Le site io9 s'est interrogé sur le réalisme qui semble imprégner la fantasy ces dernières années et a donné la parole à certains auteurs, parmi lesquelles Brandon Sanderson, Peter V. Brett ou encore David Chandler. 

Brett pense que cette évolution est toute naturelle et provient du fait que les auteurs d'aujourd'hui, ayant grandi avec Tolkien, cherchent maintenant à créer leur propre fantasy : You mature, and you want to do your own thing. Many people have tried to build upon the high fantasy foundation and watered it down, and it got less interesting. The new crop of fantasy writers are the people that read all that stuff and while they enjoyed it, they're also kind of tired of those aspects and want to do something new and want to create a new magic system. Because the old grey-bearded wizard in the robes with the staff is boring now. 

Pour David Chandler, l'explication est toute autre : Horror movies, before about 1975, were mostly guys in rubber suits. And after 1975, we started to see buckets of blood and viscera and intestines all over the place. I had a professor in college who said was the Vietnam war. People had seen all this on television and they didn't believe the guy in the rubber suit any more. Certainly, the last 10 years of television have shown us all kinds of horrible things in the most hardy, realistic fashion, so that's what we're demanding now from our myths and legends. 

A noter qu'Elbakin propose une traduction de cet article, pour les réfractaires à l'anglais.