Stitch on 12/11/2009 at 19:43

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Just wrapped Murakam's A Wild Sheep Chase, which was pretty fantastic. If you've been eyeing up his books for awhile but found The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle too intimidating, A Wild Sheep Chase serves as an accessible point of entry into his world.

Okay, now I need some recommendations from my TTLG peeps on what to read next. I've got an itch for some great genre literature that also happens to be well written, something fat and rich and worthy of settling into as fall starts to turn into winter. Something perhaps filed away in the fantasy section, but with elements of horror or adventure mixed in as well. Well written characters doing important shit in a well written world, that sort of thing.

Here's the thing, though: it has to be well written. If the first paragraph reads like a laundry list of fictitious world details mixed in with dubiously spelled names--you know, such as "Two of the three moons of Arm'rr had set upon the Talnasion sky, the yrkk-hide skins of brittle wine long since depleted as Christoph'rr and Jef paused and gazed out across the broken splendor of the Everdeath Wastes," that sort of thing--I am fucking gone.

Aerothorn on 12/11/2009 at 19:50

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I know this great series called The Baroque Cycle

seriously though, I still haven't got a really solid grasp on your definition of "well-written" so it makes it hard for me to recommend anything with total confidence, and most of the books that come to mind I've either already mentioned or aren't really epic in scope (which I guess is what you mean by characters doing "important shit).

That said, the next two books on my "to-read" list - Gene Wolfe's The Knight and Oryx and Crake - have both been described to me as all the things you've said. We'll see how I find them.

Though if you like the script for Dragon Age, the prequel novel is written by the same guy. Dunno if you'd want that sort of thing outside of a video game, though.

Stitch on 12/11/2009 at 19:59

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I most certainly wouldn't. There may be good video game tie-in novels somewhere out there but I certainly don't plan to find out.

But yeah, "well written." I don't mind shit that gets a little pulpy (now there's a pleasant mental image) but I would like to steer clear of books that read like transcriptions of Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. Someone recommended Patrick Rothfuss to me but the first page of The Name of the Wind made me want to snort bleach. It also lost points for being Book One of the Kingkiller Chronicles. BOOK ONE OF THE KINGKILLER CHRONICLES FFS. Christ, just try reading that shit on a bus without feeling like a pervert.

But all recommendations are welcome :)

june gloom on 12/11/2009 at 20:27

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Yesterday I found out that the asshole who wrote the (awful) novelization for Metal Gear Solid just put out the novel of MGS2. I'm tempted to get it just to see how awful it is.

Aerothorn on 12/11/2009 at 21:35

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Oh god. I picked up the first one in a bookstore just to page through it, and...it was bad. I mean, it's not like MGS is known for its brilliant prose in the first place, but I'd read the script over that any day of the week.

How this writer will handle the ending of MGS2 should be....interesting, though.