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Hello and Welcome to our weekly Four Questions! As ever, please do join us in our fun, and fill out the questions below. Have a great day!
Satima Flavell
2) What do they do well?
It's easy to see from the names I've picked that I love historically-based fantasy, including that which is set in the history of our own world and that which is set on imaginary worlds. I should probably point out here that I adore history — adore and revere it. As a family historian, I long ago realised that history is simply the sum total of all the family histories of our world. It is where we come from and where we are going. It is the place where our ancestors still live. To disrespect it, therefore, is to disrespect our ancestors, who collectively built our society.
So, in reading my favourite books, I look for historical credibility. Even if the story is set on another world, its history needs to be similar to that of our own. In fact, it would resemble very closely the relevant historical period on our planet. Could Paxton have created his press if his society had not already invented paper? The alternative might have been to print on vellum, which would have meant that farmers would have had to send young animals to the slaughterhouse instead of keeping them for breeding, which would have resulted in a shortage of breeding stock and a shortage of large carcases and dairy produce. You can't change even one thing in a society without a serious ripple effect. Therefore, except for a cleverly-placed anachronism that is designed to make a point, such as the submarine in Dave Luckett's recent book Subversive Activity or similar effects in some steampunk novels, I want and expect to read books set in a historically cohesive world. Idiocies such as armoured knights on horseback travelling by spaceship, or people living in castles when a neighbouring society has nuclear weapons, will get short shrift from me, both as reader and reviewer. Such things not only disrespect history, they demonstrate poor logic, so my suspension of disbelief flies out the window.
3) What do they do badly?
Some of them fail in the originality stakes here and there. Kay, for instance, seems to have stock characters that continually turn up in his books under different names. But they are good, well-drawn characters with distinctive traits, so their re-appearances in different guises don't make his work any the less enjoyable.
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself; Jaqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart , Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice; Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic duology, Glenda Larke's The Last Stormlord, Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing and Karen Miller's The Innocent Mage. But that's just today. On another day I might pick other faves, and if you go out and buy anything by any of these authors, I promise you will get a good read.
Helen Venn
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
I started writing a list and when I got to fifty I realised that wasn't going to work. I have very varied taste in writers so the list included thrillers, police procedurals, historical fantasies, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy as well as many others, old and modern. So I guess I should just pick three and resist the demands of the rest to be included. For obvious reasons I've chosen speculative fiction writers and of those the ones, I've most enjoyed recently in alphabetical order are Robin Hobb, Glenda Larke and Juliet Marillier.
2) What do they do well?
I'm going to concentrate on one author or this would become an opus - and, for no other reason than because she comes first in alphabetical order, Robin Hobb gets the guernsey. She has a great ability to evoke a setting. In one of Hobb's books the reader is drawn into a richly imagined setting that is totally believable. In The Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven, two recent releases, she built fascinating worlds ranging from a recognisable city one, through a place where the ground is so hostile a city has been built in giant trees and on to the depressing wild world where rivers run so acid that they kill and just surviving is an achievement. The worlds she creates are alien and familiar at the same time. We have sentient ships and dragons along with people living ordinary - and sometimes extraordinary - lives. At the same time she has a cast of believable characters. The reader wants to know what happens to them and cares about them.
3) What do they do badly?
Hobb can be wordy and, while all these lovingly crafted characters and settings are cleverly described, the reader can find themselves wishing that things moved on faster. There's also a tendency to hammer home a point and not rely on the reader to remember what they had already been told. Don't think from this that she is not an entertaining writer. She certainly is but, for me, the repetition can get irksome.
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
It's very hard for me to pick favourites. I loved The Farseer Trilogy - Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin and Assassin's Quest, The Live Ship Traders trilogy - Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship and Ship of Destiny and The Tawny Man trilogy - Fool's Errand, The Golden Fool and Fool's Fate - for all the reasons I've mentioned above.
Joanna Fay
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
I tend to have favourite novels or series of novels rather than favourite authors as such. I can't think of any whose whole output I have enjoyed, yet I've been touched, changed, inspired by many writers in particular works. To name a few; in SF and Fantasy, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Frank Herbert's Dune, Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover, Julian May's Many-Coloured Land and Galactic Milieu series, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Death Gate Cycle novels. In the 'classics', Jane Austen's Persuasion, Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Honore de Balzac's Illusions Perdues, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. In more recent times, Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist, Eleven Minutes and By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, Albert Camus' L'Etranger, Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse and Emma Tennant's Wild Nights. So many others too. I do appreciate for various reasons the fantasy phenomena of recent years, J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter books and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels.
2) What do they do well?
Well, I'll just pick one here or this will turn into a major essay! Tolkien probably hasn't been surpassed as a world-builder, in depth, breadth and sheer detail of vision, because he truly thought from inside his world. You can smell, taste and breathe it as well as see it. Middle Earth feels amazingly 'real', because the histories he created behind his stories were so complex and layered. He always maintained his starting point was the languages (which are an evolved artform in their own right); that he then had to envisage the people who spoke them and the life events/cultural impacts that developed those languages into their various branches. He intelligently used real world mythologies (as do G.G.Kay and Julian May) to create a world with a high level of 'internal reality' (by which I mean it is highly resonant with our collective unconsciousness and its stored mythopoeia).
3) What do they do badly?
He wasn't good at finishing things! There are so many great stories in The Silmarillion that could have become another Lord of the Rings if Tolkien had gotten round to writing them as fully fledged novels rather than as discontinuous, variably personalised, fragments of history. The story of Beren and Luthien is a case in point. It has all the ingredients of a 'great story' and sits at the very centre of his storyworld, yet remained little more than a compressed 'history'. He first wrote it as a poem (The Lay of Leithian), got to 10 000 lines and then abandoned it! From photos of his original manuscript it appears that he was writing firstly in elvish, then translating into English (which might have slowed him down!). Perhaps this is why his work has such a unique ambience. It's frustrating though; this story could have been exceptional. It has deep elements, its reversal of the myth of Orpheus being one of them (in Tolkien's story, it is the woman who charms the god of death in the underworld after ensorcelling his hound, and manages to extract something precious from him). Clearly, this story was right in its author's heart too; the names of Beren and Luthien are carved into the gravestones of Tolkien and his wife.
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
Here I'll go over to Guy Gavriel Kay and put in a word for The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy (and not just because of its lovely weaving metaphors!). Some of his later novels might be more tightly crafted, but these books are wonderful in their use of Celtic and Arthurian myth in a completely original - and deeply poignant - way. Yet they never overbalance the world he has created, or his passionately drawn characters, or the turns and twists of the (very large) plot. He's holding a lot of threads here and manages not to get them tangled. Oh look, see? I'm getting all weaverly just thinking about it!
Carol Ryles
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
That would be a very long list for which there is not room enough here. So I'll narrow it down to ten and write them as they spring to mind: Octavia Butler, Stephen Baxter, Damien Broderick, Jeanette Winterson, Vonda N McIntyre, China Mieville, Toni Morrison, Charles Dickens, Ursula Le Guin and Colleen McCullough. I guess this means I like variety.
2) What do they do well?
They can all write a gripping, meaningful story. SF that both entertains and challenges, Fantasy that is both beautiful and grotesque. Mainstream fiction that will make a long distance plane trip bearable.
3) What do they do badly?
They're my favourite. I enjoy their work too much to notice if they do anything badly :)
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
Broderick: The White Abacus -- a stunning tour of human emotion. Beauty in space, with a touch of Hamlet.
Butler: The entire Xenogenesis Trilogy -- Aliens rescue humanity from extinction -- thoughtful blurring of boundaries between benevolence and cultural assimilation.
Baxter: Ring -- the first Baxter book I ever read. A novel that spans 5 million years with a woman who has been genetically engineered to live in the centre of the sun, discovering dark matter Photino birds that feed on stars. Throw in the inscrutable XeeLee, a generation star ship and how could I not like that one?
Winterson: The Passion -- Wow. Beauty in prose and beauty in the tale. A touch of fantasy, love and loss set in Venice and the Napoleonic wars, from the point of view of Napoleon's cook, and a girl with webbed feet who cross dresses and works in a casino.
McIntyre: The Exile Awaiting -- was the first feminist SF novel I read in the '70s. Always enjoy rereading this one about a thief who fights her way out of oppression.
Mieville: Can't decide between The Scar or Perdido Street Station -- Beauty and the grotesque, audacious technology. Fantasy and Steampunk. I'm writing my thesis about it.
Morrison: Beloved -- the best ghost story I've ever read. A baby ghost. Beauty and tragedy.
Dickens: All of Dickens -- Probably Great Expectations -- Miss Havisham, that wedding dress and uneaten wedding cake! Eek
Ursula Le Guin -- The Left Hand of Darkness -- A world with only one gender -- Intelligent World building and culture building.
McCollough: The Thornbirds -- This is the sort of book I can read on a plane, even after being sleep deprived for 20 hours.
Sarah Parker
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
Lois McMaster Bujold, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, Ann Bishop
2) What do they do well?
Lois has a real gift for writing interesting people. She writes vividly and with great care. Anne Mccaffrey had fantastic ideas and worlds, though I mostly only read her Pern series and her Rowan series. Terry Pratchett has become a master story teller, I think, able to make me cry with a phrase or care for the unexpected. Anne Bishop wrote a great story which carried me along.
3) What do they do badly?
I sometimes find Pratchett's Pratchettisms to be more annoying than entrancing. Anne Mccaffrey can't write sex/relationships at all. Lois... I haven't noticed anything annoying about her works! She had bad luck with last books though. I thought the last book of the Curse of Chalion series was lacking in the strength of the other two, and the last book in the Vorkosigan saga really threw away some of the characters I had been attached to since her short stories were published in Analog. I got a bit tired of Bishop's habit of continuing to up the ante every time Jael did something.
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
Paladin of Souls is my favourite book of Bujold's. It's just awe inspiring that she's managed to take an unusual heroine and made her so popular! Ista is a favourite character of mine. All of them have written such excellent stories, I love tight pacing and a good plot. Every one I have mentioned has what I want, obviously!
You!
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
2) What do they do well?
3) What do they do badly?
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
--
Sarah
Satima Flavell
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
There are so many good writers around at the moment that all I can do is point to the ones whose work I follow — and that's without considering the many fine authors of twenty, thirty, forty years ago whose work I still treasure! So, in alphabetical order: Joe Abercrombie, Jaqueline Carey, Robin Hobb, Guy Gavriel Kay, Glenda Larke, Juliet Marillier and Karen Miller (K.E. Mills). In most cases I have the author's entire oeuvre on my shelves.
2) What do they do well?
It's easy to see from the names I've picked that I love historically-based fantasy, including that which is set in the history of our own world and that which is set on imaginary worlds. I should probably point out here that I adore history — adore and revere it. As a family historian, I long ago realised that history is simply the sum total of all the family histories of our world. It is where we come from and where we are going. It is the place where our ancestors still live. To disrespect it, therefore, is to disrespect our ancestors, who collectively built our society.
So, in reading my favourite books, I look for historical credibility. Even if the story is set on another world, its history needs to be similar to that of our own. In fact, it would resemble very closely the relevant historical period on our planet. Could Paxton have created his press if his society had not already invented paper? The alternative might have been to print on vellum, which would have meant that farmers would have had to send young animals to the slaughterhouse instead of keeping them for breeding, which would have resulted in a shortage of breeding stock and a shortage of large carcases and dairy produce. You can't change even one thing in a society without a serious ripple effect. Therefore, except for a cleverly-placed anachronism that is designed to make a point, such as the submarine in Dave Luckett's recent book Subversive Activity or similar effects in some steampunk novels, I want and expect to read books set in a historically cohesive world. Idiocies such as armoured knights on horseback travelling by spaceship, or people living in castles when a neighbouring society has nuclear weapons, will get short shrift from me, both as reader and reviewer. Such things not only disrespect history, they demonstrate poor logic, so my suspension of disbelief flies out the window.
Likewise with language. Writers who have not done their linguistics homework will also find their works among my discards. Of the above writers, I would point to Guy Gavriel Kay and Jacqueline Carey as numbering among those who've gained HDs for their devoirs!
In other words, I find casual dissing of history or language because the writer either can't be bothered doing the necessary research or because they can't see that it matters really hurtful and offensive. Conversely, I love works in which these aspects have been given the love and attention they deserve. My favourite authors all show signs of having done a fair amount of research in those things that matter to me. And then they write a damned good story about it!
3) What do they do badly?
Some of them fail in the originality stakes here and there. Kay, for instance, seems to have stock characters that continually turn up in his books under different names. But they are good, well-drawn characters with distinctive traits, so their re-appearances in different guises don't make his work any the less enjoyable.
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself; Jaqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart , Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice; Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine Mosaic duology, Glenda Larke's The Last Stormlord, Juliet Marillier's Wildwood Dancing and Karen Miller's The Innocent Mage. But that's just today. On another day I might pick other faves, and if you go out and buy anything by any of these authors, I promise you will get a good read.
Helen Venn
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
I started writing a list and when I got to fifty I realised that wasn't going to work. I have very varied taste in writers so the list included thrillers, police procedurals, historical fantasies, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy as well as many others, old and modern. So I guess I should just pick three and resist the demands of the rest to be included. For obvious reasons I've chosen speculative fiction writers and of those the ones, I've most enjoyed recently in alphabetical order are Robin Hobb, Glenda Larke and Juliet Marillier.
2) What do they do well?
I'm going to concentrate on one author or this would become an opus - and, for no other reason than because she comes first in alphabetical order, Robin Hobb gets the guernsey. She has a great ability to evoke a setting. In one of Hobb's books the reader is drawn into a richly imagined setting that is totally believable. In The Dragon Keeper and Dragon Haven, two recent releases, she built fascinating worlds ranging from a recognisable city one, through a place where the ground is so hostile a city has been built in giant trees and on to the depressing wild world where rivers run so acid that they kill and just surviving is an achievement. The worlds she creates are alien and familiar at the same time. We have sentient ships and dragons along with people living ordinary - and sometimes extraordinary - lives. At the same time she has a cast of believable characters. The reader wants to know what happens to them and cares about them.
3) What do they do badly?
Hobb can be wordy and, while all these lovingly crafted characters and settings are cleverly described, the reader can find themselves wishing that things moved on faster. There's also a tendency to hammer home a point and not rely on the reader to remember what they had already been told. Don't think from this that she is not an entertaining writer. She certainly is but, for me, the repetition can get irksome.
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
It's very hard for me to pick favourites. I loved The Farseer Trilogy - Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin and Assassin's Quest, The Live Ship Traders trilogy - Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship and Ship of Destiny and The Tawny Man trilogy - Fool's Errand, The Golden Fool and Fool's Fate - for all the reasons I've mentioned above.
Joanna Fay
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
I tend to have favourite novels or series of novels rather than favourite authors as such. I can't think of any whose whole output I have enjoyed, yet I've been touched, changed, inspired by many writers in particular works. To name a few; in SF and Fantasy, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Frank Herbert's Dune, Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, Tanith Lee's The Silver Metal Lover, Julian May's Many-Coloured Land and Galactic Milieu series, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Death Gate Cycle novels. In the 'classics', Jane Austen's Persuasion, Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Honore de Balzac's Illusions Perdues, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. In more recent times, Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist, Eleven Minutes and By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, Albert Camus' L'Etranger, Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse and Emma Tennant's Wild Nights. So many others too. I do appreciate for various reasons the fantasy phenomena of recent years, J.K.Rowling's Harry Potter books and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight novels.
2) What do they do well?
Well, I'll just pick one here or this will turn into a major essay! Tolkien probably hasn't been surpassed as a world-builder, in depth, breadth and sheer detail of vision, because he truly thought from inside his world. You can smell, taste and breathe it as well as see it. Middle Earth feels amazingly 'real', because the histories he created behind his stories were so complex and layered. He always maintained his starting point was the languages (which are an evolved artform in their own right); that he then had to envisage the people who spoke them and the life events/cultural impacts that developed those languages into their various branches. He intelligently used real world mythologies (as do G.G.Kay and Julian May) to create a world with a high level of 'internal reality' (by which I mean it is highly resonant with our collective unconsciousness and its stored mythopoeia).
3) What do they do badly?
He wasn't good at finishing things! There are so many great stories in The Silmarillion that could have become another Lord of the Rings if Tolkien had gotten round to writing them as fully fledged novels rather than as discontinuous, variably personalised, fragments of history. The story of Beren and Luthien is a case in point. It has all the ingredients of a 'great story' and sits at the very centre of his storyworld, yet remained little more than a compressed 'history'. He first wrote it as a poem (The Lay of Leithian), got to 10 000 lines and then abandoned it! From photos of his original manuscript it appears that he was writing firstly in elvish, then translating into English (which might have slowed him down!). Perhaps this is why his work has such a unique ambience. It's frustrating though; this story could have been exceptional. It has deep elements, its reversal of the myth of Orpheus being one of them (in Tolkien's story, it is the woman who charms the god of death in the underworld after ensorcelling his hound, and manages to extract something precious from him). Clearly, this story was right in its author's heart too; the names of Beren and Luthien are carved into the gravestones of Tolkien and his wife.
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
Here I'll go over to Guy Gavriel Kay and put in a word for The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy (and not just because of its lovely weaving metaphors!). Some of his later novels might be more tightly crafted, but these books are wonderful in their use of Celtic and Arthurian myth in a completely original - and deeply poignant - way. Yet they never overbalance the world he has created, or his passionately drawn characters, or the turns and twists of the (very large) plot. He's holding a lot of threads here and manages not to get them tangled. Oh look, see? I'm getting all weaverly just thinking about it!
Carol Ryles
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
That would be a very long list for which there is not room enough here. So I'll narrow it down to ten and write them as they spring to mind: Octavia Butler, Stephen Baxter, Damien Broderick, Jeanette Winterson, Vonda N McIntyre, China Mieville, Toni Morrison, Charles Dickens, Ursula Le Guin and Colleen McCullough. I guess this means I like variety.
2) What do they do well?
They can all write a gripping, meaningful story. SF that both entertains and challenges, Fantasy that is both beautiful and grotesque. Mainstream fiction that will make a long distance plane trip bearable.
3) What do they do badly?
They're my favourite. I enjoy their work too much to notice if they do anything badly :)
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
Broderick: The White Abacus -- a stunning tour of human emotion. Beauty in space, with a touch of Hamlet.
Butler: The entire Xenogenesis Trilogy -- Aliens rescue humanity from extinction -- thoughtful blurring of boundaries between benevolence and cultural assimilation.
Baxter: Ring -- the first Baxter book I ever read. A novel that spans 5 million years with a woman who has been genetically engineered to live in the centre of the sun, discovering dark matter Photino birds that feed on stars. Throw in the inscrutable XeeLee, a generation star ship and how could I not like that one?
Winterson: The Passion -- Wow. Beauty in prose and beauty in the tale. A touch of fantasy, love and loss set in Venice and the Napoleonic wars, from the point of view of Napoleon's cook, and a girl with webbed feet who cross dresses and works in a casino.
McIntyre: The Exile Awaiting -- was the first feminist SF novel I read in the '70s. Always enjoy rereading this one about a thief who fights her way out of oppression.
Mieville: Can't decide between The Scar or Perdido Street Station -- Beauty and the grotesque, audacious technology. Fantasy and Steampunk. I'm writing my thesis about it.
Morrison: Beloved -- the best ghost story I've ever read. A baby ghost. Beauty and tragedy.
Dickens: All of Dickens -- Probably Great Expectations -- Miss Havisham, that wedding dress and uneaten wedding cake! Eek
Ursula Le Guin -- The Left Hand of Darkness -- A world with only one gender -- Intelligent World building and culture building.
McCollough: The Thornbirds -- This is the sort of book I can read on a plane, even after being sleep deprived for 20 hours.
Sarah Parker
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
Lois McMaster Bujold, Anne McCaffrey, Terry Pratchett, Ann Bishop
2) What do they do well?
Lois has a real gift for writing interesting people. She writes vividly and with great care. Anne Mccaffrey had fantastic ideas and worlds, though I mostly only read her Pern series and her Rowan series. Terry Pratchett has become a master story teller, I think, able to make me cry with a phrase or care for the unexpected. Anne Bishop wrote a great story which carried me along.
3) What do they do badly?
I sometimes find Pratchett's Pratchettisms to be more annoying than entrancing. Anne Mccaffrey can't write sex/relationships at all. Lois... I haven't noticed anything annoying about her works! She had bad luck with last books though. I thought the last book of the Curse of Chalion series was lacking in the strength of the other two, and the last book in the Vorkosigan saga really threw away some of the characters I had been attached to since her short stories were published in Analog. I got a bit tired of Bishop's habit of continuing to up the ante every time Jael did something.
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
Paladin of Souls is my favourite book of Bujold's. It's just awe inspiring that she's managed to take an unusual heroine and made her so popular! Ista is a favourite character of mine. All of them have written such excellent stories, I love tight pacing and a good plot. Every one I have mentioned has what I want, obviously!
You!
1) Who is your favourite author(s)?
2) What do they do well?
3) What do they do badly?
4) Favourite book of theirs and why?
--
Sarah
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