Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and found a new home with That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. This week’s topic was ‘Frequently Used Words In [Insert Genre/Age Group] Titles’ and I thought I’d twist the topic a bit and go with Not Frequently Used Words In Fantasy Titles.
1.Light:
It’s all very dark and shadowy…What about Queen of Light, His Light Materials? Sun and Day are not too popular in titles either.
2. Water:
And earth. Fire and air seem much more popular. Don’t even get me started about fire. Now what’s wrong with some water?
3. Princess:
The Little Prince, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Clockwork Prince, Prince Caspian, Prince of Thorns, Nine Princes in Amber, The Vampire Prince, The Cruel Prince.. Seriously. Where are all the princesses?? We do have a ton of queens for some reason. And Daughters. Do they just evolve from daughters to queens?
4. Title with a mythic creature that is not a dragon.
It can’t be that hard.
5. First …
Since it’s always Last of something, why not first unicorn. Or first dragon. Or first vampire?
6. Peace.
So I did a Goodreads search. There are about 30 000 hits for peace and 170 000 hits for war. Just saying. You could combine with something dramatic like ‘Broken Peace’ or ‘Shadow of a Peace (I ruined the idea didn’t I…)
7. Gun… or maybe a bomb?
It’s always a sword, knife or a blade. A storm of guns? A storm of bombs? The Assassin’s Firearm?
8. Office. Or maybe a park.
Office in the Air? The Dark Office. Park of Glass?
9. Lullaby.
Well since it’s quite often a song, how about a lullaby. Lullaby of Darkness. Lullaby of (Ice and) Fire…I mean Lullaby of Water.
10. Fact.
Knife of Facts? Facts of Gods and Monsters?
While doing some backup work for this post, I stumbled upon two great articles: https://www.tor.com/2011/03/11/best-of-the-decade-data-common-words-in-titles/ &
https://thoughtsonfantasy.com/2014/06/30/judging-a-book-by-its-name-10-common-trends-in-fantasy-titles/
Check them out! Happy TTT!
Nice way to do this one! I’d like to see more “water” titles too, actually! And I definitely agree with more non- dragon creatures. Where are the gryphons and harpies and… whatever ha ha? Oh and PArk of Glass does conjure up a nice image. :)
:D Yeah exactly! Harpie, siren, phoenix… would make a refreshing kind of fantasy book. I’d read it, just because of the title. Park of Glass sounds almost like horror novel.
Thinking about it… I come up with tons of titles that feature a ‘prince’, but the only princess is ‘The Princess Bride’!
‘War’… yup! I come across that word in a title so often. Probably because there’s ALWAYS some kind of war going on in fantasy books :(
Exactly! We need more capable princess characters!
Haha true, but you can express it differently. Like George R R Martin gets extra points for ‘Game of Thrones’…it could as well have been ‘War of Thrones’ or ‘Battle of Thrones’ or something like that..
That is true!!
I would read most of those books if they existed XD
I would too :D
I’m told the big publishers use algorithms to decide titles that will sell best. (QED)
They should create an algorithm that predicts these kinds of weird titles too, that’d be interesting!
Great way to spin this topic! It’s amazing how overused some words are in titles😊
It is. Like seriously someone should do something about it.
I laughed out loud reading this list. I LOVE fantasy novels but I’m totally behind your list!
Here is our Top Ten Tuesday. Thanks!
Now we only need authors who’d write a book on these :D
I think all of the YA female titled royalty are Queens, hence not many princesses!
My TTT: https://jjbookblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/24/top-ten-tuesday-156/
:D you make a great point…ugh but still. I want more princesses.
Great twist! You make a good point.
I love your take on this topic :)
I love the twist you did! You are totally right about water, fire was my second highest word this week xD
More water would be nice :D
This post was very entertaining! Going to check the links out now, Thanks matey.
x The Captain
Hope ye like th’ articles Captain! I thought they made mighty good points.
I found both articles to be fascinating. I wanted to know where Tor got its data set. Did they take the top titles from their company, from a Google search, or what. My favourite part of Nicola’s post was the use of “of” in titles. Thought-provoking and fun. Thank ye kindly fer sharing.
x The Captain