Essay

"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 Popp