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

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

Caution: it's one hell of a long time since I've read any of these Delany novels!

My favourites, though, are some early short novels - novellas, really (before he got so firmly into writing gay SM/Ds - and Ace wouldn't have stood for it, either, seeing as they came out in the 60s): Babel-17, The Ballad of Beta-2, The Einstein Intersection (it was Delany who created "the cosmic poet Rydra Wong", who understood all languages). I should re-read them, from my current better-informed position.

If you want novels from his maturer writing, the Neveryona series (I can't be bothered reproducing all those diacritics) have a range of interesting characters: Tales of Neveryon, Neveryóna, Flight from Neveryon.

If you come to the Kent HPcon, I can bring you my copy of Triton, which I never managed to finish (bloke changes sex to female, reckoning he'll have a better chance of finding a satisfactory dom that way). Keep it, if you want it.

Delany's later books really didn't punch any buttons for me, because they're so focussed on his sexual fantasies (which, surprise, aren't mine). They're quite well done, though.

BTW, the first Scott trilogy listed is a woman with two blokes, and I forget if they're lovers too. Probably!

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Damn, if you're going to the Kent!HP, I probably should try to myself :). And not just for the book!

Thanks for the list - I've always took Delany for more into hard SF than I'd like, but maybe that was one serious misconception... It sounds like something I would like.

[leni-jess.livejournal.com]

The Neveryon books are definitely fantasy. The others I mentioned are technically SF, if not terribly hard - spaceships, living on a moon of Jupiter (or is it Saturn?), but the setting are really just trappings; the focus is what's going on in people's minds. No one could call his SF science fiction.

It'd be nice if you could get to Kent (I seem to recall you said you'd like to, but expected to be busy). I can always post the book to Edinbugh, though, if you can't make it! (And if you want the book, having maybe by then been able to try some other of his novels.) I know we're unlikely to get up to you; this summer we're doing the south of England.