Literary Fantasy: What the Heck Does that Mean?

"You can tell it's literary when the book is so abstract you don't even know what it means."

I've heard variations of this comment more times than I can count. Usually it’s delivered with a smirk, or sometimes with genuine frustration. And I get it. "Literary fantasy" has a reputation problem. To some readers, it signals pretension. To others, it means impenetrability. To publishers, it's a marketing term that somehow encompasses everything from The Goblin Emperor to The Poppy War—two books that could not be more different in execution.

At its core, literary fantasy builds its story around philosophical questions, political commentary, or explorations of human nature. The themes aren't decorative. They're structural.

But that thematic core can manifest in two fundamentally different ways, requiring completely different craft approaches and offering readers entirely different experiences. It’s this duality that makes it hard to pin down an exacting definition of literary, especially in genre spaces.

So let’s dive into and peel back some of the mystique.

The Two Modes of Literary Fiction

After struggling to answer this question for years, I've come to realize there are two distinct modes of literary storytelling in fantasy. Both are valid. Both get called "literary." But they accomplish fundamentally different things.

Mode A: Allegorical-Philosophical Fiction

This is the one people usually ascribe as being “abstract” and “hard to understand,” because characters exist primarily as vessels for ideas. Think:

• 1984

• Animal Farm

• The Handmaid's Tale

• Fahrenheit 451

• The Poppy War

In these works, theme is the protagonist. Characters don't have agency outside what the author's philosophical argument requires. The world exists as symbolic scaffolding rather than a lived-in ecology.

This mode is:

• Thesis-driven: The author starts with an answer and writes toward it

• Top-down: Theme shapes everything else

• Symbolic: Characters represent positions within an argument

• Stark: Often emotionally distant by design

These books aren't trying to be immersive. They're trying to make you think. The story is a delivery mechanism for a political, philosophical, or ethical argument. The Poppy War, for instance, is historical allegory about colonialism, genocide, and inherited trauma. Rin exists to carry thematic weight, she's not meant to be a psychologically coherent person you empathize with.

If you came to the book expecting character-driven fantasy, it will feel hollow. Because compared to those expectations, it is hollow. That's not a flaw—it's a feature.

Mode B: Character-Sovereign Literary Fiction

This is an entirely different approach. Think:

• The Lord of the Rings

• A Wizard of Earthsea (or really anything by Le Guin)

• The Goblin Emperor

• The Broken Earth trilogy

• Jane Austen's novels (yes, really)

In these books, theme still matters enormously—but it emerges through character and world rather than being imposed on them. These stories maintain:

• Deep interiority: Characters are people with complex internal lives

• Psychological realism: Characters behave like humans, not metaphors

• Sensory worldbuilding: The world is textured, lived-in, internally consistent

• Emotional continuity: Character psychology drives the plot

This mode is:

• Inquiry-driven: The author starts with a question and discovers the answer through storytelling

• Bottom-up: Theme crystallizes from character experience

• Immersive: You're meant to inhabit the story, not decode it

• Technically demanding: Requires juggling multiple layers simultaneously

The key difference? Mode A begins with the answer and writes toward it. Mode B begins with a question and lets the characters find the answer.

Why Mode B Is Technically Harder

Mode A isn't "easier" in the sense of requiring less skill—writing effective allegory is difficult. But Mode B requires a different kind of architectural discipline.

Character-sovereign literary fiction has to maintain:

1. Internal logic - The world must function according to consistent rules

2. Thematic resonance - Ideas must emerge organically from events

3. Psychological realism - Characters must behave like actual people with trauma histories, cognitive patterns, and sensory experiences

4. Worldbuilding coherence - Culture, politics, economics, and religion must interlock

5. Structural pacing - The story needs narrative momentum

6. Symbolic layering - Metaphors and themes run underneath without overwhelming

If any single one of these elements breaks, the whole structure wobbles. The worldbuilding must be anthropologically sound. Character psychology must track. Dialogue must reflect cultural and class differences. Magic systems must have political implications. Trauma representations must be accurate. Themes must resonate without being didactic.

Mode A doesn't prioritize all of these—and that's fine, because it's accomplishing something else. But Mode B cannot function without them.

The Case Study: Understanding The Poppy War's Lineage

The Poppy War makes an interesting case study because it clearly draws from a specific literary tradition, but understanding which tradition helps clarify why readers have such polarized reactions to it.

The book models itself on Chinese post-colonial trauma literature, the kind descended from Yu Hua's To Live, Mo Yan, and the "scar literature" movement.

These works use:

• Episodic tragedy and violence

• Emotionally flattened narration (trauma as numbing)

• Characters who function partly as historical allegory

• Abrupt tonal shifts that mirror social collapse

• A documentary or witnessing quality

To Live succeeds brilliantly within this tradition because it maintains absolute tonal integrity. From page one, you know what kind of story you're reading. The emotional logic is consistent. The voice is unified. The narrative focuses on one man's intimate experience, allowing national trauma to emerge through his specific life.

The Poppy War attempts something far more ambitious (and unstable). It tries to synthesize:

• Chinese post-colonial literary traditions

• Western YA military school structure

• Grimdark war fantasy

• Divine mythology

• Modern dialogue conventions

Each mode demands different emotional rules, creating tonal whiplash. The first half reads like one genre; the second half pivots to something else entirely. Characters use modern slang that clashes with the setting. Peasants and nobles speak identically, without class or cultural distinction.

The book zooms out rather than in as it tries to represent colonialism, genocide, nationalism, and corruption of power all at once. The intimacy gets sacrificed in favor of thematic scope. This is intentional. Kuang is experimenting with hybridizing traditions. But the modes don't fully integrate, creating what literary critics might call "tonal dissonance."

This doesn't make it a bad book. It makes it a Mode A book attempting to wear Mode B clothing, which creates friction for readers expecting the latter.

Why It’s Hard to Recommend Literary Fiction

It is very easy for recommendations to misfire in literary genre spaces.

People see a book with:

• Complex worldbuilding ✓

• Political themes ✓

• Morally gray characters ✓

• Trauma as a central concern ✓

• Literary ambition ✓

They think: "Literary fantasy!"

But the craft priorities are completely different across modes and that will appeal to different audiences.

Mode B books are:

• Emotionally intimate

• Character-based

• Psychologically grounded

• Deeply sensory

• Immersive

• Tonally consistent

Mode A books are:

• Metaphorical

• Thematic

• Idea-driven

• Allegorical

• Often fragmented

• Emotionally distanced

Both are literary. Both are fantasy. But they offer fundamentally different reading experiences.

It's like recommending bebop to someone who loves symphonic orchestration because "they're both complex music." Technically true. Completely unhelpful.

What This Means for Readers

If you're trying to find books you'll actually love, understanding these two modes helps immensely.

Ask yourself:

• Do I want to think about themes, or feel them through characters?

• Do I prefer emotional distance or deep interiority?

• Am I comfortable with tonal shifts and fragmentation, or do I need consistency?

• Do I want symbolic worldbuilding or anthropologically rigorous worldbuilding?

• Am I looking for an argument or an exploration?

Neither answer is wrong. But knowing which mode resonates with you will save you from recommendations that sound perfect on paper but will leave you feeling irritated.

What This Means for Writers

If you're writing literary fantasy, you need to know which mode you're working in because they require different skill sets and different reader contracts.

If you're writing Mode A:

• Own the allegory. Thin characterization isn't a flaw—it's purposeful

• Maintain symbolic consistency even if that means emotional distance

• Trust your themes to carry the weight

• Accept that some readers will bounce off, and that's fine

If you're writing Mode B:

• Build the foundation first: character psychology, world systems, cultural logic

• Let theme emerge—don't impose it

• Maintain tonal integrity above all else

• Accept that this will take longer and require more architectural planning

You can also hybridize, but be aware you're attempting something technically difficult. You need to know why you're mixing modes and have a clear plan for how they'll integrate. Otherwise you risk creating the tonal dissonance that leaves readers feeling unmoored.

The Bottom Line

"Literary fantasy" isn't one thing. It's (at least) two very different approaches to storytelling that happen to share ambition, thematic depth, and complex worldbuilding.

• Mode A (allegorical-philosophical) uses narrative as argument.

• Mode B (character-sovereign) uses character as inquiry.

So the next time someone recommends you a "literary fantasy" book, you might want to ask: "Is this the kind where characters are vessels for ideas, or the kind where ideas emerge from characters?"

Because that's the distinction that actually matters.

This framework isn't perfect or comprehensive—literary fiction exists on a spectrum, and plenty of books blend these modes successfully. But it's useful for understanding why certain recommendations work and others don't, and for articulating what kind of story you're actually trying to tell or hoping to read.