(no subject)

[threeplusfire]

None of the books I want to read have been written.
I need a good fantasy novel, or a good vampire novel, or even just those creepy weird Tanith Lee books I used to have.

There's a fourteen hour Law & Order marathon showing on Labor Day. Rock on.

Comments

[tamperevident.livejournal.com]

have you tried Ted Chiang? don't know if he'd be in your interest range, but his writing is exceptional.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I have not heard the name, but I will check it out. Can you tell me about Chiang's work?

[lacyunderall.livejournal.com]

ohhh, it's me, lenny, my sofa and a mess of iced tea.

a flight of fancy

[tamperevident.livejournal.com]

some consider him science fiction, although he reads like a novel -- very well researched and carefully constructed realism, with just one twist of something extra -- a one proposed "what-if" per story. the result is an alternate reality that is so familiar one can't help but make it their own.

my favorites, so far: "The Story of Your Life", "72 Letters", "Understand", and "The Tower of Babylon".

[alainn-sorcha.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm, Law & Order...

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Hehe, exactly!

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Fourteen hours of it! Mwuhahaha.

[curmudgn]

Give a try to Charlaine Harris's "Dead" series, about a barmaid in northern Louisiana who's a telepath and has a vamp boyfriend (she can't stand to date a human because she "reads" them too easily, but can stand vamps because she can't read them at all). The books (four so far) are rather less grotesque than AR or PZB's vamp stories. And she writes pretty good sex scenes, too.

A few suggestions on reading material...

[geoectomy.livejournal.com]

We seem to have a few genres and authors in common (Hey, I'm impressed by anybody who love deLint) Heres' some recommendations, based on stuff I've liked, recently...

Blood Price (and other "Blood..." books) by Tanya Huff
Modern Urban Vampire - It's about a former cop-turned-PI who teams up with a vampire to cover various murders. She did it before Laurell K. Hamilton. And did it better.

BloodList, The Dark Sleep (and other "Vampire Files" books) by P.N. Elrod
Period (1920's) Urban Fantasy - Jack Fleming doesn't remember how he became a vampire. But he's living with it. Working as a PI, a bar-owner, a wannabe-author in Chicago in the 1920's. Some entertaining writing with a wise-guy slant that's pretty engaging.

Summon the Keeper (and other Keeper books) by Tanya Huff
Urban Fantasy - Woman who is a "Keeper" (a person who fixes the holes in reality by manipulating the possibilities) faced with gaping maw to Hell in a local hotel...

Luck In the Shadows, Stalking Darkness, Traitors Moon by Lynn Flewelling
Fantasy - Boy becomes an apprentice theif/spy without even knowing it, before eventually learning of his elven heritage. Well-done writing with the homoerotic angle very much downplayed.

Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest, by Robin Hobb
Fantasy - Bastard son of a Prince trains to become a Royal Assassin, fidns himself caught in the midst ofa civil war between two types of magic... Quite impressed me.

Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman
Urban Fantasy - Beautiful. I'd say it should be required reading for most Urban Fantasy fans... It segues real well with deLint's world-view too...

Technogenesis, Syne Mtchell
SF - An elite data-miner in a pervasively-connected world discovers the possibility of an awareness in the net, and uncovers one of teh great conspiracies out there...

Storm Front, Fool Moon, Summer Knight, Death Masks, Blood Rites, by Jim Butcher
Modern Urban Fantasy - I can't not rave about this series. Harry Dresden is the only practicing wizard in the Chicago Yellow Pages. And that gets him a lot of attention... it's a monster-of-the-week type of series, but he writes so well, and engagingly, and the scenarios are well thought out. And it's a male main character in the supernatural world, for a change.

The Dreaming Place, Charles deLint
Real Short book--Children's novel, I'd guess. About a girl who believes her cousin is a witch and has been sending her bad dreams of becoming different animals. The reality is worse, though...

The Years best Fantasy and Horror, Ellen Datlow and Teri Windling
Simply the best series for Fantasy and Horror I've read in a long time...

You might also run down the Hot Blood anthologies for some good horror/erotica stories... Then there's the Ultimate series... it had soem good vamprie stories, if I remember...

[geoectomy.livejournal.com]

Sounds a little like Frameshift in premise... though, of course, Frameshift is all SF, with a telepath getting hooked up with a geneticist quebecois with parkinsons, who tries to discover how she became a telepath... she hooked up with him because she didn't understand what he was thinking, cause he was thinking "Nice Ass" or some such in French...