Two weeks ago I wrote about how much more popular fantasy was than science fiction, something like a factor of 4 to 1. This past Friday evening, I had confirmation of that result. It was an eye opening experience.
I was drafted into providing dinner for a number of my wife's relatives who had arrived in town for "Cookie Bake Weekend". My sister-in-law had brought along a copy of the fantasy/romance book Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, the sequel to The Fourth Wing, which if you recall dominated the ratings in the Goodread's Best Book of 2023 list for romantasy. It has sold more than 800,000 copies to date. I gathered that it was a spare copy. Her daughter, Julia had gotten the special edition, and she wondered if Sadie, my granddaughter, would be interested in it. Of course she would. She's been into fantasy since her mom read Harry Potter to her before she could read, and has been reading fantasy ever since. Dark fantasy with romance, which, I gather is what she loves, and which The Fourth Wing and Iron Flame very much are. Sadie had already read The Fourth Wing and so had the 30-some year old Julia, and her two friends, as well as my daughter. Most had also read or were reading the Iron Flame as well. It was quite a confab, crimped only by trying to avoid spoilers nor was it confined to just those books, but others of that vein as well. I gather they had much more to say while making cookies the following day; after Sadie stayed up to 11 getting a start on Iron Flame.
Moreover, in a break in the conversation I asked Sadie how she enjoyed the Dungeons and Dragons club at the high school that she joined. She said that loves it, and discovered that one of Julia's friends plays D & D with her friends every Tuesday, so they had D & D stuff to talk about as well.
Of course this is not a true cross section of women age 15 to 40-something, but I think it shows just how powerful J K Rowling's influence was on the millennial/Gen Z generation. There is no doubt in my mind that the Harry Potter series written between 1997 to 2007 shaped the reading tastes of two generations of readers.
My daughter would have been just entering college with the first book appeared, and since I got a Harry Potter book each year for Christmas, she must have been reading them as well. Plus I have several slightly younger nieces who I know are also into fantasy, dating from the Harry Potter era and all those YA fantasies that followed.
And it seems that all those first generation Harry Potter fans have now been reading Harry Potter books to their children ever, which I think goes a long way to explaining the growing popularity of fantasy today. Of course Sadie and her younger brother were also Star Wars fans when young, but middle school/YA fantasy books are much more numerous than SF, and perhaps more approachable as well. And it seems, much more appealing to girls and women. My daughter did read the Harry Potter stories to my grandson as well, but he's more into sports and Roadblox than reading, which I guess is fairly typical for boys.
So as the title suggests, I think that fantasy owes a great debt to Harry Potter. There was the Lord of the Rings, and scores of it imitators prior to Harry Potter, but the J K Rowling's books struck such a wide and resounding cord in the young readers of that time, that I think those books overshadow all those other fantasy books combined. And I have no reason to believe that this second generation of Harry Potter/fantasy fans won't be reading Harry Potter to their kids just as soon as they can.
Ah, yes; Harry Potter. I can still remember my dad reading the first book out loud to me when I was a kid. It was great fun.
ReplyDeleteI had to get each book on the day it came out, and read it as fast as I could. The last one came out when I was 17 and I didn't care for it much. But then I realized maybe it wasn't anything wrong with the book; I'd just gotten older and it wasn't for me anymore.
I know Rowling tried to make the later books "darker" so it sort of mirrored the maturation of the intended audience... and I think the story suffered for it. It should have remained a more innocent fantasy world like in books 1-3, rather than the grimmer, darker tone of 4-7. But hey, it didn't hurt the sales at all, and as you say, that's why it spawned a million Potter-wannabes.
I read the books as an adult, and of course, it wasn't the same. But the thing is, whatever type of fantasy fantasy readers are into now, almost all of them trace their interest back to Harry. And, with the possible exception of Star Wars (the movies) there is nothing like that in science fiction, and likely never will be. Fantasy has always appealed to children, unlike SF. We'll see how long it last, though I'm pretty sure it will outlast me:)
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