Recent reading — epic fantasy novels
Mar. 28th, 2023 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12It wasn't intentional, but for some reason the last three books I've read were all epic fantasy novels, all part of multi-book series. I'll try to sum them up briefly, but given they were all very chunky books, this might be difficult!
The Thousand Eyes (A.K. Larkwood) is the sequel to her previous novel, The Unspoken Name, which I can best sum up as what if The Tombs of Atuan, but Tenar was a lesbian and Ged was evil? I adored this first book, and enjoyed the sequel immensely, which was a mixture of twisty political machinations and betrayals, weird, weird magic, and loads of characters being consensually possessed by gods for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure if there are plans for a third book in the series — if not, things have concluded in a satisfying manner, but open-endedly enough that there's room for new books.
The First Binding (R.R. Virdi) bills itself as the first in Silk Road-inspired fantasy series. Whenever I hear 'Silk Road,' I always want stuff set in a fantasy version of central Asia, but so far Kate Elliott's Crossroads series seems to have been the only epic fantasy series I've encountered in which this is the case. The setting of this book is mainly inspired by South Asian history and cultures, and it also draws heavily on (as far as I can tell, having not read it) The Name of the Wind. Like Rothfuss's book, it features an unreliable narrator, a frame narrative (the protagonist recounts his history over the course of the book to a woman he's hooked up with in a tavern), and a protagonist who seems to be inexplicably gifted at everything he puts his mind to. The former two are fine by me, the latter I find really grating, and as we follow the narrator through a series of stock fantasy novel settings (a theatre troupe, a band of pickpocket children exploited by the adults who control them, a training montage at a school for magical children), unravelling the circumstances that have seen him locked in a quest for revenge, I can't say I found a huge amount to captivate me.
A Day of Fallen Night (Samantha Shannon) is a prequel to her epic fantasy brick of a novel, The Priory of the Orange Tree. This second book (equally brick-like) is set five hundred years previously to the first, in a world suffering the simmering threat of apocalyptic destruction by fire-breathing dragons, bound in dormancy under the earth, but always at risk of rising to wreak havoc again. This book, and the series in general, is interested in the thorny issues of inheritance and legacy — the problems inherent in monarchical rule (the imperative to have heirs even for people who don't want to bear children, the risk of the fate of a nation being placed in the hands of a child, or someone ill-suited to authority, the scheming and resentment by those whose blood or place in the birth order renders them unable to rule), and the dangers caused by flawed or suppressed historical memory. It's also a book about motherhood, in all its facets, and although I thought this was done well, it doesn't quite work given the series' setting, which is one free of homophobia and transphobia. Same sex relationships (including, but not always, marriages) are viewed in the same way as heterosexual ones, and there are numerous named trans characters, including nonbinary characters, even in parts of the world which have very rigidly defined gender roles. And yet, for certain characters in certain settings, motherhood, and specifically the need to become pregnant and give birth to one's own biological child, is considered essential for reasons that supersede everything else. For plot and worldbuilding related reasons, this is necessary, and it is shown to be a terrible burden and a flawed assumption, but it really doesn't work for me because it seems to contradict other aspects of the internal logic of the world Shannon has created. For the most part, I could ignore it because I love the settings, and the characters, and the epic sense of scale in terms of time and distance (Shannon is one of the few authors I've encountered who really understand that one thousand or five hundred years is a long, long time), but it is certainly a problem that is hard to resolve, given the story that Shannon wanted to tell.
I'm now moving on to read Wild and Wicked Things (Francesca Ma), which is a story of magic and the occult set in the years immediately after the end of the First World War. Have you been reading anything interesting recently?
The Thousand Eyes (A.K. Larkwood) is the sequel to her previous novel, The Unspoken Name, which I can best sum up as what if The Tombs of Atuan, but Tenar was a lesbian and Ged was evil? I adored this first book, and enjoyed the sequel immensely, which was a mixture of twisty political machinations and betrayals, weird, weird magic, and loads of characters being consensually possessed by gods for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure if there are plans for a third book in the series — if not, things have concluded in a satisfying manner, but open-endedly enough that there's room for new books.
The First Binding (R.R. Virdi) bills itself as the first in Silk Road-inspired fantasy series. Whenever I hear 'Silk Road,' I always want stuff set in a fantasy version of central Asia, but so far Kate Elliott's Crossroads series seems to have been the only epic fantasy series I've encountered in which this is the case. The setting of this book is mainly inspired by South Asian history and cultures, and it also draws heavily on (as far as I can tell, having not read it) The Name of the Wind. Like Rothfuss's book, it features an unreliable narrator, a frame narrative (the protagonist recounts his history over the course of the book to a woman he's hooked up with in a tavern), and a protagonist who seems to be inexplicably gifted at everything he puts his mind to. The former two are fine by me, the latter I find really grating, and as we follow the narrator through a series of stock fantasy novel settings (a theatre troupe, a band of pickpocket children exploited by the adults who control them, a training montage at a school for magical children), unravelling the circumstances that have seen him locked in a quest for revenge, I can't say I found a huge amount to captivate me.
A Day of Fallen Night (Samantha Shannon) is a prequel to her epic fantasy brick of a novel, The Priory of the Orange Tree. This second book (equally brick-like) is set five hundred years previously to the first, in a world suffering the simmering threat of apocalyptic destruction by fire-breathing dragons, bound in dormancy under the earth, but always at risk of rising to wreak havoc again. This book, and the series in general, is interested in the thorny issues of inheritance and legacy — the problems inherent in monarchical rule (the imperative to have heirs even for people who don't want to bear children, the risk of the fate of a nation being placed in the hands of a child, or someone ill-suited to authority, the scheming and resentment by those whose blood or place in the birth order renders them unable to rule), and the dangers caused by flawed or suppressed historical memory. It's also a book about motherhood, in all its facets, and although I thought this was done well, it doesn't quite work given the series' setting, which is one free of homophobia and transphobia. Same sex relationships (including, but not always, marriages) are viewed in the same way as heterosexual ones, and there are numerous named trans characters, including nonbinary characters, even in parts of the world which have very rigidly defined gender roles. And yet, for certain characters in certain settings, motherhood, and specifically the need to become pregnant and give birth to one's own biological child, is considered essential for reasons that supersede everything else. For plot and worldbuilding related reasons, this is necessary, and it is shown to be a terrible burden and a flawed assumption, but it really doesn't work for me because it seems to contradict other aspects of the internal logic of the world Shannon has created. For the most part, I could ignore it because I love the settings, and the characters, and the epic sense of scale in terms of time and distance (Shannon is one of the few authors I've encountered who really understand that one thousand or five hundred years is a long, long time), but it is certainly a problem that is hard to resolve, given the story that Shannon wanted to tell.
I'm now moving on to read Wild and Wicked Things (Francesca Ma), which is a story of magic and the occult set in the years immediately after the end of the First World War. Have you been reading anything interesting recently?
no subject
Date: 2023-03-28 01:22 pm (UTC)I haven't been reading much in the recent weeks, but I did finish all of the Expanse series a month ago. While I mostly enjoyed it, the last several books left me fairly ambivalent. I think it's one of the few cases where the TV adaptation was actually better, even when they had to scrape a fair amount of edge down to be able to show it. The TV show utilised the characters differently and made several of them far more interesting, so I was looking for those versions in the books and was disappointed not to find them. But I liked the worldbuilding of the first six books definitely.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-28 03:06 pm (UTC)I haven't read or watched The Expanse, but my husband has seen the TV series and it's one of his very favourites. It might be one of those rare cases where the adaptation actually improves on the original, judging by your experience.
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Date: 2023-03-29 01:18 pm (UTC)Yeah, it sometimes happens, which is so strange as I so commonly grumble about adaptations.
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Date: 2023-03-29 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-31 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-30 04:47 pm (UTC)I'm in love with all things Silk Road, so I'm sorry to hear that book didn't work.
but it really doesn't work for me because it seems to contradict other aspects of the internal logic of the world Shannon has created.
Does it help to think about the ways in which real life cultures are full of contradictions? Or do you want something very specific from fantasy worldbuilding?
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Date: 2023-03-31 09:30 am (UTC)You know, you're kind of right in that I'm much harsher on contradictory fantasy worldbuilding than I am on the hypocrisies and contradictions of real life! That being said, I find it hard when fantasy settings have one kind of discrimination but not another, especially since most of our real-world discriminations are interconnected.
I hope you like The Thousand Eyes when you get to it!
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Date: 2023-03-31 02:19 pm (UTC)This makes sense to me! And I get being pickier about worldbuilding than in real life! I wasn't trying to play gotcha, I was just curious!
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Date: 2023-04-01 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-04-07 01:40 am (UTC)