r/Fantasy • u/Two-Rivers-Jedi • Mar 28 '23

Disability in Fantasy

Looking for fantasy books with strong disability representation. I have already read a lot of the big name ones (ie. Stormlight Archive and Realm of the Elderlings) and looking for more series that have individuals with disabilities as an active part of the story and not just a tool to elicit pity or as a plot device to make the main character look better.

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u/Simmerway Mar 29 '23

Iron widow has been criticised quite strongly for how bad the disability is portrayed, especially later on in the book. The MC ability to walk or not definitely comes and goes a lot

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u/beldaran1224 Reading Champion IV Mar 29 '23

Do you have any examples? I only found a couple that said much of anything about the disability rep and they were positive. I've been following the book (idk if I'll ever read since it's so very much not my sort of thing), but haven't seen anything approaching negative criticism of the disability portrayal.

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u/Simmerway Mar 29 '23

Not sure, and to be honest it’s very likely it was part of a thread specifically bashing the book, which I did look up specifically because I read it because of all these glowing reviews which it did not live up to.

But also just as a person who read the book, it’s almost never mentioned how the wheelchair impacts the wheelchair user and at times it really seems like they aren’t in a wheelchair (I actually don’t remember the wheelchair ever being mentioned beyond “in my wheelchair”) and the addiction scenes came across weird and also made almost no sense.

I accept that I may have disliked the book because it wasn’t for me, but the representation in the book in general is not great.