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

[chthonya]

I didn't like Jonathan Strange either - partly, I was expecting too much as I read it shortly after it came out and everyone and their Kneazle was squeeing over it. I did finish it, but found it very dry. On the other hand, a scientist friend of mine loved it for the way the conflict between theoretical and practical magic echoed the development of science.

Northern lights I'd feel less strongly about if it wasn't so hyped. I agree with LN on the first one - good but horrible. I was expecting the story to go in a different direction, so the second one took some getting used to, and the third one... well.

On a structural level, Pullman seems to be another of these writers who looks down on fantasy and therefore doesn't appreciate the need to create a consistent world. Different concepts suddenly appeared midway in the 2nd and 3rd novels as if cut and pasted from the generic fantasy canon, which was a bit unsettling to say the least. And while he makes some interesting points about organised religion, by the time he got to the third book it wasn't even a half-decent caricature of a straw man. It irritates me no end when people treat such works as an argument against religion when they show so little understanding of it. (Dawkins being an even worse example, who openly admits that he is not engaging with theologians who won't conform to his stereotype of religion.)