Question of the Week: Guns In Fantasy

It’s time for Question of the Week, which is intended for enjoyable discussions of interesting topics!

This week’s question – do you dislike guns showing up in fantasy novels? No wrong answers, obviously.

The inspiration for this question was a blog post I saw where the writer was complaining about the increased number of guns in modern fantasy novels and how it shatters her suspension of disbelief.

For myself, I have no strong feelings about it one way or another. I do think guns are best suited to urban fantasy environments – in CLOAK GAMES and CLOAK MAGE, Nadia goes through a lot of guns. Granted, my favorite type of fantasy is what gets called Basic Fantasy or Generic Fantasy, where a barbarian, a dwarf, an elf, and a wizard go to a dungeon and kill orcs and monsters. Firearms would definitely be out of place in that sort of setting.

That said, I think “guns in fantasy” is like any other story trope, and it just needs to be done well to be enjoyable. I suppose it’s a matter of setting the table for reader expectations. Like, if you have a medieval-style fantasy world like HALF-ELVEN THIEF, it would be weird to have guns suddenly show up. But if you create a setting that’s an analogue for 1880s America but with wizards, then guns wouldn’t be out of place.

-JM