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[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

[graycardinal]

Crossing the streams of some of the down-thread discussion:

I don't know that I entirely agree that "cozy fantasy" need be contemporary, given that a sizeable sub-strata of cozy mysteries are historicals (and specifically medieval historicals, Ellis Peters' "Cadfael" series having been a major prototype). And Elizabeth Peters likewise counts as a writer of cozies, both contemporary (Vicky Bliss, Jacqueline Kirby) and period (Amelia Peabody).

OTOH, I'd agree that classic YA is a good source of cozy fantasy, and that's definitely colored the list I ended up with, grouped into authors, series, and singletons. (I think this is going to run to several posts....)

Authors
Linda Haldeman
Elizabeth Marie Pope
Sherwood Smith*
Christopher Stasheff
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Patricia Wrede (with and w/o Caroline Stevermer)

Of the foregoing, Linda Haldeman is by far the most obscure; she published a handful of books and short works in the 1980s, then fell ill and died. The Lastborn of Elvinwood has been one of my core Yuletide requests for years, and Star of the Sea and Esbae are arguably just as good -- all neatly blending elements of the domestic and the epic with grace and wonder.

Pope's two books are The Sherwood Ring and The Perilous Gard; if the former isn't a classic cozy, I don't know what is. Wrede is definitely a "cozy" writer; to me, that label clearly fits the Lyra books as well as the Mairelon duo and the co-written series that begins with Sorcery & Cecilia. Smith's Dobrenica novels are certainly cozies, and from there it's not much of a stretch to draw in most of her YA work, particularly the Wren series and Crown Duel. (OTOH, the Inda cycle is clearly something else again, thus the asterisk.)

Christopher Stasheff is nominally SF rather than fantasy, but the texture of the extended "Gramarye" series has such a strong fantasy atmosphere (and such a solid family dynamic) that I think he really ought to count here.

Lawrence Watt-Evans is a bit of a stretch, but I'm adding him here largely on the strength of the Ethshar novels, and the fact that no matter what he's writing, the focus is usually on ordinary people coping with the extraordinary and the ultimate tone is generally upbeat.

It is definitely worth noting that the majority of these are veteran "midlist" authors as opposed to Bright! New! Stars!....

[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. :)