Finished Reading (fantasy)

[cimorene]

• I finished The Moon and the Sun (Vonda McIntyre). The historical setting part of the historical fantasy is pretty strong and plausible, and there are a couple of really interesting characters. This is probably why I liked it so much as a teenager, I guess. I was fond of fantasy with a lot of real history. On the surface, though, the writing had an almost maddening short and choppy and completely unvarying and unsyncopated rhythm, with lots of very simple sentences, sort of the way a person (with some linguistic sophistication and multiple language competencies) will modify their speech to make it more followable for a foreign visitor. Maybe she was trying consciously to make it YA? But I don't remember noticing this at all at the time, so maybe all her writing is like this. It got pretty irritating to my mental ear. The romance also felt extremely pastede on yey, but that's a fairly common feature in a lot of genre. At least it wasn't as egregious here as it is in mysteries when the sleuth is always going around matchmaking while they solve murders for some reason - what a bizarre combination of hobbies. But she could always have done a better job of blending it in, if she just couldn't stand to not have a first time and a happily ever after.



• I read the second of NK Jemison's Inheritance series, The Broken Kingdoms (that's the follow-up to her breakout hit, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which I reread last week). THTK was still great when I reread it, but it didn't seem as impressive the second time: I remember being blown away ten years ago when I first read it. I think part of this was just because I already knew what the twist was going to be, perhaps. The Broken Kingdoms is still very well-written, magical, and interestingly plotted, which makes it a relief to read after having read so much stuff that is bad over the years, but I didn't like it as much as the first book. Part of this was just the nature of the story - the type of story it was and the types of characters, the kinds of conflict. But part of it was the important characters in the ensemble and having a hard time with the lynch-pin relationships - they didn't just leave me unmoved (which is an issue), but thinking 'GET OUT!' And even though it wasn't really necessary to buy into the protagonist's emotional investment, I think I was probably intended to.

My quest for fantasy recs and a journey of discovery

I found some lists of past Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy award winners and nominees and skimmed through them to make up my list of novels to read, because I decided I needed to seek out some more traditional high fantasy and most of the things in my to-read list were science fantasy, space opera, and low fantasy (the latter especially has been quite dominant in recent decades). Obviously I ended up adding more than just high fantasy to the list, but I was also intrigued and surprised by the familiar (read and not-read) titles I ran across.

A strong cluster of publication dates emerged in stuff I grew up familiar with (from shortly before I was born and when I was a young child), which is funny because I'm sure my parents' library must have had stuff that was older too. They always talked about buying paperback classics for fifteen cents at conventions. Maybe they just didn't like and talk about the older ones as much? (Also funny because it's pretty obvious why they stopped having time to buy and read all the new hot awards buzz books when they suddenly had a teenager and a young schoolchild instead of just one introverted little bookworm).

A lot of the books I hadn't heard of organically in my sff upbringing, but have read since (or put on my to-read list since) because of other recommendations, appeared in the same lists, just like... slightly outside the period when most of the ones in my parents' library came from. On the other hand, there were plenty of books there that I was aware of all the time, but wouldn't have considered genre, and other ones (notably most of Stephen King's ouvre) that obviously is genre, but is certainly primarily horror genre. Apparently the World Fantasy Awards at least choose a lot of stuff that is horror and not mainstream sf or fantasy, but also a lot of stuff that combines elements of sff and elements of Mainstream Literature Genre.

Comments

[twistedchick]

When was the McIntyre book written? She was very ill with cancer toward the end; it may be that it did not get as much work as her earlier books. I don't remember that kind of choppy writing from Dreamsnake, for instance.

[cimorene]

It's from 1997, so probably earlier than that. It won its award, too, so obviously the voice didn't damage its reception too much.

[stranger]

How would you define low fantasy vs. high fantasy? I have only a vague idea how they're distinguished. Is high fantasy inherent in the complete secondary world creation? The save-the-whole-world plot? Literary style difference? I'm sure this has blurry edges, but if Dunsany/Eddison/Tolkien define one pole (do they?), what's the other?

[cimorene]

I grew up with the terms 'high fantasy' and 'low fantasy'. The former is a fantasy set in a fantasy world that isn't our world, and the latter is fantasy elements mixed into our world. Although I think the term 'low fantasy' as I recall hearing it used in practice was usually a relatively modern or contemporary world with fantasy elements. I only know the term "secondary world" because I saw someone say "second world" two days ago and had never heard it before, and I googled until I found an explanation, which was that high fantasy is dependent on an entire secondary world (as opposed to our world).

I think if you're dividing all of fantasy on a spectrum with only two endpoints, or into only two categories, then you can't make things like style or trope a required part of it, but 'high' fantasy is certainly a bit more associated with epics and hero's journeys and with settings informed by history and folklore of the pre-modern world.

In PRACTICE, most of the time when I have encountered the term in the wild, it was referring to fantasy informed by the post-Tolkien Western tradition, but that's not a requirement or anything. NK Jemison's Inheritance books are definitely high fantasy, and there are increasing amounts of fantasy worlds informed by the mythology and folklore of other cultures besides the ones Tolkien and his genrelings use. The Western fantasy tradition has always included a certain amount of high fantasy informed by 1001 Nights, for example, in varying degrees of respect and offensiveness.

[stranger]

Oho, yeah, it seemed to be a code for Tolkien-tradition world-building and solemn quests, but I wasn't sure how universal the terms "high" and "low" fantasy might be. There was a certain amount of academic sniffiness about Harry Potter's enormous popularity for a while, and various terms to differentiate it from the, you know, *real* fantasy literature, written by Oxbridgians instead of unemployed single mothers. (Please note the enormous sarcasm tag in there.)

Anyway, Terry Pratchett already had guyed the whole up-and-down of it in a completely invented secondary universe, with invented physics, modern institutions, and all the cultural magic traditions you ever saw and some you didn't. So fantasy styles are pretty clearly multi-dimensional...

[cimorene]

Opposition to the popularity of genre fiction aimed at... all genre fiction, frequently with no exceptions made for Tolkien and his pals, dates back to their publication, I think. I never encountered the particular variety of gatekeeping you mention here, but it's common at least from outside the genre for people invested in the concept that mainstream literature is inherently superior to genre to pick and choose which genre works they think have value and then make up reasons why they aren't really genre. So I guess it makes sense that someone would try to articulate the same argument from within genre and declare the stuff they didn't like the 'not really' part.

Anyway, though, low fantasy and high fantasy as terms predate Rowling by a long shot, and I don't THINK low fantasy has any negative connotations, or at least, when I heard it it didn't, but it could have originated with some group who disapproved of it. I always kind of associated the 'high' in high fantasy with the high middle ages, as like... the most characteristic or most archetypal fantasy, with 'low' denoting a mixture with realism/other genres.

In my early childhood that elf-punk stuff was the popular variety of low fantasy - if you exclude like, Stephen King, anyway. It was what people probably meant when they talked about it most of the time because there was a lot of it. It wasn't the only stuff by any means - Diana Wynne Jones was active all that time and she wrote tons of it - but the elf punk stuff was a distinguishable sub-genre/trend with a bunch of different authors, and people leaping on the bandwagon and writing obvious imitations of the early stuff. I suppose Pratchett was writing then as well, but his stuff and DWJ's were both a little slower to appear in booksellers and harder to acquire in the US. And there definitely were people disparaging the trendy elf punk stuff, but not, I think, any more than people disparaging the low-quality high fantasy - those franchise books spring to mind, what were they called, like Dragon Quest or something like that... Dragon Lance? There was plenty of eyerolling for 'generic', 'derivative', 'Tolkien copycats', etc, as the bad part of high fantasy.

Of course, cultures aren't monoliths so it's possible that generic derivative high fantasy and trendy brainless elfpunk were disliked by two separate groups of people... but I think most likely both derided by the champions of quality, which is surely what anybody trying to associate fantasy with Oxbridge would be. Although that seems like a really weird distinction given that the famous foundational-text-writing Oxbridgians are like... all dead... and most of the cognoscenti-approved fantasy in the last fifty years has come from elsewhere. Albeit frequently written by professors.

[stranger]

Ha, I remember elf punk! I associated it with Mercedes Lackey, but she was clearly working in a group and did a lot of co-authored books, and anyway The War for the Oaks and Emma Bull's group of writers were a decade earlier and I suspect that started it off.

I keep wanting to organize my books by subject type -- elves in modern times, regency magic fantasy, hard SF from various decades, steam punk, Sherlock Holmes take-offs, whatnot -- but the groupings get muddled by overlap and by me not having a clear definition for nearly anything. It's back in strictly by-author alphabetical, which makes for some very strange shelf-fellows.

The low fantasy of elves or other magic intruding on everyday life is definitely its own thing in many variations, and some is clearly slipping social satire into the mix. Then there's magic realism, which is different: it's "about" mundane life but also distinctly psychological fantasy. I think. I don't understand most magic realism and try not to read it because it gives me nightmares, which probably says far too much about me and not the books...

[cimorene]

Magical realism is a genre with a long history in spanish-language literature that blends fantasy with depictions of ordinary life, with its own literary conventions and its own genre conversation going on. If you just read a couple of short stories or novels of it, you probably aren't going to find a scientific basis for arguing what about their content distinguishes them from English-language low fantasy literature. I mean, they manifestly do meet the requirements, but you can point to things they have in common (besides the linguistic and cultural setting of most or many), and I guess 'psychological fantasy' might be one, although... not a term I've heard before.

[princessofgeeks]

are you still looking for fantasy recs?

[cimorene]

If you want to rec some high fantasy, go ahead! I was just relying on the voters of the three awards in question as a proxy since I didn't have any pre-vetted similar-taste fantasy readers to ask, since I read more and faster than my mom these days. Most of my favorite writers over the years were picked up out of books she liked, although she also likes some stuff I don't like and vice versa. Some of my favorites are from my dad too, but they don't correlate well enough to his favorites to be able to pick out what I'll like from his much wider reading taste. And Wax's taste is way less reliable for me because she likes a lot more gory and gritty and grim ingredients.

[princessofgeeks]

You may know about a lot of these already.

CJ Cherryh and Lois Bujold both wrote fantasy that I have loved!

Recently I enjoyed another older book, Sister Light, Sister Dark by Yolen.

A novella I loved and wish there were more of: The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Cho

The Empress of Timbra by Healy and Fleming

Really enjoyed The Eternal Sky trilogy by Bear

Really enjoyed all the Astreiant novels by Scott and Barnett

Gifts, Voices and Powers, three books by Le Guin that are fantasies unrelated to Earthsea

The Long Price quartet of novels by Daniel Abraham. Very weird.

Maybe something there will be new to you. About the time the pandemic started I abandoned reading fantasy for mysteries/detectives, but I always have an eye out for fantasy as my younger son loves it too. Although surprisingly enough he also loved both the Murderbot series and the Ancillary Justice series. So you never know. I love your book reviews.

[cimorene]

Sister Light, Sister Dark is part of a trilogy - you should probably read the other two books, White Jenna and The One-Armed Queen!

I haven't tried any of Cherryh's fantasy yet, but it's on my list.

I stopped being able to enjoy Bujold's or Patricia C Wrede's, my teen and childhood favorite writers, after racefail and mammothfail. I've got stacks of old favorites that don't work for comfort rereading anymore and it's incredibly aagravating. So safe to say I couldn't read Bear either.

Also I read a different Zen Cho novel a couple of years ago and bounced off pretty hard.

That still leaves a handful to google though, thank you!

[princessofgeeks]

So many books, so little time!

[cimorene]

Oh! But if you like those, I think your taste does have a good overlap with mine, so - have you read Wrede's and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's high fantasy?

Wrede's non-YA is the Sorcery and Cecilia series and the Mairelon the Magician series, and the Lyra series, which starts with Shadow Magic. I grew up with these as well as the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, which were my aforementioned favorite books (and the source of my user name and this icon and I used to reread them like every year so you can see that not being able to reread them in the past decade has been very sad for me). (Fortunately I still have Diana Wynne Jones - never quite as iconic as Dealing with Dragons for me, but close.)

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough inadvertently traumatized me when I read the award-winning The Healer's War at age 12, way too early - it was about Vietnam and it contained all the horrors thereof. I read it last because I'd devoured all her high fantasy and its cover didn't look very high fantasy, but - I'd run out! And I don't think I asked my parents first, I just took it off the shelf. I think I'd already read Bronwyn's Bane, Song of Sorcery and In the Harem of Aman Akbar... and I don't remember any of these anymore except the cover art, and the fact that the latter involves three heroines from said harem teaming up.

[princessofgeeks]

I have not read any of these; thank you so much!