fantasy series rec
Okay, I've been wanting to pimp these books out since about a third of the way through the first one, but I figured I'd better wait until I'd finished out the series first, just in case the author went nuts and fucked everything up. But she didn't, and in fact they just kept getting better, so! Book rec! The Crown of Stars series, by Kate Elliot, which is comprised of seven books (the last of which just came out this spring): King's Dragon, Prince of Dogs, The Burning Stone, Child of Flame, The Gathering Storm, In the Ruins, and Crown of Stars. I'd never heard of either the books nor the author before randomly stumbling across the first book in the bargain basement of a bookstore in Dublin, but oh, I'm so very glad I did.
What I really love about this series is that it takes a number of your standard fantasy-world cliches -- the varied races (humans/elves/orcs/uruks/what-have-you), for example, and the medieval Europe-ish setting -- and completely change the way you look at them. For example, the elven race is not all-knowing and benevolent and immortal and wise-yet-fading; rather, they are an angry, often cold-hearted race constantly at war with humankind, with a fascinating culture reminiscent of the Aztecs or Incas, and lord knows they aren't any longer-lived than us. And then, the sort of uruk-hai race (here called Eika) -- they aren't mindless evil beasts, they've got their own culture and history that's just as compelling as anyone else's, and we follow an Eika's POV for a significant part of the books. And the human culture, which is deliberately based on Christianity but has a lot of really well-crafted alterations, just enough to make it new and interesting, and which does what I've very rarely seen done in this type of fantasy: an almost matriarchal society, in which women are often considered superior to men, particularly in matters of administering lands and succession. And also, no evil overlord to be destroyed, and no destinies, and none of that other crap that so frequently pops up in these things. There's one primary character who could appear to be Mary-Sue-ish, but she's compelling and flawed and very wonderful, so I really don't care. (Also, is it possible to create a strong female character without having the Mary-Sue accusation hurled at you these days? But I digress.)
And there's even a bit of canon slash, which was the greatest thing ever, since I'd been privately slashing these two characters for quite a while and then they HAD SEX, and I just sort of gaped at the page for a few minutes because I'm so unused to seeing canonically gay (or bisexual, one of them is bisexual, or possibly just heteroflexible but who CARES) characters in medieval-type fantasies. So much awesome. But anyway.
So. Yes. If you're into fantasy, read these books. So worth it.
What I really love about this series is that it takes a number of your standard fantasy-world cliches -- the varied races (humans/elves/orcs/uruks/what-have-you), for example, and the medieval Europe-ish setting -- and completely change the way you look at them. For example, the elven race is not all-knowing and benevolent and immortal and wise-yet-fading; rather, they are an angry, often cold-hearted race constantly at war with humankind, with a fascinating culture reminiscent of the Aztecs or Incas, and lord knows they aren't any longer-lived than us. And then, the sort of uruk-hai race (here called Eika) -- they aren't mindless evil beasts, they've got their own culture and history that's just as compelling as anyone else's, and we follow an Eika's POV for a significant part of the books. And the human culture, which is deliberately based on Christianity but has a lot of really well-crafted alterations, just enough to make it new and interesting, and which does what I've very rarely seen done in this type of fantasy: an almost matriarchal society, in which women are often considered superior to men, particularly in matters of administering lands and succession. And also, no evil overlord to be destroyed, and no destinies, and none of that other crap that so frequently pops up in these things. There's one primary character who could appear to be Mary-Sue-ish, but she's compelling and flawed and very wonderful, so I really don't care. (Also, is it possible to create a strong female character without having the Mary-Sue accusation hurled at you these days? But I digress.)
And there's even a bit of canon slash, which was the greatest thing ever, since I'd been privately slashing these two characters for quite a while and then they HAD SEX, and I just sort of gaped at the page for a few minutes because I'm so unused to seeing canonically gay (or bisexual, one of them is bisexual, or possibly just heteroflexible but who CARES) characters in medieval-type fantasies. So much awesome. But anyway.
So. Yes. If you're into fantasy, read these books. So worth it.