Cav's Place

A couple of months ago, somebody who admitted to having “always taken a rather condescending attitude toward fantasy literature, with the exception of Tolkien” asked for recommendations on the MobyGames forums, wondering whether anything else “that would have at least some literary aspirations, even if it ultimately lapses into mere pretensions” may be worth trying and specifying that what he’s “definitely not looking for is someone’s poorly written account of their D&D session, gay dwarven sex or endless descriptions of swords clashing”. So I replied at some length and, though my list is obviously limited by what I already read, now that I’m planning to put the book reviews written over the years here on the blog, thought I might as well add this here as well, with the edits required to turn a forum reply into a blog post.

Since the popularity of the TV series would make many start with this, yes, A Song of Ice and Fire is stunning, and the books are definitely far better than what you can see on TV, as that may be outstanding compared to other series in this genre but not so much when compared to the source material. Still, I have to say that my recommendation of it is based on the first four books. The fifth is still sitting there on a shelf, as I heard enough bad things about it to not want to spoil my opinion of the series by reading it on its own. When he’ll release the sixth, it’ll be out in paperback as well and I’ll get it too, I’ll go for reading both I guess. Up to that point, however, and in books two and three in particular, it goes to mind-boggling in scope and passes that point without even noticing, though one has to note that it’s very low fantasy. With the exception of Daenerys’ dragons, once she has them, such elements appear very rarely.

Then I also particularly liked The Black Jewels Trilogy, which is conveniently available in one huge volume. Yes, very much a Mary Sue case and there’s a note of soap opera in there, but highly original world that oddly enough works really well. Plus those character names… Must note that the series continued a fair amount after that, but what I heard was that most of the other books were pretty much just a fantasy soap, some focusing only on one event or another and so on, so I didn’t bother, though if you put them all together they do continue the story. Then again, it wouldn’t necessarily need to be continued past the end of the main trilogy.

For those who may be interested in some epic science fantasy as well, I really liked The Book of the Short Sun, which is also conveniently available in one large volume. Extremely confusing, with this unreliable witness thing that Wolfe does and a main character who can’t control his powers and doesn’t usually know whether what he’s experiencing is real or merely a dream, but nevertheless absolutely awesome. I’ll say it’s the best part of his Solar Cycle, if probably because it’s the one with the most notable actual fantasy elements and that’s what I prefer.

Back to regular high fantasy, Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Seriously, the first two books of that are stunning. I did see people quite pissed off by parts of the second, but that was because of connections they made with real life, and yes, I’m talking about the depiction of organized religion. The third book seemed somewhat weaker, though still nice on its own, while the last one is just a compressed whirlwind of action. Does seem like the author got rather bored of the series and wanted to finish it even though what was supposed to happen would have probably required at least one more book, so it’s extremely packed and at times you need to stop and “unzip” what you’re reading to make it more bearable, but that sure was an awesome piece of work.

Still at Keyes, Age of Unreason. Written before Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone and it shows, as the style is rather rough and you shouldn’t expect reasons to like it based on that, but the story is awesome. It’s alternate history with significant, and increasing as you go along, fantasy elements, with real historical characters but everything else taking a very different turn. While the writing issues are usually noted by most, I do see that plenty tend to say that it’s better than Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone in terms of the actual story. Not exactly sure I’d agree, since I strongly prefer proper fantasy, but it is quite awesome, and the way it all comes together in the end for one amazing and heroic 100-page battle scene, which works better than those who are uncertain about reading detailed descriptions of battles would probably think, is quite something.

And since this was originally posted on a gaming site, I obviously couldn’t forget The Witcher. The Last Wish, Blood of Elves, Time of Contempt and Baptism of Fire are out in English at this point. Admittedly, The Last Wish is made up of short stories, which are a bit of hit and miss, and I didn’t read Baptism of Fire yet, but sure liked Blood of Elves and Time of Contempt. Quite different from what typical high fantasy means, but then again many probably already know that.

And since somebody had mentioned Weaveworld on that thread as well, I did read that too at some point. Urban fantasy isn’t my thing, horror elements even less so, but it was indeed well done, and I’m saying that even if I generally stay away from fantasy novels, meaning single books that are not part of series, because it’s pretty much impossible to fit proper worldbuilding into a single book, even a big one. Does work for urban fantasy, since you only need to explain what’s different, but proper high fantasy can’t work without the space offered by a series.