(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

[ceitfianna]

Ooh, this looks like it might be catnip for me as cozy mysteries are my favorite and I love fantasy about the Fae.

[skygiants]

Oh, yeah, I think you'd love it. All the cozy, none of the corpses.

[graycardinal]

Heh. I thought you'd like these....

And the two original books have just now been re-released in an incredibly fat combined edition (print only, evidently) entitled Spells at the Crossroads.

[sophia_sol]

I just realized I don't own a single book that could be called a cozy fantasy and that is a SAD LACK.

These books sound like fun and I shall be adding them to my to-read-someday list!

Out of curiosity, can you think of any other books that would fit into the cozy fantasy or cozy theme fantasy subgenre?

[skygiants]

Wow, that was fast! Although also slightly disconcerting to me because of another much-beloved fantasy series of my youth that I've had difficulty locating as an adult called the Crossroads series. Which is also kind of cozy themed fantasy-ish (fantasy about vets!) albeit a bit too disturbing to really be cozy....

[skygiants]

RIGHT? I'm having real trouble! There's the vet-themed fantasy series I mentioned in a comment above (The Magic and the Healing is the first one -- it's about a bunch of vet students who go on rotational rounds to a magical fantasy land) but given that the heroine has a terminal disease and there's a lot of murder and emphasis on the fact that veterinary medicine can be tough and depressing I remember it as kind of too dark to be called cozy. I think there's also an fantasy series about a werewolf who hosts a radio talk show, but I haven't read it -- that's the one I was thinking of when I said urban fantasy got there first, though, because the cover definitely seem super urban fantasy even though the conceit could conceivably be cozy-theme-style. Maybe Mercedes Lackey's racecar elves series? But given the focus on ABUSED CHILDREN!!! in those books, I wouldn't exactly call that cozy either...

I don't know, if anyone else has thoughts, please chime in!

[next_to_normal]

YOU HAD ME AT "INTO THE WOODS."

[graycardinal]

Working on it, but am presently limited to wifi via pocketphone. List will follow once I'm home and have a real keyboard....

[hebethen]

How interesting! Most (adult) mysteries are murder mysteries, as far as I can tell, which one would not instinctively associate with an adjective like "cozy". Are Cozy Mysteries non-murderous, or do they simply alchemize?

Also, I bet cozy bibliophile mysteries are well-established, but if there's a cozy fandork/gaming/linguistics mystery novel series out there you gotta lmk, right?

[lacewood]

The closest thing I can think of to cozy fantasies are actually... cute fluffy Regency fantasies, and maybe some of the early children's fantasy books (eg. Mary Norton's The Borrowers is pretty cozy) But those are clearly set in an earlier era so it's not quite the same.

Maybe... DWJ...? (I mean, Archer's Goon is SORT OF cozy until the spaceship and time travel show up....? Black Maria was like, CREEPY COZY? IT'S A STRETCH BUT)

Sadly I can't think of any modern day versions. I think urban fantasies get a little too ~ALPHA MALE~ and THE FATE OF THE WORLD/UNIVERSE/ETC IN YOUR HANDS to have the cozy effect. Clearly this is a niche people should get into, RIGHT NOW.

[skygiants]

Right? First book is "Brigadoon", a made-up musical and "Carousel", which is fine but none of which I know very well, and then for the second book they busted out "Secret Garden" and "Into the Woods" and I'm like YEAH OK LET'S DO THIS.

[skygiants]

Alchemize! I think the trick is mostly to have the murder victims be generally unlikable and the unpleasantness drowned out by the comforting charm of everything else, a la Miss Marple or Murder She Wrote.

I've not yet come across a cozy gaming or linguistics mystery novel series, but I bet they both exist! Internet, this is your cue to provide, HINT.

[skygiants]

Yeah, cute fluffy Regency fantasies get at some of the same feel, but 'cozy mystery' generally denotes 20th-century to me. And I love the notion of contemporary fantasy, I think there's lots of cool stuff you can do with it! Except now it's all got eaten by the urban fantasy cliches that I don't like, so YA seems to be the only place you can do the interesting things. And they are doing super interesting things (Frances Hardinge!) but I think of that as a bit different from the fluffy comfort food that cozy mysteries are.

[sovay]

another much-beloved fantasy series of my youth that I've had difficulty locating as an adult called the Crossroads series.

Nick O'Donohoe! The Magic and the Healing (1994), Under the Healing Sign (1995), The Healing of Crossroads (1996). I cannot tell for the life of me whether those would hold up if I re-read them, although the central conceit of a veterinary practice for mythological creatures is still gold. I remember liking the first two very much and the third not at all. I always wanted more about Morgan. She was such a weird quasi-Arthurian touch. (Doesn't she hail from a country that would have been the Waste Land if she hadn't murdered the Fisher King, or something?) To the best of my knowledge, the trilogy is dead out of print. If it turns out that my parents still own the copies I read in high school, I'll lend them to you. I can't promise anything, though—there have been several devastating book-losses since then.

[thistleingrey]

In the ones I've read, there are murders but they're passed off as "Oh, yeah, another murder without gory detail, but let me tell you all about the new stock I've laid in at my New Age crystals shop!" Passing over most of the mystery stuff makes me bounce, actually--no knitting or embroidery/cross-stitch cozy mysteries for me so far, though the idea seems appealing!

[sovay]

Seriously, cozy theme fantasy can become a thing any time now.

I would totally classify Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles as cozy fantasy. Like, any scene with Morwen and Telemain just seals the deal.

(I read those books as a child, starting with Talking to Dragons (1985)—and then spent years convincing everyone else I knew that, no, it really was written first and everything else was just filling in backstory—and while I had other reasons for learning Latin, Cimorene really is why I learned to make cherries jubilee.)

[skygiants]

Oh man, if it turns out you have them I would love to take you up on that -- I've been wanting to reread them for years. (I found a set at the Strand once and didn't buy it because I thought I still had copies at home which proved unfindable, and I've been regretting it ever since. The Minuteman system seems to have the second one, but none of the others.) I have no idea if they'll hold up either. Mostly what I remember is the Huntington's Chorea, the cute clever creatures that turn out to be murderers who pose their victims like lawn gnomes, and the fact that she dumps her series love interest after it turns out he's actually only a fast-aging five years old, all of which I found striking and distressing at the age of twelve. I barely remember Morgan, but what you're saying sounds vaguely correct...

[graycardinal]

Ah, yes, the Crossroads series by Nick O'Donohoe, well-described by sovay above. I remember those books fondly, too, though I think I agree that they don't *quite* meet the "cozy" standard. I unwisely winnowed those from my collection some years back, having badly underestimated the likelihood of finding them again at need.

OTOH, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the even more obscure O'Donohoe book I kept: Too Too Solid Flesh, which is a pure sci-fi whodunit featuring a production of Hamlet largely performed by robot actors. Very Asimovian, totally fascinating, and published by -- of all things -- TSR, the company behing the Dungeons & Dragons empire. Very, very odd, but also very, very good...and, of course, utterly out of print.

[jinian]

Cozy mysteries frequently are murder mysteries, it's just that the person murdered was never all that popular to start with and everyone else has generally happy/comedic times instead of angst and sordid affairs.

Donna Andrews' We'll Always Have Parrots takes place at a media con and I quite like it, if you'd like a rec from me. :)

[skygiants]

See, while the Enchanted Forest books are absolutely a comfort read and cozy in the more broad sense of the adjective -- and I can definitely think of second-world fantasies that have a similarly comforting feel -- I wouldn't call them cozy fantasy as parallel to cozy mysteries per se. Cozy mysteries per definition are not just amiable and charming (though they are!) but also usually contemporary and set in a small town or community of some sort, and you just don't get a lot of that feel in contemporary fantasy, which has tilted heavily towards the URBAN and DARK and GRITTY. The noir end of the spectrum, if you will.

Actually, I've just remembered DWJ's Enchanted Glass, which I think would count. OK, one!

[skygiants]

...I have got to find Too Too Solid Flesh!

[sovay]

Cozy mysteries per definition are not just amiable and charming (though they are!) but also usually contemporary and set in a small town or community of some sort, and you just don't get a lot of that feel in contemporary fantasy, which has tilted heavily towards the URBAN and DARK and GRITTY.

Check. Do you get cozy in the fantasy-romance genre, or is that still mostly really hot were-leopards?

(What's frustrating me is that I feel like I've read examples of contemporary charming fantasy, but I'm blanking on them. Patricia A. McKillip's Solstice Wood (2006) might count, even though AMERICAN SEQUEL TO WINTER ROSE WTF I don't actually like it very much.)

[sovay]

Too Too Solid Flesh, which is a pure sci-fi whodunit featuring a production of Hamlet largely performed by robot actors.

That sounds deeply confusing and I must find it.

[skygiants]

I realized below: Enchanted Glass! That is totally cozy fantasy.

[skygiants]

I think it's still mostly really hot were-leopards! >:( If anyone's written a nice quiet knitting or gardening-themed fantasy romance, I haven't come across it yet.

(Hmm, yeah, from what I can remember about Solstice Wood -- and it's very vague in my head, like all McKillips, which somehow tend to turn into pleasant-memory mist at a much speedier rate than any other author's work -- it probably would fall into the genre, or at least around the edges of it. Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, maybe, sort of, but I think there's a bit too much there there to comfortably call it 'charming' and leave it at that.)