Once upon a time, I lived in LA. It didn’t work out. But that’s a story for another time. This time, what you need to know is that the main reason I couldn’t relate to Angelenos was because of their disconnection. I could find no one to discuss books or current events with. It horrified me the number of people who’d shrug to me with a smile and say, “Oh, I don’t read.” You couldn’t pay me to admit something like this.1
A European coworker put it best. After spending a week in our LA office, she said she understood why Angelenos were so disconnected from the rest of the world. “You have perfect weather and the beach right around the corner,” she continued. “There’s no reason or motivation to care about anything else.” As much as I tried, I could not care less. I walked into the office the day after a terrorist attack in France, and no one knew what I was talking about.2 For this reason, among many others, I moved back East.
Why am I telling you this? There has been an increase in escapism culturally. This has, logically, translated into what we consume, including books. Books have always been an outlet, but a specific subset of fantasy that has recently sky-rocketed in popularity: cozy fantasy. Please don’t take my word for it, though. Behold: some fancy Google search term history graphs.
I think it’s safe to say that the political upheaval and turmoil of the past decade, and especially the past five years, has exhausted people. We’re all looking for an outlet from real life, because real life quite frankly sucks. Human brains are not meant to process the level of information we now receive on a daily basis, and thanks to the 24 hour news cycle and social media, there is always, ALWAYS, something trying to grab our attention. It’s exhausting. No wonder so many people, self included, want to tap out into a cozy fantasy land where the only problems are interpersonal ones, and the thought of civilization collapse and climate catastrophe is a million miles away.
This trend started in earnest with Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree, which was published in early 2022. Sub titled A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes, it was billed as a slice of life fantasy tale. Sure, there were orcs and magic and quests and all that jazz, the classic ingredients in a typical high fantasy narrative, but there was no world saving quest here. Just an Orc looking to leave her job and open up a coffee shop. It’s a sweet tale about starting over and building community in a new place. And it did exceptionally well, market wise. Travis Baldree self-published the book before it was picked up to be traditionally published by Tor.3 The point: cozy fantasy does well, and now there’s a booming market for this new subgenre.
I read lots of different types of books, as evidenced here on this newsletter. Sometimes I read fiction that is all thought experiment, sometimes nonfiction about historical events, sometimes scientific books about psychology, sometimes French books that make my brain ooze out of my ears. All this to say: when I need something I can just enjoy and not have to use much brainpower for, cozy fantasy was ready and waiting for me. And once I read one, you gotta catch em all. So I kept reading, interspersing cozy fantasy books with my other books. And that’s when the cracks started to show. For as much as I’ve come to enjoy this genre, its focus on individual stories and not world saving quests, I noticed a few troubling patterns I couldn’t shake. This is a newish genre, so it’s reasonable that it’ll go through some growing pains. But once I saw the writing on the wall, I couldn’t look away.
The Spellshop: A Review
*spoilers ahead*
Let’s start off with what I liked. First of all, the book itself is beautiful. Look at that cover! The pages! Really quite enticing, and it helps that purple is my favorite color so this drew me right in.
Aesthetics aside, the story starts off with the question: what happens if you have to change your life? Our protagonist, Kiela, is a librarian whose assistant and best friend is a sentient spider plant named Caz. She lives in The Great Library of Alyssium, where she’s a research librarian. Alyssium is the capital of the Crescent Islands Empire, which is undergoing a little revolution at the moment. The opening page of the book finds the Library on fire, and Kiela escapes with Caz, and a whole horde of spellbooks that she’s ‘stolen’ in order to protect them from being burned. As Kiela’s home is quite literally destroyed, she’s got to come up with a Plan B real quick, especially because having all of those spellbooks on hand is Very Illegal. She decides to sail to Caltrey, the island where she was born and spent her early childhood before she and her parents immigrated to the capital for better opportunities. How Kiela is going to make her way on the island is the central plot of the book.
I loved how Kiela was portrayed. She’s socially awkward, and is not only aware of it, but also tries to change it. Not that social awkwardness is bad - Kiela just realizes that she’d like to make a home on the island, and to do so, she’s going to have to try a little harder to be friendlier, putting in effort where she didn’t previously. She’s developing because she wants to, not because someone is forcing her to do so. Kiela’s realization that shutting herself away in her library cubicle to the detriment of the rest of her life is one of the big themes of the book.
Don’t worry, the spider plant (and then a few other plant and animal friends) stick around and offer great running commentary.
Another plot point I adored was the emphasis on research. Yes, Kiela is able to perform magic, but she isn’t able to do so without doing tons and tons of research. She’s not a natural, she’s a beginner who has to do her homework first. In fact, she spends some time experimenting, and documenting her results. The Scientific Method in a fantasy world? We love to see it. I’ve read very few fantasy books that extol the virtues of doing your research, so 10/10 for that.
Another highlight is the magical creatures. In additional to talking plants we’ve got:
cats with wings
mermaids
various different human like creatures
merhorses (half mermaid, half horse)
forest spirits
It’s truly a smorgasbord of good fantasy creatures, and the worldbuilding around the island was great. Because we’re dealing with one specific location, and not a world at large, the author can spend time developing this specific island without having to worry about any other islands. We’re not going there - who cares. (Except I do and we’ll get back to that.) But for worldbuilding purposes, Caltrey felt real and lived in, and like there was an actual history to the place. As worldbuilding is a big interest of mine, I enjoyed this and was glad to feel like the author actually had control of the world she was building.
The book overall was well written, and it only started to stumble when trying to tie up its disparate thematic elements towards the end. So let’s get into:
The Limitations of Cozy Fantasy
Before I get into this, because this will be long, I need to reiterate: I enjoyed The Spellshop. I thought the worldbuilding was exemplary for a standalone, and the magical creatures were a standout. Many of the following thoughts were percolating in my head before I read the book, and this is the one that pushed them over the edge. So apologies, Spellshop, for being the inciting incident here. I still love you.
[kindness]
Cozy fantasies have a key ingredient: their protagonists and main characters being kind to one another. Kiela and the community on Caltrey do this in spades: they help each other after bad storms, Kiela helps heal some trees, they hire each other without a second thought. It’s lovely. It’s charming. It’s heartwarming. I may be a Grinch but who’s counting.
The problem is that kindness does not make a plot. A character choosing to be kind is a choice (à la Cinderella), but it is only interesting so long as the people around her do not make that same choice. Kindness is only interesting when other people are not kind. Otherwise, it becomes pollyannaish.
The Spellshop runs into trouble with this towards the end where a series of plot points hinge upon characters choosing to be kind in situations where they, realistically, wouldn’t. There is one sour puss who appears throughout the text as the perennially unhappy rude character, and the narrative then tries to introduce two more 50% and 75% of the way through as characters who could be motivated to break from this unkind model. These characters, a sea captain and a storm survivor, make the correct narrative choice to be kind when they really have no motivation to do so. Given their previously stated goals, they have no reason to just…be nice to other people. Sure, we love a redemption arc, but not in less than ~50 pages. It’s not believable.
I’d love it if people were nicer to each other. I’d like to believe that most people have fundamentally good natures. The problem is, many, many people do not. And trying to ignore this reality and shoehorning characters into acting against their best interests for the sake of kindness threw me out of the story.
The examples of kindness shown by the local community throughout the text feel more authentic; more about explaining backstory and behaviors rather than ‘let’s get this person to radically change their behavior through one act of kindness because everyone should be kind.’
[small towns are the only way]
Like the best Hallmark movies,4 The Spellshop also perpetuates the theme that running away from your life to a small town is a solution to all problems.
I have two competing thoughts about this:
Viola Davis’s Oscar acceptance speech a few years ago. She won for Fences and extolled Hollywood filmmakers to ‘exhume [the] bodies.’ She was specifically referring to the fact that Black Americans’ stories had value and should be told, no matter how domestic. I agree. Everyone’s story, no matter domestic, has value. Running away from your life to start a new one in a small town is a fine story.
Note: Viola’s remarks on this come early in her speech, around :18.
Retreating from the ‘big, bad, ugly city’ to return to the ‘utopic countryside’ is a political ploy that has been used in (specifically American) politics for years. It has been used to extol that only folks who live in rural communities are ‘real’ Americans, and that everyone else, i.e. those nefarious city dwellers, is ‘fake.’
Both are true. Everyone’s life has value, and I want to read their stories. But I also want to read a cozy fantasy that happens in a city. The cities in The Spellshop, Legends & Lattes, etc, exist only as a place to escape from before the real story can begin. If cozy fantasy can only exist in opposition to and away from urban centers, then this genre has a bigger problem.
I do not do well in small towns. I grew up in one. I understand their virtues. I like visiting, and getting a breather from too many people. I also slowly lose my mind there. I get claustrophobic in very specific situations, and that is one of them.5 So trying to sell me a fantasy of running off to the countryside to open my own shop does not work. That is not my fantasy. That is my nightmare.
Put it another way: my therapist told me once about how in certain Italian towns, you can buy homes for as little as 1€ Euro. The towns in question are all very remote, in the southern, poorer parts of Italy. She stared at me directly as she said, “I do not think this would work for you. Do not do this.” It’s great in theory. In reality? No.
Personal qualms aside, so many people live in cities. Many of them have to for economic reasons. Though The Spellshop and other cozy fantasy books may not intend to do this, they are sustaining a narrative that says that staying in cities isn’t real living, and that only when you leave them can your life begin.6 Heck, Kiela and her family left their small island for economic advancement and opportunity! Almost every single one of the books I listed at the end take place in a small town.
Small towns are not inherently virtuous. Cities are not inherently evil. But cozy fantasy positioning their narratives as stories that can only happen in small towns plays into stereotypical notions that I outright reject.
[your choices will not save you]
While it may seem like I’m truly harping on cozy fantasy books, I actually do like them! They are nice. They are sweet. They are no thoughts just vibes and the vibes are very nice and cozy and like drinking hot apple cider whose season is upon us and I am thrilled. I can enjoy something and also critique. I contain multitudes, etc. etc.
But, I cannot read any of these books without the cynic lurking in me rearing its head to say: this is not how the world works. And normally, I can put my inner cynic away, because who doesn’t want to enjoy a book about a lady and her talking plant opening up a spellshop and building community? It’s lovely! It’s delightful! The edges are sprayed purple! I had a great time! Who needs the real world when you’ve got fantasy?
Yet, the fantasy in The Spellshop became too fantastical for me, unfortunately. I could not suspend reality enough. I couldn’t shake the feeling. There was too much deus ex machina, too much sweetness. It hit me in the shower the other day: running away from society will not save you. Specifically, your individual choices will not save you.
Kiela saves the spellbooks fearing they will be destroyed, a valid fear that is born out. The revolutionaries have a program that demands that magic be distributed and used equally amongst the Crescent Islands. This is a great and noble (and Enlightenment influenced) goal, one that all of the characters agree with. Except… as far as we know, Kiela now has the only spell books in existence. We don’t know whether the rest of them burned. So…is there no more magic now? Is everyone else in the Crescent Islands Empire/Republic out of luck? Is Kiela going to share the spellbooks, or are only the folks on Caltrey now going to have access to magic? Because that lands us right back where we started: the knowledge being sequestered into a few hands. I know this wasn’t the author’s intention, but I’m a political scientist at heart, and I wanted this tension acknowledged. It is literally baked into the plot, for it to be overlooked is curious. All I wanted was a few sentences, something along the lines of:
Once the violence subsidied, Kiela would get in contact with her former employers, check to see if any of the other spellbooks had survived the fire. Maybe she’d got back to Alyssium one day, to share her index and help copy the remaining spellbooks.
That’s it. That’s all I wanted. Two, maybe three, sentences. The actual acknowledgement of a world beyond Kiela’s island community. It stays in line with her previously stated goals and ideals, and doesn’t need to be explored further beyond that. The lack of acknowledgement is what threw me out of the story. It’s such an easy fix, and would help resolve some of the larger thematic issues.
Because cozy fantasy does have a problem with this: with just a few simple choices, you, too, can evade society and fix all the problems in your life! That is, frankly, false. We are all at the mercy of systems that are much bigger and greater than we are, and to deny their impact on us is shortsighted. It’s what got me grumbling so much about The Spellshop in the first place. We know there’s a world at large! Sure, Kiela’s trying to hide from it for most of the book, but once she doesn’t need to, what’s her plan now? How does she plan to engage with it? What about Kiela’s responsibilities to the academic community and the former library at large? Does she abdicate them because she lives on an island now? Is she going to ignore them and stick her head in the sand? Because sticking your head in the sand does not work.
Ignoring the upcoming Presidential election or climate change or how there’s plastic in quite literally everything does not mean they won’t impact me. They will. Pretending they won’t is to my detriment. I cannot opt out of civilization and society, and Kiela can’t, either. Life in the capital will catch up with her one day, no matter how remote of an island she’s on. A small town will not protect Kiela from societal forces - she’s still part of that same society. As much as I am someone who has threatened to run away, (and who may still do so, who knows), I’m still here. Here being: the United States of America, where my own ancestors immigrated to for economic opportunity over a century ago. As long as I’m here, I will not ignore my community. I can’t. I’ve tried.
The Japanese books I listed below at least address this tension - while the magic occurs in small little cozy pockets, there is acknowledgement of a world at large that the characters will return to and engage with. The Spellshop does not - in fact its happy ending suggests that ignoring the world at large will bring you happiness.
In the context of The Spellshop, this may be an unfair critique. Kiela was fleeing revolutionary violence, and needed to leave to protect herself. Absolutely fair. But the level of PTSD she was supposed to have was only lightly treated throughout the remainder of the book, making me unconvinced that she was so traumatized that she could never engage with the Library - or its potential successor - ever again.
Ultimately, this, and the lack of technology, is what frustrates me about this genre. Sure, it’s a great place to visit, but it’s not sustainable. Like every good vacation, at some point, you have to go home.
[technology]
And now, we come to it: technology. The thing that bedevils us constantly. Cozy fantasy is not the only genre that has a problem with addressing modern technology. All fiction does, if we’re being honest. While many might be tempted to think that science-fiction addresses newer technology, it actually doesn’t. Science fiction, and speculative fiction more broadly, is about addressing current societal problems/issues/etc through a fantastical lens. Ursula K. Le Guin’s introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness explains this well. I’ve linked it here, and if you haven’t read the book, go read that, too, because it’s great. Just because a novel is about time travel, doesn’t mean it’s addressing the prevalence of modern technology and how it has impacted our behaviors.
Cozy fantasy, and speculative fiction more broadly, has not found a sufficient way to deal with the technological explosion of the past 20 years. Most fantasy books, and many of the cozy fantasy books I’ve read, either deal in pre-modern societies, or include technology as a fact of life with no further explanation. This inherently makes the ‘run away to a small town to ignore the world’ plot more achievable. If you’re in a society where you don’t have smartphones/the internet/a small glowing device staring at you 24/7, then yeah - reality is much easier to ignore.
Thing is - we don’t live in that world anymore. And I’d like to start seeing some of that in my fiction. I use fiction as a way to escape the world and to maybe give me some clues as to how I can return to it, ready to take on another day of being bombarded with too much information. To find the solution in these books is: run away! Ignore society! Make a big change to your life! is disheartening at best. Because if I tried to implement any of those strategies in my own life, I can sure as hell tell you I wouldn’t be running a successful small business on a cute island.
I cannot stress this enough: information overload is a real thing and is actively being studied. Our brains cannot handle the amount of information we have access to on a daily basis. I am not advocating being plugged into social media/a phone/the news 24/7. Taking breaks is good. Please do that and care for your mental health.
My point is that fiction wholesale ignoring this reality is detrimental.
Thank you to my friend Rachael who helped talk this through with me over birthday drinks.
I don’t expect cozy fantasy alone to solve this issue. It’s a newer cultural reality, and culture moves slowly in this domain. I expect that it’ll be a few more years before we start seeing speculative fiction dealing with the reality of information overload. But I do want to see it.
And again, to repeat myself: I enjoyed most of these books! I like cozy things! I think it’s the fact that I’ve read too many of them in close succession that I now cannot stop thinking about their pitfalls. Ultimately, since I’m the one reacting this way, I admittedly could be the problem here. I am very high strung and famously have no chill. I take things very seriously and am quite earnest. It is a lifelong project for me to flow with the universe, and so for someone whose idea of relaxing involves doing a puzzle, maybe these books aren’t the best way for me to turn my brain off.
I want to like cozy fantasy. I want to keep reading it, especially because most of these books are standalones and I don’t have to commit to a full series. But I cannot stop caring. And to read a book that extols the virtues of forgetting about the world at large rankles me, and I can no longer look past it. I’m sure I’ll keep reading this genre, and I’m cautiously optimistic. But I’m skeptical.
Cozy Fantasy Books
If you need some recommendations, here’s all the books I’ve mentioned above and then some. Some spoilers ahead.
Legends and Lattes, Travis Baldree.
The one that started it all.
Bookshops and Bonedust, Travis Baldree.
The prequel to the above.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot. A four book series that is more accurately cozy sci-fi since it has to do with time travel. Even though the book takes place in Tokyo, it’s setting is mainly a small cafe off the beaten path that people rarely stumble upon. The fact that it takes place in Tokyo is irrelevant.
The sequels are:
And in writing this post, I realized there’s going to be a FIFTH book in this series, Before We Forget Kindness. Guess I have to go read that now.
The Full Moon Coffee Shop, Mai Mochizuki
Translated from the Japanese by Jesse Kirkwood. This is a direct comp to Before the Coffee Gets Cold, because it has many of the same elements imho: a cafe that appears when you need it, a small cast of characters that overlap, small magic. Oh also the coffee shop is run by talking cats. Again, though it takes place in Kyoto, the fact that it’s in a city is irrelevant and the story could have taken place anywhere.
The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst
The book that I finished last week that set off this entire monologue in my head.
Can’t Spell Treason without Tea, Rebecca Thorne
Haven’t read it, but own it. (Story of my life.) The first line of the synopsis is: “All Reyna and Kianthe want is to open a bookshop that serves tea.” We’re in the same wheelhouse here.
Under the Whispering Door, TJ Klune
I cannot vouch for TJ Klune’s other works since I have not read them, but I am told they also fall under this cozy fantasy/cozy spec fic umbrella. This book in particular has to do with a small subset of characters that live and work in a cafe on the outskirts of a city. If I recall, the city isn’t even named. The main plot point is not necessarily the cafe, it’s mainly the fact that half of the residents are dead and the rest are grim reapers, but it has many of the same cozy fantasy elements.
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett
Somewhat different in that this follows an academic who studies faeries, in an alternate history where faeries are well known and studied. Academia is mainly the focus, though the majority of the story does take place in either the European countryside (including very remote places in Austria or Norway). These books do not have all of the same issues I outlined above, but they do fit the vibes of cozy fantasy.
Sequels include Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, and the forthcoming Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales.
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sangu Mandanna
For once I haven’t read it AND I don’t own it! But it has been included on many of the same cozy fantasy roundups as the above books so, I am including it here for vibe purposes. I am also told it includes a sunshine-grump romance if that’s your kind of thing.
Gosh this post is already so long, but I broke my book buying ban over the weekend so I have to report on that. So here’s this week’s chaotic updates.
No New Books™️ Challenge
I broke my streak on Saturday with a lovely little book crawl. I knew it was coming. I was up in Boston getting my hair cut and there were new bookstores in the area and I needed to visit them and touch all the books. As one does.
Streak to Beat: 50 days (January 1st - February 19th)
Last streak: 25 days (August 20th - September 14th)
Current streak: 1 day (as of September 18th, I preordered a book today lol)
Mug Moment of the Week
Today’s mug moment is courtesy of Ogunquit, Maine. You cannot see it, but I promise that mug says Ogunquit on it. My parents have a house up there, I’m a frequent visitor. And I was in a souvenir shop one day, meandering about when I saw this one. I was immediately hooked because: 1) it is huge and was only $12 and 2) it had a teeny, tiny little spoon to go along with it. That I’ve since broken, but that’s neither here nor there and also I’ve broken all the tiny spoons that have go with my mugs and I think this says something about me?
Anyways. I was drinking lemon ginger tea from Twinings and drinking out of a beach adjacent mug not wishing I was on the beach. I am a bad beach person, but do enjoy this beach related mug. So many textures on it.
And we have ~finally~ come to the end. Next week’s post will be shorter, I promise.
I do not like to paint entire swaths of people with the same brush but I will say this: many, many people I interacted and worked with embodied the stereotypical Angeleno. I never found my group of people. It was one of the reasons I moved back. In fact, most people I knew at my company who were from the East Coast moved back East. I still have friends and former coworkers who live out there, though, who love it. So no, I’m not saying all Angelenos, I’m saying my particular experience of Angelenos.
Not Bataclan - this was in 2014. I had just spent 2 weeks working in London and Paris, and where the attack happened in Paris was not far from where I stayed. I was a little rattled, to say the least. I did happen to be in London when Bataclan happened in 2015, and was at the Boston Marathon Bombings in 2013 so. This is a real weird streak I hope never repeats itself.
https://www.campfirewriting.com/learn/interview-travis-baldree
I am not making this comparison in jest or in a derogatory manner: the book jacket copy literally calls the book ‘like a Hallmark rom-com.’
Walking down into caverns/caves and the window seats of planes are the others.
And for the love of gods, if you know of a cozy fantasy book that takes place EXCLUSIVELY in a city, please let me know.