books

[meganbmoore]

To cleanse my brain and remind myself that Cassie Edwards is not representative of the entire genre, I shall read a couple of good romance novels next. Well, Loretta Chase and Elizabeth Thornton usually write good books, so I shall assume the recent book by each that I have is good. Uhm...seriously...most things would look good right now. After that, I shall return to epic fantasy because...uhm...it's all, novelwise, I seem to really be inthe mood for the last couple months. Due to yesterday's infusion, I have...a wide selection. The first 4 are continuations of series I'm already reading. The others, as far as I know, are the first books of their series. If I am wrong, I feel I should be told.

[Poll #1126501]

And, since I am in the mood, fantasy vids.

This one cracks me up because of the song choice(yet, I can't 100% say it's inappropriate)

And, because nothing says "love" like an abducted, injured woman...

Comments

[fivil.livejournal.com]

I voted Broken Crown because I misread it "Broken Clown" and thought that was awfully amusing. However, I've never even heard of any of these books so..

[estara.livejournal.com]

And if you really love Michelle West and want some good fantasy romance, buy her Cast in-Series at Luna. It has some romance (with rivals) but the main attraction is her world-building, great characters and the main heroine.

http://www.eharlequin.com/author.html?authorid=266

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Well, this will be my first west, so we'll see.

Fresh Bait

[estara.livejournal.com]

OH! Well then there's a sort-of prequel duology of her world around, Hunter's Oath and Hunter's Death, but The Broken Crown is the start of her main opus which she's still working on (there ought to be something new released this year, I believe). There are six books of it so far, it comes down to two or three protagonists and they can be read stand-alone but they work best read in sequence.

This is really epic fantasy, with strong females, who are the main characters - and a fascinating take on gods and magic. I've been collecting her since the duology and recently got her very first four books fantasy series (written as Michelle Sagara West) when it was reissued: that has a very dark setting though, so most of the three books after the first one are on the TBR pile still.

She's on lj as msagara, but she doesn't write much. All her books can be viewed here: http://www.sfsite.com/lists/msw.htm
The most uptodate newssite is here, though:
http://www.sff.net/people/Michelle.Sagara/

Re: Fresh Bait

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...do I need to get the prequel duology first, then?

Re: Fresh Bait

[estara.livejournal.com]

You'll get more enjoyment out of it, as some side characters in Broken Sword are people 15 years after the duology, but they're not the main characters so it's just an in-joke kind of thing.

It's nice but not necessary.

Re: Fresh Bait

[estara.livejournal.com]

There are short descriptions of the plot on the sfsite.com link, you might check out if the connection is important enough for you to try and get those books.

[chomiji]

I can't imagine any good reason to read anything by Terry Brooks. He's been writing weak Tolkien imitations since I was in college (and we know how long ago that was ... ).

Tad Williams is "meh" to me, and I haven't heard of any of the rest of those books ... but I've heard some good things about Locke Lamora. >/p>

ETA: Just found a couple good reviews of In the Cities of Coin and Spice, so that's another one for Valente. (I don't know if the polling program will let me add another vote.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Terry Brooks was my intro to fantasy, so, even though I know I should, I can't quite drop him. Honestly, though, I was about ready to a few books back...and then he introduced the character of Grianne, and I got stuck reading him a bit longer. (Of course, this makes exactly 2 truly strong female characters he's ever written...)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Eeargh, yeah, Brooks is a large part of what started putting me off commercial attempts at epic high fantasy. I remember reading the first book back when I was about fifteen or so -- an older schoolmate, one of the handful of fellow geek-misfits I could talk F&SF with, handed it to me with much effusive praise about how great it was. This was the same kid who'd gotten me hooked on Elfquest, so I had high hopes. But while I read and even sort of half-heartedly enjoyed the Brooks, in a time-killing mental junk food sort of way, even back then when I was a much less jaded reader it had me rolling my eyes and muttering "my god, this is just a transparent LOTR clone!". And I picked up the next two or three over the years, only to find they weren't really any better, but my tolerance for that sort of thing was getting lower and lower. And it didn't help any that as I drifted further away from the genre, most of the folks I knew who did read it and would try to rec stuff to me ADORED Brooks (and Eddings, who I found almost as unbearable when I tried slogging through his stuff.)

The real lightbulb moment for me was reading Le Guin's "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie"; she pinned down perfectly why I adore Tolkien but just can't stand his would-be successors. If it's meant to be a magical epic high fantasy, nothing will put me out of that mood faster than language and tone that wouldn't be out of place in a realistic modern novel.

[fire-snake.livejournal.com]

I like Tad Williams, so I am all for the Dragonbone Chair. On the minus side, the four books (the last book of the trilogy has two parts) are pretty thick. On the plus side, there are only four of them with a decent story arch and no sequels. If you are into semi-historical fantasy, you can try Gavriel Kay (probably my favorite fantasy author), and early Turtledove.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I'm fine with thick books as long as there's enough enough story to fill the pages. For example, I breezed through Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books last year, but I could barely make it through Gabaldon's "Outlander" a couple years ago, because it was somewhere between 800-1000 pages, and only about 300 pages was story, and the rest was her showing off her historical clout.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Heh, whereas I blazed through Outlander with such great pleasure, and still reread it occasionally, in large part because I loved the historical stuff. But her later books in the series were a lot less satisfying to me, in large part because she started spending more and more time on stories involving Brianna and her husband and kid; and they really didn't interest me at all. (I still need to pick up the latest one: I am reassured in that a fellow Brianna-nonfan has assured me this will have much less to annoy me.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I would have been fine with the history stuff if it had been pertinent to the story, but most of it was just there for "hahaha...look at how much I know!"

Plus, I wasn't really big on any of the characters.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ah, I adored Claire and Jamie, and found a lot of the minor characters likeable (or for the villains, unlikeable but interesting) as well. And that was the first thing I ever picked up that was even close to falling into the romance genre, so having SO MUCH history and of such an interestingly bloody sort really helped me get past that mental block; if it had been more tightly focused on the love story I honestly would have had more trouble getting comfortable enough to enjoy it...

The more recent books haven't thrilled me as much as the first because a lot of the minor characters I liked are dead or gone, and the new ones who've taken their place I'm mostly neutral-to-hostile towards, so I really resent their stories taking up space where I'd rather see more history-wallowing or more Claire and Jamie.

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

Well, I went and bought Willow as I can't remember it after all these years.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

As good a reason as any to go buy it.