We can talk about classy science/speculative fiction all day, but sometimes you just want dragons and helpful badgers.
What we’re looking to get, ideally, is a SPIRITED CONVERSATION about great fantasy novels, and also to have paragraph-length defenses of your favourites emailed to us (either of us, we talk to each other) so we can have a huge master post filled with glorious tales of talking trees and so on. Lurid cover art greatly preferred, etc.
We look forward to hearing from you. You won’t get paid for it, because if you could get paid for talking briefly about how much you like Anne McCaffrey, no one would be willing to teach grade school or make widgets.
Image via Flickr
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Tags: fantasy, novels, submissions call
Can we talk about Magical Realism, too?
No, I hate it.
GO AHEAD, it’s fine. It’s okay.
I JUST WANT TO TALK ABOUT JEREMY THATCHER, DRAGON HATCHER, like, all the time, ok?
I read a lot of fantasy as a pre-teen and I basically forget all of it! What should I re-read?
I know it makes me The Most Predictable…but Harry Potter changed my life and made it so much better for at least eight or ten years. I was at the exact right age for it, third grade when the third book came out, and the books meant so much to me. My best friend and I would play Hogwarts whenever she came over to my house, I was a witch for Halloween in fifth grade, I “made” my own wand, etc. I even learned basic HTML coding my own Harry Potter RPG site. Obviously I was the nerdiest and also the most stereotypical, and I don’t actually think the Harry Potter books are *better* than other fantasy, but that didn’t really matter at the time – I was obsessed.
I am wearing a Deathly Hallows bronze & leather bracelet right now. No shame. The only person who has recognized it at work so far today is my equally nerdy coworker and I clearly rose a couple points in her estimation.
TWINS
God, yes. So good. SO much info to organize… JKR is a stellar organizer, really. I was just looking through Pottermore, realized I’d never read The Tales of Beadle the Bard, and looked them up, then related too much to “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart” (bad break up recently) and ran away.
There’s a group of us who were right within age range when the early books came out and got to grow up with them, and I don’t think there will ever be anything else in my life that quite duplicates that experience.
Ugh, ummmmmmm I deserve the judgement coming my way for this, but: Piers Anthony’s Demons Don’t Dream from the Xanth series. It’s kind of good, sort of!
No judgement. I’ve just decided to add all of the romance I’ve read to Goodreads – it may break the server.
LYNN FLEWELLING Y’ALL. Rightful queens disguised as their dead twin with blood magic, gay elves, wizards getting their junk bitten by baby dragons, fierce redheads. So good.
Oh, and if no one has read either of N.K. Jemisin’s series, The Inheritance Trilogy or Dreamblood, you need to get on that.
SOLD.
I’m reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms right now!! I resent work for getting in the way of my reading enjoyment because that book!
UGH I LOVED THAT SERIES.
I _loved_ the Inheritance trilogy. I really liked Jemisin’s take on gods. And the sex scenes (which I often find icky) really worked for me. Also, this reminds me that I have the first of the Dreamblood books waiting on my shelves.
Flewelling sounds fun too.
Robin McKinley’s “The Hero’s Crown”, was my first, therefore holds a special place in my heart. Anne McCaffrey’s “The White Dragon” was another pivotal book, leading me to read all of the books by her, and all of her co-authors. The Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and the Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey definitely contributed to open mind regarding sex, sexuality, gender, etc. Also, Lackey’s “There is no one true way” theme became ingrained in my psyche. While I am atheist, Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series affected me very strongly. This article sums up my feelings on Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series….mmmm. Good story, good writing, hot, dirty sex. Yes, please. DUNE. Mind-blowing and boggling and melting. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice, of course. I loved how this broke my heart in the first few pages. LOVED IT. I hate that I’m going to have to read all the books for the 3rd (4th?) time, when the next one comes out, because there are entirely too many characters. Seriously unknown and underrated: Joan D. Vinge’s Snow Queen cycle.
I got a chance to read “The Princess and the Queen,” GRRM’s new novella coming out, and it is AWESOME and a nice little snack between the books. SO MANY DRAGONS.
1) These are just a fraction of the fantasy books I love, because I’m too lazy to rate more than my favorites in Goodreads, and therefore can’t remember.
2) Be my Goodreads friend: link here
3) I really wish links were formatted to show up more clearly in the comments.
Ahhh, are you me? The Hero’s Crown/The Blue Sword and the McCaffrey + MZB combo was my childhood. So great.
I wanted to go do Damar almost as much as I wanted to find the door to Narnia.
MZB was never my thing, but I grew up on The Hero and the Crown (and all the rest of McKinley, but that one most of all) and the earlier Pern books. The M shelf at the library is a great place to hang out.
Yeah, I have a soft spot for Lackey…I remember my mom nervously asking me when I was young what I thought about finding out my aunt was gay, because OMG we never talked about those taboo subjects. I was so confused and laughed in my answer, because why would it be a big deal? Thanks for the positive influence, Mercedes Lackey!
Love love love the Hyperion series! And Dune. Dune is basically the best.
The Blue Sword is the last ratty book stolen from my high school library I have on a shelf, anywhere. It has covers falling off, and I could quote the entire first page from memory for a while. This is not only because it is a nigh-perfect imperialist adventure through high desert country, with HORSES and CAMPING and then a big war where the girl saves the day and a secret Fallingwateresque palace-ette with a river running through it, but also, and this was key, that girl has a hunting cat. A large, black hunting cat. So key to teenage self.
Related: Amazonian archers, something like pony club trials but you could hit the other children.
I also remember the Hero and the Crown, by which I mean, still have The Hero and the Crown, but it was less perfect by a country mile, a story started somewhere after the beginning and put down somewhere not quite at the end.
1. I have read The Blue Sword at least once a year since I accidentally stole it from my fifth-grade classroom fifteen years ago.
2. The Snow Queen Cycle is CRIMINALLY underrated. It literally boggles my mind that she’s not right up there with Lackey & McCaffrey in these discussions, because that shit is AMAZING (also the Cat series, although that’s getting farther from the fantasy requirement).
I can prove my Vinge love with a trefoil tattoo.
That is magical and I love it.
The Hero and the Crown may be my favorite book of all time.
I love the Snow Queen cycle! I was so pleased when I found the fourth book (silly me, thought it was a trilogy) and got to fall back into that world. Did you ever read Janny Wurts’s Cycle of Fire trilogy? It isn’t as well executed as the Snow Queen, but for some reason that series always reminded me a little bit of Vinge’s blend of science fiction and fantasy.
WHAT! How did I not know that!??!! Thanks – going to search for it right now.
Damn, not out on Kindle. Will have to resort to dead tree format.
I will say the Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell made me realize that fantasy was a genre that I have not given enough attention to and that book has to be one of the most perfect books I’ve ever read. Can we discuss who would be our ideal casting for that adaption? Saw a preview for the movie About Time and realized that Domhnall Gleeson looks exactly how I pictured JS so that is my vote.
Most recently I read The Eyre Affair and loved it. Haven’t been able to get to the sequels yet but I’m hoping I’ll continue enjoying the series.
Is JS a ginger? I don’t remember that, but I haven’t read the book in a few years.
That book is very, very good. I think Jonathan Strange is Ewan McGregor. Not sure for Mr Norrell…
Ian Holm is Mr Norrell in my head.
JS & MN is one of my favorite books of all time, period. I figured it was too classy for this post though, it does not have most of the embarrassing trappings traditional to the genre.
I am unbearably impatient for the miniseries to happen, but I’m no good at fantasy casting.
I suppose that’s true. I could talk about JS&MN all day so I just read “fantasy novel” and “spirited conversation” and ignored everything else.
and @ Meetapossum I thought he was a ginger and I’m trying to pull up the book in my Kindle cloud to confirm but the search function is taking too long.
He definitely is! I also helpfully don’t know where the quote is, but it’s in there!
TILDA SWINTON FOR THE GENTLEMAN WITH THE THISTLEDOWN HAIR
the last unicorn! the last unicorn! the last unicorn! I am even willing to defend the movie. Mostly. The music is definitely dreadful.
I made an account just to say: I’M ALIIIIIIIIIIVE. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMlPviRRkJA
The music is the BEST don’t you dare.
I was JUST thinking about the Last Unicorn when I was walking home from work today!!!!!! THE MUSIC IS BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!! I own the soundtrack!
What? YOU’RE dreadful! America rocks my socks.
Mostly kidding though. I’m sure you’re a lovely person, questionable though your tastes in music may be.
Yes, I love The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle as well, such a classic fantasy novel and I love the movie too, but the book is better! I love the wonderfully bittersweet ending, the unicorn, the wizard, Molly Grue, the Red Bull, etc. There is at least one follow up short story the author wrote as well that is excellent, there may be another as well, check them out if you are fans.
And while some of the actors/actresses can’t sing very well, otherwise I like the music too 🙂
I love The Song of the Lioness quartet from Tamora Pierce more than I can say. Alanna all the way. (Did not much care for the rest of the series set in this world, but that’s neither here nor there.)
This was possibly the first book featuring a girl who wanted to do boy things I’d ever read that didn’t insist on stripping the female character of all her female-ness. She gets emotional enough to cry sometimes. She has feelings about one specific boy, but considers all the other boys her close friends, and not “like a brother” – like goddamn FRIENDS, friends who will stand by you. She has relationship issues with some of these friends. She has to break up with one of her friends who is going a weird way in his life. She has to stand up to an authority figure. She has a complicated relationship with her brother.
Her sexuality is dealt with in a way that seemed utterly realistic to me. She had a crush on her friend that developed over time. They tried to be exclusive and it didn’t work for purely practical reasons, and they remained friends that had some slight awkwardness initially but quickly devolved right back into their old friendship. She had several other relationships of varying levels of compatibility, and she broke right the hell up with that guy who couldn’t handle being with a woman who could fight as well as he could. She had Confusing Feelings about various male friendships, and the menfolk in her life invariably respected her – were, in fact, more protective of her as a “boy” than they were when they found out she was female.
She struggled with independence, with power, with honor, with bullying, with friendship, with love, with sexuality, with prejudice, with how to form relationships and interact with women after having spent an entire childhood and adolescence surrounded by men. She was never reduced to “female” struggles; every single story of hers could have been told – would have been worth telling – if she were a male character. All you’d have to do is swap out hiding her gender with hiding some other aspect of herself, and there you’d be.
I love her so much. I’mma go read them again.
I wish there were more thumbs up I could give the Alanna-love!
I like all of Tamora Pierce’s books (well, all of the ones that were written in my youth, so…lots of Tamora Pierce’s books), but Alanna is the best. THE BEST
Please help me identify! I can’t remember the name of the author or series, but random facts I do recall: author is female, main character is female. Dialogue written with strong Scottish-like dialect. Protagonist is a witch, maybe? Lives in a tree, maybe? Somewhere around the third book in the series, a selkie-like princess is born in a fountain? (Wow, I remember weird shit)
WHAT. No idea what it is, but I want to read it!
Could you be talking about the witches of Eileanan series by Kate Forsyth? If not, you really should read them!
Exactly right!. Here’s the Goodreads link: Witches of Eileanan
ALSO DEALING WITH DRAGONS. Cimorene! Morwen! Kazul! Alianora and the nameless stone prince she has to go rescue like a goddamn champion!
I may have become a feminist in the instant I read the section where Kazul wants to be King of the Dragons, and Cimorene’s all, “You mean queen?” and Kazul looks at her sideways and is like, “Why would I want to be queen? Queen is a boring job. I think the post’s been vacant since Whathisbucket left five years ago. King is the way to go.”
Is this my selection for my office book club this month? WHY YES, YES IT IS.
Words cannot express how much I love those books. LOVE
I LOVE ALL MORWENS
I used to read these all the time. If I found one of these while I was supposed to be cleaning my room, it was game over.
“Well, I fence,” Cimorene said with the air of one delivering an unshakable argument. “So it is too done by a princess.”
In Which a Fictional Character Demolishes the Tie Between Physical Sex and Gender Roles on Page Three.
So good. So good.
Kazul is king of my heart forever. No nonsense and cherries jubilee.
My (now 15 year old) daughter listened to all the Enchanted forest books over and over and over from age 4 to 10, and realized last year she is (still) shaping her life to be a dragon’s princess: fencing, cooking, Latin (and eventually Greek) lots of math, archery. I am delighted that the stories are still ticking in her head!
CHERRIES JUBILEE
I got into SO MUCH TROUBLE during Racefail 2009 for telling Wrede I loved her work. This series remains absolutely made of win, except for how it ends on a weird back-looping note, which troubled me. Best to read the first and leave the rest.
Racefail2009? I am about to hear something about Wrede which will make me sad? I had written something earlier about how her heroine might have been white but as a kid it made me feel better that at least she wasn’t blue- or green-eyed like every other princess or heroine I met in books…
It’s Wrede’s Frontier Magic series. Where she’s completely written American Indians out of existence allegedly just so she could keep cool megafauna around and didn’t have to deal with genocide and hateful stereotypes all (yet there was still slavery?).
CIMOREEEEEEEEEEENE
MORWENNNNNNNNNNNN
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH SO GREAT.
These books!! I wanted to be a firewitch when I was a kid. You know how some kid books don’t hold up when you re-read them as an adult? These totally do.
So much Pern as a kid. So much. And I still have a deep and abiding fondness for The Blue Sword and The Hero’s Crown. But I think, currently, the Tiffany Aching books from Terry Pratchett. They’re like Miyazaki films, but books! Wee pragmatic heroine, well-intentioned but often misguided people around her who she loves but still needs to be better than, wonderful family dynamics, witches. The scene in Wintersmith where she goes to rescue the lambs, because she can handle being attacked on her own, but it’s another thing entirely for the wintersmith to go after the lambs because that is not done.
God, I love that book.
I may have recently reread a ton of the Pern books… I wanted to go to that music school SO BAD. And also have a dragon for a best friend. They are so cheesy, but the world is so lovely!
REDWALL
Redwall forever
EULALIA
LOGALOGALOGALOOOOOOOOOOG!
EVERYTHING REDWALL!
I acquired these in such rapid progression and consumed them all so voraciously that there was a time where my mom actually had to physically take the books away from me so I would eat dinner and do my homework.
if you’re looking for helpful badgers, look no further.
I do love a good fantasy novel. Barry Hughart’s Master Li and Number Ten Ox trilogy are possibly my favourites, set in ‘a medieval China that never was’ as the book jacket has it. A strong, good natured peasant boy and an ancient sage with a slight flaw in his character go on quests, kill ancient evils, rescue goddesses imprisoned in human bodies, all that sort of thing. Beautifully written, very funny, often moving. I wish he’d written 30 books, or that anyone I had *ever* met had heard of them and could fangirl with me about them.
That said, Diana Wynne Jones wrote my all-time favourite book, Fire and Hemlock, and is well up on my list of favourite authors ever. She mentored Neil Gaiman, writes smart, realistic, believable characters, has a strong feminist sensibility throughout her books, even the ones with male protagonists, and should be a hell of a lot better known and loved than she is.
Ooooh, I love Fire and Hemlock! I didn’t love Bridge of Birds nearly as much as I expected/wanted to — perhaps I’ll give it another try. Everything seemed perfectly set up for it to become one of my favorites, but it just didn’t click.
I’m just amazed someone else has even heard of them, never mind not loved them! Something about them just clicked with me, I love the rhythm of the prose.
And as for F&H, If I could figure out a good way to have the nowhere vases tattooed on me I would.
Oh wow I had TOTALLY forgotten about Diana Wynne Jones. Good, good stuff.
I just read Howl’s Moving Castle (and it’s two sequels) recently. Sooooo goooood.
Bridge of Birds is one of my favorite books, period. I didn’t love the sequels–they are quite derivative of the first and one features a distinctly homophobic storyline (and I think they’re out of print?). But Bridge of Birds is brilliant and beautiful.
Edited to add–did you know the letter to Ah Chen in Bridge of Birds is based on a real prayer written by a bereaved father in medieval China? I cry just thinking about it.
Oh no, I didn’t know that! They are out of print but they’re findable online at tuebl.ca. I don’t remember either of them being homophobic though? They’re definitely more of the same, but i like them anyway.
I still have a crush on Number Ten Ox.
I wanted to find a Master Li of my own for most of my young adult-hood!
I have a slight flaw in my character…
I would recommend the Farseer and Tawny Man series of books by Robin Hobb (I loved them so much), but I will never, EVER forgive her for the ending of the Tawny Man series. Aaargh I am mad just thinking about it.
AGREED.
Yes I was just coming down to say pretty much exactly the same thing! +1
I read these books practically back to back and spent my life in a daze for about 3 weeks. So amazing, so immersive, so many tears!
I used to well up just thinking about Nighteyes. Loved those books.
I have so so many feelings from those books and yet I dont really know anyone else who has read them and so the feelings are pent up and simmering. Ahhh! But apparently there will be another set?
I used to borrow my best friend’s Mercedes Lackey books for infinite periods of time. My favorite was Firebird, and it was my favorite because it was so clearly the best, argument over.
No actually I can’t remember what I specifically loved about it so I guess I have to see if my friend still has her copy so I can borrow it again for old times’ sake.
OH MY GOD I totally forgot my ACTUAL favorites as a kid, which were the Chronicles of Prydain series. The Best.
I still love them! Reread them not that long ago and was not even slightly disappointed.
Alexander, along with Susan Cooper, figured heavily in my teenage attempts to learn Welsh.
My most belied fantasy series will probably never be finished. Melanie Rawn, you’re tearing me apart! Here’s the synopsis for the first book, The Ruins of Ambrai:
“First of three in the Exiles Trilogy, it is set in the fictional world of Lenfell settled by human Catholic colonists. In the far past, the population is decimated in the Waste Wars, and the ruling class has emerged based on the ability to have healthy children. This leads to a very matriarchal society with women holding all the power and men treated as cattle.”
<3<3matriarchy<3<3
I still have hope for book 3! Although, every time I reread books 1 & 2, I get mad at myself because WHY CAN’T IT BE FINISHED ALREADY
MELANIE GODDAMN RAWN WHY YOU GOTTA BREAK MY HEART.
NB4R, the Exiles trilogy is the great quiet tragedy of my life: I love it so much, and yet it will never be finished.
That being said, I think Sioned is a fucking badass and more people should know her.
Omg, belied? No, no, I meant BELOVED. Damn you, traitorous fingers.
I had a long comment but naturally it wouldn’t post on my work computer so I am trying to post a quicker version from my phone. I love Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies. Highly recommended if you like magic and castles and highborn intrigue and dragons but want just a little less misery for your characters than what is found in Game of Thrones. The cover of the first book makes it look like a romance, but shit gets real pretty quick.
My absolute favorite book is Ruins of Ambrai, also by Rawn. It’s a fantasy retelling of the Joseph Campbell hero’s journey (or, really, Star Wars) in a matriarchal society. I would recommend it heartily if not for the fact that the author suffers from depression and may not ever write the third book in the trilogy. (Book 2 came out more than 15 years ago).
Also highly recommend Brandon Sanderson. The only one of his books I didn’t love was Alloy of Law.
Oh man, so much great jewelry porn in Dragon Prince! I like to get it out and reread the descriptions of the bridal necklets semi-regularly.
Toast, man, I have work to do. I can’t go pace the length of all my bookshelves and pull out all the contenders and then get wrapped up in one and lie on the floor reading for the rest of the afternoon.
Ughhh, so excited for the master post. I just spewed out an email about one of my most precious childhood favorites, and I’m looking forward to hearing about everyone else’s!
Does urban fantasy count? Like the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews that I sincerely love? And the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs?
Oh, I love the Kate Daniels books! They’ve got such great worldbuilding and there’s no character I don’t like.
Mercy Thompson is just the best. I wish she really existed and was my friend.
Diana Wynne Jones – Howl’s Moving Castle.
Sophie Hatter, ladies. She is made of awesome. She is unfortunately resigned to her ‘fate’ that, as the eldest (and not the prettiest) of 3 sisters, her life must be exactly what she doesn’t want. Happily, her two younger sisters are like, ‘whhhhat?! Bull!’ and pull all sorts of magical shenanigans to get the lives they want (one as a witch; one as a baker with many children) while Sophie, exiling herself from her stepmother’s hat shop after encountering the local evil witch, unwittingly sets out to seek her fortune, getting involved with a narcissist with a heart of gold along the way.
Those Hatter sisters. Big hearts, strong magic. Gotta love ’em.
Yes. Love. Also the two sequels, Castle in the Air (nothing to do with the Miyazaki movie Castle in the Sky, although he also of course did a gorgeous if loose adaptation of Howl), and House of Many Ways. I actually love the three books in descending order, with Howl’s Moving Castle being by far the best, but the other two are fun and you get to see what Sophie and Howl have been up to. They’re very much satellite characters, though.
Her Chrestomanci books are also terrific, and the Dalemark Quartet (especially the latter two books).
WE DO NOT SPEAK OF THE FILM. THERE IS NO FILM.
Yessssssssssssss. My favourite.
Pamela Dean’s “Tam Lin” for me – reading it now I realise it’s a bunch of smug academics having smug academic adventures but man it hits the spot.
50% pretentious college students hanging out, 30% quotes/references from other works (Hamlet, The Revenger’s Tragedy, etc.), 20% ghosts and fairies. ONE HUNDRED PERCENT WONDERFUL AND BELOVED.
YEP.
I brought that to college with me in the hopes that college would be like that. One of my two roommates had brought it too. Vertiginous meta-moment of roommate bonding.
MY FAVORITE BOOK OF ALL TIME EVER. Probably about 50% responsible for me majoring in classics. (Did not get taken under the hill by a faerie queen.) I’m actually in the middle of a reread because I’ve been super stressed/depressed/anxious and it’s like a giant warm blanket of a comfort read.
Yesss. Whenever I re-read that it makes me desperately want to go and do an English literature degree, even though I was rubbish at English in school.
I read this book six months before I started attending the college that it theoretically takes place at, without realizing the connection. I was very confused as to why the dorm names seemed so familiar.
Weeellll I’m a stan for a lot of fantasy authors, Tamora Pierce and Jo Walton chiefest, but my number one forever-and-always true love of a fantasy novel is, of course, The Once and Future King.
But please, please, for the love of all holy things, will someone please go read The King’s Peace? I HAVE NO ONE TO TALK TO.
Also, Cynthia Voigt is rightfully famous for Dicey’s Song and so forth, but her Kingdom series is really good. I was especially fond of Jackaroo as a teenager.
I love The King’s Peace! More asexual heroines, please! (Sit down, Paksenarrion, you’re dead to me now.)
THANK CHRIST (or I guess thank the White God) I have never met anyone else, online or in person, who’s read that series. Please tell me your thoughts about Elenn!
DUDE, the Jackaroo is MY JAM, and much less angsty than her other stuff (at least in my mind), so it’s the only one I’m willing to re-read. Dicey’s Song broke me at age 10.
Ooh, I have the King’s Peace on my kindle but haven’t had a chance to read it yet. Moving it up the queue…
I should have read the comments before I commented. I LOVED The Once and Future King! Except I re-read it recently and boooooy oh boy did I not notice the racism when I was a kid. Seriously, it’s a this face D:
Still like it, tho
There is definitely racism in it, and I would agree that it’s most evident in the more child-geared “The Sword in the Stone” (and also with Sir Palomides, who doesn’t really benefit from his status as a comical character of color). It is such an interesting mix of modern and archaic, especially given that White stridently did not want to write a “modern” Arthur story, but it seems he couldn’t help himself.
A lot of the time when I reread either White or Susan Cooper, I find myself comparing their treatment of characters of color, as books that are in some way about the Matter of Britain. Cooper in Silver on the Tree seems to have realized that racism exists in the world and specifically in the UK (although I suppose in the eponymous book she also sort of deals with it when Will’s father states that Merriman isn’t “from here”) and presents it as a manifestation of the Dark. In the first book a character wears brownface without comment from characters or author, but the Circle of the Light is indicated to stretch all over the world and members in Jamaica and Gibraltar are specifically mentioned. White’s social concerns are pretty much centered around war and political ideology, without too much nuance about imperialism or race relations, I would say, except for his interest in the various colonizers of the British Isles (say, whole chapters devoted to how Gaelic characters feel about Norman characters).
I decided to only post things that no one else had posted yet because OH GOSH YOU GUYS HAVE GOOD TASTE and have totally already covered off on some of my favorites, but….
DARK IS RISING BY SUSAN COOPER. YES PLEASE AND THANK YOU.
Oh crap, also, ANYTHING by Garth Nix but especially the Abhorsen series.
can we talk about how INTENSE Bran is
Yes, yes we can. Although all there really is to say is ‘very’.
I had a crush on Bran when I was twelve or so.*
*now I have a crush on John Rowland
I have never considered John Rowland in that way, but I have a feeling I am now going to.
I’ll be in my bunk.
like sir bring your “well-modelled mouth” over here please.
I wish I wrote fanfic…
Oh man, I impulse bought that entire series at the used bookstore a few months after September 11 and rereading it then was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Oh god, can I just say I loved the Dark is Rising up to like age 22 but I just reread it last year and it’s reeeeally sexist in a bummer disappointing way, also super classist (the bad guys are all grasping lower-class characters who don’t understand the inherent goodness of the Light who just all happen to be manor-owning aristocrats and painters and academics), Noble Poor characters like John Rowlands and the Stantons notwithstanding. :/
I mean, Susan Cooper is AMAZING at imagery and atmosphere, but there is some really offputting politics in there and it was really disappointing.
Oh no!!! I blasted through the whole series one summer when I was 9 or so, so I don’t remember much about specifics or plot. All I really remember is being wicked creeped out and learning to pronounce Welsh. That’s kind of a huge bummer.
Also, learning to pronounce Welsh totally screwed up Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles for me, because I was pronouncing the names as close as I could to the instructions in Dark is Rising, while it was occasionally clear that Alexander wasn’t. When youth fantasy worlds collide…
AHHHHHH, Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles forever. Love, love, love it & when I was an undergrad in university (about 10 yrs ago) I wrote him and he wrote me back!
I think characterizing the bad guys as all “grasping lower-class” people is a bit of an overstatement, especially given the Witherses and the vicar in Over Sea, Under Stone. The Black Rider was a jewel dealer “in real life” and the artist in Greenwitch was of indeterminate class. I’m not disputing your opinion about the offputting politics, but it wasn’t as cut and dried as all that.
No, not literally every single baddie is a lower-class character trying to reach above their station and getting slapped down for it by the aristocracy, but it’s a major theme among the villains. IIRC the Witherses come across as very new money (they are too tidy to be upper-class) and the arc of Hawkin, Maggie Barnes, and Caradog Pritchard is basically “working-class person has ambitions above Honest Poverty, this must mean being in league with the Dark but their weak minds can’t handle the complexity so they go mad and/or are righteously slapped down by the sadly obliging nobility of the Light”.
The painter in Greenwitch is “swarthy”, with “long wild dark hair” and lives in “a real old-fashioned gipsy caravan”; that is not upper-class in 1970s Britain.
Granted, all of this. However, I still like to read the books. If I didn’t read any book that had elements of race/class/gender issues, I’d have a pretty limited reading list.
Lately I’ve been reading/re-reading a lot of early Ruth Rendell mysteries from the late 60s/early 70s. If you want your head to explode with 70s British class stuff, that’ll do it.
Oh, no, Kerry, you are right and I am SAD, and I never saw that before.
-rymenhild @DW/LJ
PETER S. BEAGLE. ALL OF THEM.
But especially The Innkeeper’s Song because hell yes, magically changing your gender so that the assassins can’t find you. Also creepiest assassins ever. Also spectacular orgy. Also the fox, sweet fox.
I’m sure everyone else will cover my classics (Prydain, Madeleine L’Engle, HIS DARK MATERIALS FOREVER), so I’ll just mention that I really enjoyed the Sabriel trilogy by Garth Nix. Haven’t read it in ages, but it struck me enough that I still remember it fondly.
It is SO GOOD. I cosplayed as Sabriel before I even knew what cosplaying was–made my own bell bandolier and everything. It was for a class presentation, I’m sure everyone thought I was off my rocker.
That’s amazing. I also think I just found my Labor Day weekend (re)reading.
Shout out to @dorkmuffin above, you beat me to it!
Sabriel was life-changing for this young nerd. Can’t recommend that series highly enough. The first half of Lirael is, like, my platonic ideal of exploration and discovery stories. That library! And the Abhorsen house! And Mogget! Ugh, it gives me pains
My sister-in-law has recently started reading YA and has been asking me for recs. Naturally, those books were at the top of my list.
I have always wanted to name a cat Moggett but I am afraid of what it would do.
I came to those books at about 16 and loved them, except in the latter stages where they seem to devolve into ‘look, another Touchstone clone to be rescued.’ Kind of want to take a lazy weekend at the inn where the soap smells like pears.
Nix’s other YA series, the days of the week series–for my money that’s a much better read.
I love, I love, I looooooove those books.
sorcery & cecelia: or the enchanted chocolate pot. by patricia c. wrede and caroline stevermer. regency england, magic, it’s told through letters and it has a dreamy boy who is referred to as “the odious marquis”. i love it.
A College of Magics and A Scholar of Magics by Stevermer are sooo good also. A college of magics specifically. I think that one was in a remainders bin at the grocery and I love it. I bought it recently for my ereader and died all over again.
*cough* Those books are based on the place where I went to college; I have an especial fondness for them.
You want me to CHOOSE? You people are horrific monsters.
This^
Has anyone read Jennifer Roberson’s Cheysuli series? I mean, it’s all Celtic/Native American appropriation ahoy but maaaaaaaaaaaaan teenage me ate them up. Shapechangers! Sorcerors! Demons! Fiesty heroines!
Yes! I came to comment about those. I read them when I was young, but man oh man have they ever stuck with me!
Awesome! And may I just say your username gave me a smile this morning. 😀
The Hounds of the Morrigan, by Pat O’Shea, deserves a great deal of credit for being an excellent, funny Irish quest book about kids running away from the death-goddess. I highly recommend.
I am also pretentiously proud of having actually read the Never-Ending Story but it is a long, drawn-out, boring-ass book, FOR REAL, and there are so many better choices.
Otherwise, Hexwood by Diana Wynne-Jones. It reads well as an adult, a fun story told perfectly backwards with hints all the way along the piece.
For years and years I thought I’d made up the Hounds of the Morrigan because no one else had heard of it.
Then the Guardian had an article on it last month.
OH MY GOD ME TOO I had to hunt down the last copy in the library but that kind of made it more perfect, because: it is a book about a disappearing book. PERFECT.
Oh, I love all of these! I wish they’d film Hexwood.
Yes please to all of the Anne McCaffrey (The Rowan! So! Much! Pern!) & all the Ursula Le Guin. Definitely would love suggestions of anything up that alley.
Is this the post where we can ask about fantasy books we’ve forgotten the titles to? I read one about two years ago that is a little like a dark, twisted Harry Potter… a modern-day boy discovers he is a wizard and goes off to a school to learn how to be a wizard, but gets all rebellious once he figures out that the power structure in place is a bit corrupt… and is tempted by some dark-wizard boy… help?
Oh and it was part of a series, not sure how many books in the series.
The Magicians! By Lev Grossman! answered my own question *fistpump*
Wait wait wait, how have we gotten to 100+ comments without passionate thrashings and smashings about Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain? Because every young girl ought to spend some valuable preadolescent time learning about Annwn, the god of death and missing vowels, and the shambling Cauldron-Born and baby’s first encounter with the female trinity. Man the stuff you can get away with if you say it’s for fairy tales for kids.
I had a weird relationship with Silverlock: It’s strung on the thinnest of picaresque premises, and the main character doesn’t have a personality to speak of, but there were enough references I could get on the first read that I sat down and listed all the ones I didn’t know. Twenty-mumble years later, I still run across familiar names in unfamiliar books and get a pleasant shock of, “Oh, so THAT’S who you are when you’re at home.”
Look up! They might be hidden in collapsed comments but someone definitely mentioned them. GREAT GREAT GREAT stuff.
It pops up in one of the threads — but yes, a thousand times, yes Prydain FOREVER. That and Narnia for me are the classic children’s fantasy series (have fond memories of Dark is Rising but did not re-read it compulsively and into adulthood like I did for P.C. & Narnia).
Argh, I should probably stop “guesting” and just make an account …
Oh friend, I made my younger brother spend so many hours running around our neighborhood pretending the Cauldron-Born were after us.
Also, I still try to imagine exactly what shade Eilonwy’s red-gold hair would be and wish my own hair were that color on a regular basis.
HIDDEN IN THE COLLAPSED COMMENTS
also i wrote, then deleted, a paragraph about the page where Taran has to pay with his memories to the witches and how they were all laid out like postcards, and the beauty/sadness of learning you’re SO GOOD AT SOMETHING but cannot do it for your living which is almost all art always. And the broken sword. Oh man.
Hands down favorite is The Little Country by Charles deLint. In fact, just about anything by deLint comes highly recommended by me.
Also, the Deryni series by Katherine Kurtz held me enthralled for a few years. I love the magic users vs. muggles sort of politics in this world.
Lately, I’ve been getting back into the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon which I am so stoked is going to be made into a series on Starz.
Newer series: the Eugenides books by Megan Whalen Turner. They’re not as… fantastical as a lot of fantasy, although there are active gods, but most of the action is political intrigue and trickery. They are so, so great. The first book (The Thief) is the weakest but still good, and then the second book, The Queen of Attolia blows my freaking mind every time I read it. It’s my absolute favorite until I read the third one, The King of Attolia, and then that one’s my favorite instead.
The main character, Eugenides, is just this fabulously charming and difficult person and I’m completely in love with him. And there’s lots of exploration of stuff like balancing personal loyalties with the good of a kingdom, and how to wield power without becoming a tyrant, and it’s just really, really good.
yeeessss The Queen’s Thief books! I’m STILL not caught up, I need to get on that.
But can we talk about how A Conspiracy of Kings was terrible?
All of the other ones I disliked at first and then loved (disagree with your ranking though), but I cannot bring myself to like A Conspiracy of Kings. So much of the action is dependent upon characters not trusting each other _who have already repeatedly been established as trusting each other!_ ugh ugh ugh did not like. But yes, Megan Whalen Turner is amazing and I love her.
No, no, no, A Conspiracy of Kings was WONDERFUL. It’s not that the characters don’t trust each other, it’s that because Gen has now agreed to be King, his allegiances have necessarily shifted, and because of Sophos’s position, he also has new responsibilities that fundamentally must change his relationship with Gen, though he doesn’t realize it at first.
LOVE GEN AND ATTOLIA FOREVER. The Queen of Attolia is one of my favourite books to reread because even though I know what’s going to happen, it still leaves me so tense! What if it goes wrong this time!
War For The Oaks. Finder. Any of the Bordertown series. Any of the short story collections–reimagined fairy tales–edited by Teri Windling. TAM LIN oh my Frogs I love TAM LIN. Also the Jack duo by Charles de Lint, although I find I can’t get into any of his other stuff. Uh. . . .pretty much anything by Diana Wynne-Jones, except I didn’t understand wtf was going on in Fire And Hemlock.
The Chrestomanci series, speaking of, which I devoured in one sitting last winter when I had a horrible sinus infection.
Outlander, though I have yet to wade through the last book.
Aaaand now I have to go read.
War for the Oaks oh Willy Silver and the phouka foreverrrr. Boiled in Lead were a real band–with a stunningly talented drummer, man oh man–and one of the first live shows I ever went to. Also, visiting Minneapolis after reading War is 100% A+ recommended.
Oh my God, the Bordertown series — I had almost completely forgotten they existed, but I had a seriously life-changing experience with Elsewhere and Nevernever in high school.
Have we talked about Darkover yet? DARKOVER.
I could never choose but will add Martha Wells’ Tales of the Raksura series – “The Cloud Roads”, “The Serpent Seas” and “The Siren Depths” – and Kate Elliott’s Spiritwalker Trilogy – “Cold Magic”, “Cold Fire” and “Cold Steel”. Oh, and also Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky series – “Range of Ghosts” and “Shattered Pillars” so far. Big shout out for N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy and her Dreamblood Duology (even though several mentions have been made above, I must say READ THESE IMMEDIATELY if not sooner.
oh, have you read Martha Well’s Element of Fire? Upside-down castles and proud strong dowagers and bastard heirs and the Queen of Air and Darkness? The BEST.
I did not read any of these and scooted right down here to say The Once and Future King. The Once and Future King!
[Tho I re-read it last year and realized it’s racist. Really, really racist. Like damn, White, you’re writing a book with dragons and shit in it for kids. Tone down the bigotry a notch or two]
Yes racist, but holy crap, he so took down the Nazis when it came to the ants.
The beginning of that book is so lovely and fun, and then by the end everyone is horrible and depressing and you just want it to be over because you are so sad that such a promising group of people imploded so horribly… I’ve read that book probably 15 times. Although now I stop reading before everything goes wrong!
I bought the audiobook because I love the books so much and ended up having to pull over into a service station on the motorway because I was crying so hard for Lance and Gwen!
Oh! Also was I the only child who read the Changes trilogy by Peter Dickinson? Where everyone in Britain becomes …. allergic? To modern technology? I could be making this up.
Yay fantasy!
Favouritest ever is too difficult, so looking at this year’s reading list:
Cold Steel by Kate Elliott. She describes the first in the series as “Afro-Celtic post-Roman ice punk Regency novel with airships, Phoenician spies, and the intelligent descendents of troodons (a small type of dinosaur).” How could anyone not want to read that?!
Ettiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger. Really fun steampunk school caper. Didn’t feel at all authentically victorian, but I really didn’t care.
Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck. Short story collection by a Swedish author. Incredibly weird, but in a good way. Magic realism, I guess? The first story is about a man who falls in love with an airship and ends up sharing living space with a woman who has fallen in love with a steam engine
I loved Kate Elliott’s Cold Steel trilogy! And all steampunk-alternate history-adventure novels. Along those lines, have you read Scott Westerfield’s Leviathan/Behemoth/Goliath books?
I have a couple of prints from Leviathan! So pretty! Enjoyed it, but not enough that I’ve got round to finishing the trilogy yet.
Also, I’m going to cheat and mention Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series. It’s really science fiction, but zombies have got to count for something, right? I am normally not a zombie person, but I loved this trilogy about bloggers in a world where the dead have arisen due to an unfortunate combination of cures for cancer and the common cold.
Plus, honorary mention to Seanan McGuire’s song “Wicked Girls Saving Ourselves”. I particularly like the Susan and Lucy verse (“And one queen said ‘I am not a toy’, and she never returned”)
Which reminds me that I’ve read some really great Susan fanfic stories.
I’ve only read Feed, but it was amazing. So very very good. And her Encryptid series is also so good, the religious mice!
Ooh, I haven’t read encryptid yet: it sounds totally up my street, but there isn’t an ebook or audio version available in the UK and I’m trying to cut back on hard copy books. I’m sure I’ll give in sooner or later and pick it up :-).
Feed is so, so good. I don’t like either of the sequels, but Feed left me an emotional wreck, it’s perfect.
I have read and loved both the Newsflesh and October Daye series, and did not know, until today, that they were witten by one and the same person. It’s true, learning stuff is good for you!
The Mists of Avalon. Feministy *and* fantastical. ::drops mic::
The Mists of Avalon are how 12-year-old me discovered what an orgasm was.
For some reason my middle school didn’t have Dune in the library, but they DID have the Dune Encyclopedia. Good practice for my present day habit of reading recaps of shows I don’t watch nor ever will.
I’m so jazzed about this topic. All of the Diana Wynne Jones, and the Jennifer Roberson, and Mercedes Lackey too. Mists of Avalon! The Once and Future King! And Prydain! And Chronicles of Earthsea! And Garth Nix’s Abhorsen series. YAY.
Patricia Mckillip’s A Riddle of Stars trilogy! Complicated, muted fantasy with strong Welsh-mythology-based worldbuilding.
I loved that series! I read it so many of times, and then all of her other work!
I grew up on Mercedes Lackey and Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McAffrey, Piers Anthony and Robert Heinlein.
If I were recommending series now though – Michele Sagara’s The Sundered series, Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels series, Lackey’s Valdemar novels, and anything by Wen Spencer and Tanya Huff
One I don’t think was mentioned yet is Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold (second in the Curse of Chalion series, first was ok, but the second is breathtakingly beautiful and haunting).
Yes! I am very fond of all of Bujold’s works, but Paladin is spectacular.
You guys, I just found this website, and I have tears of happiness running down my face as I read your descriptions of the books I gorged on as a child. Yes, Emma Bull! Yes Melanie Rawn, Tamara Pierce, Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffrey, Diana Wynne Jones, Francesca Lia Block, and Octavia Butler.
Everything by Robin Mckinley, but especially Sunshine. Her descriptions of food are perfect, and she slowly uncovers the politics of a world saturated by magic, to the resentment of many. The first Kushiel trilogy by Jacqueline Carey is a fun sex romp with lush mythology. Fly By Night by Francis Hardinge is the very best YA/children’s book I have read in years–her character Moska Mye is a smark little dirty lying sneak, and utterly wonderful.
I read all the Pern books as a kid, but I think my favorite is certainly out-of-print and mostly forgotten: The so-called ‘Tredana trilogy’ by Joyce Ballou Gregorian (she does have a Wikipedia entry, though!) They’re basically portal fantasy, with each successive book written just a tad ‘older’ – in The Broken Citadel the main character is a child, in Castledown she’s about 20, and maybe mid-30’s in The Great Wheel? And in a lot of ways they’re very typical fantasy – goddesses, dead cities, princesses in towers, etc. – but something about them just clicked with me. I’m probably overdo for a reread – maybe I’ll write something more on them then.
No Terry Pratchett? You are all fakin’.
Or maybe because there are so many, and you’re afraid that if you say your favorites are like, Small Gods and Feet of Clay, people will think you are being obvious, or maybe you are just so sad about the Alzheimer’s that your mind threw up a block, walling off hundreds of hours of joy and diversion in order to spare you the pain.
Maybe you still think “Urinating dog!” after making some kind of super-obvious observation in wondering tones. Maybe you thought “dragged kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat,” about something not that long ago, and you realized that you’re corny and you always have been. You cringed your customary inner cringe, but you know, too, that corny weirdos who enjoy comedy fantasy whatever those are books are allowed to walk in the sun, too. If they have to. So, admit it: all the Terry Pratchett.
I thiiiiink my favorite is Witches Abroad. But then again maybe it’s The Wee Free Men. Oh, who can choose?
Wyrd Sisters. NO, the Tiffany Aching books! Wait, actually Moving Pictures and Soul Music together. Or is it Mort? Wyrd Sisters.
Sam Vimes. Sam Vimes, forever and ever amen.
I love them all – I am not saying Monstrous Regiment or Equal Rites or any of the others are less worthy – but that earliest drunken Sam Vimes free indirect discourse in GUARDS! GUARDS! (“The city wasa, wasa, wasa wossname. Thing. *Woman.* Thass what it was.”)… I was done for.
OH GOD, YOU’RE RIGHT.
I almost said Witches Abroad but I already spawned an entire Pterry thread over in Beautiful Not Beautiful, and they’re so political by the end it’s hard to think of them as fantasy at all. Anyway, all the witches ones, especially Tiffany Aching. But on the other hand, _of course_.
I am persistently saying things like “It is always one time, and that time is too late,” cc. Good Omens, and of course, as an art teacher, That Agnes Who Calls Herself Perditax. Sometimes _just_ Perditax. Or thinking “there was a badger in the privy when she got home.” Or the thing about swords and paying for it. I don’t know, those books are so formative I don’t even own any of them any more, they just live in my head and are _good_, where the first ratty copies of The Blue Sword and Invitation to the Game (science fiction) got me through high school, y’know? They were singular and perfect and important alone, the way the Witches are important as real characters and friends. I’m not _friends_ with Harry, I don’t learn from her; I just read her and I’m comforted by the adventure.
Granny has a way of turning up saying “hmmph” whenever I need to manage something at work, though, and that’s different. She’s very alive to me. It’s hard to keep her, or any of the discworld, in a book at all.
Feet of Clay was my favourite for years.
I love The Truth, and also Maskerade/all Greebo-specific scenes. No one can have his fish eggs.
Has anyone said the Codex Alera? It’s my most recent favorite fantasy series, all about magic and friendship and tolerance and cooperation, and Tavi is the coolest dude ever and I want him to be my best friend!
I love how Butcher wrote two such separate and diverse series as Harry Dresden (not mentioned – is urban fantasy not a thing here?), which is all wise-cracking PI, and Codex Alera, all heroic, be-the-best-you-can fantasy.
Both are excellent series, highly recommended and very well written.
Gah sorry I totally missed this… I love the Dresden Files too, just in a completely different way. It’s like those books are chips and dip, and Alera is a 4 course meal! But holy moly Butcher is crazy impressive, and I will read anything he writes. Ever. For sure.
This is not a full endorsement, because it’s been so long since I read them that they could be chock full of unremembered awfulness, but I really liked Parke Godwin’s early, early, early Britain novels–Firelord (about Arthur), Beloved Exile (about Guenevere), and The Last Rainbow (about St. Patrick). He also has a Robin Hood novel I think I read and a two-book series about alien brothers battling for control of Earth and the future of humanity, with surprise appearances by Dorothy Parker and Abraham Lincoln (that one’s pretty great, but stretching the definition of “fantasy” by quite a bit).
ohohoh! ‘A Face Like Glass’ by Frances Hardinge: it’s set in an underground city where no one naturally shows their emotions on their face. They have to be taught facial expressions by Facesmiths. The poor and workers are only taught a couple. They are docile, servile, expressions. How can they rebel when they have no face to show anger with? WHen they look at each other after an injustice and only see compliant happy Faces?
Meanwhile, the decadent wealthy go through fashions of really elaborate expressions, and hire Facesmiths to prepare just the right mix of wonder, superior understanding and wistfulness with which to react to a new piece of music, for example.
The protagonist, for Reasons, is born with normal human expressions. This horrifies everyone else – they yell at her and she looks scared/upset and they freak out “Why does she keep making those horrible Faces! Make her stop!” (they imagine she must have *chosen* to put on the upset Face)
She cannot lie in this world, and has to wear a mask.
I’m someone who, as a kid/teenager, was pathologically honest, which for some reason people took as really deep-level manipulative behaviour. So I relate to this girl. SO much interesting stuff going on in this book! Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!!
The Magicians of Caprona, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
A paragraph, you say: Cats! Cats, who are important for spells, and only very magic kids can speak to them. Kids who read a lot but don’t know how magic they are. Also, songs that are so powerful they can change the course of history, strange Alice-yperspective shifts, Italian City-states, star-crossed lovers, duels.
Ella Enchanted. My first, my last, my everything.
Beautiful deconstruction of the Cinderella story. A compelling, adorable romance (The letters! Oh God the letters!) A beautiful female friendship. GREAT descriptions of food and lots of cozy sensory details (a must for any great fantasy book.) And like DUH a warm, wonderful heroine who survives by her wits and courage. She’s feisty and independent without being obnoxious (a common trap for a lot of “strong” fantasy female characters is to make them just plain nasty or rude and call it “being spirited.”) She makes mistakes and has moments of weakness, but is just a stronger character for doing so. And the whole thing takes place in this perfectly sketched fantasy realm that kind of feels like the literary version of the kingdom in Brandy’s “Cinderella” movie (i.e. multiethnic perfection with lots of fantastic, ridiculous clothes.)
The whole book just induces the best feelings of warmth and happiness. When I was a kid I went through three copies (one lost, one dropped in the bath, and one currently held together with masking tape.)
Love. This was my #1 comfort book when I was younger.
I love all the childhood suggestions, one that i loved that hasn’t been mentioned is the wind on fire trilogy by William Nicholson. I recently listened to the audio books- still loved them.
Recently I have discovered some awesome adult fantasy stuff- Ben Aaronovitch, magical policing in modern london is fab. The first in the series is Rivers of London and is particularly good. I have also really enjoyed Paul Magrs, Frankensteins Bride hiding in Whitby and solving magical mysteries.
And obviously Jasper Fforde is excellent, the Thursday Next books are great and I also loved Shades of Grey
HOW DARE YOU DROP THIS POST WHEN I WAS OUT
HOW DARE U
RAAAAAAAAAAAAGE
Anyway here are some real lovelies (since adoration has already been lavished on Garth Nix and Pat O’Shea and their works of magic):
Isobelle Carmody’s Obernewtyn series.
What, you dummies haven’t read the grand Australian arc of dystopic fantasy, post nuclear holocaust, set in an orphanage, with a protagonist called Elspeth who’s got a magical cat named Maruman? This book was positively reviewed by your Lloyd Alexanders and Tamora Pierces, the latter of which called it a DREAM DATE. Horses get sassy! Landscapes are Australian, European, toxic! Brains be chatting each other up without words being spoken!
And a little more on the romantic side, Daughter of the Forest and the works that follow by Juliet Marillier, and the Archangel series, by Sharon Shinn.
Daughter of the Forest is a historical fantasy crafted from the bare bones and feathers of the Grimm tale of the six swans. The setting is lush, and fabulous, and scorching, and heartrending. There are many dudely dudes to lust after, depending on whether you prefer druids or stocky English land-tenders. Or wackadoo rebellious tattooed animal-people a la that Disney retelling of Robin Hood. It is great, what can I say, I re-read it all the time for a lovely escape into lands of mystery and myth and prophecy. There is also a lot of strong female action and some strong female sacrificing for others and the Fate of the World, so if the latter ain’t your thing, you might want to walk away. Or you know. Skip a few paragraphs that might be upsetting. BUT I LOVE IT.
Sharon Shinn’s Archangel series just tickles my bible-mythology appreciation without being actually bible-endorsing. Plus, for the Redwallian feasts and songs and cultural worldbuilding and dramatic battles – that itch is satisfactorily scratched in a more adult fashion. And the love interests! They are so dramatic! And so interesting in their interpersonal conflcts (and so cheesy at times, ahhhhhh whatever). Science and religion and doubt and class conflict and oppression and faith and rebellion and racial politics, interspersed again, shall I repeat, with romantic entanglements and ornate courts and PEEPS WITH WINGS I WOULD TOTALLY BONE.
Sounds like a great recommendation so I’ve gone and downloaded the Obernewtyn ones!
I recently reread Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy (or Old Kingdom Series–I’ve seen it called various names) and was struck all over again by how great they are. The worldbuilding is not only really interesting and thorough but also super unique! Seriously, how much YA fantasy is there about necromancy? It has amazing female protagonists and talking animal sidekicks that manage not to be cheesy (???) and a beautiful morbid aesthetic that personally I feel should be translated to film asap.
Also The Bartimaeus Trilogy, by Jonathan Stroud, which manages to be a YA series with three narrating characters where none of them have the moral high ground! They’re all fucked up in their own ways, and good intentions backslide into antihero-territory moral degeneracy pretty quickly. The series deals with some heavy themes of slavery and government oppression in a traditional fantasy metaphor mode, but it’s a far less veiled metaphor than most, and it gets into downright brutal social commentary at times. And at the same time, they manage to be hysterical, especially in the sections Bartimaeus (a world-weary amoral djinn) narrates. They also have the bravest ending I’ve ever seen in a YA series. I cried for a week. I still cry when I read the last paragraph, even out of context. Also I’m convinced it’s at least partially based on The Tempest.
OH. I’ve needed this thread. Lloyd Alexander (of course the Prydain novels but also the Kestrel series) and Susan Cooper and everything by Robin McKinley and Anne McCaffery’s Pern and Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar – all books I can’t reread anymore b/c they are essentially memorized. They were all books you fell into and never quite came out of. Books that left you with a small aspect of your personality changed for the better. I haven’t ever found anything to measure up!
Lately I’ve really been liking Barbra Hambly – her Sunhawk series and also her Winterland series. All feature strong characters with realistic feelings. They aren’t the same as the favorites though – I’m hoping one of you will have something…
Deerskin- Robin McKinley- so lush, soooo dark, so fairytale, my handsdown favorite. Her others are great too, but this one. Especially the original cover: http://pop-verse.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/d… . I loaned my copy of the original out once and never got it back and it took me ages and many used bookstores to get a copy with the original cover with the white purple hair again.
Mageborn Traitors- Melanie Rawn. Like it’s been said above, its tragic because her depression caused her to get stuck and she may never finish the series, but even so, these books are so goddamn good.
The Golden Key- Jennifer Roberson , Melanie Rawn, and Kate Elliott. The way it’s written as a historical saga unfolding over several generations makes it more captivating than it should be and as a young aspiring artist I longed to have a talent for painting that was literally magic and the bad guy is SO SINISTER. The prequel/sequel they wrote is garbage, but this one I can happily return to. Also in this line, Memory and Dream- Charles DeLint about magic painters.
Winter of Fire, is pretty heavy handed for the adult reader, but I believe this is about love, and when I read it in forth grade there was a tiny hint at sex in one chapter and I read it over and over and over and over. It’s all about slavery and sexism and stuff, and it works best if you read it when you are young.
I came across Winter of Fire in sixth grade and absolutely loved it and have never come across anyone else who knew it. Hooray!
Is your username a Vorkosigan novel reference?! Because I love those books too and can’t convince either my serious sci-fi men folks or my fantasy loving women folks to read that series.
It is! Hooray! I want to be Ekaterin Vorsoisson when I grow up. Well, a cross between her and Cordelia Naismith, possibly with a side of Ellie Quinn. And while technically the Vorkosigan series is sci-fi, not fantasy, I will give a plug anyway for the benefit of anyone skimming the thread: Fantastically strong female characters! Delightfully well-plotted story arcs! Feudalism! Feminism! Mystery and adventure! In SPACE!
Also, you mentioned Deerskin, and so now I must tell you my trauma. Reading Robin McKinley was the first time as a kid that I loved an author so much that it occurred to me to track down everything she’d ever written, and so I wandered into the adult section at age nine or ten and collected all of her books there, INCLUDING DEERSKIN. This was such a terrible decision. So much trauma. It took another ten or eleven years before I was willing to give it another shot, and now I have great appreciation of a novel that handles redemption and recovery beautifully – I love the part at the end where she talks about how she may never be whole – but ye gods and little fishes, that book lives on an entirely different plane than The Blue Sword and The Outlaws of Sherwood.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t think anyone has mentioned Diane Duane’s Young Wizard series. I didn’t come across it until I was well out of the intended demographic, but one day in the library I stumbled across the fourth book, which begins with our two young wizards trying to negotiate sunlight and water rights between feuding trees, and I fell instantly in love. Fantastic comfort reading.
I loved those too! Especially the one set underwater–the songs and the ritual and everything was so intense and engrossing. I should read these again!
Leslie Barringer’s Neustria series.
Okay, three which I love:
George MacDonald’s “The Princess and Curdie,” which features otherworldly women and people turning into animals, and animals turning into people, and fires of roses. Fires of ROSES people.
The best fantasy book no one has heard of, “A Book Dragon” by Don Kushner. More about books and the passage of time than about the fantastic, but it’s so beautifully written, and Nonesuch is such a perfectly wonderful dragon.
Again, the days of the week series by Garth Nix. — wrote more about that above.
So excited to see some recs I’ve never seen here before–A Face Like Glass is now on my amazon wishlist.
Did we mention the Graceling trilogy by Kristin Cashore yet? No? Then I shall.
Little, Big by John Crowley. Elegant, haunting, strange, right from the barely understood Faery world that clearly influenced Susanna Clarke to the hardly visible dystopia at the end.
The Last Witchfinder, by James Morrow. A young woman fights against witch-burning, sometimes aided, hilariously, by Benjamin Franklin, in a wild picaresque novel that keeps edging into fantasy.
Loved them both. Read both as an adult.
I’m 66, have been reading fantasy since I was 12 or so. Now that fantasy has stormed into the limelight, I am bemused that, with a backlist of so much fine, fine work long neglected, what is standing in the limelight is stuff life Harry Potter (C-, neat gadget and spells, but no character depth, no mythic structure…movies better than the book because actors inhabit the characters) andThe Lightning Thief (sigh). This is not a hit on YA. Diane Duane has been writing killer work there a long time (The Wizard series, kids going up against a well drawn Satan, losing a parent and coping with mortality….and her adult work, The Tale of the Five, is transcendent), Diane Wynn Jones has been writing forever with the depth to attract Miyazaki (Howl’s Castle) and her Charmed Life/Christopher Chant/Magicians of Caprona work (nicely collected in a 2 volume Green Willow set, The Chronicles of Chrestomanci). More adult fantasy: Lois McMaster Bujold (who has won as many Hugos as Heinlein did) has fine, fine work, her Chalion series, Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, is thunderously about redemption and true courage, about the spirit in travail. And for a walk through a different world, her 4 volume Sharing Knife series will pull along, book after book. Looking back to the past, there’s Zenna Henderson and her stories of the People wonderfully anthologized in Ingathering. In the present, the matle of her kind of work about a paranormally gifted extended family has carried forward by Nina Kiriki Hoffman in The Thread That Binds The Bones and its successors. More from the past R.A. MacAvoy and her Grey Horse, on a classic tale of a pooka’s love affair in the 30’s Gaeltacth of rural Ireland. Also her Tea with the Black Dragon. Two more 4-volume classics, The Dark is Rising series of Susan Cooper and Evangeline Walton’s retelling of the Welsh folk epic, the Mabinogion. For truly spiritual, even mystical fantasy, Charles Williams, a man who T.S. Eliot thought of as his master. And of course: White’s Once and Future King, including the Book of Merlin, which will break your heart. Also *anything* of Ursula LeGuin.
Two authors I find eventually disappointing are Mercedes Lackey (lots of output, but lightweight…Tamora Pierce does that sort of work much, much better) and Tolkien, who doesn’t wear well to me While his work is epic, the surface glitters and his alternate world and language(s) are superbly researched and created, the characters and the myths have neither depth nor development for me.
I eschew 🙂 tragic dark fantasy, ugly, bloody, Machiavellian fantasy like Game of Thrones, the work of Guy Gabriel Keyes, Robin Hobbs (glorified assassins, forsooth) Stephen Donaldson (glorified epilepsy, double forsooth), fantasy where goodness, honor and loyalty are drowned in blood, betrayal, soulless seduction and back-stabbing. If I’m reading and investing my imagination in an author’s alternate universe, I want to be shown Light, deliverance and redemption, how another world might exalt the human spirit, not yetanotherugly imagination of the dark side. As if that was something special: just turn on the news
I was exposed to P.C. Hodgell’s Kencyrath books too late for them to be a founding piece of my childhood personality, but man I wish they had been.
Oh god, I’m sorry to thread-necromance like a Free Magic sorcerer (SHOUT OUT TO MY GARTH NIX LOVING-HOMIES, I ADORE YOU) but I really have to mention Franny Billingsley’s The Folk Keeper. Celtic lore! The sea everywhere! Teenage girl diary! Protagonist is tougher than nails and gets shit done but also grapples productively with control and intimacy issues!
I also have to fourth(?) Ella Enchanted as a fucking grimoire of awesome that is one of very, very few children’s books where the story is all about female agency, like tackles it on a conceptual level, not just with a “princess becomes hero” plot! Even for 1997, the radicalness of it makes my brain explode in the best of ways.
Okay I’m just gonna breathe for a bit now.
EAST