Kind of Obscure Favorites


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Has anyone else read The Prince of Mourning Bells by Nancy Kress? A fantasy novel, by an author more famed for her science fiction. Certain tongue-in-cheek humorous approach, but I'm always leaking tears over the end.

Also, Michelle Sagara's series about the conflict between the followers of the Light and Dark Hearts of the world... can't dredge up titles to save own life at the moment... ought to be sleeping, dammit.

What unsung oddities does anybody else have to throw on the pile?


Events in other recent threads helped the ol' memory to dredge up Bimbos of the Death Sun by Sharyn McCrumb which I found, when I was prepubescent, to be a hilarious murder mystery set at a sci-fi/fantasy con.

More recently, I found a book called The Demon of Scattery by Poul Anderson and Mildred Downey Broxon about Viking marauders raiding the Irish countryside. Enjoyed it a great deal.


Heroes Die by Matthew Stover.

It's an awesome fantasy story inside an amazing sci-fi political drama. It's about a bad man doing terrible things for all the right reasons. Read it. Right now. Go.


I've brought them up in a couple of other threads on these forums, and I'll bring them up again. My two favorite novels of all time are _Master_of_the_Five_Magics_ and its first sequel _Secret_of_the_Sixth_Magic_, both by Lyndon Hardy. Not only do these books have the coolest magic system I've ever seen, by far, but Lyndon Hardy could squeeze more plot and action into one "part" of a book (each of his books being divided into 4-6 parts) than most authors can manage in an entire novel. And his use of language was perfect for fantasy! And "Secret" has the coolest alien world I've ever seen in fantasy.

(My third-favorite fantasy novel is _The_Anubis_Gates_ by Tim Powers, but I don't know if that's obscure enough to qualify for this thread.)


I have never met anyone in the flesh who has read The Anubis Gates, so I'd say it's obscure enough.


Lyndon does rock -- I really enjoyed those, myself.

Liberty's Edge

Silverlock by John Myers Myers. You, too, can play the, "Oooooh, I get that reference...." game.


Doodlebug Anklebiter wrote:
I have never met anyone in the flesh who has read The Anubis Gates, so I'd say it's obscure enough.

Ho boy!

I wish I could explain what makes that novel so great. I wish I could. But I can't, without giving away the most major of spoilers. And I'm talking about spoilers greater than those of The Empire Strikes Back, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and The Sixth Sense all combined. I first read that book at the impressionable young age of 13, and it deeply, DEEPLY influenced my opinion of how a time travel story should be written. (Which probably poisoned my mind, ruining a lot of good time travel stories for me...)

So what CAN I say about _The_Anubis_Gates_? It's got Lovecraftian elements (although I wouldn't classify it as a horror novel). It's got ancient Egyptian sorcerers, one of whom gravitates toward the moon instead of toward the center of the Earth. It's got a body-switching werewolf. It's got magically-created artificial life forms.

And yet, no matter how weird it gets, the author somehow makes you believe it. I don't know how he did it.


@Aaron

Don't worry, it couldn't have ruined a lot of good time travel stories for you... there aren't a lot of good time travel stories...

:P


Be that as it may, _The_Anubis_Gates_ is definitely my favorite time travel story.


OK-- I haven't read The Anubis Gates, but my favorite time-travel novel is Replay by Ken Grimwood (1988).

Charles Stross has become my favorite contemporary sci-fi author. I'd especially recommend his "Bob Howard" series: The Atrocity Archives (2004), The Jennifer Morgue (2006), and The Fuller Memorandum (2010); which cross modern-day espionage with Lovecraftian existential horror, infused with a wicked sense of black humor. (plus, there's a new one tentatively being published this year). For fans of futurism, I'd also recommend his novel about The Singularity, Accelerando.

It's been ages since I've read them, but Barbara Hambly's "Darwath Trilogy" (The Time of the Dark (1982), The Walls of Air (1983), The Armies of Daylight (1984)) is my favorite series of the "modern-day people thrown into a fantasy world" variety.

They're more passe than obscure, but instead of the over-hyped (and terrible) Twilight series, I'd recommend vampire fans to check out the first two novels of Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles": Interview With the Vampire (1976) and The Vampire Lestat (1985). You can skip the rest of the series-- they're pretty bad. And skip the movies too-- they're even worse.

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