SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I am looking for some new fantasy books to read, preferably with unusual/creative settings. I'm not really interested in more traditional fantasy (like The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia), but books like The Lies of Locke Lamora or the rest of that series, the Ship of Magic series and The Fifth Season are all right up my alley. Basically, I'm trying to get away from traditional high fantasy tropes and basic pseudo-Medieval Europe settings.

Double plus bonus internet points for female lead characters and/or creative magic systems.

Thank you!

Do you have a preference for series or standalones?

Try City of Stairs and City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett.

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone's appears to check all your boxes. Creative, non traditional setting. Black female protagonist. Really unique magic system.

Sarah Anne wrote: "Do you have a preference for series or standalones?"

Nope - either is fine.

Martha Wells! She does some of the best world-building (I think) and lots of fantastic female characters. Take a look at
The Cloud Roads this one begins a trilogy and they're fantastic. Male non-human main character with very different gender roles and societal behavior.
While these are stand-alones
Wheel of the Infinite < great older-ish (40s) female lead character and a very different magic system.
City of Bones

She's also got several books set in the world of Ile-Rien over a period of several generations/centuries.
The Element of Fire is the earliest both chronologically and in publishing order
Followed by The Death of the Necromancer
and then the trilogy of books that begin with The Wizard Hunters which features the daughter of the main characters from Death of the Necromancer. And one of my favorite opening lines I've run across. (view spoiler)[It was nine o’clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in court when someone banged on the door. (hide spoiler)]
Those don't have to be read in order -aside from the trilogy which you do want to start with book one and go on in order. Though it's a little fun to see the details of things from the earlier books that crop up as historical tidbits in the later books.

Amy wrote: "I am looking for some new fantasy books to read, preferably with unusual/creative settings. I'm not really interested in more traditional fantasy (like The Lord of the Rings or The ..."</i>

Okay, for some really great fantasy, check out Helen B. Henderson's Windmaster series[book:Windmaster Windmaster Legacy Dragshi books Dragon Destiny There are a number of Dragshi books, and each one gets better than the next. if you haven't experienced her writing, I strongly recommend it. I believe most of it's digital.

Another worth looking at perhaps, the the Breaking the Wall trilogy by Jane Lindskold. Mahjong tiles are used to work magic. It's mainly set in our world, not a non-Earth fantasy. And it's got a female lead character.

Book 1 Thirteen Orphans

If your looking for unusual fantasy books the I would recommend these:

The Worm Ouroboros

I'm currently rereading a fantasy I proofread some years ago, The Drowning City by Amanda Downum. Southeast-Asian-inspired setting, three female lead/viewpoint characters, and interesting magic.

Have you read anything else by N.K. Jemisin? The Dreamblood duology fits really well with what you're looking for.
I'd also suggest Kelly Link for very unconventional fantasy--Magic for Beginners especially.
The Rook might also work for you, or The Library at Mount Char.
If you're open to UF, I highly recommend the Kate Daniels series, starting with Magic Bites. Great female lead character, and the magic system is really interesting--the world basically oscillates between magic and technology in waves.

I think many of these will fit what you're looking for:

A Shadow in Summer by Daniel Abraham
Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
The Emperor of the Eight Islands by Lian Hearn
The Fox Woman and Fudoki by Kij Johnson
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar
The Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer
Deathless by Catherynne Valente

Amy wrote: "I am looking for some new fantasy books to read, preferably with unusual/creative settings. I'm not really interested in more traditional fantasy (like The Lord of the Rings or..."

Well-written non-medieval Europe female protagonist books:

War for the Oaks by Emma Bull.

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler.

The Lady Trent Chronicles, first one is A Natural History of Dragons.

The Borden Dispatches by Cherie Priest: Maplecroft and Chapelwood.

Thanks for all the recommendations! I've added a bunch to my to-read shelf, and in a few cases, been reminded of books that are already on my bookshelf.

It seems like a lot of new fantasy authors are trying to buck the standard "Middle Ages with magic" fantasy setting formula. For a lot of them, I think that The Wheel of Time was probably a big influence. The shift away from medieval European settings in WoT sort of takes place within the narrative itself. It begins seeming like a standard rip-off of LotR (if an enjoyable one, depending on who you ask), but you eventually realize that the setting isn't terribly medieval and the cultures borrow from all over the place.

To me, Brandon Sanderson is a great author for unconventional fantasy settings, and he's obviously influenced by WoT (not surprising, since he completed the series after Robert Jordan's death). I'm sure that he's an over-recommended author in fantasy circles, but all of the Cosmere books feature cultures that aren't typically medieval European. Heck, the second Mistborn series is somewhere between steampunk and Wild West.

Also, Brent Week's Lightbringer series does not strike me as being very Middle Ages at all. Some of it does, I suppose, but it's still not full of your typical medieval trappings.

My theory is that magic use usually goes hand in hand with swords from a narrative standpoint. Thus, you end up with that sort of "time period" feel to most work in that direction. Some by accident, some on purpose.

It also seems to me that the ones that don't use that setting have a tendency to make a big deal about not using it. Especially the ones set in modern times.

has a female lead, and an interesting hybrid setting of a Fantasy/Sci-fi variety.

has a female lead and is set in a world that is not standard medieval europe but is a fun parody of a number of other settings.

has a female lead and takes place in a setting that is decidedly not european, and the magic system in this book is very distinct and interesting.

And, finally... I normally refrain from recommending my own book when people ask for book recommendations, but "Double plus bonus internet points for female lead characters and/or creative magic systems." I can't resist...

I will not blame you at all for ignoring this since it's me recommending my own work, but it meets all the criteria you set forth, and I seem unable to stop myself this once. Set in a fictional world inspired by feudal Japan, with an elemental magic system and two female leads...

*hangs head in shame and runs to hide in shadows*

Palace Job is a really entertaining one, though I did stall out on book 2. I'll probably have to go back to it later. It did a great job in not nailing itself to a specific feel in terms of an Earth time period and had a lot of good character POV's.

Adam wrote: "My theory is that magic use usually goes hand in hand with swords from a narrative standpoint. Thus, you end up with that sort of "time period" feel to most work in that direction. Some by accident..."

Not sure I agree with that. I think a part of it is the fairly common assumption (particularly in the wake of Tolkien's popularity setting the perception of a pastoral sort of fantasy world as the default) that it's an either-or situation. A culture/world has magic or technology but rarely can have both. So you get tech and the trappings of industrial progress, or you get magic. And if it's magic, unless it's set up so that most people have enough ability to at least accomplish basic tasks then you have power concentrated with a small subset of the population -usually depicted as those who were both born with a gift and received training in it's use- who generally don't have a strong incentive to make the extensive social improvements that would pull a large population out of a pre-Industrial state without things like the internal-combustion engine and electricity and whatnot. So you get horses and swords over cars, computers, and guns. Technology is vastly more egalitarian than magic when magic is a rare inborn factor and elevates the user so far above the rest of the population in a way they can't match. Particularly if they are a very small subset of the population which seems to be common as well. Whole world and there are a half a dozen wizards you ever hear about. Tends to leave the nonmagical people in the dust if the author doesn't allow that all of them might have been working out tech advancements for their own benefit, while the mages were off throwing lightning bolts or whatever.

I like your theory. I'm just not sure that a lot of the people writing the specific pieces we're referring to put as much thought into it as you did. Actually, I've read enough by the numbers fantasy fiction to strongly suggest that your level of thinking is a few cuts above.

Your post leaves me with an interesting question. If you have magic on one side and development of tech (not to mention medicine, teaching, cooking etc etc) on the other, there are probably a lot different scenarios depending on where you slide that portion of the population. Greater amounts of magic users and the development naturally slows. Fewer and it's not only quicker, but almsot spurred by the magic as you noted.

Where is the perfect ratio? That is an intriguing question under those guidelines given that everyone's answer will be very different.

Adam wrote: "Palace Job is a really entertaining one, though I did stall out on book 2. I'll probably have to go back to it later. It did a great job in not nailing itself to a specific feel in terms of an Earth time period and had a lot of good character POV's."

Interesting! I stalled out on book two for a while also, but then went back to it happily a few months later and finished and enjoyed both books two and three.

My theory is that I tried to read the second book too close to the first book and found it to be "too much of a good thing." One of my few complaints about the series is that Weekes sticks pretty closely to the same formula for every bit of climax that occurs. When spread out, it's still delightful, but when read all together it becomes repetitive enough to be irksome.

Aerulan wrote: "Adam wrote: "My theory is that magic use usually goes hand in hand with swords from a narrative standpoint. Thus, you end up with that sort of "time period" feel to most work in that direction. Som..."

Intriguing discussion! In my thinking, this is the interesting thing about contemporary/urban fantasy, especially the few worlds that authors have created where magic is "out" even in the modern world, but there are two sets of advancement magical and non-magical. To be fair there are very few authors who seem to try to address this. Most prefer the magic-exists-but-only-the-magical-know-about-it scenario, or the whole parrallel-magical-world scenario rather than trying to mix the two openly.

To be honest I find it very refreshing when an author's world mixes magic and technology openly, but even then only a few authors address the imbalance of power that you brought up in an interesting way.

I've always found the Forgotten Realms books interesting for this reason, where magic is a learnable and salable skill, so the power balance comes through anyone being able to pick it up, and many magic users selling their talents and trinkets in order to make a living, but only a few authors in the Forgotten Realms (Salvatore for example) seem interested in how that world would grow and change for all the non-magic users and where it would take them.

Another example is the Black Jewels trilogy, where Anne Bishop has created a class hierarchy based entirely on magical ability, and the non-magical people get the seriously short end of the stick. However, somewhat unfortunately, she rarely addresses how crappy it must be to be a non-magical human who is essentially a serf to the local ruling class.

One of my favorite examples of mixing magic and technology in world building is actually The Others series also by Anne Bishop where she gets deep into what happens when one group of people have a huge amount of innate magic and the rest of the humans have zilch aside from guns and other modern weapons. That series also addresses a number of other interesting cultural/historical issues that I find intriguing, but suffice it to say tensions are very high between the folks who have the magical fire power (and are very closely tied to nature) and the folks who have zero magic and are reliant on technology.

Anyway, sorry for jumping in mid discussion, but I think it's an interesting one, and one that more authors should consider when they're doing their world building!

Aerulan wrote: "Technology is vastly more egalitarian than magic when magic is a rare inborn factor and elevates the user so far above the rest of the population in a way they can't match."

I wonder how we got the convention of magical ability being a rare inborn thing. It isn't really there in Tolkien, especially since magic and technology aren't clearly distinguished in Tolkien, but then everything works in such an elitist way in Tolkien that any kind of ability is sort of rare and sort of inborn.

Silvio wrote: "I wonder how we got the convention of magical ability being a rare inborn thing. It isn't really there in Tolkien, especially since magic and technology aren't clearly distinguished in Tolkien, but then everything works in such an elitist way in Tolkien that any kind of ability is sort of rare and sort of inborn. "

I suspect it stems from two things:

1) In the real world things like books (and being literate) were controlled by an elite, and the ability to read was viewed as being mystical, with books having an almost totemic or fetishistic mystique. This is a belief that persisted into the 1980s at least, because I encountered it in high school from a teacher who should have known better.

2) It's a logical solution to a story problem where you merely have to look around at the world to see that science works and magic doesn't. So if you want magic in your contemporary story, you have to make it very difficult and something known to only a select few.

Adam wrote: "My theory is that magic use usually goes hand in hand with swords from a narrative standpoint. Thus, you end up with that sort of "time period" feel to most work in that direction. Some by accident..."

That's also only a very small portion of Fantasy stories, although that small fraction of stories tends to also be the most popular.

It's certainly easier to place magic in ancient times before the Age of Reason (whenever one arbitrarily decides that age began) because myths were taken as fact and we now look at ancient myths as quaint fantasy stories (while ignoring that many of our own personal beliefs are identical to those myths), so equating swords and sorcery becomes a very easy mental leap to make.

The equation starts to look like: "the past was simple full of simpletons who believed nonsense, so magic." Even when you strip away the condescending aspect of that attitude as many current authors do, "simpler times" equates with magic.

What people don't understand is that metallurgy and sword-making are very technological pursuits, indeed. They require a great deal of specialized knowledge as well as industry on a vast scale in order to pull it off. It seems simple only to people who are ignorant of the process, but once you pull on that thread you realize it takes an entire civilization to actually produce a sword.

If you're hunting-and-gathering, you don't have the time or energy to devote to finding ore, learning about fire, kilns and ovens, smelting rock, figuring out how to handle molten metal, shaping it, creating the tools to manipulate everything along the way, and the dozens of other things which go into making a sword.

That's why swords are often named and have taken on mythic status: they are incredibly difficult to make and only a few could afford them. Nowadays we can stamp them out by the thousands, but back in the day (s of yore), it was a Herculean task involving hundreds of people working together.

We're sort of seeing the same thing with stories of Flintlock Fantasy today: because that technology is seen as "simple", people don't have any trouble accepting that magic was used openly and often in the world.

The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are the most popular expressions of Flintlock Fantasy, but there are lots of writers working in that subgenre, such as Brian McClellan, Brandon Sanderson, Django Wexler, Tim Powers, Naomi Novik, etc.

I also highly recommend Martha Wells Books of the Raksura series, and The Memoirs of Lady Trent series.

I also recommend
The Legend of Eli Monpress series by Rachel Aaron
Paper Mage
The Empire Trilogy, beginning with Daughter of the Empire
The Thief and series
Darkborn series

Silvio wrote: "Aerulan wrote: "Technology is vastly more egalitarian than magic when magic is a rare inborn factor and elevates the user so far above the rest of the population in a way they can't match."

I wonder how we got the convention of magical ability being a rare inborn thing. It isn't really there in Tolkien,"

It's there in Tolkien. However, it's a different thing, because the rule is "not human." Even Aragorn has a bit of elvish blood. This is different from the special snowflake wizard.

Trike wrote: "In the real world things like books (and being literate) were controlled by an elite, and the ability to read was viewed as being mystical, with books having an almost totemic or fetishistic mystique"

Very true. The word "glamour" derives from "grammar" by way of "booking-learning" shifting to "magic."

Let's see

James Stoddard's The High House, The False House, and Evenmere

Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere

Richard Garfinkle's Celestial Matters

Trike, I like your theories. Also, I'm kind of in love with your description of the sword n sorcery genre.

"the past was simple full of simpletons who believed nonsense, so magic."

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon not the typical fantasy setting, not the typical fantasy heroes, and it's a short stand alone novel.