Comments | kate_nepveu: Fantasy Conversion Kit

kate_nepveu

Fantasy Conversion Kit

Jul 18, 2005 20:08

My entry in the genre conversion kits discussion is very belated, but here it is all the same (I came up with a list of titles back when the discussions were going around, and then didn't have time to add reasons to the list). Since I'm not up-to-date on science fiction ( Read more... )

genre, recommendations, books, sff

Comments 54

marykaykare July 19 2005, 05:26:38 UTC

I think you should have some McKillip in there, but I'm a fan.

MKK

kate_nepveu July 19 2005, 12:24:47 UTC

Besides _The Forgotten Beasts of Eld_ and some of her short stories, though, I haven't liked her stuff.

_Forgotten Beasts_ might go as an alternative to _Spindle's End_, though.

(The comment has been removed)

kate_nepveu July 19 2005, 12:25:02 UTC

Cool!

sienamystic July 19 2005, 14:30:11 UTC

Would Anubis Gates work better than Last Call? It's all one to me, because I adore Powers and these two books in particular, but AG seems to be more universally liked. On the other hand, LC may be more accessable on account of people knowing more about Capone than Colridge.

I'd be likely to replace Spindle's End (my least favorite McKinley) with one of her others. Not Deerskin, because it's so dark, but maybe one of the Beauty and the Beasts, or either of the Damar books.

And I'm so glad you used Element of Fire - it's my favorite Wells, but gets passed over in favor of Death of a Necromancer all the time. (And speaking of which, we'll have to race to the Borderlands, because if I beat you there, I'm taking the name Kade Carrion for myself *g*)

kate_nepveu July 19 2005, 14:41:17 UTC

I don't remember _The Anubis Gates_ that well; I remember finding it confusing as anything, and that's all.

Re: Wells: lots of people like her later stuff, but it's not *zing*ed for me like _Element_ does. I might give the currently-in-progress trilogy a shot when it's done, though. _Death_ was enjoyable but doesn't do well in comparison afterwards, to me.

richboye July 19 2005, 15:48:31 UTC

Anubis Gates is one of my favorite books of all time (time-travel! ancient Egyptian sorcerers! guilds of thieves! spoon-sized boys?! Lord Byron?!?) but it's a bit too, to employ a literary term, wacky for the uninitiated.

IMHO, if you want a nice introduction to the zany brilliance that is Tim Powers, I'd push On Stranger Tides. It's got pirates, for one thing, and I think its a ...breezier read than Last Call

richboye July 19 2005, 15:49:41 UTC

Dammit! Damn html tags!

Thread 8

anonymous July 19 2005, 15:36:10 UTC

Interesting list...I've read all but three of these (_Mockingbird_, _Sorcery & Cecilia_, and _Tooth & Claw_), and certainly liked or even loved all of them. I'm not sure I see the granularity of your sub-genres, which says more about me really, since I'm not used to thinking of fantasy subgenres in quite the same way that you've parsed them here (all that's really saying is that I don't think about subgenres that much at all, to tell the truth). Or maybe another way of saying the same thing is that I lump several of your choices into roughly the same grouping or sub-genre, and if I were making the list, I'd be granular in a different direction, for instance, by giving Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" a separate category rather than subsuming it under either Tolkien "big epic" or Kay "historical basis". Not a criticism, just an observation ( ... )

kate_nepveu July 19 2005, 15:59:59 UTC

I'm not putting "Song of Fire and Ice" on this list because it's not _done_ yet.

As I recall _Little, Big_ (which is not very well), the fantasy element is not precisely foregrounded; which I suppose could cut either way, really. I should re-read that in my cps spr tm.

I haven't read Kij Johnson's novels yet, either. Someday . . .

kgbooklog July 19 2005, 19:53:51 UTC

I'd like to second the rec for Fudoki. It's a fun little book about a dying princess writing a story about a cat who turns into a woman.

coffeeandink July 19 2005, 16:33:18 UTC

I am just awed you took this on at all. It's such a huge task I wouldn't know where to start. The readerly divisions you tried on seem very sensible.

kate_nepveu July 19 2005, 17:25:38 UTC

Thanks! It was a little hard to get started, I admit, but once I had a couple of ideas, I could kind of see the holes left by them. And it was certainly an interesting way to vacuum some cats--still, even, with the interesting discussions it's sparked here. We'll see if sf.written has anything to say about it.