(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.

[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?

[next_to_normal]

YOU HAD ME AT "INTO THE WOODS."

[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.

[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.)

[holli]

Okay, I am now definitely writing the story about the haunted vintage shop where the former owners of the dresses appear as shades, wearing the dresses, to dispense useful advice.

[hebethen]

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

[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.