fantasy novels.

I just picked this up because it's part of Gollancz's classic fantasy series (presumably a sister collection to their excellent sci-fi classics series). Have I wasted my money, I wonder?

If it's China Mieville you're talking about, Bloke also rates that stuff very highly indeed.

I read the Thomas Covenant books when I was 13 or 14. I thought the first three were wonderful, but the second three were a bit disappointing. I can't remember why, now. I don't recall any truly difficult words, but I do remember that he used the word "mien" a lot, which became a little wearing after a while.

I remember loving Raymond E. Feist as well. Again, I don't even remember why.

Anyway, I've read enough of the Mieville thread to see that the books you were recommending were not his, but something else. But I didn't read the rest of the thread because I intend to read Perdido Street Station and don't want to know anything about it before I do.

i also remember liking thomas covenant a whole lot when i was fourteen. i had an RE teacher who thought they were the best thing ever written. i mean an actual grownup. i never did finish the second lot. was anyone sad enough for the final chronicle thing that came out the other uh year?

Deconstructionist philosophy to the extent they deal with the dawn of history, the birth of codified language, when signifiers were freshly coined, and so as yet not "suffering" from slippage with the signified. Also, they stpries are quite meta-, the narratives self-deconstructing at times, if I'm remembering correctly.

J.D., are Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass and The Little Prince children's or adult fantasy? What about Rushdie's fantasies, Grimus and Haroun & The Sea of Stories?

i should look up the neveryon books. (isn't there a science fiction one of his meant to be "about" deconstruction too?)

what about 'midnight's children', which is about superheroes?

This could apply to almost all of his fiction, but probably most to The Einstein Intersection, Babel-17 and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.

The Neveryona series is really good, even for people like me who've never studied deconstructionism and barely know what semiotics is.

stars in my pocket... is like pure wish-fulfillment for the academic-left - as well as being a beautiful love story, and great literary fiction. but i don't think it makes strong statements about literature / reading the way dhalgren does, or at least it's not the point of the book.

dhalgren is about an amensiac named "the kid" who travels to an american city called bellona. bellona has been afflicted by a terrible, unnamed disaster. it is mostly deserted, but has become a gathering-place for misfits. something has ruined the flow of time and space in bellona - streets and buildings change location unexpectedly, roads lead different places on different days, people experience time differently. you may leave overnight, when you get back, a week may have passed for your friends.

several identities are proposed for "the kid", none of which are confirmed. "the kid" eventually becomes de facto leader of the street gangs and nomadic hippie tribes of bellona. this is because he writes a book of amazing poetry. though later, we find out he may not have written the book after all - he may have found the notebook. or was he the owner of the notebooks, before his amnesia? as events speed up towards the climax of the book - which may or may not be the original disaster that "deconstructed" bellona - "the kid" exchanges identity several times, before finally dissolving into ... what?

ok, the novel's not as heavy-handed as you might think from reading my synopsis - except when it is, like the scene in which the kid puts on a sci-fi shapeshifting suit, looks in a mirror, and sees - i kid you not - SAMUEL R DELANY. OMG WTF !!!

no really, though, i found it absorbing and compelling over the length of it's approx 2,000,000 pages. sometimes i was like "this is the best scifi novel ever" and sometimes i was like "this is the worst scifi novel ever". i am really glad i read it, though.

rec'd to everybody!

(same w/ stars in my pocket... and triton, though i didn't like or "get" nova, and ballad of beta-2 and his early shorts (collected in aye, gomorrah aren't all that distinctive - w/ lots of them you feel they could easily have been written by a sexually liberated, hipped heinlein or van vogt or even cordwainer smith or somebody ... but w/ triton and stars and dhalgren he really works the academic/theory angle hard, it really shines if you dig that stuff)

MORE SPOILERS

The aspects of Dhalgren that gave me the worst karates (that's a good thing) were the circular structure and the fact that the novel had happened before to the female sculptor he meets on the way in, and was going to happen again to whoever it was he met on the way out. The unbreakable cycle is kinda heartbreaking to me.

I would describe Dhalgren more as a fantasy novel than SF, personally.

i think the one i meant was 'stars in my pocket'. i had been putting off dhalgren until after i read finnegans wake i.e. more or less never. (i've only read delany's easy books and the autobio and some of the criticism) (i feel moderately shamed over this)

has anyone read a princess of roumania, by paul park?

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/07/21/a-princess-of-roumania/#comments

"I’ve a theory, which I suspect is hardly original to me, that the magic in really good children’s fantasy draws its resonance from a child’s perception of what it must be like to be grown up. When you’re a child or a pre-adolescent, the adult world seems an attractive and terrifying place. Adults have power, but are driven by forces and desires that a child can only dimly understand; wild magic. Thus, for example, when Susan rides with the daughters of the moon and the Wild Hunt in Alan Garner’s The Moon of Gomrath, she’s glimpsing for a moment what it will be like to be a woman. In contrast, the magic in mediocre children’s fantasy is all too often domesticated, rationalized, and stripped of its real force."

right on.

has anyone else read Mick Farren's DNA Cowboys? it deserves some pimping

Did Delany say this? I missed it if he did.

Wait, I don't remember this at all, was I asleep during this part?

the hint is the bitten nails and the beard.

...maybe he saw William Dhalgren!

And I don't think he even had the beard yet back then?

Consider:

http://www-as.phy.ohiou.edu/FORUM/s98/images/delany1.jpg

i guess it says more about my reading of the book / mental image of delany that i just assumed it was meant to be him in that scene ...

blurb cribbed from the back page, beneath the fantastic heading "The Last Story in the Annals of The Human Race!"

"a world of the remote future. the scoiety is very rich, very decadent, and the population is small. the story centers on the schemes and conflicts of a group of bizarre men and women - The Duke of Queens, Lord Jagged of Canaria, the bitter giant Mongrove, My Lady Charlotina of Below-the-Lake, Mistress Christia (the everlasting concubine) and the Iron Orchid, mother of the central character, Jherek Carnelian.

when Jherek meets Ms Amelia Underwood, a lady time-traveler from 1896, he determines to possess her and finds himself being plunged backwards in time to Victorian London...

An Alien Heat is set in a world of crazy, jeweled cities with ripe rotting technologies. it is an example of teh mighty imagination of michael moorcock at its most magnificent"

...

i LOVE these novels, particularly the first. i'm rereading them from the beginning because i just recently found the third volume, "the end of all songs", after reading the first two about ten years ago, and spending all the intervening time in suspense about what happens.

combines the best parts of elric (wildly overstuffed, fantastical, absolutely purple characters and creatures and magics) with the best parts of the cornelius novels (zinging social critique, madcap situations, speeded-up narrative) without the depressing cynicism of either. these novels are genuinely funny and - a word i use so rarely - even sweet! they make me happy to be a reader!

just finished bishop's 'the etched city', which had some good bits and some bad bits and lots of "oh i have so lost patience with this kind of thing" bits, particularly in descriptions of the city, which i doubt are bishop's fault, although they might be. spoilers to follow. (god i hate that word.)

i think i might have lost the patience for the 'subcreation' bit in fantasy novels: i mean, i don't CARE what kind of names for deserts you can think up..

the entry of magic into a world where it hadn't been was an interesting strand (and uh probably relevant to stuff i am thinking about with my novel, god help me). but it made the whole creating-a-world bit seem rather excessive, considering the world created was in terms of what can go on, magic-wise, sort of identical to ours. (if-i-remember-correctly plisskin on the other thread suggested the changing of the world is sort of metafiction. which sort of makes sense.) and the mental states of the two lead characters (one a total cynic, one morally worn down and incapable of wonder, i guess) seemed to force me into a kind of detached stance of my own in reading the whole thing, which i'm not sure how i feel about. i will read her next novel unless it is about stuff going on in one of the other deserts or something, in which case i won't.

now i am reading harry fucking potter.

Yeah, enjoyed the Rothfuss and Lynch series but have zero expectations of ever getting the final book from either of them.

Where would you start with Tad Williams? As it was implied in the other thread he was a precursor to GRRM rather than just another Tolkien clone

I tried reading Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower recently, but unfortunately found it completely undreadable

If Duncton Wood counts, I'd probably add REDWALL and THE DARK PORTAL to the list

Also curious about Tad Williams

ive only read Memory, Sorrow & Thorn and not sure I'd recommend that ahead of starting robin hobb's farseer trilogy for a series of that type tbph

melenkurion abatha lads

A decent standalone Tad Williams is The War of the Flowers if you just want to get a sense of the writing style. It's not high fantasy, more of a portal. It's not as good as Memory, Sorrow and Thorn but also it's nowhere as near slow to get going

More good standalones: Patricia A. McKillip's Winter Rose, Naomi Novik's Uprooted, both have teen heroines, managing in deep woods-farm-village-outpost-ov-empire, then disturbing male traveler appears. There must be journeys, changes, challenges, rich imagery and energy.

Yeah The Dragonbone Chair (first Tad Williams MST book) really does take forever to get going, with an absolutely astonishing amount of mopey internal monologues - though then it becomes quite zippy and action-packed. It’s like Robert Jordan in reverse order.

i thought there was a Broken Earth Series thread. there should be. i loved those books. some day i'm gonna read them again. i feel like everything else she does is going to suffer by comparison. i tried to read the Inheritance Trilogy and only got through one book. it was okay but i missed the Broken Earth. i could have lived in that world for ten books.

every time you guys mention Robert Jordan i think back to when i used to read that thread for fun knowing i would never read the books. it was very entertaining. this feeling that people liked something so much that also kinda drove them crazy.

wait, did people here read the Jemisin books? i would start a thread but its been so long since i read them.

started the war of the flowers last night. it's fine but a) not sure i need sad-sack post-breakup unemployed vaguely alcoholic dudes with dead parents in my fantasy right now, and b) not sure i can take 700 pages of tinkerbell's brogue

yeah the broken earth series was great. didn't like jemisin's new york city one that much but damn she really hates staten island

yeah i didn't want to read the city one. that seemed like a mieville kinda thing.

this guy says brandon sanderson is the top of the gloomy mountain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z95GJbromsI

oohhhh mookieproof you are reading the absolute best of the genre imo, what an utterly amazing list. If you run out of things to do, I recommend going with the GGKay "Tigana" next, that one will never leave me.

Second all the Naomi Novik recs but espesh Uprooted and Spinning Silver.

McKillip: The next move here is The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. All the other fairy tale one-offs are varying degrees of fine to good but they are not TFBoE.

oh no: i thought the first three apprentice adept (anthony) books were fine
looooooool

L'Engle: Do the traditional A Wrinkle in Time / A Wind in the Door / A Swiftly Tilting Planet. They won't take long and they'll reward you with truths that will form kernels inside you and stay there forever. I know it sounds painful and it's not entirely comfortable tbh but MLE gave me the cosmos.

Broken Earth really left me confused and cold, Idk. I loved everything Jemisin up until then. Maybe I've gotten too unfamiliar with weirdness. I should spend this winter getting much, much weirder.

I'll second Tigana. It's one of my all-time favourite fantasy novels

Patricia McKillip is a pretty astounding writer, she just has this effortless, poetic style, and Winter Rose is a great one for sure. I just bought a book which compiled her Riddle Master trilogy too.

https://icollectible.thriftbooks.com/cimage/1235929318/1.jpg

kirstein (the steerswoman) (trilogy, I think?)

I read these. They're good. Really great in parts about their analysis of the world and of people, and having a certain kind of perspective on both. I don't want to give things away but there's a particular plot arc that these kind of take which isn't my favorite but it's common in works of a certain era. I was actually in the middle of re-reading the whole trilogy(?) but they had just gotten mentioned somewhere and the hold wait time was insane.

i read tigana last year! and yes it was great -- the curse was a simple but exquisite touch

oh i've read all the early l'engles -- first three time ('trilogy') books, the austins, the ones that are kind of in-between like 'the young unicorns' and 'arm of the starfish'. also saw her speak when i was in college and it was very moving even though i am not religious

the local auction house here sold l'engle's library at auction a while back and you could buy a shelf full of her book collection for peanuts. they sold everything in lots. also tons of different editions of her own books obviously.

so wait i meant to ask on here on that video i posted the number one series was by brandon sanderson and he is not mentioned on this thread at all. is that series all that or what?

I watched that video, Scott, and I hadn't heard of half of those books? I took a recommendation from the list and am reading a certain trilogy and it's just another A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES analog where people have sex with non-human beings and save the world with/from magic.

Sanderson is fine, I think? I've read a bunch but I honestly forget what a lot of it was about. My bigger problem with him is that he's a Mormon tbh.

MORMON FANTASY. hmmmmm...okay.

i'm still gonna seek out those mole books.

Sean Russell swans’ war series is excellent. River-centric high fantasy. I think he may have stopped writing but these deserved to be a big hit.

If you want an early 80s gem with the usual trappings elves wizards etc, but taking inspiration from wind and the willows and dickens rather than Tolkien, The Elfin Ship by James P Blaylock. There’s two sequels that aren’t quite as good (he quickly moved on to writing several masterpieces of Southern California magic realism through the 80s and early 90s but is today pigeonholed as the “godfather of steampunk” based on the admittedly wonderful Homunculus and its sequels)

I’ve been too depressed to list for several months now but somehow this thread has coaxed words out of me

*post, not list

nice to see you here!

like the olden tymes of yore.

Hi Scott <3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncton_Wood

imagine tryin to convince someone how much these books will wreck you

they out of print? trying to find new copies don't see any...

Following ilx discussion of Alan Garner a while back, I just now finished reading The Owl Service for the second time in the past week, which never happens---second time was much quicker, though mainly because the whole thing was still lodged, incl. what I couldn't quite remember or forget, to near-quote one character on another, sympathetically and not: that's just how it is these days, in the book and out, to some extent---but mainly, I knew and kinda knew, with a squint sometimes, what had happened, was happening still, is happening still, anywhere and anytime I open the book, the real and modern and fantasy and ancient, recurring and mixing---I found that I did understand it/take it in (incl. class and English and Welsh and gender and generational and generative and other identity markers, clashes, proximities) a bit better for having read it the first time, also recognizing again and moreso the questions that will never be answered: my struggles somewhat mirroring/aping those of the characters, although they have it worse, or most of them do.
Enjoyed the author's afterword as well (btw, he mentions the TV adaptation, filmed in the valley of his inspiration---any of you watched it?), reminding me of enjoying Lethem's afterword to We Have Always Lived In The Castle, another rec if you want to take it as fantasy, personal mythology.

TV version seemed underwhelming to me, they didn't capture the atmosphere of the book very well and the casting was odd.

There's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elidor#Television_adaptation
And this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Shift_(novel)#Television_adaptation_and_popular_culture

neither of which I've seen. Elidor quite infamous in the UK for scaring the shit out of any kids that did see it though, in true British style.

Plus these, although The Moon of Gomrath doesn't seem to have been adapted at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weirdstone_of_Brisingamen#Adaptations

is the owl service the one that takes a lot from the Mabinogion? that keeps cropping up here and there to the point where i feel i should read it.

(yes - The Owl Service interprets a story from the Welsh Mabinogion, namely, portions of the story of "Math Son of Mathonwy.")

strangely, published in the US as "Maths son of Mathsonwy"