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[cimorene]

Michael Shea's Nifft the Lean (1982 World Fantasy Award) and the 1997 sequel The Mines of Behemoth

I mentioned starting this book here. The protagonist is a famous thief in a high-fantasy world; he always works with the same partner, another world-famous thief, and the plots are magical adventure-capers in a classic medieval-inspired high fantasy realm and underworld reminiscent of the setting of Conan the Barbarian (and maybe, like, Tanith Lee without the Orientalism?) as well as of, as Wikipedia says (quoting a Locus review?), "Nifft showed that Shea had developed the exotic style of Vance and Clark Ashton Smith, plus the ingenuity of Fritz Leiber's Gray Mouser stories, to produce an extravagant quest novel. It won the 1983 World Fantasy Award as year's best novel." I've not quite gotten around to the Leiber yet - it's on my list - but I'd also point to Flandry, Poul Anderson's space opera Bondesque secret agent. The Nifft stories have some moments that are less than ideal from a gender perspective to my modern eyes, but actually, to give Shea credit, his worlds are well populated with well-rounded female characters.

As Tim Powers wrote in his introduction to The Mines of Behemoth, it's the vivid and immediate-feeling reality of the prose and narration that makes these stories stand out. The pacing doesn't falter and the narrative voice is wonderfully evocative of character, but the events of these fast-paced quests, heists, and capers are drawn with a gritty and at times disgusting physical reality and a humor that makes their dramatic moments as delightful and heart-pounding as their demons and underworld scenes are wildly inventive and memorable. I will be reading the third book and probably the rest of Shea's ouvre. In fact, I cracked Vance's Mazirian the Magician the other day on the strength of the above Locus comparison, but it's got about 4000x the Gender Issues and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to finish it. It was an earlier time, but I have my limits.

Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes, the British 1926 feminist classic about a spinster who runs away and becomes a witch

Since this was already popular in the 1920s and has been considered a classic for years, it has no doubt gained attention from the mainstream literary establishment, so I won't spend time analyzing it; there's plenty of meta on the surface, and no doubt more beneath. The introduction discussed the social context of the period when the book is set, when there was a massive oversupply of unmarried women due to World War I but a comparatively narrowly circumscribed idea of their role, particularly in the English middle and upper class. It mentions Lolly Willowes as a precursor to "A Room of One's Own" particularly. The style is a satirical comedy of manners; the fantasy is nearly incidental. I especially enjoyed this portrayal of meeting/conversation with the devil as an example of the genre; there were some giggles. It brought to mind Jareth in Labyrinth and the meanings and associations of Faerie.

Comments

[oracne]

LOLLY WILLOWES is coming up on my TBR Challenge list! So I will be reading it soon.

I have not read Michael Shea, though I adored Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series when I was young. I should re-read, I still have the paperbacks.

[cimorene]

My dad talks about those. I read a couple of Flandry collections when I was a teenager which I liked, and my dad compared those two series the most, but he didn't have any single paperbacks of them I think. I was telling him about the Shea, though, as I was reading, because it's very much in line with a bunch of things that he likes (all the namechecked guys basically). There are only the 3 books though, apparently, not a ton of short stories published separately like a lot of other series seem to have! Maybe partly because this is a bit later.

[(Anonymous)]

The Leiber was mostly short stories and one novel. IIRC.

[oracne]

Ummm, that was me.

[cimorene]

That makes it easier to try out anyway!