Why I Don’t Like Reading Fantasy Novels

 

            

            As an avid reader and frequent reviewer of books, I am well-acquainted with the vast spectrum of literature. I’ve spent countless hours in libraries, bookstores, and late-night corners of my room, chasing the resonance of a well-formed sentence or the revolution of a character’s transformation. Reading is not a pastime for me; it is an enduring relationship. I’ve reviewed everything from contemporary fiction to historical memoir, psychological thrillers to experimental prose. And yet, despite my deep and active love for literature, I have always felt resistance, sometimes frustration, toward one particular genre: fantasy.

This resistance is not born of ignorance. I’ve given fantasy its fair trial. I've read what I was told were the “essential” titles: the epics that launched a thousand spin-offs, the beautifully bound books with ornate maps and rich lore. I’ve joined book clubs that centered fantasy series and read reviews lauding the ingenuity of fictional worlds. But each time, I find myself disengaging, not from a lack of imagination, but from a craving for something else: interiority, emotional realism, and linguistic precision. For all its grandeur, fantasy often leaves me longing for the intimacy of a story rooted in emotional truth.

Fantasy literature tends to privilege plot and setting over psychological depth. There’s a great deal of emphasis on stakes (wars, prophecies, magical relics, curses) but less on the small, ordinary devastations that make characters feel real to me. As a reviewer, I pay particular attention to how an author treats silence, hesitation, contradiction—the moments in which a character becomes complicated. Too often, fantasy characters function more as vehicles for plot or archetypal representations than as fully formed people. They are heroes, villains, sages, or outcasts, but rarely all at once. Life, on the other hand, is far messier. I want characters who are not guided by destiny but by fear, longing, shame, or wonder. I want stories that are not about saving the world, but about surviving it.

Moreover, the ornate world-building that defines fantasy often comes at the cost of language. There is a certain kind of writing I return to again and again: subtle, evocative, economically beautiful. I admire fiction that trusts its reader to linger with ambiguity, that doesn’t over-explain or rely on elaborate exposition. In many fantasy novels, however, the prose is burdened by the need to construct an entire world from the ground up. Descriptions of kingdoms, political systems, magical rules, and invented species fill pages. While I can appreciate the skill this requires, it often reads to me more as an intellectual exercise than a visceral one. I do not want to decode a language or memorize lore to feel something. I want to feel immediately.

Even in its attempts to reflect on the human condition through allegory, fantasy sometimes loses its grip on what is essentially human. I understand the power of metaphor. I know that a dragon can represent greed, or a cursed object can symbolize grief. But too often, these stand-ins remain abstract. I don’t want grief to be personified by a spell or a haunted forest. I want to see it in the act of someone folding a loved one’s sweater months after they’ve passed. I don’t want a prophecy—I want a panic attack. I want discomfort, moral ambiguity, small moments of tenderness. I want mess. Fantasy, to me, too often cleanses that mess through metaphor rather than inhabiting it fully.

I also find myself questioning the escapist impulse that fuels much of the genre. I do not read to escape life but to encounter it more fully. I read to understand others and, in the process, myself. While I recognize the comfort and thrill that fantasy offers to many readers, I do not seek out comfort in literature. I seek confrontation. I seek a mirror that distorts just enough to let me see more clearly. I read because real life is confusing, painful, and often unsatisfying—and I want books that help me live better inside that truth, not ones that lift me out of it temporarily.

This is not to say that fantasy lacks literary value or cultural importance. On the contrary, some of the most thoughtful discussions about power, society, and identity are happening within speculative fiction. Writers like N.K. Jemisin and Le Guin push the boundaries of what fantasy can be, intertwining world-building with bold political commentary and richly human characters. But even then, I find myself more engaged by the ideas than the form. I admire these books from a distance, the way one might admire a sculpture, recognizing the talent, the vision, the execution, but not feeling moved to bring it home.

Ultimately, my disinterest in fantasy is not a judgment on the genre or its readers. It is a reflection of my preferences as a reader, shaped by years of careful reading, critical analysis, and emotional sensitivity to narrative. I do not want to be transported; I want to be disarmed. I want books that make the familiar strange, that pull beauty from banality, that challenge how I see the world I already live in. I want characters whose battles are internal, whose wounds are invisible, whose triumphs are quiet and uncelebrated. I want stories that risk being small because they know that small is not the same as insignificant.

In the end, we all read for different reasons. Mine just happen to be rooted not in wonder, but in witnessing.