I so agree with this. Something we are so intent on developing something new we forget reading is meant to be fun.
Like most fantasy fans, I’ve watched Patrick Rothfuss’ response to academic, or literary, snobbery. It highlighted something that we readers have faced at one time or another: literary fiction snobs, who view the “fantasy” genre as “popcorn” fiction fit only for mob consumption. And I would not presume to add to what Mr. Rothfuss said, since he outlined the response to that way of thinking far more eloquently than I ever could, but I would like to touch upon something that seems to have grown up during my decade long hiatus from reading fantasy from the early 2000s to 2012. Something I like to call Fantasy Snobbery.
What do I mean by Fantasy Snobbery, you ask?
Quite simply it is a feeling by current fantasy reader that fantasy before Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, et cetera are Tolkien clones with no merit because they invariably are set in medieval-type…
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