I started writing about another world when I was eight years old. I was already a reader, but books for kids were full of adventuring boys, with girls mostly sidelined. My world started with a gang of adventuring girls, and as I aged up, it kept getting bigger, and deeper, especially as I studied history. All fiction is a mirror to our contemporary society, and in conversation with other fiction; so is epic fantasy written over a lifetime. Many books later, I still get to adventure, wield magic, and be a hero, through my characters!
I fell in love with this long series about Miles
Vorkosigan, physically disabled but mentally brilliant.
This book begins before
Miles was born, introducing the reader to Cordelia, Miles’ wonderful mother.
She’s the POV here as her unarmed craft stumbles into the middle of a space war
wherein she’s taken prisoner. She meets a Barrayaran commander with whom she
slowly forms a relationship, then using her wits, she shows what a hero really
is.
Humor, pathos, action, bigger-than-life characters, great space opera were
absolute draws for me.
When Cordelia Naismith and her survey crew are attacked by a renegade group from Barrayar, she is taken prisoner by Aral Vorkosigan, commander of the Barrayan ship that has been taken over by an ambitious and ruthless crew member. Aral and Cordelia s
Marketed as historical novels, this series, besides being accurate, full of action and brilliant characterizations, and a roller coaster emotionally, is a deep immersion into the era of the tall ships.
It’s also subtly fantasy, though not marketed as fantasy. There are psychic elements, and later in the series O’Brian admitted that he’s writing in a sort of endless 1812. It’s really less of a series than one long story divided into volumes.
Third in the series of Aubrey/Maturin adventures, this book is set among the strange sights and smells of the Indian subcontinent, and in the distant waters ploughed by the ships of the East India Company. Aubrey is on the defensive, pitting wits and seamanship against an enemy enjoying overwhelming local superiority. But somewhere in the Indian Ocean lies the prize that could make him rich beyond his wildest dream: the ships sent by Napoleon to attack the China Fleet...
'There it is, the city of Liverpool,' says Henry Kitto, master of the Hannah Leigh three days out of Fowey in Cornwall with a cargo of China Clay standing beside Ben Pascoe, 'a cesspool of humanity and no mistake. Yet full of opportunity for them that can grab it.'
I love the series about Ankh-Morpork, full of ordinary people, some of them rather hapless, who every so often rise to greatness.
Pratchett is so funny, and yet there is an undertone of real feeling beneath the comedy, which makes these books rereadable. My favorite characters are the Guards, and this book was my first introduction to them.
First book of the original and best CITY WATCH series, now reinterpreted in BBC's The Watch
'This is one of Pratchett's best books. Hilarious and highly recommended' The Times
The Discworld is very much like our own - if our own were to consist of a flat planet balanced on the back of four elephants which stand on the back of a giant turtle, that is . . . _________________
'It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the…
This is my favorite type of space opera: bigger-than-life characters, tons of action, with great sense of wonder and a world full of surprises. The women characters are excellent, as well.
There is a touch of fantasy in this series that I found sparked a hint of the numinous.
When an assassination on the Senate floor threatens the thirty-year peace between the human Republic and the mysterious Mageworlds, the victim's daughter is forced to become accustomed to the galactic intrigue, but the Galaxy may never get used to her. Reissue.
Deadwood meets The Vampire Diaries in this tale of brother versus brother and blood-magic set in a gaslamp fantasy world. Llew’s body transfers life. One nation wants her dead. Another wants her power for itself. Two brothers want the same. Only one might be swayed by love.
Brust has written a long series that is all connected to his cycle about Vlad Taltos.
My favorite is The Phoenix Guards, which evokes, for me, the swashbuckling style and fun of Dumas’ Three Musketeers. Brust took that tongue-in-cheek narrative voice, and the panache of the seventeenth-century Musketeers as envisioned by Dumas, and created this world full of magic and fascinating denizens.
Indevan Algara-Vayir was born the second son of a powerful prince, destined to stay at home and defend his family's castle. But when war threatens, Inda is sent to the Royal Academy where he learns the art of war and finds that danger and intrigue don't only come from outside the kingdom.
"She plunged her blade into his chest, feeling it grind along his ribs..."
Outcast swordfighter, Kyer Halidan, was abandoned in a cornfield at age three. Now, twenty years on, she’s searching for answers: Who left her there? And why?
Kyer doesn’t suffer fools, and when she kills a man in…
This is a multicultural epic fantasy with a diverse cast of characters. Sickly fifteen-year-old Prince Psal, the son of warrior-king Nahas, should have been named Crown Prince of all Wheel Clan lands. But his clan disdains the disabled.
When the mysterious self-moving towers that keep humans safe from the Creator's…
