While I still visit the Fantasy section, it is like returning to your hometown after college—you’re happy to be there for a short while, but you won’t be taking anything with you when you leave. Looking at the covers and reading the blurbs, most of it is just doesn’t hit me in the same way; I cannot care about another teenage sorcerer or a child pirate that turns out to be an heiress or dragon in disguise. Not because I am above goblins or faeries or enchanted accoutrements, but because the writing can often be embarrassing. I still enjoy the plots, even if they do tend toward clichéd; it isn’t exactly fair to read hundreds of Fantasy paperbacks and expect to be surprised—that familiarity breeds comfort and is part of the appeal, anyway—but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t want to drag myself through the level of prose that felt appropriate to me two decades ago

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