BookTuber reviewing classic Fantasy Novels.

The name of the YouTube Channel is The Everyman Reads.

The idea is he's going to review 500 major Fantasy Novels in the order they were written.  He's still very early in the project having just reviewed George MacDonald's Lilith.  And it's a very good video everyone should watch it. 

In this video he defines how he divides Fantasy into 6 Eras. He's probably about right in what his divisions are, but the Pedantic in me can't help but be annoyed by the labels he chose, the point of naming eras after precious Metals is to repeat the Greek Mythological format, Gold then Silver then Bronze and then Iron.  His timeline goes Bronze, Silver, Classic, Golden, Modern and the current recently started but not definitively named era.  Which is the other pedantic complaint, Modern is by definition current, if we aren't in the same era as 2005-2020 anymore then that era needs a new name. 

Now as I said when talking about Eras of Anime The Golden Age is the first full era of greatness, but there can be a proto or pre history. So I would call his Bronze Age the formative years, then his Silver Age The Golden Age, then his Classic age the Silver Age and his Golden Age the Bronze Age and his Modern Age the Iron Age.

The 500 books he's selected are naturally biased towards the English speaking canon. And that's fine actually, there is a lot to cover just there. I just want to use this framing as a jumping off point for mentioning some foreign works I feel deserve more credit and attention.  Because what foreign language country's fiction I'm interested in changes depending on the era. 

The first two eras line up well with my Froncophilic interests I hold thanks to CoolFrenchComics.com and BlackCoatPress.

Paul Feval wrote only one book I'm confident can be considered Fantasy enough to definitely count, La Ville Vampire translated into English by the late Brian Stableford as Vampire City, first serialized in the 1860s.  Stuff straddling that early transitional line would include some of the works in Anne of The Isles. Some of his books set in modern Paris I would draw inspiration from when writing Urban Fantasy though they wouldn't actually count since the Supernatural element is always left ambiguous if present at all, The Vampire Countess, Revenants, Knightshade and The Blackcoats saga whose 6th volume The Companions of The Treasure is in my view the most Tolkienesque thing written before Tolkien. 

The Angel and The Sphinx from 1889 by Eduard Schure and translated by Brian Stableford.

The Enchanted City by Eugene Hennebert from 1893 including in BlackCoatPress's upcoming French Tales of Lost Worlds anthology.

In 1908 and 1909 Gustave Le Rouge wrote two novels that directly anticipate the Barsoom series, these were Translated and published together as Vampires of Mars. 

1919's L'Atlantide is like She in some ways but not in others, the author Pierre Beniot had not read She. It has had a similar if more forgotten cultural impact, for awhile being directly adapted every decade but also in the name of it's Femme Fatale Antinea influencing even more films.

As far as arguing that 1990-2004 was the best era of Fantasy Prose Novels, this wouldn't be the only time where what I call The Bronze Age is also the age I would argue is the best, that's certainly the case with Anime and kind of is for some DC characters. And that is where my Weeb interests come in.  

I haven't read these books, I haven't even seen all the Anime based on them, but I know a lot about their cultural importance.  And these are only stories that were originally prose novels which Light Novels count as, I won't be including anything that started as a Manga, Anime, Video Games or Visual Novels though they certainly have plenty of their own contributions to making this an exciting decade and a half for the Fantasy genre.  

The Heroic Legend of Arslan series started in 1987 but continued all through this era. 

Majuu Senshi Luna Varga is referred to as being based on a Light Novel but I can't find any publication dates for it, it's probably the most randomly obscure thing I'm going to list here.  The OVAs came out in 91 so it could turn out to be too soon for this era. 

Slayers started in 1990.

The Twelve Kingdoms started in 1992 and is one of the many GRRMs of Anime source materials in that it's still unfinished. 

On the subject of Urban Fantasy I'm unsure what does and doesn't count but I feel 1998 started a peak era for Japanese Urban Fantasy with Boogiepop and Others in February and the first Kara No Kyoukai in October.  I also recall Trixie The Golden Witch mentioning an anthology book of Light Novels like these from this era called Faust. 

Maybe a short story shouldn't be considered eligible for this but Kinoko Nasu's Angel Notes from 99 is pretty important. 

Scrapped Princess was from 1999 to 2003.

Legend of The Legendary Heroes started in 2002. 

2002 is also the same year as the original Web Novel for Sword Art Online, which isn't a Fantasy novel but has become undeniably important to the history of Fantasy in Japanese media.

Baccano! started in 2003 as did The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya if you count either as Urban Fantasy.

The year 2004 was the start of at least three important Light Novel sagas. 

The Familiar of Zero was very popular and a website that started as a fan site for it would go on to be the main incubation chamber for modern Isekai.

And then two more where I'm unsure if they count as Urban Fantasy for now.  Durarara!! and A Certain Magical Index.

And in December of 2004 Hakubō no Dendōshi by Gen Urobuchi was published. 

The strong Women of French Pulp Fiction, and their unexpected authors

[Update 2026: When I made this series of posts I was still mistaken about some aspects of Political terminology are used.  I called myself a Liberal but I was actually already a Socialist.]

http://z13.invisionfree.com/The_Shadowmen_Lounge/index.php?showtopic=54

The struggle to gain better female representation in Genre fiction is an interesting and complicated one. Recent years have seen a lot of progress with the success of movies  like The Hunger Games, and Divergent and Frozen  and Wonder Woman finally coming to the big screen (First in Batman Vs Superman, then finally a solo movie). But also lots of developments that demonstrate how much more work needs to be done, like the recent controversy with the latest Assassins Creed game announcing it won’t have any female playable characters.

What continually interests me is how surprisingly ahead of their time many older authors were. Both the frequently revered classics, and the more obscure ones, both English and French. In this post I’ll be discussing mainly what I see as an interesting observation about 4 of the major feuilletonists, but I’ll be making more posts on other characters.

I want to point out something interesting I've observed about the four major feuilletonists of the Golden age of the Romans-Feuilletin. Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, Paul Feval and Ponson Du-Terril.

Brian Stableford spends a good deal of  time in the Introduction and Afterward material for the Feval and Ponson translations he’s done for BlackCoatPress talking about the political alignments of those four authors. What I find curious is that the two who were the “Conservatives” in the contexts of post Revolutionary France (in being devout Catholics and Royalists) Feval and Ponson. Seem to me to have over all been more inclined to write surprisingly well written strong independent women.

Dumas arguably invented the modern Femme Fatale, between both writing the Le Tour de Nesle play and the character of Milady d’Winter in The Three Musketeers, but like many firsts I feel they pale in comparison to their more fleshed out literary descendants (both the well known and less well known). I of course love the heavily implied Lesbian characters of The Count of Monte-Cristo, Eugenie Danglars and Louise d'Armilly. And I find Ziska from his Le Vampire play fascinating. But beyond those examples, Dumas’s women conform to the stereotypes you expect, still well written characters because Dumas was a great writer of Melodrama, but not too innovative.

Sue is admittedly the one I’m currently least familiar with. But still, plenty of what I've heard about what transpires over the course of Les Mysteries du People wouldn't sit well with Feminists.  And I've read the stage play he himself made of The Mysteries of Paris (Translated by Frank Morlock).  And the two main female characters are a typical Ingenue (clearly part of the inspiration for Cossete in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables), and Countess Sarah who's a fallen woman desperately seeking redemption (I think the play makes her ending happier then the original Novel based on what I read in Shadowmen).  I feel for the character, she's not horribly written, but also not subversive like I'd expect from France's top Socialist writer.  The character of La Chouette (The Owl) is only mentioned in the play and doesn't appear directly.  She at any rate was an ugly evil old crone.

Ponson was seemingly more inclined then Feval to let his political-religious views influence his writing in a very obvious and, intentionally or not, preachy way.  I've often found myself thinking “really? that’s what’s honorable to you Ponson?”.

But none the less, in what would become known as the Rocambole saga, Bacarat proves to be a very formidable woman. In the first novel she’s an important but minor role, however in the second and third novels she proves to be the real Hero of the story. And Torquise proves to be a very mesmerizing Femme Fatale in the second Novel. The two Ponson Vampire novels Stableford has translated for BlackCoatPress both have compelling women as the title Vampires. In his introduction-afterward material for The Vampire and The Devil’s Son Stableford discuses how Ponson kind of innovated a lot of the tropes common in modern Romance Novels. (Update: more on Rocombole here)

Paul Feval’s characters are endlessly fascinating.  Plenty fit the norms you’d expect of the time, but many do not. I personally think two of the greatest Femme Fatales ever written are Countess Marcian Gregory of The Vampire Countess and Marguerite Sadoulas of The Blackcoats saga. But Sarah O’Neil of John Devil is also an interesting early experimentation with that archetype. The saga of the Habits Noirs also has some strong heroic women. Rose de Malvoy is the real hero of The Heart of Steel, Valentine (Fleurette) and Maman Leo are the core protagonists of The Invisible Weapon. Regina from Bel Demonio is bound to gain conflicting responses from a modern feminist reader, I’d dare say she’d fit in as an Anime character quite well. Susannah gets an opportunity to show some impressive courage in Les Mysteries de Londres.

In Le Bossu our young female lead is allowed to actually save herself from an attempted Rape, something Stableford suspects Feval might have originally intended to do again in The Sword Swallower. Vampire City has both Anna Ward (Anne Radcliffe) and Polly Bird, (warning though, the desire of some modern reviewers to describe Polly Bird as transgender is very misleading).

And there are still so many Feval works not available to me yet. Among them La Louve (The She Wolf) the prequel to Le Loup le Blanc (The White Wolf), and quite possibly the first depiction of a masked female vigilante.  The novel it prequels was the first depiction of a Masked Vigilante period, well before Zorro or the Scarlet Pimpernel.

I want to go back a bit now.  Stableford describes The Heart of Steel as "Unintentionally Proto-Feminist".  I've suggested elsewhere it may not be as unintentional as you'd think.  But by no means do I think Feval would be a cheerleader of modern Feminism.

In the case of the Invisible Weapon.  I'm not sure, but I think it may very well pass the Bechel Test.  Considering how rare passing that still is, I think it's really fascinating to consider that a forgotten work of 19th century literature (a sequel to a prequel) by a man fighting the tides of a change could be capable of passing it.  (Update 12/23/2015, since I've seen it argued The Force Awakens passes, The Invisible Weapon certainly would by that standard).

Paul Feval, a very over looked but historically important author

I want to increase familiarity with him, here are some links about his works, including ones selling modern English Translations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Feval
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/feval.htm
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/johndevil.htm
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/invisibleweapon.htm
http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/habitsnoirs.htm
http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/habitsnoirstimeline.htm
http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=6883
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBlackCoats
http://www.blackgate.com/2011/05/06/john-devil-and-the-world-of-paul-f eval/
http://www.blackgate.com/2011/07/15/the-black-coats-an-introduction/
http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2010/05/classic-literature-vampire-countess.html
http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2010/06/classic-literature-knightshade.html
http://taliesinttlg.blogspot.com/2010/04/classic-literature-vampire-city.html
http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=6803
http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=6803
http://www.lsu.edu/necrofile/knightshade.htm
http://www.thedraculasociety.org.uk/ds_reviews-bst.html
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/02/vampire-city-by-paul-feval
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/feval_paul

John Devil is arguably the first Supervillian, as a Detective author he is important in bridging the gap from Poe to Sherlock Holmes, and his Vampire stories are very interesting considering they predate Dracula and even Carmilla.

The Black Coats saga was his most seminal work, the in fact the first fictional depiction of The Mafia.