Emily’s review of Twig's Traveling Tomes > Likes and Comments
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Oooh, sounds good! I might have to give it a try. I'm still trying to work out if cozy fantasy works for me or not -- I keep picking up books labelled as cozy but are decidedly not inside the covers.
Elle wrote: "Oooh, sounds good! I might have to give it a try. I'm still trying to work out if cozy fantasy works for me or not -- I keep picking up books labelled as cozy but are decidedly not inside the covers."
It's been enlightening being on the cozy fantasy subreddit seeing how different people's thresholds are for what constitutes cozy. For some people cozy is basically slice of life and everything must be lovely and nice, and even the slightest hint of peril makes it cozy-adjacent, whereas some people are happy for something to be going on, as long as the tone hits right and the promises of everything coming out okay are kept. I am much more the latter. (Weirdly, I did see The Tainted Cup described as cozy-adjacent, but apart from some of the character dynamic between Ana and Din, I have no idea what they were on about).
There's way too much death and threat-of-death and weird body/nature horror going on in the Din & Ana novels to ever be cozy, lmao.
For me, cozy just has to be quieter and more low-stakes than normal fantasy. If your MCs are on the run from assassins, the fate of an entire kingdom is at stake, and MC's best friend is dying slowly and painfully from cancer, then congrats you left 'cozy' far far behind you and are just writing plain adventure/epic/drama fantasy.
I saw one description that said with cozy the stakes are more personal, whereas in your high fantasy, etc., the stakes are more all-encompassing. Using this book as the example, yes, they're on a quest, but the stakes are still about Twig's character growth rather than "if we don't recover these artefacts, everyone's going to die".
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Elle
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Oct 14, 2026 05:24PM
Oooh, sounds good! I might have to give it a try. I'm still trying to work out if cozy fantasy works for me or not -- I keep picking up books labelled as cozy but are decidedly not inside the covers.
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Elle wrote: "Oooh, sounds good! I might have to give it a try. I'm still trying to work out if cozy fantasy works for me or not -- I keep picking up books labelled as cozy but are decidedly not inside the covers."It's been enlightening being on the cozy fantasy subreddit seeing how different people's thresholds are for what constitutes cozy. For some people cozy is basically slice of life and everything must be lovely and nice, and even the slightest hint of peril makes it cozy-adjacent, whereas some people are happy for something to be going on, as long as the tone hits right and the promises of everything coming out okay are kept. I am much more the latter. (Weirdly, I did see The Tainted Cup described as cozy-adjacent, but apart from some of the character dynamic between Ana and Din, I have no idea what they were on about).
There's way too much death and threat-of-death and weird body/nature horror going on in the Din & Ana novels to ever be cozy, lmao. For me, cozy just has to be quieter and more low-stakes than normal fantasy. If your MCs are on the run from assassins, the fate of an entire kingdom is at stake, and MC's best friend is dying slowly and painfully from cancer, then congrats you left 'cozy' far far behind you and are just writing plain adventure/epic/drama fantasy.
I saw one description that said with cozy the stakes are more personal, whereas in your high fantasy, etc., the stakes are more all-encompassing. Using this book as the example, yes, they're on a quest, but the stakes are still about Twig's character growth rather than "if we don't recover these artefacts, everyone's going to die".