared the trials and tribulations of doing research for mystery novels.

[intothespin]

I loved this book.

[jinian]

Mileage varies widely: Duane is among my favorite authors, but I absolutely cannot stand that novel.

[shark_hat]

I think the werewolf with the radio show series is by Carrie Vaughn- I've read the first one, liked it, but it definitely read more as in the mainstream of urban fantasy than as particularly cozy.
One I was recommended a couple of years ago as domestic fantasy (i.e. not about Saving The World) might fit- it's called At Amberleaf Fair, and is charming; a toymaker proposes to his girlfriend and is turned down, and then his brother gets ill (possibly enchanted). Sorting those out is the whole plot, pretty much.
Mary Robinette Kowal's Glamour series might count, too. They're sort of regency-romance-with-magic, ish.

[graycardinal]

[nodding]

At Amberleaf Fair is by Phyllis Ann Karr, who's done a number of very good and very interesting things -- the "Frostflower & Thorn" sowrd-and-sorcery series (about a pair of female mercenaries who -- unlike Lackey's later Tarma & Kethry -- really were romantic partners), and also Idylls of the Queen, which is in fact essentially a cozy murder mystery set in King Arthur's court.

[skygiants]

YES, PLEASE DO THAT *___* I still have to write up the Barbara Michaels Gothic-that's-super-not-Gothic about the vintage shop!

[skygiants]

Hah, please feel free to make your pitch! I am willing to be evangelized to (and then to steal it from genarti).

[skygiants]

I will happily take you up on that! I do remember Ombria in Shadow very vaguely, but that's mostly because I was learning Latin at the time that I read it and got very excited about the linguistic root of the word 'Ombria'.

[skygiants]

It's true, though they technically travel under the same barrier, there's been a definite genre shift -- or rather I guess paranormal has kind of staged a hostile takeover of urban fantasy. Though you do still get some of it; Seanan McGuire, yes, and also Ben Aaronovitch and the Dresden books, too. I'm not sure I'd necessarily say it's backwards, though, so much as towards a new thing, which is almost explicitly 'noir WITH MAGIC.' Old-school urban fantasy was not so much that.

[skygiants]

Dubious Hills is sort of! But I still in my heart want to disallow second-world fantasy from the 'cozy fantasy' subgenre as I'm talking about it because I think it comes from a different tradition. I want to say Lud-in-the-Mist but I've not actually read it so I probably can't actually say that for sure.

I do definitely want to read The Interior Life now, though.

[skygiants]

I've not heard of Linda Haldeman! Clearly I should check her out. :)

I'm gonna stand by what I said somewhere down below, though, I think for the purposes of my definition I'm ruling out anything second-world. Because second-world fantasy is very clearly a thing, and cheerful comforting second-world YA fantasy is definitely a thing, and there are long traditions of those things; what surprises me is that there doesn't seem to be a tradition of that kind of pleasantly self-insert adult contemporary fantasy. (But I don't really think of Cadfael as cozy mystery, either. Too much sad medieval death!)

....Sherwood Ring is totally cozy, though, that one I'll definitely grant you. :)

[skygiants]

Thank you for reminding me that I've meant for ages to pick up some Phyllis Ann Karr!

[hebethen]

So I just came across the announcement of a cozy mystery fantasy project. Welp.

[enleve]

A better murder mystery set at a sf convention is We'll Always Have Parrots by Donna Andrews. I think it is more true to fan culture than Bimbos of the Death Sun and the characters are more likeable. It is my second favourite book by Donna Andrews. My favourite is Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon, a murder mystery set in a software development company.

[enleve]

I'm not sure I know of any that exactly fit, but the novels that come to mind are:

Sharon Lee's series set in rural Maine is a contemporary fantasy. It is a trilogy, starting with Carousel Tides. I'm not sure how cozy it is, but it avoids most of the paranormal sub-genre tropes.

Another that come to mind is Mathemagics by Margaret Ball, where the magic works much like computer programming, and a woman from our world is valued for her skills with math that work like magic in another world.

If you don't mind a science fiction time travel cozy mystery, then I heartily recommend The Far Time Incident by Neve Maslakovic. That book makes me happy. It has fun characters, a more realistic depiction of academia than I've come across in most fiction, and it manages to successfully satisfy the requirements of many genres at once.

[sovay]

A better murder mystery set at a sf convention is We'll Always Have Parrots by Donna Andrews.

That is my mother's favorite in the series.