Books I liked...
(This is copied from a post I made on the MeFight Club forums in an unrelated thread, in response to somebody asking for SciFi / fantasy book recommendations; saved here for posterity)
Okay, here are some books that I found to be all sorts of good; some even awesome. I like sci fi / fantasy stuff mostly, but I won’t let the genre stand in the way of a good story. (by the way: many genre books / authors (for any genre) think that, because they target a niche, they can eschew good writing and still be successful. to that I say: bah)
I’ll stay away from classic sci fi / fantasy. I’m assuming you’ve already read most of Asimov’s work, Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, and everything Douglas Adams has ever written.
Historical fiction:
Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost (I read The Dream of Scipio as well, but it seemed too contrived and didn’t really work for me)
Sci fi / fantasy:
Iain M Banks - some of the Culture novels (I know someone said “no Iain M Banks” but he’s not bad. If you’re a total nerd like me who likes reading / watching everything in order, start with Consider Phlebas, although the second and third books (The Player of Games and Use of Weapons) are better. The first three books have recently been republished in the US by Orbit)
Dan Simmons - the Hyperion cantos. (Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion). Really, two two-volume books: the Hyperion cycle (first two) and the Endymion cycle (last two), and the story gets better in the second volume of each of the cycles.
Clive Barker - Imajica (it’s fantasy, not horror, and I kind of wish Barker would write more fantasy. There’s lots of cool, weird sex in this book).
anything by Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere was my favorite of his books; definitely read that and his short story collection, Smoke and Mirrors). And Good Omens, which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett (of Discworld fame).
Some Greg Egan books (his short story collections - Axiomatic and Luminous - are interesting; of his novels, I liked Diaspora; skip Quarantine and read Robert Charles Wilson’s novel Spin instead, which has a similar plot but with better writing). Egan does better in short story form; he explores great ideas but his writing is rough along the edges.
Vernor Vinge - A Fire upon the Deep / A Deepness in the Sky (read them in this order, which is the order in which they were published, and you’ll catch some subtle but delightful references when you read the second book, which is a prequel of sorts to the first). Of Vinge’s books that I read, these are my favorites, but The Peace War / Marooned in Realtime are also worth it.
Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell has great writing, but the plot (if any) moves rather slowly.
