I read a lot of fantasy when I was younger but gradually fell out of love with the genre. It started to feel really trope heavy and I got tired of everything feeling like it needed to be a 3-5+ novel epic series that was so enamored with its own world-building it felt more like a history lesson. Perhaps my choices on reading material were to blame, but still. I moved onto sci-fi and fiction for a good while.
I’ve been trying to rekindle my passion for it with one off “weird” fiction. Standalone stories that are just interested in doing weird stuff, whatever that may entail. It’s not well-defined and if anyone has any recommendations I’d be happy to hear them but so far some of my best discovies,
- The West Passage, Jared Pechaček. A palace the size of a city ruled over by giant, eldritch ladies and mired in ancient bureaucracies is threatened by a forgotten prophecy. I like it because it doesn’t overexplain its world, it just throws a bunch of interesting events and scenery at you while gesturing at the architecture of the world that holds it up, leading you to speculate on the mystery of it all.
- The Starving Saints, Caitlin Starling. Claustrophobic, horrifying, vaguely sapphic. It follows the storylines of a knight, a nun, and a peasant girl trapped in a castle under siege. As supplies diminish and things are looking grim, their saints miraculously appear to save them but not all is at it appears etc. etc. Just a good read, I liked this one a lot
- Currently reading: Mad Sisters of Esi, Tashan Mehta. This one got off to a bit of an uneven start but it’s an interesting mashup of myth and sci-fi where the universe is referred to as the black sea, planets are islands, and spaceship may be literally ships with sails. Not done with it yet, but enjoying it as it has strong characters and a good emotional core.
I’m currently reading Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett … fantasy, but not like any other.
It’s a nice palette clenser in between all the lesbian smut I usually read :-)
I’m up to “Thud!” and getting a bit sad I’m almost at the end of the series.
Terry Pratchett is a classic of course. I was making my way through publication order, but can’t remember where I stopped at this point.
As for the lesbian smut, definitely give The Starving Saints a look. Not spicy, but more the painful aching, if that’s your thing.
When you say painful aching … do you mean “lustful longing” or “having trouble sitting down without wincing”?
Check out the Bas-Lag novels by China Miéville. Lots of strange and interesting creatures and cultures in those books. Each of them is standalone but they take place in the same world.
Oh yes! I’ve read Perdido Street Station and The Scar and greatly enjoyed them. I should get back to checking out more of his stuff, I know Iron Council is also in that setting but I’m not sure of much else. I tried Un Lun Dun back in the day and while it was fun, it was a little too YA for me.
I’ve been on a scifi binge. MurderBot on audio is worth your time. After Atlas was quite good, stands out from the rest. Timothy Zahn’s Icarus series was fun.
As for fantasy it’s been a slog. We need better search parameters. It took the book people forever to separate scifi and fantasy, but there’s still work to do. Paranormal romance is there for some reason and clutters up Libby’s ability to search. That, and it feels like there’s a glut of books involving either the fae or dragons right now, and little else, not unlike the vampire thing 2 decades ago.
The Expanse by James S.A Corey is also worth your time. Currently reading The Faith of Beasts by the same author, part 2 of The Captive’s War. Enjoying it so far.
I’ve read the expanse twice, it’s always on the lists so I didn’t bother mentioning it. Not so keen on the last book, but that’s a tough landing.
Favourites include Lord of the Rings, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey & Maturin series, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy.
Currently reading Bleak House.
A.glass of wine with you Sir!
Favourites include Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series, Ursula K Le Guin’s Hainish cycle.
Currently reading Le Guins Dispossessed.
I always came down on the Hornblower side. Have you read that series? How do they compare?
Hornblower is OK. I enjoy some of it but O’Brian has a knack for humour and tragedy thats mostly absent in the Hornblower series.
My favorite are the Kushiel trilogy, anything by Ian McDonald, almost anything by Adrian Tchaikovsky or Michael Carey. Though it’s difficult to pick.
Currently reading The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers.
Right now I’m reading Neocolonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah. It’s a really good expansion of Lenin’s work on Imperialism as a stage in capitalism. Nkrumah was coup’d one year after its publishing with support from the US.
As for favorites, I really love both Piranesi and Roadside Picnic! The former is just a really fun mystery with a good deal of whimsy, the latter is excellent sci-fi.
I do read new stuff, on occasion, but at the moment they are one and the same: the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I just picked it back up and I already noticed something new. At Bilbo’s 111th birthday party, Tolkien describes the dragon firework as passing “like an express train”, which struck me as an odd turn of phrase that I’d never noticed before.
I don’t read books much anymore. Combo of internet and my close vision getting worse. I like piers anthony a lot as a general story teller and wheel of time although I only read the books jordan wrote and did not finish off the series. Honestly though there are tons of authors with great books.
It’s funny that you mention Wheel of Time because I’m on the Sanderson books now and I feel like everyone’s personality changed due to his different writing style.
At first I didn’t think Robert Jordan was a particularly masterful writer (at least not like Tolkien), but by now I have an appreciation for how each of his characters has a different personality which came through clearly in not only the dialogue and the character’s actions but also the narration depending on whose perspective the chapter is told from.
But Sanderson though, it’s like whoever the chapter’s POV is from, it’s all narrated in the same writing style. It loses a lot of depth and just feels kinda flat.
The dialogue is more bland too, and suddenly everyone seems just mildly autistic. It doesn’t feel organic. And all their personalities are the same now. Like there’s not much distinguishing one person from another anymore.
I’m still gonna finish the series now because I’m emotionally invested in it and want to see how the story concludes. There are a lot of plot arcs that really started to come together in Book 11 to set the stage for Tarmon Gai’don. I can’t just put the series down. But my imagination needs to do a lot more work to keep the characters true to themselves.
There are still some chapters that I feel like Robert Jordan wrote before he died. Where suddenly the characters come to life again and the narration is told with more depth. Hopefully that lasts, cause those chapters are still nice.
But also, he left detailed notes of how to finish the story, and Sanderson interviewed his friends and family to better understand his intentions. So at least the plotlines will conclude true to the original author’s vision.
And then there’s the prequel which I’m looking forward to. That one was written by Jordan.
My favorite series is Dungeon Crawler Carl . Its so good. I have ALL of the physical books, the audio books (Jeff Hays is hilarious with his takes on the different characters).
My favorite book soap is The Wandering Inn . Its a free web serial and I find it VERY good. But it can have some lulls. I call it a “book soap” because if its size . I am a prolific reader and it took me YEARS to get though around 50% of the series. I have the ebooks, audio-books, and have enjoyed my forever book. The payoff is SO good. Tears of Liscor broke me. I had to take time off of reading for a while due to what felt like a bit of trauma.
When I was a kid, I loved the ring of fire series ( 1632 and such). I dont enjoy it as much, but the older books in the series I still enjoy re-reading from time to time.
currently listening to the 4th book in the children of time series
i love these books
Roger Zelazny is one of my favorite authors. Roadmarks and A Night in the Lonesome October are probaby my favorites from him.
I just finished the most recent Dungeon Crawler Carl, which was fun. And I’m currently working on This Way Up.
The Trial - Franz Kafka The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood Fight Club - Chuck Palahnuik Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Fight Club, yes!!
How do you rate Blood Meridian against The Road? The Road is easily in my top 5, but could not get into other McCarthy books. I might give Blood Meridian a try.
The Border Trilogy is fantastic. The first two books are about young men discovering themselves in the west. Book three is a nice coda, bringing them together and closing some threads. Not nearly as violent or bloody as The Road or Blood Meridian.
No Country for Old Men is also fantastic. The movie was very faithful, the book is better but in a different way
Currently reading Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser
The thesis of the book is basically that environmental pollution, particularly lead, might be the thing that caused so many serial killers to pop up during the period of the late '60s to the late '70s. Only half way through it so far, and not quite convinced by the theory yet. Although it’s indisputable that such pollution can damage brains to a severe degree, I’m just not sure how you get from “damaged” to “I’d better serial kill some women”. Random violence and anger management issues, sure. But the highly specific and MO-driven criminality of serials killers seems like something else entirely. We’ll see what evidence comes in later chapters!
Favorites in fiction I keep turning back to: old Murakami (anything before 1Q84), and Kafka.
Currently reading Careless People. Not too impressed (yet?)
Too bad you aren’t liking carless people, I really like learning how crazy the muckity mucks were at FB.
Not far yet, writing on the wall but not yet full-on. Sheryl is starting to show her ugly side… :)
I don’t think I have a favourite. I have some that I liked enough as to read them more than once: The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarilion, some of the Culture novels.
Then there are long series that I enjoyed quite a bit: Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome, JJ Benitez’s Caballo de Troya series (if you ignore the author’s insistence in that everything in the book is real and you take it as an adventures book or science fiction it is actually enjoyable), I’m liking so far McBride’s detective Logan McRae series.
And I’m about to begin Mikel Santiago’s La Chica del Lago
