So I’ve been thinking…
My podcast, Lavender Tavern, was cozy fantasy. My next book, The Library at Eventide, is cozy fantasy. But Talio’s Codex…?
Originally, I’d categorized it as ‘cozy fantasy noir.’ But now that people are reading it and giving me feedback, I’m having second thoughts.
Cozy fantasy noir may sound like a contradiction in terms – at least the ‘cozy’ and ‘noir’ bits. Because the majority of Talio’s Codex takes place in courtrooms and taverns, with conversations, arguments, and hearings, I thought it was cozy. And because there’s a bit of violence, a mystery, and everyone’s morally gray, I thought it was noir.
I think I’ve been viewing cozy as subtractive, rather than additive. I know what parts of non-cozy fantasy novels I don’t like. The classic example: Chapter One starts with soldiers, visiting from the city, who are about to tear up the village and kill the main character’s grandparent. Now by ‘I don’t like,’ I don’t mean it’s a bad thing for a novel to have that. I simply find it upsetting, and would rather read books that don’t have a grimdark, hopeless feeling, or sexual violence, or emotional abuse.
So what I was doing mentally was taking ‘fantasy’ and then subtracting the things I didn’t want: grimdark, gory violence, etc. etc. But as Spinoza said, “Peace is not an absence of war.” Cozy fantasy is also additive: deliberately including elements that nourish the soul, heal the heart. A forever stew cooking over a hearth fire. Friends well met after a long journey. Sitting on a comfy couch reading a good book while a storm rages outside.
I took another look at Talio’s Codex. There isn’t all that much of that coziness. The Double Moon Inn (pun!) serves as a cozy refuge. Talio has dinners and other sweet meetings with the two men in his life, Pazli and Cale. I did conceive of it originally as a lighthearted novel where trickster Talio showed off with courtroom antics and engaged in a sweet love triangle.
But the decisions I made before I even started outlining the novel turned it away from cozy right off the bat:
- Talio’s facial scar: It’s a reminder that he’s a victim of war. It’s something that sets him apart from other people, that prompts comments and looks and discussion. It speaks for him, even when he does not want it to.
- Talio’s history: Ten years before the novel starts, his wife found him in bed with another man. That was another deliberate decision, to make him an adulterer who caused his marriage to fail. His moral record is far from clean. It’s hard for him to stand in judgment of others when he has done some terrible things.
- The Incarnites: They are an insular religious minority who stay cloaked and hooded at all times. Their sheer existence is in opposition with mainstream society, who has an obsession with identity, authentication and bureaucracy. As a result, they are discriminated against (actively and systemically), shunned and form their own isolated groups.
All that dictated the course of the novel. Talio’s scar has affected his psyche all his life, and continues to do so in various ways throughout the novel. In some ways he is still making up for his marital adultery. And again and again, the Incarnites are shown to suffer discrimination, stereotyping, tokenism, microaggressions, and everything that minorities go through.
There was no cozying up this novel based on its very premises!
So I’ll call it a ‘legal fantasy thriller.’ Or a ‘romantic fantasy courtroom mystery.’ Or simply a ‘fantasy noir.’ But it’s not very cozy, even without the soldiers coming from the city to kill the main character’s grandparent.
Whether or not The Library at Eventide is cozy fantasy is another matter. I believe it is, even though it deals with chronic illness, disability, the stresses on relationships between caregivers and caregivees and redefining one’s dreams in the face of adversity. I think that cozy fantasy can stretch and expand to include heartache and self-doubt…as long as that happy ending is present.