What are you reading in 2025?

[Retros_x]

Yeah I think a lot of this comes from authors coming at the issue of worldbuilding "backwards" as it were

Yes, I think you nailed it with the reasoning here. It feels like she had the plot before the world and than just designed it to fit. The funny thing is - the characters are not even all like that simple, it just get repeated very often. Sentences similar to "typical to a raven, she did this" or "he is a fox, of course he would do X" . If she would've just reduced these sentences a lot, I think I would've noticed it much less.

'd say it's pretty notable how different and more diverse and organic and complex the societies of people who use "forwards" worldbuilding (like NK Jemisin, when I think of "proper" worldbuilding in a modern fantasy novel, I think of The Broken Earth trilogy)

This comment just pushed Broken Earth Trilogy farther on top of my TBR!

 

[jian]

This is a symptom of the same "backwards" approach to worldbuilding - i.e. the author just thinks "What do rich people do for fun?", doesn't even really think historically beyond like, the 1920s very often (let alone do historical research to get any ideas - I mean you don't have to then follow those ideas, but it's good to know), and then puts it pretty much straight into their setting and works around that, rather than the actual worldbuilding approach where you think about the society you've created, and what resources and traditions the nobles have, and what they might be doing because of that (what social benefits and so on).

I'd say it's pretty notable how different and more diverse and organic and complex the societies of people who use "forwards" worldbuilding (like NK Jemisin, when I think of "proper" worldbuilding in a modern fantasy novel, I think of The Broken Earth trilogy) are to authors using more "backwards" worldbuilding (though being everyone does a bit of both) but I think there's a real question as to whether most audiences care about this or even notice the issues.

I think there’s also a solid element of “didn’t do the research, or at least no research around anything I wasn’t interested in” with a side order of “nobody else I’ve read has done the research either”. Some writers seem to think that because they’re writing fantasy they don’t have to do historical research, which is unfortunately quite incorrect a lot of the time.

It’s worse if you’re writing some form of historical fiction, of course. There was a whole thread about this on Bluesky the other day, starting with Joanne Harris noting a recent book she’d read where a Victorian detective gives someone a 50p coin as a tip. I’m sure we can all think of many examples.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

with a side order of “nobody else I’ve read has done the research either”

That's a good point. I think that's a big part of why it's becoming increasingly common again (decades ago it was very common too), especially with self-publishing and fanfic and so on. Like, obviously, if you're writing a fanfic, you don't need to do research, but maybe if you're getting published and people are paying you money it behoves you to do some?

But yeah, if they don't even read books where that's happened, it's not surprising. Especially with how insular some communities are (esp. YA).

This comment just pushed Broken Earth Trilogy farther on top of my TBR!

It's quite a tough series of novels, but it is worth it imo, they were basically classics by the time they were finished, with strong timelessness and self-complete-ness (very uncommon in fantasy). And I wouldn't say that about all of Jemisin's work - like The City We Became has some fantastic ideas (especially the post-Lovecraftian elements and urban alienation via blandness/gentrification/brandification, and how that relates to the post-Lovecraftian stuff) but I found it to be a little cold and up itself (like the actual "chip on its shoulder" re: any major city that isn't NYC, which is weird as hell in a book about working together to resist stuff - why go out of your way to piss on others facing the same challenges whilst doing that?), and I couldn't tell you anything about any of the characters. It's very clever but not a classic in the same way.