What do I need to read?

[kennahijja]

My f-list is wise and perceptive and well-read, so here's the problem:

I'm badly out of good books. That, and my birthday isn't all that far off, so I would have an excuse for hitting Amazon. But as it is, I'm even out of books I know I desire madly. Hence, I'll ask you. What would you rec? What excited you recently?

What *do* I like? Fantasy, horror, SF if it's character-driven and not technology-heavy. Slashy, dark, unusual, stylistically beautiful, erotic. Other genres if the themes fit.

Examples that rocked my world... Carey's 'Kushiel' series, Friedman's 'Coldfire', McMaster Bujold's 'Miles Vorkosigan' series, McKillip's 'Riddlemaster' trilogy. General fondness for MZB, Guy Gavriel Kay, C J Cherryh, Octavia Butler... Storm Constantine, apart from the undisciplined plots. Liked Lynn Flewelling's 'Nightrunner' series for the slash, but otherwise it's too cliched for me... Not much into the Tolkien clone type stuff...

Suggestions will be lovingly huggled! :)

And if anyone ever stumbled across a list of homoerotic fantasy novels, I'd so love to see that :).

Comments

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Ew! *ducks*

No, seriously, it's not as if I haven't tried, but... so not my thing with one exception, purely for story.

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

There are quite a few (hundred) manga with good storytelling, well-written characters and whatnot. One I'm reading ATM is an example. It's BL too, which is surprising 'cos BL tends not to be very complex. This one is also very well-drawn. Much prettier than the cover.

Eroica, Fullmetal Alchemist, Hikaru no Go, to name a few. All are very well done. It's like, when people who don't read manga imagine manga (me two years ago too), they imagine some stupid yaoi that's also drawn, let's put in mildly, like shit :D

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

It's the drawing style in general that turns me off, and that's unfortunately not something easily ignored. I make an exception for Cantarella, because I love the story so much, but I *much* prefer novels.

Image heavy

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

But it's not one style. It's dozens, hundreds. There are of course stylistic conventions but honestly, with so many artists drawing, a good percent of them push those conventions as far as they please.

Just for the sake of comparison, and mind that it's largely only two genres here, Shounen and Shounen Ai (which is manga aimed at teenaged boys and Boy Love manga aimed at women respectively).

2 pages from Eroica:




Two from Hikaru no Go:





Two from Yokohama Shopping Trip:





Two from Fullmetal Alchemist:





And two from Let Dai:

Re: Image heavy

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

I sort of liked the last one :).

Re: Image heavy

[painless-j.livejournal.com]

Trust you to pick the darkest of them all :)

Re: Image heavy

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you! :)