What is the ideal length of a fantasy novel? Of a fantasy series?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fantasy, as a genre, is known for being big. Big stakes, big emotions, big battles\u2014and big books. It isn’t unusual for a single fantasy novel to run well over 200,000 words. Authors like Brandon Sanderson regularly turn in doorstoppers, with Words of Radiance<\/em> clocking in at over 400,000 words, longer than the entire Lord of the Rings<\/em> trilogy combined. And of course, there\u2019s J.R.R. Tolkien himself, whose influence looms large over the genre. The Lord of the Rings<\/em> helped establish the idea that a fantasy story needs room to breathe\u2014and to expand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Series length is no different. Some of the most beloved and influential fantasy series are also some of the longest. Steven Erikson\u2019s Malazan Book of the Fallen spans ten main volumes and several more side novels. Robert Jordan\u2019s Wheel of Time ran for fourteen massive books (fifteen, if you count the prequel). These stories require commitment, but for many readers, that\u2019s part of the appeal. Once they find a world they love, they want to spend as much time there as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But not all fantasy needs to be long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Robert E. Howard, one of the foundational voices in the genre, wrote mostly short stories. His Conan tales, often published in pulp magazines like Weird Tales<\/em>, rarely ran longer than a few thousand words. Yet they endure. David G. Hartwell, in “The Making of the American Fantasy Genre,” points out that Howard and Tolkien were arguably the two most successful fantasy authors of the twentieth century. Before The Lord of the Rings<\/em> took off in the 1970s, most fantasy readers thought of the short story as the natural format for the genre. That pulp tradition carried strong into the mid-century, where fantasy shared shelf space with science fiction in magazines and anthologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That clearly isn\u2019t the case anymore. In today’s market, a 90,000-word fantasy novel is often considered short. Readers are more than happy to put up with a bit of filler or extra padding if it means they get to linger in the world a little longer. And to be fair, there is something immersive about a book that takes its time. When done well, it can feel less like reading a story and more like living inside another world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That said, I still believe in the value of economy of words. Economy of words doesn\u2019t mean writing short\u2014it means writing lean. It means using only as many words as the story needs. Louis L\u2019Amour is a great example of this. His prose is tight, clear, and evocative. Most of his novels are quick reads, but they pack a punch. He could sketch a character in half a page and make you care about them. That\u2019s not to say all of his books were short\u2014The Walking Drum<\/em> is a long and sprawling novel\u2014but even there, his style is efficient. Every scene does something. Every word earns its place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why does epic fantasy run so long? Does it always have to be padded with extra filler? Not when it\u2019s done well. One of the defining features of epic fantasy is that the world itself becomes a character. Tolkien mastered this. Middle-earth isn\u2019t just a setting; it has a history, a culture, and an arc. The long travelogues, the deep lore, the songs and genealogies\u2014they help build a sense of depth that makes the final conflict in The Return of the King<\/em> resonate on a mythic level. You\u2019re not just watching Frodo destroy a ring; you\u2019re watching the curtain fall on an entire age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when the world has that kind of weight\u2014when it grows, transforms, and carries the burden of history\u2014it\u2019s no surprise that a single book often isn\u2019t enough. That\u2019s one of the reasons epic fantasy so often stretches into multi-volume series. If the world is a character, it needs space for its own arc to unfold. A hero might only need three acts to complete their journey, but a world? That can take a bit longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, there\u2019s more than one way to structure a series. Take Louis L\u2019Amour again. He wrote mostly short standalone novels, but many of them followed the same families\u2014like the Sacketts or the Chantrys\u2014so that readers who wanted more could get it. You didn\u2019t have to read them in order. You could pick up whichever one you found first and still get a complete story. That\u2019s a far cry from most modern fantasy series, where the series itself is a single, complete work that must be read in order. After all, try starting The Wheel of Time at book five or A Song of Ice and Fire at book three, and you\u2019ll be utterly lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My copy of The Lord of the Rings<\/em> is a single-volume edition, the way Tolkien originally intended it. The main reason it was split into multiple books was to save on printing costs (Tolkien himself split the book into six parts, but the publisher turned it into a trilogy). Frankly, I think it works better that way. When a series beings to sprawl, the middle books often sag, and readers can definitely feel that. Just look at Crossroads of Twilight<\/em> (Book 10 of The Wheel of Time) and how much the fans hate that book. I also remember when A Dance with Dragons<\/em> first came out, with a 2.9-star average on Amazon that held for several years. (That rating has since improved, but I suspect that a large part of it is due to review farming by the publisher.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another risk inherent in writing a long, sprawling series is that the author will never finish it. George R.R. Martin is the most infamous example here\u2014fans have been waiting for The Winds of Winter<\/em> for over a decade, with no firm release date in sight. Patrick Rothfuss has faced similar criticism, with readers growing increasingly frustrated over the long delay between The Wise Man’s Fear<\/em> and the long-promised third book in the Kingkiller Chronicle. And Orson Scott Card has yet to finish his Alvin Maker series. Seventh Son<\/em> was published when I was just four years old, and though I enjoyed the first two books in that series, I refuse to read the rest of it until Card finishes the damned series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m not alone. Many readers, burned one too many times, now refuse to even begin a new fantasy series until it\u2019s complete. I can’t blame readers for feeling this way, but it does create a real challenge for new and midlist authors trying to break into the genre. Without the benefit of an established readership, it\u2019s hard to convince readers to invest in book one of a planned trilogy or longer series. And if readers don\u2019t start the first book, the rest may never see publication.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right now, I’m writing an epic fantasy series based loosely on the life of King David. According to my outline, it’s a seven book series, but I’ve decided instead to split it into two trilogies (each with a complete arc) and a bridge novel (kind of like what Frank Herbert intended for the Dune books, though he died before he could finish the final book of the second trilogy). My plan is to wait until the first trilogy is totally written, publish the first three books within a month of each other, and promote that trilogy while I write the bridge novel and sequel trilogy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the meantime, I’ve been having a blast writing short fantasy novels in the Sea Mage Cycle, in-between drafts of my larger books. With The Sea Mage Cycle, I’m following a series structure that’s much closer to what Louis L’Amour did with his Chantry and Sackett books. Each book is a standalone, and the books can be read in any order, but they all tie together with recurring characters\/families. As with all epic fantasy, the world itself is something of a character, but each book is more like a single thread in the tapestry of that wider story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not every epic needs to be long. Not every story benefits from being part of a massive, sprawling series. But when done well\u2014when every word pulls its weight, when the world itself becomes a living character, when the structure supports the arc instead of smothering it\u2014epic fantasy becomes something truly special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It becomes epic, in every sense of the word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n