Yesterday there was a fascinating discussion of portal fantasy, in which a character from our world is transported to another world. The classic example of this is Narnia. I can’t link to the post, because it was filtered (the “portal fantasy” discussion was in the comments) but I offered to make a public post on the subject. I invite the participants to copy their comments to it.
There was a Sirens panel in which five agents, who were discussing their slush piles, mentioned that they were getting quite a few portal fantasy submissions. Two of them said those made up about a quarter of their total fantasy submissions.
I said, "This intrigues me, because I haven't seen a single one in the last ten years. Is it that editors aren't buying them? Did you pick any up?"
The agents replied that none of them had even requested a full manuscript for a single portal fantasy.
They explained that portal fantasies tend to have no stakes because they're not connected enough to our world. While in theory, a portal fantasy could have the fate of both our world and the other world at stake, in practice, the story is usually just about the fantasy world. The fate of the real world is not affected by the events of the story, and there is no reason for readers to care what happens to a fantasy world.
One agent remarked that if the protagonist didn't fall through the portal, there would be no story.
Of course, this is the key quality that makes a portal fantasy a portal fantasy. England was not at stake in the Narnia series, Narnia was. If the kids hadn't gone through the wardrobe, there would indeed be no story. Nor was Narnia tightly connected to England: the kids were from England and that was important, but the story was all about Narnia.
The agents added that nothing is absolutely impossible to sell, and one said that she had a middle-grade fantasy which had portal elements. But overall, they were not enthused.
In the filtered discussion, several people confirmed that it isn’t just that agents won’t even take a look at portal fantasy manuscripts; almost no editors are willing to buy them, either. Presumably, this is why agents don’t even want to read them.
Agents and editors: Is this correct? If so, why? The obvious answer is that they don’t sell to readers… but normally, you know that because they consistently fail to sell. In this case, there seem to be none published at all.
This puzzles me. It is rare for a genre or subgenre to become absolute anathema, as opposed to merely unpopular and comparatively rare. Usually, it takes a string of spectacular and well-publicized failures for that to occur, and I’m not aware of that happening with portal fantasy.
The fact that agents are getting a large number of submissions suggests to me that there might be a market. After all, writers are interested in portal fantasy enough to write it. It’s possible that only writers, and no other readers, are interested. But that seems a bit unlikely. This isn’t some extremely metafictional or otherwise of-interest-only-to-writers form, but a subgenre to which a number of classic, in-print fantasies belong, and one which was reasonably popular up until about fifteen years ago.
However, it’s impossible to tell if it’s really anathema among readers, because there’s almost none that’s new for them to read. (Curiously, the most recent exception I can think of, Catherynne Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, is quite successful. It is, however, like Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, middle grade. The only other recent one I can think of is Hiromi Goto’s Half World,, which may also be middle grade.)
As I said, I am puzzled. I can understand “unpopular.” I am bewildered by “absolutely not.” Urban fantasy is huge now, and high fantasy is doing well in adult fiction and is at least acceptable in YA. Books about magical creatures already in our world are desirable. Books about magical creatures traveling to our world are fine. Books about humans who are native to a magical world are okay. But books about humans traveling to a magical world are verboten. Why are portals into our world fine, but portals out bad? Is it because leaving our world might be considered escapism?
As another commenter noted, there is little YA which involves space travel or takes place on other planets, either. The closer the setting is to our world, the better. Dystopias are our world, but worse; ditto most post-apocalyptic novels. Urban fantasy is our world, with added magical creatures or powers. Maybe the lack of portal fantasy is a metaphor for the belief that modern teenagers don’t want to travel to strange new worlds, even in their reading.
There are also arguments that the subgenre is inherently bad or flawed. I won’t get into too much detail on these, because someone is going to make a case for that in comments. Instead, I will make a brief “pro” case:
1. The Secret Country
, by Pamela Dean and Coraline
by Neil Gaiman, in which the fantasy world is a twisted reflection of the protagonists’ real or imagined worlds – a story that can only be told by them traveling to the other world. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
, by C. S. Lewis. The Homeward Bounders
, by Diana Wynne Jones. (Only $4.99 on Kindle –fabulous book, and one which could only be written as a portal fantasy. No portal, no story.) The Silent Tower (The Windrose Chronicles)
and The Time of the Dark (The Darwath Series)
by Barbara Hambly – neither bestsellers nor classics, but books which I love very much. The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 1)
, by Guy Gavriel Kay. The Subtle Knife: His Dark Materials
.
Also, The Matrix is not only a take on portal fantasy, but riffs on a classic portal fantasy, Alice in Wonderland.
Neverwhere and Harry Potter merge urban and portal fantasy, as does the Percy Jackson series.
These are all good books in which the portal is essential to the story. In many cases, the story depends entirely on the protagonists not being from the fantasy world, in a way for which merely being from a different part of the fantasy world would not compensate. Many of these are books which are in print, read, and enjoyed to this day. Why shouldn’t there be more of them?
2. Many arguments against portal fantasies sum up to “they can/often are done badly.” This is true of every genre.
For instance, they can be wish-fulfillment. But in what way is every “A girl learns that she has special powers and must choose between two hot boys” urban fantasy not wish-fulfillment? And since when has wish-fulfillment been banned from fantasy? Just because something is wish-fulfillment doesn’t mean that it’s not enjoyable, is badly written, or shouldn’t exist. Also, they are not always wish-fulfillment. They can be, and that can be part of the charm. But many are more complicated, and in some, the other world is outright horrible.
Similarly, they can be pro-colonialist metaphors in which a kind foreigner must save the helpless native people. But they don’t have to be. That is especially unlikely to be the case in stories in which the stakes are smaller and more personal than “save the world.”
One could argue that the concept has been so over-done that all subsequent books have nothing of interest to offer. But the same could be said of stories about vampires, werewolves, fairies, dystopias, apocalypses, teens with psychic powers, teens with magic powers, ghosts, superheroes, dragons, princesses, destined loves, angels, and every other staple of the market.
3. Or perhaps they’re fine for children’s books, but anathema for YA. Harry Potter, Coraline, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, and The Golden Compass are OK because they’re middle grade, but YA portal fantasy is unsaleable. This baffles me. Why?
4. I enjoy them. Writers are still writing them. At least some readers still want to read them. Why not publish a few, and see if some catch on?
I’m frustrated with the lack of faith in teenagers, the lack of belief that they might try something a bit different from the latest dystopia/vampire novel/werewolf novel. Just because something is unusual or out of the received wisdom of what readers are interested in doesn't mean it won't sell. Sometimes it sells like Krispy Kremes.
I'm concerned that fixed ideas of what does and doesn’t sell have overridden other questions, like, "Is this a well-written book? Is this a fun book? Did I enjoy reading this book?"
If you ask that set of questions, you buy Harry Potter. If you ask, "Is this a disguised portal fantasy? Do American kids care about British boarding school stories?" you will pass it by.
There was a Sirens panel in which five agents, who were discussing their slush piles, mentioned that they were getting quite a few portal fantasy submissions. Two of them said those made up about a quarter of their total fantasy submissions.
I said, "This intrigues me, because I haven't seen a single one in the last ten years. Is it that editors aren't buying them? Did you pick any up?"
The agents replied that none of them had even requested a full manuscript for a single portal fantasy.
They explained that portal fantasies tend to have no stakes because they're not connected enough to our world. While in theory, a portal fantasy could have the fate of both our world and the other world at stake, in practice, the story is usually just about the fantasy world. The fate of the real world is not affected by the events of the story, and there is no reason for readers to care what happens to a fantasy world.
One agent remarked that if the protagonist didn't fall through the portal, there would be no story.
Of course, this is the key quality that makes a portal fantasy a portal fantasy. England was not at stake in the Narnia series, Narnia was. If the kids hadn't gone through the wardrobe, there would indeed be no story. Nor was Narnia tightly connected to England: the kids were from England and that was important, but the story was all about Narnia.
The agents added that nothing is absolutely impossible to sell, and one said that she had a middle-grade fantasy which had portal elements. But overall, they were not enthused.
In the filtered discussion, several people confirmed that it isn’t just that agents won’t even take a look at portal fantasy manuscripts; almost no editors are willing to buy them, either. Presumably, this is why agents don’t even want to read them.
Agents and editors: Is this correct? If so, why? The obvious answer is that they don’t sell to readers… but normally, you know that because they consistently fail to sell. In this case, there seem to be none published at all.
This puzzles me. It is rare for a genre or subgenre to become absolute anathema, as opposed to merely unpopular and comparatively rare. Usually, it takes a string of spectacular and well-publicized failures for that to occur, and I’m not aware of that happening with portal fantasy.
The fact that agents are getting a large number of submissions suggests to me that there might be a market. After all, writers are interested in portal fantasy enough to write it. It’s possible that only writers, and no other readers, are interested. But that seems a bit unlikely. This isn’t some extremely metafictional or otherwise of-interest-only-to-writers form, but a subgenre to which a number of classic, in-print fantasies belong, and one which was reasonably popular up until about fifteen years ago.
However, it’s impossible to tell if it’s really anathema among readers, because there’s almost none that’s new for them to read. (Curiously, the most recent exception I can think of, Catherynne Valente’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, is quite successful. It is, however, like Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, middle grade. The only other recent one I can think of is Hiromi Goto’s Half World,, which may also be middle grade.)
As I said, I am puzzled. I can understand “unpopular.” I am bewildered by “absolutely not.” Urban fantasy is huge now, and high fantasy is doing well in adult fiction and is at least acceptable in YA. Books about magical creatures already in our world are desirable. Books about magical creatures traveling to our world are fine. Books about humans who are native to a magical world are okay. But books about humans traveling to a magical world are verboten. Why are portals into our world fine, but portals out bad? Is it because leaving our world might be considered escapism?
As another commenter noted, there is little YA which involves space travel or takes place on other planets, either. The closer the setting is to our world, the better. Dystopias are our world, but worse; ditto most post-apocalyptic novels. Urban fantasy is our world, with added magical creatures or powers. Maybe the lack of portal fantasy is a metaphor for the belief that modern teenagers don’t want to travel to strange new worlds, even in their reading.
There are also arguments that the subgenre is inherently bad or flawed. I won’t get into too much detail on these, because someone is going to make a case for that in comments. Instead, I will make a brief “pro” case:
1. The Secret Country
Also, The Matrix is not only a take on portal fantasy, but riffs on a classic portal fantasy, Alice in Wonderland.
Neverwhere and Harry Potter merge urban and portal fantasy, as does the Percy Jackson series.
These are all good books in which the portal is essential to the story. In many cases, the story depends entirely on the protagonists not being from the fantasy world, in a way for which merely being from a different part of the fantasy world would not compensate. Many of these are books which are in print, read, and enjoyed to this day. Why shouldn’t there be more of them?
2. Many arguments against portal fantasies sum up to “they can/often are done badly.” This is true of every genre.
For instance, they can be wish-fulfillment. But in what way is every “A girl learns that she has special powers and must choose between two hot boys” urban fantasy not wish-fulfillment? And since when has wish-fulfillment been banned from fantasy? Just because something is wish-fulfillment doesn’t mean that it’s not enjoyable, is badly written, or shouldn’t exist. Also, they are not always wish-fulfillment. They can be, and that can be part of the charm. But many are more complicated, and in some, the other world is outright horrible.
Similarly, they can be pro-colonialist metaphors in which a kind foreigner must save the helpless native people. But they don’t have to be. That is especially unlikely to be the case in stories in which the stakes are smaller and more personal than “save the world.”
One could argue that the concept has been so over-done that all subsequent books have nothing of interest to offer. But the same could be said of stories about vampires, werewolves, fairies, dystopias, apocalypses, teens with psychic powers, teens with magic powers, ghosts, superheroes, dragons, princesses, destined loves, angels, and every other staple of the market.
3. Or perhaps they’re fine for children’s books, but anathema for YA. Harry Potter, Coraline, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, and The Golden Compass are OK because they’re middle grade, but YA portal fantasy is unsaleable. This baffles me. Why?
4. I enjoy them. Writers are still writing them. At least some readers still want to read them. Why not publish a few, and see if some catch on?
I’m frustrated with the lack of faith in teenagers, the lack of belief that they might try something a bit different from the latest dystopia/vampire novel/werewolf novel. Just because something is unusual or out of the received wisdom of what readers are interested in doesn't mean it won't sell. Sometimes it sells like Krispy Kremes.
I'm concerned that fixed ideas of what does and doesn’t sell have overridden other questions, like, "Is this a well-written book? Is this a fun book? Did I enjoy reading this book?"
If you ask that set of questions, you buy Harry Potter. If you ask, "Is this a disguised portal fantasy? Do American kids care about British boarding school stories?" you will pass it by.
Tags:
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
If it's popular on TV, I would think there's a market for it in books. What is the Tardis if not a portal to another world? I've been reading all the time travel I can get my hands on - I'm not a young adult reader anymore but I have always loved the idea of stepping from one world into another. And there's a mini-series I loved called Lost in Austen where the protagonist steps through a door into the book Pride and Prejudice and gets stuck there watching her presence change the story. Gosh, I think all of fiction is stepping through a portal - either the protagonist does it or the reader does. Must be one of those fashion trends like when casting directors get tired of hearing a particular song and put it on a DO NOT SING list.
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
I do not get this, as an objection. It seems nonsensical. Of course if the protag didn't fall thru the portal there'd be no story. And if Bilbo hadn't picked up the Ring, there'd've been no story. If Mr Bingley hadn't moved to Pemberly there'd've been no story. If the snake hadn't convinced Eve she wanted an apple there'd've been no story.
That just seems so . . . duh?
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I think that the agents are tacitly saying that kids can't possibly relate to the problems of people who don't exist in the real world. Which...way to quash both the fantasy and the science fiction genre, twatwaffles. Kids and adults don't seem to have any problems relating to people from fictional worlds...and why WOULD they?
Obviously, I would never make a good agent. My first questions about a book would be, "Does it tell a good and compelling story? Is it well written? Will people buy it?"
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
EDIT: Those Terry Brooks "MAGIC KINGDOM" books were popular, right? I remember reading them as a teen along with some of Pratchett's Discworld novels.
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
Didn't Borges write at least a couple of library-as-portal stories?
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Bleach continued to be popular when it went, fairly early on, from urban fantasy to portal fantasy. (Soul Society.)
(no subject)
From:ObNitpick
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
And it's really interesting that you mentioned Harry Potter because I always wonder how to classify it. It's YA, okay, but beyond that, is it more heroic fantasy (the magical world looks a bit ancient, there are elves...) or urban fantasy (Harry lives in our world, he has powers...)? It doesn't really fit any category.
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
If it's not about Us/Earth/This World it can't count because We are all that matters... make it about this world only: It has to be egocentric about us as humans... how or why that happened, beats me...
I think you can a very human story on a world of cats.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
One of my main dislikes about portal stories is that the endings disappoint or flat out suck because:
-They end up with the modern character having to return back home and everything they've accomplished in portal land is rendered pointless because he/she doesn't get to stay part of portal land.
-It all turns out to be a dream.
-Portal stories are an excuse to drop modern slang, attitudes and or science into usually a less advanced fantasy world.
-Modern character can't stay in portal world or the balance of every living thing will be thrown off and both worlds will DIE!!!(This also often involves a destined but doomed couple in twu wuv).
-I just don't like them.
One of the few portal stories I did like happened to be a manga series called From Far Away.
From:
no subject
-They end up with the modern character having to return back home and everything they've accomplished in portal land is rendered pointless because he/she doesn't get to stay part of portal land.
I've never seen one of those. I have seen "modern character fixes portal land, then decides to go back home." So the work remains, even if the modern character doesn't see it. I've seen novels I liked where the character said "I have helped fix your problem, but if I stay here I will never mature in my own world, or solve the problems in my culture." I think this has happened in some of Diane Duane's Young Wizards books, but I can't give a cite. It certainly happens in Peter Pan.
In TV, Doctor Who is pretty much the ultimate portal character: he drops in on situations, fixes them, then moves on without a backward glance. Similarly, his companions drop in on his life for awhile, then move on. For those who like the series, this is immensely satisfying; people don't tend to demand "But what happened on that world 100 years down the pike?"
-It all turns out to be a dream.
Agreed on hating those.
-Portal stories are an excuse to drop modern slang, attitudes and or science into usually a less advanced fantasy world.
They sure are, in a bad portal story. But so are a lot of pure fantasies. In particular, the feisty heroine who disobeys all the social rules on women's roles and gets away with it is ubiquitous.
-Modern character can't stay in portal world or the balance of every living thing will be thrown off and both worlds will DIE!!!(This also often involves a destined but doomed couple in twu wuv).
And now we get back to the question about whether it's about the character's journey or the character's goals. A character can successfully do what has to be done in the portal world, but regret leaving it. I don't remember seeing that gimmick where it wasn't a lead-in to a sequel, at least not since Narnia.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:Portal fantasies
From:Re: Portal fantasies
From:From:
no subject
I can't think of a modern single YA example, eitherand while it's not something I'd realized before this post, and while it's a genre I can find problematic (mostly for the anti-Fairyland need of every portal fantasy protagonist to spend their entire journey trying to get home), I can't think of any established and successful genre that I would want to see blacklisted.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
But. Huh. Okay, so. Working in slush for a magazine, there are certain types of stories that could be done well, but I've seen so often done wretchedly in the slush that I am pretty turned off by the entire type of story the instant it appears. (Hapless artist encounters actual embodied muse. Wicked man is wicked at length, comes to ironic end. Preteen boy in post-apocalyptic setting confronts the monster all the adults warn him against.) They have a lot of easy failure points because of their nature, and SO MANY hit those points...any time I see one, I am on edge immediately, waiting for the inevitable fall into one of those damn flaws.
So. If agents are getting deluged with portal fantasy of which the vast majority is failing in the same easy ways (colonialist apologism! no reason for the protagonist to care about any of this! predictable cheap chosen-one setup!), maybe it's the same burn out. They always see portal fantasy failing in the exact same way, and so any portal fantasy that comes up that is maybe just weak in one of those areas hits the "Oh god, not again" buttons immediately.
...but then, agents get lots of terrible submissions for every subgenre. So I'm not sure if that explains it. But after reading slush for a while, and seeing how I cringe at every "This is clearly a D&D setting" or "God, another hapless artist, I bet his muse is just around the corner" setup, maybe they are flinching in the same way at every "Oh god, another lonely kid who falls through a portal and is suddenly Special" setup they see. I dunno.
From:
no subject
Since I have not seen any YA examples of either in years and years, I'm assuming it applies to both.
Yeah, there are some obvious ways portal fantasies can be terrible. I just don't see them as being inherently more terrible than than the bazillion terrible iterations of "my supernatural boyfriend," "naive white girl in one-note dystopia," "I just discovered that I have magic/psychic powers," etc.
(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
From:
no subject
That always seemed to me the point of portal fantasy. The characters return to their own world stronger, more capable, better able to grasp/handle their old lives. Surely that's useful/important.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
One of my favourites was Andre Norton's Witch World series. In that one, the hero left this world for good, burning all his bridges, and saw the new world as a haven where he had to fit in and contribute in order to survive. And he was there for good, rather than losing everything he did at the end of the book.
I think they can be written in an interesting way, using the familiar viewpoint to explain the strange, and I don't see why they should be anathema.
From:
no subject
I note that Dorothy eventually moved to Oz, taking her uncle and aunt with her.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
I'm not a big fan of it: I enjoy Gabaldon's Lord John books, which stick to one timeline, but can't get through her timetravelling books.
And I still remember my acute disappointment at R. Garcia y Robertson's Lady Robyn books. Also time-travel romances, they were quite dire -- a real change from his excellent previous fantasies.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
On Maybe Why There Is No Safe Place For Portal Fantasy to Hide
It strikes me as quite likely that agents have tried in the last 20 years with portal fantasy and found not an inch of give.
Such things become conventional wisdom, and tend to so very quickly.
Granted, there's also an argument to be made about this feeding into agent/editor 'burnout' faster than the general reading public (which we have previously discussed! :D) but my own biases against PF come on both a personal and professional level, so I doubt I can divorce them well enough to speak objectively.
Of course, the elephant in the comment box right now is not writers, agents, or editors: It's the marketing department.
But Writers Seem To Like Them A Lot
While there are certainly a LOT of writers out there - enough that when I hear the sheer numbers of queries some agents get in a year it gives me heart palpitations on their behalf - I think we tend to get an inflated sense of our own community and numbers. I'm reasonably certain we make up a fractional amount of what's considered the active reading public. (And an even smaller percentage of what I think the real prize is, as far as marketing departments are concerned, and that's breakout success among people who are not usually active readers, ala 50 Shades.)
Why I Think Portal Fantasy Fails As A Genre
My bias toward portal fantasy is that I can't see any justification for a story to exist as portal fantasy, honestly. It has a long and storied history, and it's been done brilliantly (I love Lewis as much as the next guy), but I think both that publishing has evolved from that point and that by its nature, portal fantasy is a genre that becomes stale quickly.
There's very little room for variation - Character is transported from World A to World B. If character doesn't end up saving World B, I'll eat my hat. It doesn't really matter, to me, if they get there via wardrobe, swimming pool, or malfunctioning toilet. The one biggest thing that varies story-to-story is the secondary world, in which case: Why not write secondary-world fantasy?
The other thing that varies is POV character, and I think the answer to the previous question is often laziness as embodied here. There are certainly important things that can be explored and unpacked by taking someone from our world and sending them elsewhere - but it's more easily (and more often) a shorthand way to explain all your worldbuilding in infodumps to your character, write a character who can be Just Like You in terms of history and background and culture and language, and then they get to save the world.
As a reader, my reaction happens on two levels: Mechanically, it strikes me as a way to avoid the nuance and labor required to build this world from the ground-up without having a convenient foreigner to explain it to, and emotionally, it reads like pure wish fulfillment. (This is plenty of people's cup of tea. It's not mine.)
When I see as the shortcomings of the genre combined with the ancestors of the genre that're considered successful and classics, it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for fresh blood. And I think the reason for that is that these days, there are better, more nuanced ways to explore the themes and topics that are at the heart of portal fantasy without relying on the convenience of the genre to do so.
For instance: If you want to explore the identity clash, learning curve, and sense of alienation as experience by an outsider... write a character who is an immigrant! In a fantasy world! (Actually, don't do that, because I'm currently doing that.)
I guess typing this all out has helped me condense it in a way that I wouldn't have been able to before, and that's this: The genre strikes me as painfully un-subtle by design.
Combine with the fact that I'm pretty sure the first book everybody writes when they are 14 is portal fantasy, and I think you get the current publishing feedback loop.
From:
no subject
As someone who enjoys (some) portal fantasies, I can think of two reasons:
1) One of my favorite things to read about is characters plunged into a foreign culture where they're completely out of their depth and have to struggle to understand the rules via trial and error. This can obviously be done in pure secondary-world fantasy, but portal fantasy has the advantage of not requiring explanation of why Main Character is completely oblivious to the culture of Neighboring Country. Too often, when I read secondary-world fantasy that I think will scratch this itch, the explanation is just "Well, they weren't that curious before." I like inquisitive protagonists, so that doesn't work for me.
2) I love reading stories that use mirrors and parallels to make thematic points. Portal fantasies that bounce back and forth between the two worlds are great for this. (Portal fantasies that don't include substantial sections set in the real-world are less interesting to me.)
I would like to see more portal fantasies where characters from one secondary world end up in another secondary world, but I realize that's a lot of worldbuilding to ask for.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
Even after I grew into the YA age range, I returned to those kinds of stories when I was craving escape and comfort reading, and really appreciated being able to find some with protagonists my own age. It's really sad that there aren't as many being published now. I'm sure their absence has left a gap. I wonder what kids are reading instead.
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:From: (Anonymous)
no subject
Perhaps they see portal fantasy as peculiarly immature and appealing only to kids, but considering the YA explosion, that's not a viable explanation either. I'm going with: The writing was not good enough to carry the agent or editor past suspension of disbelief or dislike of subject matter.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Also, middle-grade. Perhaps the "perceived as an inherently childish subgenre" theories are on the money.
(no subject)
From: