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Abstract: The aim of this article is to examine V. Kamsha’s “Chronicles of Arcia” cycle within the context of the formation and development of the fantasy tradition of the turn of the 21st century, encompassing fantasy fiction texts of both Russian (N. Perumov) and foreign (J. Martin) authors. The study employs genre, comparative-historical, typological, and mythopoetic analyses to answer the question why the creative activity of Kamsha has become a landmark phenomenon of the 21st-century Russian literary process in the genre of fantasy. While analyzing the genre nature of Kamsha’s cycle, three main fantasy genre models (historical, epic, and mystical) are identified. Their synthesis contributes to the formation of the writer’s easily recognizable style, which later manifested itself in her original fantasy cycle, “The Gleam of Eterna”. The writer herself insisted on realizing the historical fantasy tradition in “The Chronicles of Arcia”, seeing in this tradition a fundamental difference between her work and that of N. Perumov. Drawing on Professor K. Gosden’s conception, the author of the article analyzes the poetics of magical fantasy in “The Chronicles of Arcia”, arguing that these features are not only present in the series but are also manifested through the characters’ engagement in all three levels (transcendence, transformation, and transaction) of magical existence. Rethinking Perumov’s tradition of depicting the universal evil, embodying the eschatological traits of a god-destructor, leads Kamsha to the creation of a fundamentally new image of a character-antagonist, Estelle Oskora, who begins to fulfill soteriological functions by the end of the first book of “The Dark Star” series. The anthropocentrism of Russian fantasy, in turn, compelled the writer not only to prefer human characters to the actively present representatives of other races (elves, orcs) in the series, but also to focus special attention on the development of their images and their moral choice between the forces of the Good and the Evil. Furthermore, Kamsha rejects the typical “slider”-time traveler character of the 1990s Russian fantasy, replacing him with autochthonous heroes of Tarra (René Arroy, Estelle Oscorà), who are at the second level of heroic initiation according to J. Campbell’s concept.

About the author(s) :

Elena E. Prikazchikova

Ural Federal University named after the first President of Russia B. N. Yeltsin
(Ekaterinburg, Russian Federation)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9018-6213

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 11.01.2026; date of publication: 31.03.2026

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