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A review by frumiouslyalice
The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
4.0
I really like both the conceit of the book and the commentary that the book provides. It's a discussion that's needed by fandoms and fantasy fiction in general, and it's greatly satisfying to know that a book like this was published at all. Thomas provides a lot of personal and thoughtful insight to the place of black women in fantasy stories and fiction, and brings her shameless (a word I only use in the sense that being part of internet fandoms seems to often come with embarrassment in general society) connection to internet fan culture and allows those people to be better represented and heard. I've watched Merlin and read Harry Potter, so the discussion of Hunger Games and Vampires Diaries was new to me, and also extremely sad to watch her describe all the misery of wanting best for a PoC character that is underappreciated by fandom and then having that curtailed at every turn. A misery that I'm not unused to. Her connecting the future of these fictions to her niece and the painful cognizance a lot of creators of color have when new art is created and the influence it can potentially have was really well done, not to mention the underlying frustrations when a new work can be groundbreaking, but sidesteps its true potential.
The downside is that I wish this book was a lot longer and a bit more broad. It's fair to say that it reads like many academic books do, i.e. like a final essay in book format, which is fine, but I wish there could be a section and a large elaboration on internet fan culture, and more examples than the major four, particularly because a lot of them are mentioned (such as Abbie Mills of Sleepy Hollow) but aren't given their own sections. In a way, I somewhat wish it wasn't so specific to those characters? Or to use those characters as archetypes of how other black female characters have been channeled into those 4 paths over and over again. I was expecting a little more commentary in the Hermione chapter about racebending - but maybe I just want to shake my fist at Rowling again. I was also expecting a little more about how "darkness" is used in fantasy fiction, starting from Tolkein and used fairly consistently everywhere in fantasy, but maybe another book?
Overall, a book I appreciated reading a lot, but also wish I was reading more of. Maybe in the future! I hope to read so much more!
The downside is that I wish this book was a lot longer and a bit more broad. It's fair to say that it reads like many academic books do, i.e. like a final essay in book format, which is fine, but I wish there could be a section and a large elaboration on internet fan culture, and more examples than the major four, particularly because a lot of them are mentioned (such as Abbie Mills of Sleepy Hollow) but aren't given their own sections. In a way, I somewhat wish it wasn't so specific to those characters? Or to use those characters as archetypes of how other black female characters have been channeled into those 4 paths over and over again. I was expecting a little more commentary in the Hermione chapter about racebending - but maybe I just want to shake my fist at Rowling again. I was also expecting a little more about how "darkness" is used in fantasy fiction, starting from Tolkein and used fairly consistently everywhere in fantasy, but maybe another book?
Overall, a book I appreciated reading a lot, but also wish I was reading more of. Maybe in the future! I hope to read so much more!