"Adult" fantasy with minimal magic?

[cunole]

Hi. I'm after suggestions about which book/series to pick up next. Books I've read recently and brief thoughts on them:

GRRM - asoiaf. 9/10. Loved it.

Tad Williams - mst. 7/10. Lots of good stuff and some great characters. And several boring ones. And way too long. Otherland, 4/10.

UK Leguin - 1st earthsea book. 6/10. Easy to read but dry, distant and unsatisfying.

Jordan - wot. 4/10. Struggled thru the first 6 books. Unpleasant characters, poor writing, boring.

Erikson - 1st malazan book. Actually I only read the 1st chapter, and it didn't excite me. I checked some reviews which suggested a lot of magic was to come. I found that a turnoff. I came to realise magic in serious "adult" fantasy makes me cringe. GRRM got it right in asoiaf.

I read tolkien, feist, eddings and others as a young'n and loved them. I've also read harry potter more recently - to see what the fuss was about - and liked that too. I don't mind magic in youf oriented books I guess.

Thinking that maybe a change of genre would do me good, I picked up the saxon chronicles by bernard cornwell. 7/10. I found that good fun though a bit cartoony and 1 dimensional. I did like how the saxons are portrayed as the uptight religious freaks while the danes are the fun loving party animals. I'd definitely like to check out more historical fiction. Something more meaty and less actiony, maybe

Also checked out and enjoyed a couple of other genres but I'd like to get back to fantasy. "Adult" fantasy with minimal magic preferably... So yeah, sorry about the blahblah, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Luonas]

I would suggest staying with historical fiction, perhaps, sounds like that's what your after more than fantasy?

But that said, good speculative fiction without magic:

Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union"

Just started reading it and it's a great read. But if your primarily interested in medievalesque fantasy/historical fiction it is perhaps not for you.

If you want to expand into sci-fi, Ursula Le Guin's "Left hand of darkness" is a very great read, much better than the Earthsea novels.

 

[ThornofCamorr]

Just read Malazan, the fact that theres magic is negligable. You don't even notice after a while.

 

[ChrisW]

umm i'd say avoid MBotF if ya don't like magic. I can't imagine how someone wouldn't notice it especially if there already predisposed to not liking lots of magic.


Sticking with fantasy but little magic perhaps the "Caine" novels by Stover or the new guys Lynch and Abercombie. Kay or Wolfe may might float ya boat aswell.

 

[Luonas]

Sticking with fantasy but little magic perhaps the "Caine" novels by Stover or the new guys Lynch and Abercombie. Kay or Wolfe may might float ya boat aswell.

Abercombie is pretty heavy in magic, imo. Especially the last book.

 

[owlcroft]

The Return of Lists'R'Us!

. . . I'd like to get back to fantasy. "Adult" fantasy with minimal magic preferably...

From Lists 'R' Us Central, the laundry list below. Each of the books there is, in at least one opinion, a work of real merit; each is a fantasy. Most have settings not remotely resembling the tired middle-ages elves-and-orcs doorstop-fantasy cliches; the very few that are in something similar are marked with an @ sign instead of an * -- but each is there for a reason having to do with your specifications.

All these books are assuredly "adult" fiction; being fantasy, they all have some sort of magic (in fact, there is an exception, Islandia, but it is typically classed a fantasy), but none of it is the stereotyped sort.

Taking my will power in both hands, I have mightily avoided the temptation to further annotate the list by relative quality levels; but there are some truly magnificent works here, along with very good and pretty good stuff. Part of the fun is checking them all out.

So then, may I have the envelope please . . . .

===========

Ackroyd, Peter
* First Light

Adams, Richard
* Watership Down
* Shardik
* The Girl in a Swing

Amis, Kingsley
* The Green Man

Amis, Martin
* Other People

Auster, Paul
* In the Country of Last Things
* Mr. Vertigo
* Man in the Dark

Barrett, Neal
* The Hereafter Gang
* Interstate Dreams

Barth, John
* Chimera
* The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor

Bauer, Steven
@ Satyrday

Beagle, Peter S.
* A Fine and Private Place
* The Last Unicorn
@ The Innkeeper's Song
@ Giant Bones

Bell, Douglas
* Mojo and the Pickle Jar

Bellairs, John
o The Pedant and the Shuffly
@ The Face in the Frost

Billias, Stephen
* The Quest for the 36
* The American Book of the Dead

Bisson, Terry
* Talking Man

Blaylock, James
* The Twombley Town Trio:

o The Elfin Ship
o The Disappearing Dwarf
o The Stone Giant aka The Goblin Keeper​

* The Langdon St. Ives Trio:

o Homunculus
o Lord Kelvin's Machine
o The Digging Leviathan​

o Land of Dreams
o The Last Coin
o The Paper Grail
o Night Relics
o Winter Tides
o All the Bells on Earth
o The Rainy Season

Borges, Jorge Luis
* Collected Fiction

Bradbury, Ray
* Something Wicked This Way Comes

Bramah, Ernest
* The Kai Lung Sextet:

o The Wallet of Kai Lung
o Kai Lung's Golden Hours
o Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat
o The Return of Kai Lung aka The Moon of Much Gladness
o Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree
o # Kai Lung: Six​

Brunner, John
@ The Traveler in Black

Bulgakov, Mikhail
* The Master and Margarita

Byatt, A. S. **
* The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye

# Cabell, James Branch
* The "Biography" Cycle:

o Figures of Earth, #2
o The Silver Stallion, #3
o Domnei, #4a
o The Music from Behind the Moon, #4b
o Chivalry, #5
o Jurgen, #6
o The High Place, #8
o The Cream of the Jest, #16a
o The Way of Ecben, #18b
o The White Robe, #18c​

* The "Heirs and Assigns" Trio:

o Hamlet Had an Uncle
o The King Was in His Counting House
o The First Gentleman of America​

* The Florida Trio:

o The St. Johns (with A.J. Hanna) - nonfiction relevant to the following two books
o There Were Two Pirates
o The Devil's Own Dear Son​

* The Nightmare Trilogy:

o Smirt
o Smith
o Smire​

Cady, Jack
* The Jonah Watch

Calvino, Italo
* The Cloven Viscount
* The Nonexistent Knight (usually published with the previous in one volume)
* The Qfwfq Duo:

o Cosmicomics
o t Zero
(A few more Qfwfq stories appear in Numbers in the Dark, listed below.)​

Carroll, Jonathan ****
* The Land of Laughs
* Voice of Our Shadow
* Black Cocktail (novella)
* The Rondua Sextet:

o Bones of the Moon
o Sleeping in Flame
o A Child Across the Sky
o From the Teeth of Angels
o Outside the Dog Museum
o After Silence​

* The Panic Hand *
* The White Apples Trilogy:

o White Apples
o Glass Soup
o (third book being written)​

Carter, Angela ***
* The War of Dreams aka The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
* Nights at the Circus
* The Bloody Chamber *
* Fireworks *

Charnas, Suzy McKee
* Dorothea Dreams

Cherryh, C. J.
* The Rusalka Trio:

@ Rusalka
@ Chernevog
@ Yvgenie​

* The Arafel Duology:

@ The Dreamstone
@ The Tree of Swords and Jewels​

Chesterton, G. K.
* The Man Who Was Thursday

Cisco, Michael
* The San Veneficio Canon:

o The Divinity Student
o The Golem​

* The Tyrant
* The Traitor

Clarke, Susanna ***
* Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
* The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories *

Crawford, F. Marion
* Khaled
* The Witch of Prague

Crowley, John
* Little, Big
* The Aegypt Quartet:

o The Solitudes
o Love and Sleep
o Daemonomania
o Endless Things​

Davidson, Avram ****
* The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy
* Limekiller
* The Peregrine Trilogy (only 2 books written):

o Peregrine: Primus
o Peregrine: Secundus​

* The Vergil Cycle:

o The Phoenix and the Mirror
o Vergil in Averno
o The Scarlet Fig​

* The Boss in the Wall
* Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty

Davies, Robertson
* Murther and Walking Spirits

Davis, Kathryn
* The Thin Place

De Bernieres, Louis
* The Latin American Trilogy:

o The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts
o Senor Vivo And The Coca Lord
o The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman​

DeMarinis, Rick
* Cinder

Ducornet, Rikki
* Phosphor in Dreamland

Dunsany, Lord *****
o The Chronicles of Rodrigues aka Don Rodriguez
@ The King of Elfland's Daughter
o The Charwoman's Shadow
o The Blessing of Pan
o The Curse of the Wise Woman
o My Talks With Dean Spanley
o The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders

Eco, Umberto
* Baudolino

Eddison, E. R.
@ The Worm Ouroboros
* The Zimiamvia Trilogy:

o Mistress of Mistresses
o A Fish Dinner in Memison
o The Mezentian Gate​

Findley, Timothy
* Pilgrim

Finney, Charles G.
* The Circus of Dr. Lao
* The Unholy City
* The Magician Out of Manchuria

Gaiman, Neil
* Good Omens - co-authored with Terry Pratchett
* Neverwhere
* Stardust
* American Gods
* Coraline
* The Wolves in the Walls

Gardner, John
* Grendel
* Freddy's Book
* Mickelsson's Ghosts
* The Sunlight Dialogs

Goldstein, Lisa
* The Red Magician
* Dark Cities Underground

Gogol, Nikolai
* The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

Grahame, Kenneth
* The Wind in the Willows

Grant, Richard
* Views from the Oldest House
* Tex and Molly in the Afterlife

Green, Simon R. *
* Shadows Fall

Hanratty, Peter
@ The Last Knight of Albion
@ The Book of Mordred

Hansen, Erik Fosnes
* Tales of Protection

Harrison, M. John
* The Viriconium Quartet:

o The Pastel City
o A Storm of Wings
o The Floating Gods aka In Viriconium
o Viriconium Nights​

* The Course of the Heart

Helprin, Mark
* Winter's Tale

Hoban, Russell
* The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz
* Kleinzeit
* Pilgermann

Hodgson, William Hope
* The Night Land
* The House on the Borderland
* Carnacki the Ghost-Finder

Hoffman, Alice
* Practical Magic

Hoffmann, E. T. A.
* The Devil's Elixirs
* The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr

Holt, Tom
* everything.

Hughart, Barry
* The Master Li Trio:

o Bridge of Birds
o The Story of the Stone
o Eight Skilled Gentlemen​

Irwin, Robert
* The Arabian Nightmare

Jackson, Shirley
* The Haunting of Hill House

Joyce, Graham
* The Facts of Life

Kathryns, G. A.
* The Borders of Life

King, Gabriel
* The "Wild Roads" Books

o The Wild Road
o The Golden Cat
o The Knot Garden
o Nonesuch​

King, Stephen
@ The Eyes of the Dragon

Kress, Nancy
* The Prince of Morning Bells

Lafferty, R. A.
* anything whatever you can get your hands on

Lee, Tanith ****
* Cyrion
* The Flat-Earth Cycle:
Note that scheduled for 2009 is a set of reprints, from Norilana Books, of the "Flat Earth" works; what is important here, though, is that the reprint series will extend that series with two all-new books: The Earth is Flat (a short-story collection), and Earth's Master (a new novel).

o Night's Master
o Death's Master
o Delusion's Master
o Delirium's Mistress
o Night's Sorceries
(There also exist in this setting a novelette, The Man Who Stole The Moon, and the short stories, "The Origin Of Snow", "The Snake", and "I Bring You Forever", none yet published in book form; presumably they will be in the forthcoming collection mentioned above.)​

* The Paradys Quartet:

o The Book of the Damned
o The Book of the Beast
o The Book of the Dead
o The Book of the Mad
(There also exists in this setting a novelette, Doll Skulls, not published in book form.)​

* The Venus Quartet:

o Faces Under Water
o Saint Fire
o A Bed of Earth
o Venus Preserved​

Lindholm, Megan
* Wizard of the Pigeons

Lindsay, David
* A Voyage to Arcturus

Lively, Penelope
* The House in Norham Gardens

Lupoff, Richard
* Sword of the Demon

Lustbader, Eric Van
* The Sunset Warrior Quintet:

o The Sunset Warrior
o Shallows of Night
o Dai-San
o Beneath an Opal Moon - different characters, same world​

MacDonald, George
* Phantastes
* Lilith

Machen, Arthur
* The Three Impostors
* The House of Souls
* The Hill of Dreams - quasi-fantastic

Meynard, Yves
@ The Book of Knights

Miéville, China
* King Rat
* The Bas-Lag Books:

o Perdido Street Station
o The Scar​

Millhauser, Steven
* From the Realm of Morpheus

Mills, Magnus
* Three to See the King
* The Scheme For Full Employment

Mirrlees, Hope
@ Lud-in-the-Mist

Mitchell, David
* Ghostwritten
* Number9Dream [sic]
* Cloud Atlas

Monaco, Richard
* The Parsival Quartet:

@ Parsival, a Knight's Tale
@ The Grail War
@ The Final Quest
@ Blood and Dreams​

Morley, Christopher
* Where the Blue Begins
* Thunder on the Left

Mujica Láinez, Manuel
* The Wandering Unicorn

Myers, John Myers
* Silverlock
* The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter

Nesbit, E.
* Whereyouwanttogoto and Other Unlikely Tales

O'Brien, Flann
* The Third Policeman
* At Swim-Two-Birds
* The Dalkey Archive

Ozick, Cynthia
* The Puttermesser Papers

Peake, Mervyn
* The Titus Saga:

o Titus Groan
o Gormenghast
o Titus Alone
o Boy in Darkness - a chilling short story featuring Titus​

* Mr. Pye

Pearson, Edward
* Chamiel

Pinckney, Josephine
* Great Mischief

Powers, Tim
* The Drawing of the Dark
* The Anubis Gates
* On Stranger Tides
* The Stress of Her Regard
* The Fisher King Trilogy:

o Last Call
o Expiration Date
o Earthquake Weather​

* Declare
* Three Days to Never

Pratchett, Terry
* anything; everything.

Price, E. Hoffmann
* The Devil Wives of Li-Fong
* The Jade Enchantress

Read, Herbert
* The Green Child

Ruff, Matt
* The Fool on the Hill

Salmonson, Jessica Amanda
* The Tomoe Gozen Trio:

o The Disfavored Hero - also published as Tomoe Gozen (but, under that name, somewhat cut up by the publisher)
o The Golden Naginata​

o Thousand Shrine Warrior
* Ou Lu Khen and the Beautiful Madwoman

Shinn, Sharon
* The Shape-Changer's Wife

Smith, Thorne
* Topper
* Topper Takes a Trip
* The Stray Lamb
* The Night Life of the Gods
* Rain in the Doorway
* The Glorious Pool

Stephens, James
* The Crock of Gold

Stewart, Sean
* Resurrection Man
* Cloud's End
* Galveston

Theroux, Paul
* Millroy the Magician

Tinniswood, Peter
* The Stirk of Stirk

Tournier, Michel
* The Four Wise Men

Vance, Jack
* The Lyonesse Trilogy:

@ Suldrun's Garden
@ The Green Pearl
@ Madouc​

Wangerin Jr., Walter
* The Books of Parable Duo:

o The Book of the Dun Cow
o The Book of Sorrows​

Warner, Sylvia Townsend
* Lolly Willowes
* Kingdoms of Elfin

Wellman, Manly Wade
* The Silver John Sextet:

o John the Balladeer - includes the original-text stories in Who Fears the Devil? plus others
o The Old Gods Waken
o After Dark
o The Lost and the Lurking
o The Hanging Stones
o The Voice of the Mountain​

White, T. H.
* The Elephant and the Kangaroo
* Mistress Masham's Repose

Whittemore, Edward
* Quin's Shanghai Circus -arguably related to the series below
* The Jerusalem Quartet:

o Sinai Tapestry
o Jerusalem Poker
o Nile Shadows
o Jericho Mosaic​

Williams, Charles
* The Aspects of Power Septet:

o Many Dimensions
o War in Heaven
o Descent into Hell
o The Greater Trumps
o The Place of the Lion
o Shadows of Ecstasy
o All Hallows' Eve​

Williams, Tad
* Caliban's Hour

Wolf, Gary K.
* Who Censored Roger Rabbit?

Wolfe, Gene
* Peace
* The Latro Trio:

o Soldier of the Mist
o Soldier of Arete
o Soldier of Sidon​

Woolf, Virginia
* Orlando

Wright, Austin Tappan
* Islandia

Wright, Grahame
* Jog Rummage

Zelazny, Roger
* A Night in the Lonesome October

=================

Have fun!

--
Cordially,
Eric Walker

 

[algernoninc]

Guy Gavriel Kay - any book after Fionnavar Tapestry has minimal magic interference. And they are standalones [even Sarantium which is a large book split in two], so you don't have to read a lot of volumes or wait years for the series to finish. The last Kay book "Ysabel" is young adult, not mature, so you better start with Lions of Al-Rassan or Tigana.
K J Parker - Engineer trilogy has no magic at all, but it is pretty grim and blood soaked. Also, it is very rich in minute details of various crafts [metalworking, hunting, etc] and some readers are turned off by this.
Gary Jennings - Aztec - not really fantasy, more like fictionalized history seen with the eyes of the natives of Mexico and not of the Conquistadores.

note to owlcroft : you have a lot of good names on that list, but it's pretty much useless because it is so big and impersonal. usually when I ask for recommendations on the board I like some input about the books put forward, not just a long list of authors.

 

[owlcroft]

Yes, but . . . .

The list is not impersonal to me, of course, in that I've read and at least liked--often loved--everything on it, and re-read a lot of them even now. The problem with annotating is that it makes an already long post even longer.

But let's see:

Probably the highest points would be these:

Richard Adams' Girl in a Swing: contemporary setting, all seems wonderful for the protagonist as he meets his ideal woman, who loves him beyond words; but, inch by inch, as in a Greek tragedy, we sense something seriously wrong growing. The ending is sudden and shocking, yet open to interpretation as to whether it is truly tragic or only seemingly so. Some deep ideas get tossed about, but not in a way that slows the movement. Very human characters populate the tale. There is no "magic" as such, but the supernatural hangs over matters.

Martin Amis's Other People: again, contemporary setting, with one of the strangest beginnings in fiction; this is a complex and compelling psychological drilling down, with an ending that might be considered a twist, and which leaves the reader to sort out the significance of all that has gone forth. Strong stuff.

Paul Auster's books--all in contemporary settings--are uniformly rich: he writes lucid prose, and makes the most amazing occurrences seem everyday normal. Mr. Vertigo is about a man who learns, as a child, to levitate, and what happens to him after--a parable, I suppose, but it reads like a diary, so plausible is it all. In the Country of Last Things is set in an unnamed country--which sounds a lot like Brooklyn--after things have more or less fallen apart; it is the story of how, and why, people survive--their everyday lives.

Neal Barrett writes (nowadays) wild-ass contemporary Texas fantasy; his protagonists, half bum and half hero, are thoroughly engaging, and their adventures real romps (but these are a lot more than just romps--there is character development as well as plot).

Steven Bauer's Satyrday is rather more like a traditional fantasy, but still not quite: it is the tale of how the owl stole the moon, and the boy and his companion the satyr who bring her (the Moon is a personality) back. The over-riding joy of this book is the sheer prose: Bauer is most famed as a poet, and it shows. Beautiful to read aloud, even if only to oneself.

Peter Beagle's contemporary fantasy, A Fine and Private Place (a classical reference to the grave), is about two young ghosts who lose love and an old woman who finds it, all in a graveyard. It's human and touching and splendidly written. The Last Unicorn is a "heroic" fantasy in which our "hero" is a well-meaning but bumbling magician named--wait for it--Schmendrick; he has to rescue the titular last unicorn from the Red Bull, and if his magic is shabby (like his robe), his heart is not. The Innkeeper's Song is a new Peter Beagle: muscular, sweaty, strong stuff, in a more nearly classical fantasy setting, yet anything but traditional. Real people cut and bleed, sometimes helping each other, sometimes not. It's about what it means to be human. (Giant Bones is a sort of sequel, set in the same world with a cameo callback for a couple of the prior characters; equally good.)

Douglas Bell's Mojo and the Pickle Jar is a hysterical romp through the American Southwest, with hapless Mojo and his girl friend racing around with a saint's heart in a pickle jar while the minions of Satan pursue them in old Chevy Suburbans. Gene Wolfe loved it and so did I.

John Bellairs' Face in the Frost is the #1 favorite fantasy of not a few readers; it is a masterly combination of droll comedy and pea-your-pants terror neatly interwoven (Ursula Le Guin said good things about that turn-on-a-dime quality in the writing). You quickly grow to love old Prospero (no, not that one) and Roger Bacon (yes, that one). A writer who can refer to "such things as trouble antique dealers' dreams" is a winner.

James Blaylock is one of our great American writers. He has four distinct styles of writing; one, the steampunk stuff, a riff on Robert Louis Stevenson and H. G. Wells, may not qualify as fantasy, though it's hard to take it "science fiction"; the rest, from the sweetly comic delights of the Twombly Town trio to the contemporary California fantasies, which last are all about Freds and Hermans and Rogers who bumble about in their garages with goofy ideas for getting rich, pissing off their loving wives, while strange and fantastic evils grow around them, are weird, rich, and rewarding. And full of squids.

Jorge Luis Borges needs, I hope, no further introduction; he is one of thw world's masters of fiction.

Ernest Bramah's work, now somewhat obscure, was once a touchstone of civilized literacy. The books, set in "a China that never was", are what one points to when the word "droll" needs to be defined. Their killing quality is the dry orotundity with which the most commonplace things get said, an imitation of real Chinese polite speech: "But however entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?" for "Cut to the chase."

John Brunner, best known as an sf writer, created The Traveler in Black in a series of related stories originally published individually; the Traveler is a demiurge tasked with bringing order out of chaos in what we must suppose is our universe in an earlier age; his chief tool is a wry ability to grant carelessly made wishes in a way that solves many problems at once. These are light, but with a bit of steel under them. Whimsical, maybe. But surely enjoyable.

In Mikhail Bulgakov's long-Soviet-suppressed fantasy The Master and Margarita, the Devil comes to then-contemporary Moscow and, um, raises some hell--but the Devil is something of a gentleman, and the devilry seems to fall neatly on bastards who richly deserve it. It runs as a neat comic satire till the end, when it takes on some extra weight to wrap up. A classic, and deservedly so.

James Branch Cabell always said that his sole desire was "to write perfectly of beautiful things"--but his books are all, however genteely phrased, scornfullly satirical romps (Jurgen led to a famous obscenity trial, in which the redasses of the time made utter fools of themselves). But Cabell has deeper purposes: he not only analyzes the human character (finding three basic modes of behavior, gallant, chivalric, and poetic), but fights against the meaningless of a life that he sees as ending at death. Amusing yet deep. And superb prose. H. L. Mencken was his first major champion.

Italo Calvino has had the good fortune of an excellent translator (William Weaver), so his delicate, lightly amusing, but ultimately serious little tales unfold delightfully. The Cloven Viscount is blown in half by a cannonball--after which, his two halves lead separate lives, to the downfal of each. The Nonexistent Knight is an empty suit of armor who gads about doing heroic and chivalric deeds, and having polite and witty conversations. And "old Qfwfq" is a sort of anthropic idea, an animate viewpoint who shows us the history of the cosmos on a charmingly human scale (when the Moon was much closer to the Earth, they would row out at night onto the ocean and climb up ladders from their rowboats to the Moon, to gather cream). Another justly famed writer.

Jonathan Carroll writes about nice, decent, upper-midle-class folk, polite, intellectual, favered with full and happy lives--who take a slightly wrong turn one day (often unaware of it) and are suddenly plunged into hell on Earth. Creepy, shocking, and nicely written, too. The Land of Laughs, an early work, is a good starting point.

Angela Carter is another literary titan. All her books are weird, some more so than others, and many are quite bloody. A good starting point, and possibly her best, is Nights at the Circus, in which we meet a real winged woman, Fevvers (get it?), a Cockney who performs flying acts in a circus and has become the social lion of London. Fevvers talks about her life with a skeptical reporter--then the two of them go off on a circus tour to Russia; much ensues after the circus train is wrecked on th snowy steppes. Alternately funny and moving, and always a rich read.

G. K. Chesterton's Man Who Was Thursday is at once a delightful social satire and a religious parable (but fear not, it's not the sort of thing that chokes one--Chesterton never wields The Great Hammer of Obviousness). It is at times--most times--screamingly funny, but also moving in a strange way. The ending is a bit OTT, but not unsatisfying. (The protagonist infiltrates a secret society of anarchists each, for secrecy, called only by a day of the week.)

Reading Michael Cisco is like experiencing a fever dream. The man positively drowns in--and frrowns his readers in--words, words thrown about extravagantly, exuberantly, chillingly. The San Veneficio Canon is, to put it mildly, gruesome--yet it is curiously exhilarating.

(It's now 4:27 a.m., so I'm going to start skipping larger blocks of authors and titles; but they're all worth finding out about, and finding, period.)

Avram Davidson is a treasure. His inimitable prose is wildly amusing when comic, and eerily moody when serious. Sometimes he is both in one short tale as with some of the Doctor Eszterhazy tales (set in an imagined late-nineteenth-century analogue of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). Peregrin, on the other hand, takes place in post-Roman Dark Ages Europe, and is the comic, Candide-like adventures of a naif in a dog-eat-dog world. Jack Limekiller is a European trying to live the lazy life in South America, where he keeps getting involved in darkly magical affairs--alternately funny and creepy (characteristic of Davidson). And Davidson's acme is the sadly incomplete Virgil Magus cycle, a reimagining of ancient Rome as the Middle Ages conceived it, with the poet Vergil (as it is normally spelt) as an alchemical magician.

Lord Dunsany is almost surely the greatest fantasy writer of all time. His fame rests chiefly on his short stories, but his several fantasy novels are at least as good. Don Rodriguez and its quasi-sequel The Charwoman's Shadow take place in, one might say, "a Spain that never was", a Middle Ages Spain in which chivalry rules (for some only, though). Both tales are gentle, humorous, warm, and pleasant reading, with many a wry smile. (The first novel gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "castles in Spain".)

E. R. Eddison is anothet titan of fantasy. Regrettably, he is better known for The Worm Ouroboros, which--to me--is ok but not world-beating, but its fame has given him the rep of a guy who just writes medieval stories in medieval prose. His real accomplishment is Zimiamvia, in which his interesting philosophy powers the action, which superficially is also "just" medieval, but in which Eddison tells us that good and evil have different meanings and purposes than is commonly supposed. Along the way great heros and great, swaggering villains (whom, in a way, it is hard to dislike, which is ok with Eddison) perform cosmic deeds, all the while being watched by Doctor Vandermast, the philosopher who actually understands the world, and the Lady, who wears different persons like dresses and is the goddess. Better by far than I am making it sound.

Edward Whittemore is, in a small way, being rediscovered these days. His Jerusalem Quartet, set in the late nineteenth and early to nearly contemporary twentieth century Middle East, is extravagantly fantastic at first, then slowly--book by book--settling in to more realism, becoming almost espionage stories. The books are remarkable for their ability to turn on a dime from farce to tragedy to farce. In that, they reflect the equally bizarre nature and history of the Middle East. (Whittemore was a real CIA field agent, not a Washington paper-pusher, and he knows whereof he writes.)

Charles Williams is "the forgotten Inkling", the third major player along with Tolkien and Lewis. His books fell out of favor for a while, perhaps because they are somewhat bizarre and complex--not the easy symbols or parables the other two wrote. Williams' tales, all set in then contemporary (early to middle twentieth-century) England, seem unrelated, but, when considered, all examine, as the collective title has it, "aspects of power"--its use and, above all, abuse. Of the seven books, Descent Into Hell is the most powerful, the nightmarish tale of a man who, in a psychological sense, slowly dissolves himself from the inside out, becoming less and less of a person, a human, with every little seemingly minor act of uncaring or selfishness. It is a star turn by Williams.

Gene Wolfe everyone knows; I'll say no more here.

Virgina Woolf wrote this curious and delightful little fantasy about Orlando, a man who lives through the centuries, and at one point--with no explanation--simply becomes a woman. Neither Orlando nor anyone around him/her ever takes any note of any of this--it just happens. But it gives Woolf a way to show the evolution of society and attitudes. Woolf is a sufficiently talented writer that there is no hint of polemic (though at bottom it is a feminist work), and both Orlando and Orlando's times are portrayed in a most interesting way.

Austin Tappan Wright is a close runner-up to Tolkien for most time invested in a lifetime crafting an entire imagined place. Islandia is an imagined semi-continental island (something a bit smaller than Australia) set somewhere in the South Pacific. It is, by a chance of isolation, a place that has evolved a society with customs very, very different from our own. And to it, in 1912, comes a young American as envoy. These are his doings, and interesting they are.

Finally (for this criminally shortened list), there is the one-of-a-kind fantasy Jog Rummage by the sadly unknown Grahame Wright, who died at age 28 shortly after finishing this superb book. It is very hard to explain much about this work without spoiler effects. Suffice it to say that it seems to start as a classic English "animal story", but there are twists and turns. I leave it at that.

==============

Well, you did ask.

--
Cordially,
Eric Walker

 

[Matrim]

Guy Gavriel Kay - any book after Fionnavar Tapestry has minimal magic interference. And they are standalones [even Sarantium which is a large book split in two], so you don't have to read a lot of volumes or wait years for the series to finish. The last Kay book "Ysabel" is young adult, not mature, so you better start with Lions of Al-Rassan or Tigana.

Seconded. Kay's books are like historical fiction with a bit of magic. And they are beautifully written.

Another option would be Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy.

Just read Malazan, the fact that theres magic is negligable. You don't even notice after a while.

What? I love the Malazan Book of the Fallen but this is simply not true, the magic there is anything but negligible. After all we are talking about a series which features magicians strong enough to cover an entire continent with ice...

 

[Rob B]

I forgot that magic in a novel made it only a children's novel or a Young Adult novel. Those are horrible types of books aren't they?

 

[MadPiper]

I forgot that magic in a novel made it only a children's novel or a Young Adult novel. Those are horrible types of books aren't they?

I laughed so hard I peed a little.

 

[algernoninc]

thank you owl, i wasn't trying to be bitchy. you put a lot of effort in this answer, and i will save it in my notepad to read it at leisure.
Richard Adams - i haven't read Watership Down, but I'm a fan of Shardik and Maya - I read them before Tolkien, and before consciously picking fantasy titles. Both are classic adventures in the style of Allan Quatermain with a vaguely african setting, and I don't know how easily available they are now [got my copies in 1990] or how dated they would feel to the fans of Ruckley or Scott Lynch...

 

[Mithfânion]

Owlcroft, have to say, you're a real asset to the board. I see you're the owner of the Great SF & F site as well so it's not a surprise.

In response to the OP's question for an adult series with not too much magic and serious drama, The Warlord Trilogy by Cornwell, The Merlin Trilogy by Stewart, The Lions of Al-Rassan by Kay and The Farseer Trilogy by Hobb come to mind. I'm sure you should give The First Law books by Abercrombie, The Prince of Nothing series by Ray Scott Bakker and Lies of Locke Lamora a chance.

Do also try Sword of Shadows by JV Jones and Winterbirth by Brian Ruckley.

 

[Luonas]

OwlcroftI'm sure you should give The First Law books by Abercrombie, The Prince of Nothing series by Ray Scott Bakker and Lies of Locke Lamora a chance.

But all of those are magic heavy, especially Bakker. None of them is atleast remotely like historical fiction, which i get the feel he is mostly intereste in. (I consider Bakker's extensive use of magic to disqulify him, he is even more historical fiction than Martin in certain aspects)

 

[Werthead]

But all of those are magic heavy, especially Bakker. None of them is atleast remotely like historical fiction, which i get the feel he is mostly intereste in. (I consider Bakker's extensive use of magic to disqulify him, he is even more historical fiction than Martin in certain aspects)

Lies of Locke Lamora has pretty negligible magic in it. There's only one character who can use magic, he does a little bit, and that's it. There's really not much in there at all, especially compared to Bakker or Erikson.

 

[owlcroft]

And the rest . . . .

i wasn't trying to be bitchy

Understood from the outset. Indeed, your comment was on point; but, as I said, it was sheerly a matter of length. I am trying hard here not to seem as if I am mainly trying to promote my own site with replies, so I didn't just point links to my pages, nor even link the various author names. I have a reputation, deserved, in and out of this field, as a compulsive list-maker (hence the style Lists 'R' Us Central), and am also a compulsive padagogue (Stop me before I lecture again!).

In the hope that no one will mind the length, it now being mid-afternoon of the next day, I will try to fil in a bit on what I glossed over in my early-a.m. haste.

==============================
Peter Ackroyd's First Light is contemporary; in honesty, it is perhaps a stretch to call it fantasy, but it seems to be as one goes along in it, and it's a right good read; strange happenings in a rural English village, with strong, believeable characters throughout.

Kingsley Amis's Green Man is a psychological study: a dissolute but charming English publican at whose inn--The Green Man--things at first strange then deeply disturbing start happening. It has one of the oddest presentations of God you'll ever find.

John Barth can be tedious, but when he avoids it, as he does in these two sparklingly clever tales set in the world of the Arabian Nights (Schezerade is in one of them), he is a lot of fun. Amusing works, but with definite serious tones as well.

Stephen Billias must have done something wrong somewhere for his clever, witty, amusing, and yet deep novels to be so little know. Both take place in a contemporary America, and go from weird to weirder. Quest For the 36 is light-hearted throughout, while The American Book of the Dead is killer black humor.

Terry Bisson mostly does sf, but Talking Man (so called because he never says a word), the tale of a backwoods southern wizard who has to drive across a magically mutable America to stop the destruction of the world, is a piece of Americana firmly rooted in what magic is really all about.

Ray Bradbury has done very few novels; Something Wicked This Way Comes, set in the rural decades-ago America that is Bradbury's patented stomping ground, is, well, vintage Bradbury.

A. S. Byatt, though a mainstream figure, laces much of her eminent short-story work with fantasy; but The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye is her only novel (that I know of) rooted in fantasy. A djinn visits a modern Englishwoman; much hilarity ensues (well, no, it's light in tone, but not exactly comic, but I've been waiting ages to use that phrase).

Jack Cady seems (so far I've only read the one novel, but I've read about him) to write gritty, dark, margin-of-horror contemporary fantasy. The Jonah Watch takes place at sea, on a rescue cutter fighting New England winters. Powerful and creepy.

Suzy McKee Charnas is best known for a feminist series, but in Dorothea Dreams she turns to the art colony in Taos (New Mexico) for a ghost story that intermingles with modern urban nightmares on the fringe. Deeply human and affecting.

C. J. Cherryh's "Arafel" books are much more like "traditional" heroic fantasy, save that Arafel is not human and female, and the tales are not "heroic" except in style or setting. Cherryh is a master of complex and plausible characters with strongly felt emotions, and these exemplify her skills.

Susana Clarke's books are too well known to require comment here.

F. Marion Crawford, who wrote around the turn of the last century (how strange that sounds) mainly produced romantic non-fantasy hackwork, but he did manage a couple of pieces of fantastic exotica worth the reading. Khaled is an Arabian Nights tale of a demon who seeks to be human for the sake of love; The Witch of Prague (noneteenth-century Prague) is not an old hag but a beautiful woman lacking love, who finds it. Both are bordeline saccharin, but stay readable.

John Crowley writes great big bears of books. Little, Big is a long, complex modern fantasy about fairies at the bottom of the garden. The "Aegypt" cycle explores the idea that this is not the only world, but that doesn't really explain it: it interweaves the ongoing life and loves of a contemporary writer and professor with the medieval activities of the magician John Dee and others in a tangled tapestry. Crowley's chiefest virtue may be his sheer writerly ability, the exuberance of his prose.

Robertson was a Canadian writer--perhaps that nation's greatest--and much of his work has at least modest elements of "magic realism". His style is, in a sense, old-fashioned: events proceed at a walking pace, so to speak, and reasonable people do reasonable things. Yet, in the end, what they feel and think affects the way we feel and think about the world. (I suspect I will soon be adding a lot more Davies books to my lists).

Kathryn Davis seems little-known in genre circles, but has a significant and growing reputation in mainstream circles, though most of her books are fantastic. The Thin Place is a place in a modern New England town where the fabric of the world is strectched thin, and strange things--like a little girl bringing first a dead dog then a dead man back to life--can and do happen. The joy of the book is the clear, charming prose used to dissect the mostly but by no means entirely charming people of the place: Davis has a knack for the utterly telling short phrase that sums up a person or place perfectly.

Louis De Bernieres has a French name, is English, and writes of modern-day Latin America. His trilogy is the essence of Latin American "magic realism", with the realism ugly and gritty (think Columbia and drug cartels) and the magic uplifting. They manage to be, for all the grimness in them, ultimately delightful.

Rick DeMarinis is another American treasure. His normal mode is short stories, but this rollicking tale of an old-age home resident rescued from endless banality by a super-powered genie (whose magic is running down) is a hoot.

Rikki Ducornet writes strange stuff. It is hard to capture briefly, but call it "magic realism" and let it go at that. Phosphor in Dreamland is alternately horrible and uproarious--no mean feat. Do try it.

Umberto Eco is, I think, much over-praised, but in Baudolino he relaxes the heavy symbolim and we get a charming, lightweight historical fantasy about the man who cannot tell the truth and in consequence rises, to his surprise, to great power in medieval Europe. Much more smiles than laughs, but endearing.

Timothy Findley's Pilgrim is an eternal whom nobody believes (even we readers are not certain); here, he encounters the pioneering psychiatrist Carl Jung, who wants to cure him of his "delusion", to the consternation of both. Powerful comments on Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Charles G. Finney must be one of the least appreciated geniuses of the field. At least The Circus of Dr. Lao has some following, even if it is rather a cult. It is usually described as indescribable, which is not much help: a circus rolls into a Depression-age Arizona town, and it is like no circus in (or out of) this world; this short book is endlessly imaginative and quotable. Regrettably, Finneys' other charming and rich books, The Unholy City (plane-crash survivor Captain Butch Malahide comes to the bizarrely ultra-modern (for the 1930s) city of Heilar-Wey, falls in with a rogue, and has adventures quite comic till the very end, when they stop being comic; and The Magician Out of Manchuria. a thoroughly lightweight, thoroughly amusing little comedy of a book set in the early revolutionary days in China, when an old magician finds he has no more place in the modern world but has picaresque adventures anyway. A delight.

Neil Gaiman is Neil Gaiman: you know.

John Gardner was famed for the strong moral positions of his fiction (by no means all fantastic), which does not mean that he is a facile moralits, but rather that he probes moral questions with a fierce ense that there is a morality. Grendel is the classic sage re-told from the monster's point of view, and affords a sad commentary on humanity. Freddy's Book starts out in contemporary times; then, as Freddy, a misfit adolescent, has written it, we enter a medieval Scandinavian world of winter and hard magics. Mickelsson's Ghosts is entirely contemporary, as a college professor gets himself into deeper and deeper trouble, some of which may well be supernatural (we are kept guessing). And The Sunlight Dialogs, one of the most emotionally powerful books I have ever read, takes place in a medium-sized upstate New York town where the anarchic Sunlight man appears one day and is in and out of jail and all sorts of trouble; his activities deeply affect the citizens, and for good reasons: who, really, is The Sunlight Man? The answer is remarkable, and so is the whole book.

Lisa Goldstein's Red Magician is a tale of Nazi persecution in central Europe and of the Red Magician who offers a little--but only a little--hope to the victims. Dark Cities Underground is a contemporary urban fantasy; not a worldbeater of a novel, but an entertaining enough read.

Nikolai Gogol is here the only short-story entry. Not all of his tales, by any means, have fantastic elements (but hey, he is a great writer overall), but his justly most famous ones--such as "The Nose" and "The Overcoat"--do, and are gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) sarcastic social satires. Amusing and thought-provoking.

Anyone who hasn't read The Wind in the Willows is to be envied, because they still have before them the incredible experienmce of reading it for the very first time. As someone (A. A. Milne?) said, you do not judge this book: this book judges you.

Richard Grant writes chaotic, bizarre stuff. Most of it is (more or less) science fiction, but Views From the Oldest House (set in contemporary California) and Tex and Molly in the Afterlife (set in the hippie regions of modern Maine--yes, there are such) are the notable exceptions. Views is weird, but Tex and Molly is a true riot.

Simon Green does everything he writes--mostly period fantasy--in one shade: dark. Shadows Fall is outside his normal line, being a contemporary fantasy, but still dark (ready for teddy bears with tommy guns?).

I don't know how or why Peter Hanratty's two Arthurian books keep getting overlooked. The Last Knight of Albion re-tells the classic Arthur story from Mordred's point of view, which is made sympathetic. The Book or Mordred is not a sequel; it is a variant different enough in the presentation of Mordred and the tale to be an entirely separate work; it was the first of wehat was to be a series carrying the story forth through the entire Arthurian cycle, but it never went past this one book, which is a darn shame. Quite adult and realistic in its treatments of people and events.

Erik Fosnes hansen writes in Norwegian, and so is not yet well known in the English-speaking world (though the mainstream Psalm at Journey's End, set on the Titanic, is getting noticed). This touching novel is a series of seemingly unconnected stories moving farther back in time from its opening in the present (which starts with its narrator speaking to us from death); but we are meant to see the ultimate interconnectedness of the tales, and view life as not so much cause and effect as interwoven threads of destiny.

I am going to cut this here, owing to length; if there are no shrieks of outrage after a day or so, I'll pick up and continue. But I cannot leave off without saying a few words about M. John Harrison, who is possibly one of the very finest writers of our time--not sf&f writers, just writers, period. His prose is, as someone (China Mieville? Iain Banks?) said, laser-etched. There is not an ounce of fat in his sentences or his ideas. His tales are uniformly gritty, dealing with real people, even if often (at least in the Viriconium cycle) with rather fever-dream environments (though The Course of the Heart is relentlessly contemporary). You cannot be said to know fantasy till you have read at least the Viriconium books, though I urgently recommend anything whatever by Harrison you can get your hands on.

More tomorrow? We'll see . . . .

==============================

Richard Adams . . .

Somehow, Girl in a Swing, which others besides me think Adams's best novel, tends to get lost--perhaps because it is contemporary and also in other ways quite different from his main corpus of work.

 

[cunole]

Hi. Thanks for the replies, owlcroft especially. Not a big fan of Prachett though, sorry. I like my comedy a bit less quirky, a bit more south park . I got quite a few belly laffs out of asoiaf, but then, maybe everyone does? Wolfe, Kay, Dunsany, Hobb, Bakker, Stewart and Cornwell's Arthur books have been on the maybe list for a while, thanks for the confirmation. Many of the others, particularly on owlcroft's list, I've not heard of (hides).

But I cannot leave off without saying a few words about M. John Harrison, who is possibly one of the very finest writers of our time--not sf&f writers, just writers, period. His prose is, as someone (China Mieville? Iain Banks?) said, laser-etched. There is not an ounce of fat in his sentences or his ideas. His tales are uniformly gritty, dealing with real people, even if often (at least in the Viriconium cycle) with rather fever-dream environments (though The Course of the Heart is relentlessly contemporary). You cannot be said to know fantasy till you have read at least the Viriconium books, though I urgently recommend anything whatever by Harrison you can get your hands on.

Hmmm, I might start with the Viriconium books. Thanks ppl!

 

[Luonas]

Lies of Locke Lamora has pretty negligible magic in it. There's only one character who can use magic, he does a little bit, and that's it. There's really not much in there at all, especially compared to Bakker or Erikson.

Yeah, I should probably have clarified that it was the otherwordly feel to the world of Locke that made me put it on the list. Kind a like a light version of New Crobuzon(alchemy, fantastic objects and so on).

That said, the number of pure magic wielders is as you say. Which, strikes me now, is fewer than in ASoIaF, so probably Lies would be acceptable.

 

[...]

Something that I haven't seen mentioned yet, would be The Ten Thousand, by Paul Kearney. I haven't finished the book yet, but there is very minimal magic involved. Basically, its fantasy take on ancient warfare. Not much depth though, very quick, entertaining read so far.

 

[Mithfânion]

Luenas

Quote:
<<<Originally Posted by Mithfânion
OwlcroftI'm sure you should give The First Law books by Abercrombie, The Prince of Nothing series by Ray Scott Bakker and Lies of Locke Lamora a chance. >>>

But all of those are magic heavy, especially Bakker. None of them is atleast remotely like historical fiction, which i get the feel he is mostly intereste in. (I consider Bakker's extensive use of magic to disqulify him, he is even more historical fiction than Martin in certain aspects)

I don't agree that they are all magic heavy, for one. For two, I get the feel that what the OP is interested in is not necessarily historical fiction, but a mature, more gritty type of Fantasy, with lesser levels of Fantasy.

Running by my suggestions, we find that Cornwell's Arthur Trilogy, Lions of Al-Rassan by Kay and The Merlin Trilogy contain barely any magic at all, and thus fit the bill perfectly. Farseer Trilogy and Lies of Locke Lamora are also not heavy magic settings and are thus also good recommendations. The only two of my suggestions where I can partially see where your suggestions comes from is Prince of Nothing and First Law, but I included those because I felt they were the sort of Fantasy he might like based on his surpassing enjoyment of Martin's ASOIAF over all others, and not because they are low magic settings.