Pieces on Speculative Fiction

My favorite fantasy novels in no particular order:

• David Gemmell – Legend
• David Gemmell – Waylander
• Matthew Woodring Stover – Heroes Die
• Sean Stewart – Galveston
• Jon Courtenay Grimwood – 9Tail Fox
• Steven Erikson – Midnight Tides
• China Mieville – Perdido Street Station
• Tim Powers – Declare
• Tim Powers – On Stranger Tides
• Mary Gentle – Ash

These books represent the best fantasy has as a genre to offer to someone who likes to be entertained and provoked at the same time. David Gemmell explores his classical theme of redemption in both of these books. MW Stover on the other hand presents us an ultimate struggle of identity and roles in society. Sean Stewart offers incredible view to how you can affect who you really are with Galveston. 9Tail Fox is pure detective pleasure with a really nice twist. Midnight Tides is part of Erikson ongoing Book of the Fallen and is in my opinion the best installment. The most important point is about self-deception and taking a stand in life.

Perdido Street Station is grotesque jumble of extremely visual language coupled with unique ideas. It takes on numerous social issues as can be expected from Mieville. Declare and On Stranger Tides both have the same appeal: filling the cracks of known history. Former gives completely different perspective to English Soviet spy Kim Philby and the latter to Edward Teach, better know as Blackbeard the pirate. Mary Gentles Ash is alternate history or “secret history” book about medieval times. It borders on military fiction.

There are a lot of other fantasy books I’ve enjoyed over the years, but these I can read and reread again and again. I think it’s appropriate to kick off a new blog with a list like this. Might even make a list of the books I “hate”, though that would rather be list of overrated books.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 2:30 am and is filed under list. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.