I know I’m always harping on about how hard it is to find Fantasy books that don’t actually belong in the Romance section, but this is worth sharing for others like myself who define Fantasy genre as quests, epic battles, magic and dragons or other fantastic creatures interacting with human and other species of characters.

Goblins, Wizards, halflings, dwarves and elves rather than hot fae guys or swoon-worthy vampires populate our imaginary worlds and protagonists are allowed to be past puberty in a good old gritty Fantasy, whether it deals with riding dragons or imaginary worlds with guilds for thieves and assassins.

And yes, my Goblin Series is on this website.

http://epicdarkfantasy.org

As I see it, this is long overdue. The website is weighted towards indie Fantasy, but of a high calibre. Professional book covers, clean editing and high quality of writing are all taken into consideration for entries.

It’s a growing resource and worth bookmarking if you like to read this genre, especially if you’re weary of sifting through the teenage Romance books that fill much of the Fantasy shelves these days. Yes, there’s a big market for that, but us old school Fantasy fans are a completely different demographic readership.

Sexist as it may sound, through the Twentieth Century and a little beyond, Fantasy genre was targeted at young, male readers, though in actuality there were as many female readers who couldn’t get enough of epic battles, riding on dragons and fascinating worlds of magic.

Around 2010, Romance plots directed at romantically inclined young women began to populate speculative worlds and before you knew what was happening, hot fae guys and gratuitous graphic sex scenes became associated by a younger generation with what was a very different genre just a few years before.

It became popular and the big publishers as well as self-publishers flooded the market with romantic stories about vampires, demons and shape-shifters who had filled the Horror shelves up until then.

What this says about the human psyche I’ll leave to the psychologists to work out. In the meantime, Traditional Fantasy fans didn’t die out. There’s a new generation of those too, and not all the authors are men. Some of the best newer Fantasy is coming from female authors like Angel Haze and J.A. Andrews, though the men are still in the game as well.

Someone said to me online recently that they had been told ‘Dark Fantasy’ was all about darker sexual practices. Um, no. Dark Fantasy is gritty and borderlines Horror. Not cute vampire Horror, but torture and nasty ways to die Horror. Some things they cannot take away from us.

If you’re a Fantasy reader and are looking for the sort of Fantasy we used to see from authors like Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, Anne McCaffrey and Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, I highly recommend this website. New books are being added every few days and the subgenre headings make it easy to find the sort of books you want.

Are you a Fantasy reader? Who are some of your favourite lesser known authors who are worth discovering?

Jaq D Hawkins

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