High fantasy/Misia's request

ARGH!

I just lost a very long post in response to misia's request for suggestions of good high fantasy.

It is now even later, my thoughts are even more jumbled, so I'm posting this in my own LJ rather than leaving my muddled rambling sin someone else's as I try and reconstruct it.

I tend to prefer high fantasy which manages to stay human in its scale, rather than the epic sort of things where the fate of the world (or the worlds) hang in the balance of the actions of a single person (or a small group). I also tend not to like books with prophecies, in part because it's hard to maintain that human scale when gods are already meddling in human affairs to create said predetermined fates, etc.

It's much more common, I think, for an individual (no matter how powerful) to be crushed under the inexorable unfolding of cosmic events.

My big frustration in reading Robin Hobb stems from the fact that her assassins trilogy opens with a lovely high fantasy, well written in that way that you just give yourself over to the story knowing that you are in competent hands; that first book is very grounded on a human scale, until book three where suddenly things get out of hand, and the dragons show up. If you look at the trilogy, without even opening a single page, you can SEE how book three gets out of hand and is much fatter than the two previous volumes. (She manages, with the third trilogy, not to let things get out of hand in the third volume, but the third trilogy only works if you've made it through both of the previous trilogies, and I didn't much like the middle trilogy--especially because of the sections in the mind of the sea serpents....)

I didn't expect to like George R.R. Martin's new unfinished behemoth of a saga, but it's worth looking into: very well written, and surprisingly human in its focus, although it's told from so many different multiple viewpoints. He also (with a few exceptions) doesn't pull punches in a way that generic high fantasy tends to (not killing off beloved characters, etc.)

For the high fantasy equivalent of Nalo Hopkinson I'd look at Pamela Dean's THE DUBIOUS HILLS. It's not that the Dean is anything like Hopkinson, but rather that they both do something with language, and cause a paradigm shift, that I think is similar.

(Actually, reading THE DUBIOUS HILLS, for me, was very similar to reading Geoff Ryman's THE CHILD GARDEN, an excellent hard SF that I'd also recommend. It's difficult and challenging but very rewarding. coffee_and_ink first recommended it to me when we were both undergraduates and it was remaindered at the Co-Op Bookstore, but it took me ages before I got around to reading it...)

Another example of what I mean by equivalent would be how Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman's THE FALL OF THE KINGS is a fantasy equivalent of Dorothy Sayers' GAUDY NIGHT. That is, FotK recreates in a fantasy setting a book that works as a romance, a university novel, and a high fantasy, the way that Sayers' GN works as a romance, a university novel, and a mystery.

(Semi-random aside: there are a number of lesbian writers of high fantasies who explore butch/femme relationship dynamics with male characters: aside form the Kushner and/or Sherman, there's Tanya Huff's THE FIRE STONE and Fiona Patton's THE STONE PRINCE. Which might make for interesting/curious reading, therefore, despite the high fantasy--and they're different reads than, say, the gay male relationships written by some straight female writers like Lynn Flewelling, whose Nightrunner series, despite the elves and occasional dragons, I enjoyed.)

You should look for Sean Stewart's NOBODY'S SON, recently republished by either Firebirds or Small Beer Press' Pequod Classics line, I can't recall which, and am too sleepy to look it up, an elegant high fantasy coming of age story (and told in a single volume.).

I think that, in general, YA fiction (including YA fantasy) tends to keep control of a human scale, so you might go back to things like Lloyd Alexander's PRYDAIN CHRONICLES or Diana Wynne Jones' HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE or DARK LORD OF DERKHOLM. Or look for some of the high fantasy titles published in Jane Yolen's former imprint at Harcourt, by Sherwood Smith, Patricia Wrede, Mary Frances Zambreno, etc. or the new stuff being published/reprinted by Firebrids. Vivian Vande Velde isn't published on that list, but some of her work would also qualify.

You might also try Franny Billingsley.

I think that the coming of age story is such an important part of high fantasy that it's one reason fantasy dovetails so well with YA...

Despite having edited an anthology of Arthuriana (CAMELOT FANTASTIC) I'm not really a big fan of such tales.

However, Ian MacDowell, who wrote one of the stories for my anthology, has two Arthurian novels that I think will be worthwhile (they're still on the to-be-read stack).

I'm a big fan of Mary Stewart, but I'm still missing one of the books, so I've never read her Arthurian trilogy (plus the fourth Mordred book). But once I find the missing volume, I plan to read all 4. I've liked everything of hers except THE PILGRIM AND THE SEER.

I think I like Nancy Springer's gender-bending adult contemporary fantasies (PLUMAGE, LARQUE ON THE WING, FAIR PERIL) better, but her two Arthurian YAs, I AM MORDRED and I AM MORGAN LE FEY, were interesting. I think she manages to find some hopeful outlook, even in the bleakest of situations (a lot of her contemporary novels, like TOUGHING IT, are coming of age stories set in these small, Pennsylvanian towns where the steel industry has gone and there is seemingly no escape or solution).

I liked Naomi Kritzer's FIRES OF THE FAITHFUL, a very quiet, very subtly lesbian high fantasy, although its sequel didn't appeal as much because of the human versus epic scale problem.

It's 2am, so will maybe just throw out some titles and perhaps people in other time zones (or when I'm more awake) can fill out details for why.

John M. Ford's THE DRAGON WAITING. (Also, for elves, albeit semi-contemporary instead of high fantasy, his THE LAST HOT TIME.)

Lois McMaster Bujold's THE CURSE OF CHALION (I haven't yet read the others).

Steve Boyett's ARIEL (boy and unicorn novel; you should maybe read this for your virginity book anyway).

Garth Nix's SABRIEL (but you can probably skip LIRAEL and ABHORSEN). It has that... assurance (??) in the language, like reading Susan Cooper's DARK IS RISING.

I'm not sure that Pat Murphy' bisexual werewolf novel NADYA would count because it's historical (U.S. Western) rather than pseudo-medieval/high fantasy.

Delia Sherman's THROUGH A BRAZEN MIRROR.

Midori Snyder's early novels.

More elves, I've a fondness for the Borderlands series of anthologies or novels (some of which were also published in the abovementioned Jane Yolen Books imprint). But they're not really high fantasy.

Anyway, that's a handful of recs.

Start with the Sean Stewart and the Pamela Dean, though, if you haven't already read.