fantasy novels.

Blurb for this edition:

In his earlier novels, The Weirdstone of Brisingstone, The Moon of Gomroth and Elidor, Garner used the sucesssful formula of the spilling of the twilight world of ancient legend into the present day. Here he uses the formula again, with an added depth, and even more compulsive terror-haunted beauty.

i pulled the trigger on the first three mole books. etsy was the only place i could find a good deal for the first three books! someone should really reissue them.

enjoy

they are pretty dense, iirc, you wont blitz through them too quickly

What other Garner should I read? All of it?

Yes, there's only nine novels (ten if you include The Stone Book Quartet which is four interlinked stories) and none of them are long. Plus what I've read of the short fiction is equally good. Haven't read anything from the 'Other Books' section from the link below, I'm guessing they're mostly for younger readers? Plus Where Shall We Run To? is a memoir.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner#Works

Thanks! Am I ready for Red Shift---?

Emma Donoghue recalls reading Red Shift as a teenager: "It looked like other Garners I had read: a children's fantasy. But Red Shift, with its passionately bickering adolescent lovers and vertiginous plunges through the wormhole of time, shook me to my core every time I read it, and still does... Garner makes the past numinous, terrifyingly real: anything but passed."[42]

Finished Red Shift six months ago and still have it on my desk because I'm convinced I'm going to solve the cipher.

i pulled the trigger on the first three mole books. etsy was the only place i could find a good deal for the first three books! someone should really reissue them.

― scott seward, Saturday, 5 October 2024 23:03 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

enjoy

they are pretty dense, iirc, you wont blitz through them too quickly

― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Saturday, 5 October 2024 23:12 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

can scott do a mole book reax thread where he shares his trauma and everyone who read them earlier relives their own trauma

Stroke it Mole

you guys are scaring me!

looking forward though.

W-what are the---mole books---?

one who must ask has not yet achieved stoneness

(duncton books, William horwood)

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

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Wednesday, September 18, 2024 5:57 PM (three weeks ago)

It's planned as 7 books and she has written 4. There hasn't been a new book in two decades and her next book is not in that series.

i dont want to come across as harsh but that should be prison time tbh

I was discussing the other day that this sort of thing isn't uncommon at all. There's tons of writers who've had an ending for their series in their heads for decades but demanding day jobs, right issues, depression, illness, other book series and many other things get in the way. If anyone should be punished it should be editors who keep asking for trilogies, quartets or more and don't allow the writer to complete them if the early books sell poorly.

otm

i said what i said

That's a lot of dead people in jail.

I think it comes with the territory, if series epics are what you like to write then there's a very high probability that you won't finish them all, or even one of them.

It seems like there's quite a lot of writers who do series that consist of standalones and their fans don't know how many further books were intended. I just found out that Gormenghast was planned as at least 5 books.

can scott do a mole book reax thread where he shares his trauma and everyone who read them earlier relives their own trauma

― Tim F, Tuesday, 8 October 2024 02:15 (four weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink

genuinely seeking an update scott

i love those books fiercely but jesus christ they tore me to bits

haha, sorry, didn't see this. i'm reading those daniel woodrell books first and then it will be mole winter. i'm just in a groove with the woodrell stuff. inspiring to me. but i'll get in a mole hole before you know it!

you need not sound so enthusiastic we are only waiting for your devastation

i am still a little frightened...

yes. correct approach.

is The Black Company a fun read at all? I see mookieproof described it as “military porn” upthread and I think I could be down for some of that in a dark fantasy setting.

Someone here liked it. I read a bit of the first book and thought it was okay, but maybe it wasn’t quite my thing.

I tried it, having heard people rave about it, but it's a bit try-hard. Not terrible writing, but frequently unpleasant and with deus ex machina magic stuff that can do whatever the plot demands at the time. Didn't bother past the end of book 1.

ie it was mostly the opposite of fun

i would send someone to joe abercrombie instead, easier read if nothing else

ty all