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I'm not really trying to defend some of the truly appalling things that get published these days. For much of it there can be no defence, poetic or otherwise. But without being able to address real examples (and I understand why you haven't done so in this instance), any conversation about grammar is going to get a little lost. This stuff is not easy to get right. I may make fun of Harry's posts on occasion, but they are exactly correct; writers need help.
Of course, grammar isn't the only problem. Long before grammar becomes an issue the writer needs to work out whether they can write a story that someone else (other than Aunt Jemima and Uncle Bert) wants to read.
I suspect fantasy gets more than its fair share of the failures because it can be seen as the easy way in: it doesn't have to be realistic, it's fantasy; the characters don't have to make sense, it's like a dream; the rules of the world don't have to be consistent, it's magic. ... Or that's the impression much of it leaves.
Whereas I'd argue that good fantasy has many difficulties that other fiction doesn't face: There's a whole world that needs to be built, there's a whole cast of characters that probably aren't entirely human, there's a whole new set of rules that need to be consistent for the story to have any meaning, and the reader needs to be introduced to all this in a way that remains involving, entertaining and internally credible. None of this is easy. Contemporary fiction at least has the advantage of starting from something familiar to the reader, a place where the rules are already known, and the writer can use this to their advantage.
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