"Maybe your standards are too high!" That's what, with some reluctance, I have had to tell myself. I am too picky when it comes to SF/Fantasy novels - so picky that I can no longer find any I want to read.
Let's change that. I have asked for recommendations before, but here I will do so again. Recommend me a book and sell it to me. I may even review some of the recommendations made here on the blog, something which I have kept meaning to do for some time. I won't limit what recommendations I might receive by stipulating any restrictions.
[Also: I have bought a new computer, my first foray into Mac ownership. I like it, but for some reason when I post comments on the blog with my Google account via Safari they just don't appear. I have no idea why this is. I will reply to yesterday's comments on my work PC; if anyone knows of a solution to this issue, please let me know what it is.]
Well, there are obvious "big names". Zelazny's Lord of Light surely requires no introduction, but it's Hindu scripture-style fantasy enabled by futuristic high technology written in a largely fantastical but occasionally more down to earth style. It is better than Chronicles of Amber by a long shot. It does not infodump in the way you complained about recently.
ReplyDeleteTanith Lee is another big name(?), but since I find her stuff so hit-or-miss that the good stuff might be hard to find I'll recommend her Night's Master, Death's Master etc series which are largely sets of sometimes connected short stories written in a style reminiscent of Arabian Nights, very fairy-tale.
You've read Jack Vance, I think. I've read everything he ever wrote and I liked all of it.
Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama recaptures a lot of the feel you associate with the Monolith from 2001.
Obviously listing all the luminaries would take all day. Ursula Le Guin Fritz Leiber etc I'm sure you've heard of most of the above.
Some lesser known stuff includes When Gravity Fails, a cyberpunk novel set in an Arabic slum in a world in which the western countries are in decline while Muslim countries prosper, and manages to avoid or successfully play the associated stereotypes while IIRC making wry references to books like Nero Wolfe. That reminds me of the Yiddish Policeman's Union, which is an alternate history so it depends on your definition of SF, but is also a detective story set in a Jewish refuge established in Alaska. Both are nice for the standard tropes being put to use in a different cultural backdrop from what's common.
Lucius Shepherd's the Dragon Griaule stories concern the people living near a mountain-sized dragon paralysed by a spell long ago, but not quite dead, which now exerts an indefinable malignancy on the surrounding country (which IIRC is semi-modern). In the first story, a man turns up and offers to slay the dragon by painting it.
Enough to be getting onward, I suppose. Now: once we've done our part, are you going to return the favour, and post a list of book recommendations?
The Dragon Griaule ones sound good!
DeleteAnd yes, probably I will do that.
Lord of Light is simply not to be missed.
DeleteOnly one series need be read
ReplyDeleteMorigu
It's D&D with more rage and death.
I had never heard of that. I will definitely be making a purchase.
DeleteI don't think I've ever seen you mention R.A. Lafferty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._A._Lafferty
ReplyDeleteMany of his books are not easy to find, but I think he's right up your alley in a lot of ways. Great and original prose stylist, never cliched. Imagine Borges, Flann O'Brien and Gene Wolfe mixed together? I guess that's as close as I can get to describing him. He wrote a bunch of short stories, but I've found his novels to be completely amazing.
Interesting character too. Lifelong bachelor in Oklahoma. Impossibly well read. Rock-ribbed conservative, devout Catholic, but fascinating to people on both sides of the political/religious spectrum.
Here's Gene Wolfe's take on Lafferty:
"No true reader who has read as much as a single story by Raphael Aloysius Lafferty needs to be told that he is our most original writer. In fact, he may be not just ours, but the most original in the history of literature."
. . .
"Lafferty sees what we do not see, and because we do not see it, we frequently think that it does not exist. The words every writer dreads most are "I didn't understand." And every writer of any merit at all must hear them often. It is impossible to write intelligently about anything even marginally worth writing about, without writing too obscurely for a great many readers, and particularly for those who refuse as a matter of principle to read with care and to consider what they have read..."
"Think then of the wall of incomprehension a writer such as Lafferty faces, a wall as blank, as ugly, and as unyielding as concrete. Small wonder that he labors at times to shut an eye. Less wonder, even, that too often only small presses like this one will publish him when he has refused."
http://antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.com/2011/10/its-great-to-be-young-and-in-danger.html
Read the whole thing on this blog (not mine).
Great - will check him out.
DeleteI have a few recommendations, with the usual stipulations that you might have heard of many/most of these.
ReplyDeleteIf you're feeling too picky on Middle Ages inspired fantasy, why not try The Waning of the Middle Ages by Johan Huizinga. One of my favorite books, and although it is non-fiction it sparks the imagination like good fiction by showing a truly alien world.
Ancillary Justice
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
The Dresden Files (this series is trash, but it's my guilty pleasure. If you want to lower your standards this is a good one)
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The Iliad if you haven't re-read recently.
Praise of Folly by Erasmus (Another non-SF/Fantasy, but highly recommended)
Hmm, Ancillary Justice definitely intrigues me, as does The Waning of the Middle Ages.
DeleteThe Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch? Definitely one of my favourites. I assume you've read Perdido Street Station? Jack Glass--or really anything by Adam Roberts. Good Luck.
ReplyDeleteI like Adam Roberts - read quite a few of his. China Mieville I can take or leave. I went through a period of liking his stuff a lot but his characters really start to grate on me after a while.
DeleteThe Black Company series by Glenn Cook, I've only read the first trilogy (The books of the north) so I can't speak to the rest of the series yet, but I can say the first three are very entertaining. It follows a mercenary company in a fairly grim fantasy world, inspired in part by the author's time in the navy during Vietnam and the experiences of others during the conflict. I've heard it described as "Lord of the rings from the orc's point of view" and while that isn't a perfect description, it gets you some of the way there. The authors no frills writing style compliments the story he's telling quite well.
ReplyDeleteA bit better known is The Taltos series by Steven Brust. It starts as a kind of fantasy noir and kind of grows into a science fantasy series. The quality varies from story to story for me, but all of them are fairly short books that can easily be finished in an afternoon each. The Phoenix Guard series, same author and setting are a bit different. Written as pastiches of Dumas' Three musketeer series t compiles the overwritten style of the books in a somewhat humorous way, or at least I found them pretty fun. I guess it depends on how much you like Alexandre Dumas.
I have just been reading a book which actually talks about Steven Brust quite a bit.
DeleteHe's particularly good at avoiding long expository text, instead letting the story show you what the world is.
DeleteFor short stories I like:
ReplyDelete-The White People by Machen, a wonderful fever dream of a story. Reads like a bit of a fae Lovecraft knock-off but was written before Lovecraft. Just have to plow through the dry as dirt framing device to get to the good stuff. Shame everything else that author wrote sucks.
-The King in Yellow stories by Chambers, especially the Repairer of Reputations. Another big influence on Lovecraft. Very uneven quality but I love the Repairer of Reputations for the wonderfully unreliable narration.
-Most anything by Clark Ashton Smith. Big influence on Vance. Incredible wordsmith but cranked out stories REALLY fast to support his dying parents so some of the stories are a bit half-assed. The Weaver in the Vault is the earliest story I've read that reads like a D&D dungeon crawl. One thing I like about his stories is that with Lovecraft you know the protagonist is fucked and with Howard you know they're going to be fine but with Smith it's a coin toss so you're actually surprised when someone manages to escape the eldritch terrors after the last story that you read ended messily.
I have read most of those - I love The White People. There are some other great Machen novellas out there. "A Fragment of Life" is a amazing.
DeleteI would second the recommendation above for Ancillary Justice. It's a far-future space opera written from the POV of a sentient spaceship with dozens of remote-controlled human bodies.
ReplyDeleteShiva 3000 is a good pulpy science fantasy that draws heavily on Hindu mythology. It's very D&D. I guess you might have come across that one already.
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell is great. One of the few cases of a literary author trying his hand at fantastic fiction and actually succeeding. If you are picky about prose you won't go wrong with Mitchell.
I have not come across Shiva 3000. "It's very D&D" sounds good to me.
DeleteYoon Ha Lee's The Ninefox Gambit has fascinating concepts and a super tight military sci-fi story that drops you into the world and doesn't get bogged down in technical minutiae you've heard about a million times over. Also the first book in a trilogy.
ReplyDeleteWill check it out.
DeleteThe Throne of Bones by Brian McNaughton. Nobody does ghouls like him. I wish he had written more fantasy.
ReplyDeleteTales of Telguuth by Steve Moore (the short story book not the comic, though the comic is great too), if you like your fantasy decadent & baroque:
To the perplexity of the astromancers gathered thereabouts, no explanation could be offered for the sudden fulguration that splintered a cloudless nocturnal sky above the ancient city of marmoreal, melancholic Bok; still less was it apparent why the lightning should have struck what appeared to be nothing more than an antique basalt slab cemented to a courtyard wall within the palace grounds.”
"Astromancer". Nice.
DeleteThe Burning Isle by Will Panzo. Newish book. Dark and well written.
ReplyDeleteSounds good. I just searched for it on Goodreads and the second result after that one was for a book called "Isle of Fire: The Political Ecology of Landscape Burning in Madagascar". Now there's a book title for you.
DeleteHyperion, by Dan Simmons
ReplyDeleteI always find Dan Simmons a tough read. I think "Carrion Comfort" sort of turned me off him because it was just too OTT. Like when you drink too much of a certain alcoholic drink when you're 15 and can never touch it again.
Delete"The Terror" was great - the one where they climb Everest is best avoided. The ending made me drop the book in disgust.
DeleteHyperion is more accessible than some of his other work, which could be down to the book's Chauceresque structure. I thought the story flowed nicely, with some good characterisation.
DeleteSimmon's politics are bullshit, and effect his later writing. I did LOL at your reaction and totally get what what you mean. :)
I have heard good things about "The Terror" but something about its size just makes me think "Ugh, Carrion Comfort but set on a ship in the middle of the Arctic" and I get the heebie jeebies.
DeleteI enthusiastically second the recommendation of Lies of Locke Lamora. It does a fair bit of exposition, but I think quite skillfully (in the Tolkein vein), and I generally agree with you about disliking it when done poorly. It's one of the most tightly plotted and perfectly paced novels I've ever read -- at a certain point things just keep piling upon one another and the stakes just keep getting higher and higher, and then it gets worse. The sequels are fun but not nearly as exquisitely done. And the prose is really lovely too!
ReplyDeleteEveryone raves about it - I expect I will read it sooner or later!
DeleteConsidering your appreciation of Japanese stuff: I'd say read the Legend of the Galactic Heroes books if you haven't already. It's a great space opera series.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I don't know much about straight Japanese SF novels. I will see if I can track them down - might be a good project to keep my Japanese fresh.
DeleteThe 100+ episode OVA is also very well done if you'd prefer a more audiovisual experience
DeleteA few recommendations...First, your SFF selection (I'll second the Hyperion recommendation, the best thing Simmons has written):
ReplyDelete*Three Lions and Three Hearts by Poul Anderson - you've almost certainly read this, but I just finished it and get the impression it's badly underrated. Very, very good, as well as being an Appendix N entry.
*This Is The Way The World Ends by James Morrow - Apocalyptic future fiction BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT. Quirky, heartfelt, wonderfully humane. Reminds me of a Dylan Thomas' beautiful prose summary of In Country Heaven, the unfinished poem that might have been his masterpiece had he lived.
*Legend by David Gemmell - Not high art, or not apparently. I'd find it hard to explain to your average SFF literati why this is my third favourite SFF book/series after LotR and Narnia, because it's written in a functional style, is avowedly about men and msaculinity/ies, and explores precisely zero high concepts. But what I can say: I've read it 4 times and I've cried every time, and I realized last year when rereading it again how deeply Gemmell, and especially this book, have informed my morality. It's that kind of book.
*Hammer's Slammers by David Drake - Military sci-fi, resonant of but utterly different to Haldeman and Wolfe. Convincing, horrifying, sympathetic - a genuinely compelling view of both the savagery and the glory man finds in war.
And a ragbag of others:
*Gilead by Marilynne Robinson - Just excellent fiction, psychologically convincing and moving.
*Planet Narnia by Michael Ward - Genuinely excellent literary detective work. Probably the only such literary theory I have ever been 100% convinced by - that is to say, it became entirely clear to me after reading this that this really was what was going through Lewis' head when writing Narnia - this isn't a "convincing theory", this is just definitely what happened. And it's frankly awe-inspiring.
*In Parenthesis by David Jones - Lengthy prose-poem, mixing English legend with Jones' experience in the trenches in WW1. Excellent capture of voice and atmosphere, and so beautiful in long stretches it's a marvel it's not better known.
I actually have Planet Narnia on order in exchange for doing a book review for OUP over 18 months ago and they still haven't sent it to me.
DeleteThere are only a handful of books I can imagine you might not already know about:
ReplyDeleteThe Passage" by Justin Cronin. Apocalyptic, humanity tries to rebuild after monsters sweep the earth kind of thing. Apparently there is a sequel but I never read it and don't care, I like the ending just how it is.
"The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova. First vampire story since I read dracula as a laddie that I actually found scary at times! Avoids all the cliches of the genre that make "the V-word" so abhorrent in recent years. I promise! My buddy who never gave back my copy: "Fucking Unputdownable."
"Doomsday Book" by Connie Willis. Time traveler goes back to study the black plague and gets stuck there! Not a cheerful read but really intense.
I have got "The Historian" somewhere - picked it up at a library sale about 10 years ago.
DeleteHard to find it, but Recollections of things to come, by Elena Garro, is simply the best (and first) Magic Realism book ever written. A decade before García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (which is regarded as the prime example of the genre, but which is actually a plagiarisation of Elena's book).
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteR Scott Bakker, he’s a cut above any modern fantasy writer - and I’ve come across a few people who think the same.
ReplyDeleteI dunno - I have picked up a couple of his books to read and something about the writing style I find intensely dislikeable. I can't put my finger on what it is.
DeleteTill we Have Faces - CS Lewis rewrites the myth of Psyche in a barbarian kingdom on the periphery of the ancient world.
ReplyDelete[I leant out my own copy of Planet Narnia a while ago - but it was fairly convincing and at any rate very interesting.]
The Stress of Her Regard - Tim Powers; the intersection of the history of Shelley, Keats and the other Romantics with vampire-like entities. Historically grounded stuff with rigorous systems for its alien entities. See Declare for the Cold War equivalent.
Children of Men, PD James - get the film out of your head. A different beast altogether; more focussed on slow decline, the dangers of utilitarianism and a waning England.
The Vorrh, Brian Catling - there is a vast forest, somewhere between the Congo and Coptic Ethiopia. The forest is said to contain the Garden of Eden. It is 1920.
Helena, Evelyn Waugh - barely SF, I'm afraid. Waugh tries his hand at historical fiction - to whit, the life of St Helena and the discovery of the True Cross. The 1930s schoolgirl slang makes it quite a ride. Fairly short anyway.
Company of Liars by Karen Maitland
ReplyDeleteit's fantasy realism set during the black plague, and I wasn't sure I would like it so I read the first few pages and the next thing I knew I was 60 pages in and my legs were hurting from standing in the bookstore aisle, I bought it and have given it away as a gift three times now
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteReposting with edits
ReplyDeleteLate to the party, but let me enthusiastically recommend everything by Naomi Novik. She has a whole series (the "Temeraire" books) that boils down to "What if the Napoleonic Wars, but with dragons?", and from the very beginning it's surprisingly compelling and well-researched.
If alternate fantasy history isn't your thing, though, she's also more recently produced Uprooted and Spinning Silver, each of which is a standalone story with excellent character-work and an interesting fairy-tale-inspired pastiche. I'd say each of these books is a masterclass in plotting and stakes-raising as well.
The one-sentence summaries:
Uprooted: A village girl is taken as an assistant by the local wizard and finds herself caught up in both human conflicts and an age-old war against the local malevolent forest.
Spinning Silver: A moneylender's daughter, a nobleman's daughter, and a peasant farmer's daughter find themselves caught up in the troubles caused by ice-elves and human kings.
These were the first stories I've found in a long time where it could literally be 3am and I'd still have difficulty forcing myself to close the book and go to bed. Highly recommended.
The Safehold series by David Webber.
ReplyDeleteAn egotistical expedition leader leader brainwashes colonists into worshiping him and his inner circle. Centuries later an android with the consciousness of one to the original colonists awakens to destroy this false idol and return history and progress to humanity.