Nailing down what I'm looking for...

[telophase]

Just trying to nail down what the heck I'm currently looking for in a book, as I've again recently spent fruitless time in a bookstore not finding anything that resonates. Doesn't mean I won't enjoy other books, just means that it's not what I'm actively looking for. Annoyingly, I'll probably have to write the bloody thing to read it. (ETA: And you're perfectly welcome to talk about that, too, if you have anything to say. XD I'm not just looking for recs.)



Something closer to traditional other-world fantasy, by which I mean not our world with the serial numbers hastily filed off, nor a historical, nor someone from our world going into another, not contemporary or urban fantasy.

Relatively few viewpoint characters. I don't much like multi-viewpoint novels full of characters. I like to find one or two I like, then stick with them. I prefer third person to first, because it's very very hard not to sound too contemporary in first.

Travel. I don't know why, but for some reason, travel is often in the sort of books I'm thinking of. Not always, though.

A fairly unsophisticated protagonist. Er, that may not be quite what I mean but I can't come up with a better word. Note that I do not mean not complex nor do I mean simple. I don't mean that the character is necessarily young, either - this quality does tend to go along with YA protagonists, but Croaker from The Black Company is someone I would call unsophisticated, but complex. (Lady, however, would be sophisticated.) Same with Vimes from Pratchett's Watch books. (and the Croaker/Vimes character is another character type I love. XD) I'm not with the court intrigues or nobility or maneuvering to accumulate votes in the council or whatnot.

Landscape as character. This could be a city, like Tai-tastigon in God Stalk.

It could be childrens', YA, or adult. Tamora Pierce's original Lioness Quartet and her Protector of the Small books are decently close to it, although I bounce off her Circle books. I also liked her first Beka Cooper book and am looking forward to the next. On the adult side, while Lucia St Clair Robson's The Tokaido Road is a historical, it's got lots of other elements that make it a winner.

A sensawunda, which is again hard to define because it takes different things to achieve it for different people. For me, it often comes with a sense of deep time, or mysteries not fully explained. It tends to go along with the numinous - Mushishi has it in spades, Spirited Away to a lesser extent.

No obviously Celtic or Viking (or faux-Celtic/Viking) elements. I burned out on those long ago.

I rather like quest novels, although the Saving the World bit is getting old. I told sartorias a couple of days ago that I think perhaps A Comet in Moominland just might be my ideal quest novel. XD Travel, unsophisticated protagonist, sensawunda`, the object is not to Save the World but to find out what's going on, landscape as character, etc. If only it were longer and I were encountering it for the first time!

Too many Portentious Capitalized Words in the back-cover blurb and the first pages of the text Drive me Up the Frickin' Wall.



That's it for the moment. As I come up with more elements that I want to read about, I'll add them.

Comments

[heyoka.livejournal.com]

Ergh. I'd recommend Sharing Knife, especially the third and fourth books, for this, but I recall you bounced pretty hard off the age difference. :(

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, yeah. :D I liked the Chalion books, though.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether this would fit your sense of "traditional other-world fantasy," and it lacks landscape-as-character; Kristin Cashore's Graceling is a fair match, otherwise.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Huh, interesting. I've seen it reviewed somewhere and looked at it in the bookstore, but haven't quite made up my mind to try it yet. I might tip over to the "try it" side soon. XD

(It took me a few encounters to try Eon: The Last Dragoneye, but I'm glad I did.)

[harukami]

Hard to come up with a recommendation, because I loooove politics, but have you tried the Gentleman Bastard series by Scott Lynch? My occasional rants aside (because I only rant in this case because I EXPECT SO MUCH that when it doesn't live up to it, I yell XD), it's pretty good. It does have some intrigue, but it's conman intrigue, not political intrigue. And the second book has a lot of travel. Sooo much of the setting is very, very much ... the worldbuilding is incredible, and in the first book, there are entire sections just talking about the place. It actually does remind me a bit of God Stalk, in a world-way, though not a narrative or character way.

[sleary.livejournal.com]

Mmm, good choice. Locke doesn't qualify as unsophisticated, though, once you get beyond the childhood bit at the beginning.

Of course, he's not quite as sophisticated as he thinks he is....

telophase, you bounced off The Sharing Knife? Sad face! I just finished it and immediately started over to read it again. Then again, I bounced off Chalion -- but am now planning to give the second book a try.

Have you read Daniel Abraham's series beginning with A Shadow in Summer? There are 3 or 4 viewpoint characters and a very NOT Celtic cultural setting. (Japanese-inspired, IIRC.) There's politicking aplenty, but more of the killing-you-now-even-though-it'll-start-a-war variety rather than the council-voting variety.

I'd also recommend sartorias's Inda books except there's a cast of hundreds, and anyway I suspect you've already read them.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah, A Sharing Knife didn't capture me to start with, and once I hit the age difference, I bounced hard. I think it was running right into my mentor/student relationship squick.

I never quite got into Locke Lamora - read the first couple of chapters, put it down to do something, and never picked it up again.

I am sadfacy at my bouncing off of Inda. I seem to get along better with sartorias' YA novels - Crown Duel and A Posse of Princesses in particular - than her adult ones.

I have not read Abraham -I'll have to check him out.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

Doh! I just rec'd you a Posse of Princesses below. Well, at least I'm in the ballpark, right? :P

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup! :D

[sleary.livejournal.com]

I almost gave up on Inda, but I pushed through and was really happy with the second and third volumes. There's a character list on her website; printing that and keeping it handy is probably a good idea (and something I'll have to do when #4 comes out) since almost every character has at least two names, and sometimes three.

Actually I almost gave up on Locke for the same reason: half a book's worth of childhood backstory. ARGH. But it was worth it, too.

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

The first two Nightrunner books from Lynn Flewelling would be worth your time. I have not enjoyed her later works as much but Luck in the Shadows and Stalking Darkness have a lot of what you are looking for and are fun as well. There is a strong element of the macabre running through them (the villain is really quite villainous) but they didn't send me packing and I am notoriously uninterested in horror.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I read the first one years and years ago and have no memory whatsoever of it. XD Perhaps I should pick it up again.

[tokyoghoststory.livejournal.com]

Randomly, and late as usual (because I missed this entry the first time?) I would have to agree here: the first two novels are pretty good and I even enjoyed them (that's saying a lot?). I just read 'em myself fairly recently.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Ysabeau Wilce's Flora Segunda books. Eleanor Cameron's The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, and the rest of those.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I have Flora Segunda on my iPod and started listening to it some time ago, but got distracted by podcasts. I keep intending to go back.

[helen-keeble.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure the main character _quite_ fits the bill (he's a street urchin turned drug dealer turned junkie turned, er, immortal messenger to the God-Emperor, for complicated reasons), but I recommend Steph Swainston's 'The Year of Our War' and following books.

[octopedingenue]

You might have fun with the Guin Saga; I just finished the first book and it was a very quick read. An amnesiac badass warrior guy with a leopard mask for a head(!), Guin, gets reluctantly drawn into protecting a pair of tweeny brother and sister twins (last scions of the royal family blah blah) on the run from an invading army. Lots of "Who IS that Leopard-Masked Man with the rippling muscles, anyway?!" ensues. I know little else of the series other than that it reportedly gets slashier later on (the rampant male admiration of Guin's naked torso isn't enough? apparently the author also writes yaoi) and that the series is over a hundred books long. ETA I most liked the twin sister, who is overall enjoyably competent and sensible.

Also, LEOPARD MASK HEAD. FUZZY PRETTY KITTY FACE MAN WHO NEEDS HIS EARS SCRITCHED.

[emtigereyes.livejournal.com]

I don't recall if you've read this or no (I'd have to check back through my LJ for the posts on it), but the first Pullman book of "His Dark Materials" seems to fit that. Leave off the other two... while okay, they aren't nearly as good as the first.

The more I think on it, the more I think you have read it. I've got nothing...

[kate_nepveu]

Brust's Khaavren books?

Ooh! Robin McKinley's _Spindle's End_. http://www.steelypips.org/reviews/spindlesend.html

[aquatic-party.livejournal.com]

I really liked Spindle's End, though it lacks the quest element telophase is looking for (there's a bit of journerying at the end, IIRC, but it doesn't apply). Oh well, I'll second it anyway, because it's a very fun book that hearkens back to the classic appeal of fairytales galore <3

[kate_nepveu]

I wouldn't call it a quest novel, true, but I think it meets everything else very well.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

Have you read a Posse of Princesses? It has some of the elements you mention; it's YA. The writing is quite good and has some tropes I think you'd like.

I've found a series that mostly fits, but I'm not sure it was ever published in the US

[estara.livejournal.com]

It's Roger Taylor's Chronicles of Hawklan.

"Something closer to traditional other-world fantasy."

I personally read it as other-world fantasy but you could make a case of it being post apocalyptic fantasy (as in thousands of years have passed) if you tried hard enough.

"Relatively few viewpoint characters".
I'm not sure how to answer that as it's an omniscient narrator that can look into peolple's heads and not just describe their reactions, so very old school. The story has a queen and an amnesiac warden of an old castle at the center and what happens around them mostly gets told, but the narrator picks up whoever is important at that moment and shows their actions and thoughts.

"Travel. I don't know why, but for some reason, travel is often in the sort of books I'm thinking of. Not always, though."
Huge amounts of travel. Once the books and the crisis start - and it is a saving-the-world-quest - the main characters get dragged into doing what they can do stop an ancient dark god from taking over or finding an ancient good god to help them and it takes them all over their world, which is disctinct and different enough, I felt, to go into your sensawunda requirement.

"A fairly unsophisticated protagonist. I'm not with the court intrigues or nobility or maneuvering to accumulate votes in the council or whatnot."

When the queen and her plight is at the center you do get some court intrigues, but the books are called the Chronicles of Hawklan and he's the warder in that mountain obscure castle with the reclusive inhabitants of the village around it and by not remembering most of his personal history and having - as he finds out - strange powers as well as crow that can talk to him and a castle that was empty for a long time until it let him in (specifically him), he starts very much as a blank slate (with just enough reason to go out and look for his past to eventually get him moving, after danger arrives at his castle).

"Landscape as character."
Lots of that. It starts right with the castle and stays there for most of the first book in the series, and the war makes the queen move all over her country, too, so you almost get a Lord of the Rings travel vibe with important places.

"No obviously Celtic or Viking (or faux-Celtic/Viking) elements. I burned out on those long ago."
Well the queen used to be a rider warrior maid for her own people, before she married the king here (you might have problems with the age difference between the old king and the queen, although I believe she loved him and in medieval societies I don't tend to think young woman and older man all that strange) - like the Rohan folk - so that's a bit Tolkienish again, but not those two. Or a bit Robert Jordanish, these days.

"the object is not to Save the World but to find out what's going on"
The story goes from the second to the first, I have to admit.

"Too many Portentious Capitalized Words in the back-cover blurb and the first pages of the text Drive me Up the Frickin' Wall."
No such thing.

Back cover blurb via Amazon, the English edition seems to be in print:

"The castle of Anderras Darion has stood abandoned and majestic for as long as anyone can remember. Then, from out of the mountains, comes the healer, Hawklan - a man with no memory of the past - to take possession of the keep with his sole companion, the raven Gavor.

Across the country, the great fortress of Narsindalvak is a constant reminder of the victory won by the hero Ethriss in alliance with the three realms of Orthlund, Riddin and Fyorlund against the Dark Lord, Sumeral, hundreds of years before. But Rgoric, the ailing king of Fyorlund and protector of the peace, has fallen under the malign influence of the Lord Dan-Tor, and from the bleakness of Narsindal come ugly rumours. It is whispered that Mandrocs are abroad again and that the Dark Lord himself is stirring.

And in the remote fastness of Anderras Darion, Hawklan feels deep within himself the echoes of an ancient power and the unknown, yet strangely familiar, call to arms..."

You obviously can buy the import version from Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Call-Sword-Chronicles-Hawklan/dp/184319273X/

part 2 of this comment

[estara.livejournal.com]

The series is four books in all, starting slim and getting bigger. Roger Taylor has written more epic fantasy, but the only other book by him I really love is a really fat fantasy called Dream-Finder, supposedly set as a one off in Hawklan's world, but not that I read it as such, hmmm.
http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Finder-Roger-Taylor/dp/1843192772/


Amazon Review by Kat Maxwell
"This is the first in a four book sequence by British author Roger Taylor called "The Chronicles of Hawklan". One night in the middle of a snowstorm, Hawklan arrives at the ancient sealed castle of Anderras Darion. He has no memory of his personal history or even his name. The locals of the village below the castle re-name him Hawklan and he finds he is a natural healer of great ability with a store of knowledge that he doesn't know the origins of.

The real story of this book starts with the arrival of a harmless looking tinker who sells goods to the village people. However, what he sells are not what they seem. This leads Hawklan on a quest to discover the source of the poison that has been sold to the people he loves, and it's the start of world changing events for everyone, with Hawklan as the unexpected catalyst.

This book is well paced and written and Hawklan and his friends are characters which grow on you with affection. However, this book is really only an introductory novel in some ways, but if you enjoy fantasy its well worth reading."

[aquatic-party.livejournal.com]

Kind of delayed response, but now that I've been thinking about it, Michael Stackpole's Talion: Revenant hits almost all your points exactly. I'm not sure how likely you are to have already read it, though.