[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Another book/DWJ/Ender's Game

[Jen Faulkner]

On Sat, 21 Jul 2001 catherine at cator-manor.demon.co.uk wrote:

> BTW:  Thanks to whoever it was who mentioned Ender's Game in a recent 
> post.  I had never heard of it, and went out and bought that and the 
> sequel.  I did enjoy them.  The first seemed a bit Boy's Own but the 
> second I loved - the themes and style reminded me of Sheri Tepper.

The third one (Xenocide) is also good, and some of my friends in high
school (which was really my sf period) liked it best of the three.  I
liked *Speaker for the Dead* best, myself.  I'd avoid anything that
OSC's written in the last few years like the plague, though.  
*Songmaster* is also a really interesting book -- I loved it around my
sophomore year of high school, as did two of my exes.  I've not read it
since, though, so I have no idea whether I'd like it now.

Tepper's marvelous, isn't she?  Though again, I'd issue a caveat to
avoid her most recent novels.  *The Gate to Women's Country* was one of
my favorites -- can't count the number of times I reread it.  I also
liked *Grass* a lot.  Classic.

As long as I'm babbling, let me throw out a few other recommendations --
haven't read any of these since high school, be warned, but I enjoyed
them then.  Terry Brooks' *Magic Kingdom For Sale -- Sold* is a very fun
fantasy, about a disillusioned man who buys a magic kingdom from a
department store catalog.  (There are innumerable sequels, most of which
aren't worth reading.)  And his Shannara novels are sort of like
Tolkien-lite, high fantasy for those with a shorter attention span.  
(They're still long, but things happen. *g* Much more quickly paced.)  
Similar to David Eddings, but darker, I think.  First one is *The Sword
of Shannara*.

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's *Death Gate* novels.  I have reread
these, many, many times.  They're not the most complex or intellecutally
demanding novels ever written, but honestly, I think they're just about
perfect.  Wonderful characters, and incredibly detailed world-building.  
Haplo and Alfred are probably still two of my favorite characters ever.  
And the books get better as they go along -- *Into the Labyrinth*, the
sixth, is far and away my favorite.  They're a fantasy series about two
races of magic users who warred with one another, resulting in the
sundering of the world into seven new worlds, and the adventures of a
member of the losing race who has just escaped from the prison world his
people were cast into.  First one is *Dragon Wing*.

Julian May's *Saga of the Pliocene Exile*, plus *Intervention* and the
*Galactic Milieu Trilogy*.  Arguably my favorite sf series.  It
certainly has the most memorable characters.  The first four are about a
group of time travellers who've gone to settle in the Pliocene period
because they can't get along in their contemporary world.  The next five
are about how that contemporary world came about, tracing the rapid
evolution of 'metapsychic' (ie, psychic) powers in humans and their not
at all smooth integration into a galactic governing organization made up
of various alien species.  If ever a fictional series was full of
characters I've fallen in love with (and wanted to drag to a therapist
at the same time), it's this one.  No particular plot surprises, but
brilliant all the same.  Did I mention how great the characters are? *g*
'Compelling' doesn't even begin to do justice to Marc Remillard.  First
book is *The Many Colored Land*.

Stephen R. Donaldson's *Chronicles of Thomas Covenant...*.  All of his
characters need some serious therapy, too.  Some of them find it, even.  
This is probably the simgle most incredible contemporary fantasy series.  
On the dark side.  Comprising six books, it's about a man with leprosy
who keeps being dragged into another world to save it -- but that
summary doesn't even begin to do justice to these books.  (I borrowed
most of these, so I haven't reread them since high school.)  Reading
them is an experience.  The first one is *Lord Foul's Bane*.  (Real
books, unlike fanfic, don't come with warnings, but if they did, all of
his work would need rape warnings.  They're still very worth reading,
but there's some seriously disturbed characters in all of them.  So be
warned.  I wasn't, by the friend who loaned them to me my sophomore year
in high school, and I nearly flipped out over the rape scene near the
beginning of *LFB*.  I don't think there's anything else too bad in the
Thomas Covenant series, though.)  His other works, the *Mordant's Need*
duo and the *Gap* series, are good too, as are his short stories.  But
do keep in mind the dark content warning, especially for the *Gap*
series.

One more recommendation, and I'm done.  *pauses for the vast sigh of
relief at the end to her babbling* :)  Charles de Lint.  Anything he's
written.  He's a beautiful prose stylist, and I absolutely adore the way
he writes urban fantasy, which is the (sub)genre of fantasy that deals
with magical elements existing as part of the mundane world.  Fairies
living in city parks, that sort of thing.  His books are heavily
influenced by Celtic mythology.  Absolutely beautiful.  The best place
to start is the short story collections, the first of which is *Dreams
Underfoot*.

I was just kidding.  One more.  *g*  Samuel R. Delany's *Dhalgren*.  Not
at all easy to read, postmodern sf.  Challenging.  'Artsy'.  :)  I love
his autobiography, too, *The Motion of Light on Water*.

--jen, babble, babble :)

"Will you be the one I've wanted, will you read my mind?
Will you ask me where I hurt, and heal me with your eyes?"
			--melissa ferrick

jen's fics: http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~jfaulkne/
jen's LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lysimache/