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

[hinotori.livejournal.com]

Soooo. I said The Administration Series, right. That's the main thing I wanted to name. I've gushed about it here, so I'll spare you now. ;)
Other stuff:

Fantasy ... I loved Robin Hobb's Farseer- and Tawny Man-series. The former took me three attempts to get into, then I devoured the books pretty much in one go and went on to Fool-- a sequel of sorts, which is also slashy to no end (it's arguably canon).

George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series -- fantasy that is nothing like Tolkien, in a good way. Politics, excellent characterisation, long. The first book is less than five quid on amazon uk atm.

I may be back with more later. It's very, very interesting to see what people are recommending here; may steal some of those for myself. ;)

[kennahijja.livejournal.com]

Yep - you're not the only one who's recced the Administration Series, or Robin Hobb. I'm certainly intrigued by the former, and will keep an eye out for the latter when I next hit the used bookstores in town :).

GRRM has been a favourite of mine before even starting the ASoIaF series - his 'Armageddon Rag' and 'Fevre Dream' were pretty spectacular already.