Cover art from
Down Comes the Night (Wednesday Books)
Villains institutionalizing heroines, crumbling, sentient houses, and a decadent social scene with a festering core: the Gothic is back in young adult fantasy, and with book deals slated into 2022, it shows no signs of going anywhere. It’s tempting, I think, to explain this Gothic resurgence as a symptom of YA fantasy leaning Darker & Edgier. The aesthetic conventions of the genre crumbling manors, flickering candelabras, and brooding lords certainly lend themselves well to that end. But this explanation hardly gets to the bottom of things.
The question still remains: why has this set of images become so alluring to us? Why
The Cruel Optimism of the Gothic: Wealth, Class, and Villainy in YA Fiction tor.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from tor.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.