Aaaaanyway, what Card was saying was, we are living in a golden age for fantasy writing, and there are an astonishing number of really excellent fantasy writers out there producing at the moment, & he then proceeded to cite a number of them. Well, I've been looking for fresh fields for reading for a while, so I bought a selection of these from Amazon (one per author), and have been chewing my way through them, so here you go.
Pick of the litter is probably 'The Name of the Wind' by Patrick Rothfuss - a really gripping tale, told by an ex-hero who has settled down as an innkeeper, flashing back to his earlier life, interspersed with an ever-darkening current story. I found it a real page-turner - the system of magick is quite interesting, but the rest of the background a fairly ordinary fantasy world; but this hardly mattered, as the tale was quite visceral and the main character highly sympathetic.
Next, and in some ways better (not least because all 3 volumes are already published) would be Mistborn & it's 2 sequels. This was almost as gripping, and had a far more intriguing premise - what happens after the Great War of Good vs Evil is over, the Hero has won, and turned into a tyrant almost as bad as the Evil he overthrew? Definitely highly recommended, although the author has a disconcerting habit of killing off major characters at a fairly steady trot: again, a fascinating idea of magic systems, and certainly a somewhat different concept of world.
Less gripping, but possibly better thought out and articulated, and definitely more intellectually appealing, is 'Lamentation: the Psalms of Isaak' by Ken Scholes. This is in many ways radically different from any other fantasy I've read, and absolutely worth reading. It is faintly reminiscent of a Canticle for Liebowitz, altho - so far - much less pessimistic and more personalised: the world it is set in has suffered more than one (it's unclear how many) catastrophic events, and since the last, a thousand years ago or more, a religious cult (a cross between Jesuits and Librarians) has been accumulating & reassembling lost knowledge: and they get wiped out, right at the start of the book, with a decided bang.
I've just started 'Kings Dragon' by Kate Elliott, first in a series called Crown of Stars. Cat has read it and said it was pretty good, but she didnt devour it incessantly, which is her sign of real approval. So far it is interesting, set in a world deliberately very similar to 9th Century Europe, and quite deeply colored by Ottonian/Germanic history, which appeals considerably. The only thing that puts me off a little, is checking on Amazon and seeing this runs to at least 7 hefty, muscular volumes (and who knows, possibly more to come), which I tend to regard as the sign of a certain authorial flatulence*
On the other hand, there is 'Ship of Magic', by Robin Hobbs, first of a series called Liveship Traders, which, well, oh dear. Don't get me wrong, it is well-written, cohesive, with a fairly interesting if narrowly-scoped world, but it was a real labor just to read. I found the characters largely unsympathetic and unpleasant, the plotting appeared to be Titanicly predictable, and the pace intolerably slow. I must admit, I abandoned the book after hitting about page 350, but in that time, basically nothing had happened ... slowly. The premise of ships that can 'come alive' after sufficient time and sacrifice was quite interesting, but the details of it detracted enormously from the plausibility, inasmuch as fantasy has any: but that just made another distraction to slow down. Perhaps I should try one of her other series, as she was warmly recommended by Card, but ... another time, after the memory of this one has paled and faded into the wallpaper of my cranium.
I have a couple more, so doubtless I'll revisit this subject sometime in the future, but while I'm talking about books in general, I should also recommend an SF series, namely:
- Old Man's War
- Ghost Brigades
- The Last Colony
- Zoe's Tale
OK, back to work!
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* This reminds me of something else Ray observed, or read and passed on, which is the dearth of editing in modern publishing. Apparently, the book manufacturers (being totally profit-driven and ignoring the inherent promises of publishing, I can't call them publishers) have decided that it is more cost-efficient to simply hire 'readers' to scan and evaluate the manuscripts submitted.
These readers then decide either it will sell enough to be profitable, or not: then the manuscript is published, without ever being edited, reviewed, or even read again as far as we can tell.
This is much more cost-efficient for the manufacturers than the traditional reading, editing, correcting, checking for coherence and internal contradiction, and the back&forth between editor and writer that we (well, me, anyway) tend to think is the norm for getting a book produced.
However, the result is - from my point of view - a calamitous collapse in the quality of what is published, with books that might have been great being encased in great superfluous rolls of authorial excess and padding, unnecessary exegesis, and endless effluence, terminally tedious, of colour and description. Mentioning the details of a meal a character is eating is interesting, gives flavour and immediacy, lets us make a quick judgement of his character, and adds to the reality of it. Giving the details of every meal just gets tedious.
Now, I know that popular, best-selling authors like Steven King have the heft and influence to insist on their books not being edited by lesser talents, however wisely or otherwise, and that is fair enough: if they are happy to be judged entirely on their own merit without other input, so be it, they have earned the right to that by their previous successes and demonstrated skills. I selected King for that, because while I'm a great admirer of his narrative skill, plotting, and empathy, he is someone whose later books could, I think, have benefited from some more rigorous editing than they received (I have no idea whether he refuses to let them be edited, or the editors are too in awe of his reputation to edit effectively, or whether I've got my head in the posterior inferior position on the whole subject).
However, it strikes me as the height of folly - and a terrible way to treat novice authors in need of guidance - to treat all books this way, and I have to say after an extended stint of reading new fiction, that this appears to be nearly universally what has occurred. So many of the 700 page books I've slogged my way through should have been 400 page books, and would have been far more fascinating for it. Perhaps this is just part of the national (international) epidemic of obesity?
OK, end of doing my nut (til next time :)
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