I still struggle to think about my work as cozy fantasy, and yet, based on this blog post on Book Riot. It gives the definition of cozy fantasy as: a subgenre of fantasy that prioritizes comforting, low-stakes narratives, character relationships, and community over epic battles or world-ending stakes. Acting as a literary equivalent to a warm hug, it often features slice-of-life adventures, gentle magic, and happy endings in enchanting settings. By this definition then, a lot of what I write is cozy fantasy including my young adult work. I’d say some of my more general fantasy is cozy-adjacent just because there are bigger world-shaking issues happening, but they’re handled with a cozy touch.
I’ve been thinking about this because recently I’ve been reading some cozy stories that feature very real, very un-cozy problems, and I’ve discovered that I don’t like it. Now it’s entirely possible these problems are hitting too close to home and are a possible trigger of mine, or maybe it’s my autistic sense of justice being activated, but there are some real world problems like threats of losing land or homes or not being able to find adequate food, that just feel wrong to me in a cozy novel. Like there is a jarring clash between the safe, comforting world that’s been built and our very not cozy real world that’s built on capitalism.
Now I have to be honest. A time honored trope in many of those young adult equestrian stories I have read, and still do read, are that the farm is about to go under and someone enters a horse race or a competition and wins all the money to save the farm. It’s a happy ending and there’s a lot of narrative tension there. So it’s clearly been done many times before. But does it feel cozy? If your choices are everyone lives happily ever after or continue to teeter on the edge of ruin, well it makes me wonder if the people writing the stories have truly experienced hunger or worrying about where their next meal will come from.
Look, fantasy, and even the cozy fantasy subgenre is huge. There’s vast terrain to be covered and what one person considers cozy another person might not. So it is not my intention to yuck on anyone’s yum, more to explain my thoughts on cozy fantasy and what is feeling good to me right now in the reading space.
I’d love to hear what you think of in cozy fantasy? Do the stark issues we face in our own world have a role? And if so, what kind of role?
