SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Greatness for me is book based versus author based. I want the book to follow the rules. Anything goes, but don't tell me a villain is always ten steps ahead of everyone until the final act when he/she becomes a moron. The more the book follows the author's established rules (by my interpretation), the more I will like it. Through in a twist ending and some sacrifice and it will likely become a great for me.

The very short answer is that I don't judge an author's entire oeuvre and give it a single rating, but I do judge a single work based on it's lowest points. I will definitely keep reading a favorite author even if they publish something I don't like, but probably not if they keep churning out mediocre stuff and there are no more gems.

Ryan, where did your question disappear to? :D

I regretted creating the thread and well... I don't wield the power I thought I had. So very male.

Wanna repost the Q or should I delete this thread? :D

The OP:

This thread is inspired by a comment from a GR friend about Adrian Tchaikovsky being a prolifical writer whose quality of work suffers in their mind as a result. It has me wondering how other readers feel about authors that produce books of wildly differing levels of quality.

Is your fave an author who just never misses for you? Is a scattergun approach with one or two major hits enough to secure greatness? How much room do you give an author to try and to fail?

Or if thinking of authors in that way isn't your thing, how about books? Is the greatness of a book defined by its highs? Is the absence of lowpoints praiseworthy or a partial definition of mediocrity? Can you love a book for a mere five pages of brilliance?

I'm not sure if this quite fits with the above but the stream of thought has led me to question whether experimentation is appreciated or if we as consumers of books merely seek out tropes to make us feel particular things and begrudge authors for making us feel or not feel something else.

Ahh, I love this topic!

I applaud trying new things, but I think execution matters. Art is a conversation between creator and observer, so I need to have it "land" where land is make me think/feel something in a way that resonates. I recognize that not all experiments are for me.

My favorite authors are both, I guess? Like, Sanderson I only really love 3 of his works, but I ADORE those. On the flip side, Ursula Vernon consistently makes me happy even if none of them open new doors in my brain.

I really think greatness is a combo of intention and execution. I think it's bullshit to compare all art to one form of greatness--I don't know how to compare Legos to the Mona Lisa, but I'm impressed by both. So, I think I guess three things:

1. What is this TRYING to do (who is it for, what niche is it serving)
2. What competency did the author show in achieving that (technical skill)
3. How did I perceive the result?

If I see what it's trying to do, think it achieved that without my eye finding the faults, and learned/felt/enjoyed the result, I would dub it great. And a great author can either do that once tremendously, or consistently but with some minor faults.

I don't think 5 pages can save a full novel, though they can point out that this author has promise, they just failed to live up to it.

I did PM Allison about deleting it... Suspect that there's another thread that asks the same thing somewhere in our archive.

It's here now, you've given it life, we can't kill it! :)

After re-writing this paragraph 5 times, for me it is all about the ending (obvious book centric not author although you can toss in Robert Jordan if we want to change the tone a bit).

If I am left with a happy glow, deep melancholy for a couple days after finishing or am obsessively researching the next book because I am invested in the characters and need to know what happens to them then book = great

If like Philip mentioned, the evil villain finds out that building a lair on an active volcano had consequences then book != great

For me, a book is NOT great when the author repeatedly uses a deus-ex-machina foil to get out of an apparent impasse, unless the protagonist is already known to possess special powers or knowledge. Also, a book that has its villains or protagonists behave repeatedly like complete imbeciles just in order to create a 'suspense/situation' leading to some action will make me throw the book away.

unless the book is a comedy meant to have stupid villains

I believe I was the one making the comment about Adrian Tchaikovsky ^^

This may sound a bit harsh, and I know many are very fond of his works - and I am as well of a few - but I seem to be less and less so. Perhaps because I'm reading the newest ones, which he seems to toss out of his sleeve like cards at a poker game. They all lack substance and personality for me. He's very clearly trying to be topical, he's a straight (afaik) white guy who is observant enough to see which way the wind blows. He writes nerdy, queer fangirls because he has an audience there. I think he genuinely wants to please, but for me it misses the mark. I know nothing worse than fanservice, I want a writer to tell *their* story, not guess at what readers want. It has downright irritated me and frankly I've felt a bit insulted. In one of his novellas he's even writing like Nnedi Okorafor, the story being an afropunk scifi. I absolutely don't understand that choice, if I want to read the afrofuturism experience, then I want it from someone whose culture it is part of, so that it feels genuine.

Is he a great writer, though? I'd say yes, because of the reasons mentioned here. He has moved me, his prose is professional, and he really can string together a tight plot. But had I read four or five of his newest works first, instead of Children of Time, I may not have thought so. Children of Time definitely placed him in the great category for me, and it's going to take a lot to remove him from that status. At some point I'll try to read some of his older fantasy, just to see how it compares to his newer works, and if it influences my view.

Jo Nesbø is another writer who is hit and miss for me. Where I'm completely addicted to his police crime novels, I feel so-so about his other works. He clearly wants to try out other genres, other kinds of narratives and POV and I respect that, but dude. You suck at writing sex and intimacy. You're GREAT at writing suspense. Just.. stick to what you're best at, dammit XD I'll still read anything he writes, though.

How do I define greatness? I think I agree with Allison, that if a book manages to do what it set out to do, then it's a success. Writing doesn't have to be perfect to be good for me, it just has to invoke feelings or urgency or tension.

Natasha Pulley is one of my favorite writers, she's fairly new and only has three published books (a fourth is finished and awaiting release), and she is far from a perfect writer. I don't mean typos, but her grammar is downright odd, me and my friends who all love her work frequently wonder how she's a native English speaker, as some of her lines make more sense in Danish or in German, if translated. I have one friend who thinks she is an absolutely awful writer, she finds her clumsy and clonky to read, and true, when my friends in our Skype bookclub read her books aloud we often stumble over her lines cos there are words where you don't expect them or she ends a sentence where you wouldn't normally XD All this just makes her writing amusing, interesting and idiosyncratically her. I'd recognize her sentence structure anywhere, it's just unique and personal. I don't know if that warrants that she's a great writer but she is certainly one I'd gobble up anything by XD

To me greatness of a book is a mix of how long it stays in my mind after reading it, how well it stands up to re-reading, and just a little bit, something to make it stand out, or to have an individual quality, no hint of cookie-cutter. It also must be a well told story. No matter how great the concept, if the author stumbles in the story telling, that would knock it back a bit for me. Two books that stand out for me on that are not all that well known and are both by authors who had very little published The Merro Tree and A Rumor of Gems.

It'll be a minute before I engage with this thread properly, but I wanted to say A Rumor of Gems certainly has an attention grabbng blurb.

'... and Micheal Fortunato, an 11-year-old boy who--under the influence of gods and gems--may have become a killer.

A Rumor of Gems is a suspenseful, sexy story about the myths that linger in the shadows of our world.'

The only thing I want aged 11 involved with anything sexy is the wallet that a condom comes out of.

And if you'd asked me to describe A Rumor of Gems, Michael is the last character I'd have picked out...... :) I see it's one of the ones I haven't got around to reviewing yet, so two things.

1. The opening
There were rumors of gems appearing in the city: topaz turning up in the sneaker of a three-year-old; discarded emeralds found glittering on a restaurant dish that a waiter was about to clear; a convenience store cash register suddenly filled with opals instead of dimes; the dark soil in a window box suddenly shining with bits of polished lapis and garnet - enough to make necklaces for every woman in the tenement.
There was no confirmation of the rumors.

2. A review that for me catches a lot about the book
Katherine Kendig rated it it was amazing
I reread this after first reading it ten or more years ago...it's been in the back of my mind for a decade, and every so often I'd check to see if the author had written anything new that I could pick up. (...no.) I wanted to see if it was as good as I remembered -- and I'd have to say, yes. It's not a perfect book, but the richness of the geography, the religion(s), the magic, the science, all based in but skillfully extracted from our own world...it's a fascinating read, with interesting, well-constructed characters and plots. It makes me want to write something just like it

And I would add that the plotting is very different - the various characters' threads in a way seem to spiral and intersect, it is a story that goes sideways - literally in places into a parallel world. I couldn't see where it was going, you just have to go with the flow.

Hah! I knew I should have done more to convey playfulness in that post.

I laughed, and then Carro gave good info! I feel this is a win-win :)

Some people just have one great book in them: Dune. All the others in the series are so-so and his books outside that series are mediocre at best. I've read Dune multiple times and it still holds my interest.

For those worried about not liking Tchaikovsky's earlier fantasy series, Tales of the Apt, don't worry. It's pretty good and I prefer it to Children of Time

Perfect example CB, would you consider Herbert a great author because of his one great book or is he diminished because of the follow on books?

Would Harper Lee have been as celebrated an author if she had written a bunch of mediocre novels right after To Kill A Mockingbird?

I think both deserve great if only because of their influence on culture and the one great book - some people just have a single spark of greatness in them. Harper Lee was right in not releasing more books, but Herbert was trying and failing to reach the peaks again.

I'm not sure that any author, unless they've published only one book, has a consistently good catalogue of works (yes, even the Brontes, Thomas Hardy, etc). They all have lesser works in their bibliography. It's like the recording industry, a band/artist might have just one great album in them or they go downhill later on.

Ditto for artists. I used to really like Kandinsky, then I went to an exhibit of his work and all his later paintings were just riffs on his most successful painting. I was very disillusioned as he showed no growth after a certain point in his life.

Great can be a single work or a body of work: the Oscars give out individual awards within a certain time period, they also give out life achievement awards. Books do the same, GR, Hugo, Nebulae; and the Nobel for literature.

I know nothing of the works of Adrian Tchaikovsky, but I'll answer regarding two other extremely prolific authors: Terry Pratchett and Dean Koontz. I've read a lot of books from both of them. Pratchett is one of my all-time favourite authors, and that remains so even though there were a few of his books that I disliked or found boring. Most of them were excellent, and I'll gladly continue picking up more by him.

Koontz, on the other hand, won me over early with a few books that I really enjoyed, but as I continued reading more I started noticing annoying patterns in his work. These elements became more annoying the more he repeated them, and at one point I decided that I hated Koontz's work and avoided it from then on. But I still liked the ones that I liked before, and perhaps if I had read them in a different order I would like different ones. I've read a few more since then that I liked, and I no longer say I hate Koontz, but I'm reluctant to pick up another book by him -- the opposite of my experience with Pratchett.

So for me at least, it could be that my opinion of an author, and my willingness to read more from them, corresponds to the ratio of good to bad books from them that I've read, some of which is the luck of the draw, depending on which ones I read in which order. But it also depends on how much they recycle elements in their work, and whether I like or dislike the things they recycle.

Brandon Sanderson often says something similar to what you were saying, Allison, about a book doing what it sets out to do. He says that a book makes implied promises at the beginning about what sort of experience you can expect, and a satisfying book has to fulfill those promises.

@ Ryan - oops :)

Regarding Terry Pratchett, there are a couple of his that are a bit meh for me, but I have found down the years that on re-read there are things I've learned since I last read and all of a sudden a dull passage is funny. The Lost Continent is not the best one but I get all the Aussie related jokes because I have relatives down under - the vegemite bit really stuck - but a friend with no down under connections was bored by that one. I love Raising Steam - but in a low key way I am a steam nut and worked on a preserved steam railway in my teens. Another friend with no interest in steam trains was bored by that one. Soul Music is a bit so so to me, but I watched the cartoon version of it a few years back and all of a sudden I was seeing the references to all the different sorts of modern music that I'd missed in the text because I knew very little about post war popular music other than a bit of rock like Buddy Holly and Queen.

So what you can consider great may change down the years, as you learn more. One series I adored in my teens was the Lensman series - e.g. Chronicles of the Lensmen, Volume 1: Triplanetary / First Lensman / Galactic Patrolseries - I've never re-read as an adult as I suspect I'd find it dire and I want to keep the memories of the good times.

Authors can def. be Great even if they have some misses. One hit wonders, well, I dunno if I'd call them great or just lucky. And yes, I'll keep trying more by my favorite authors, even if none of their works have been five star reads for me... a long string of four star reads is perfectly wonderful.

I appreciate your honesty, AMG!

Author illustrators rarely are mention here (that I've seen) but Chris Van Allsburg is I think a genius, Jumanji, The Polar Express, Two Bad Ants (there you go Ryan). Val Allsburg is beyond amazing.