I recommend the fantasy novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
It's very long, and some might find the style dry, but I found it fascinating and delightful. And apparently I'm not alone, it seems it won the Hugo award. (Which confuses me a little, I thought the Hugo was only for SF, not fantasy.) And also the World Fantasy Award. That does not happen often.
If you like fantasy which is not a Tolkien clone, go for it.
I "read" it as an audio book. (Is that called "reading"?) The reader is perfect. It must have been a Homeric task to read all that, it's something like 30 hours. Just remembering all those different voices... (he does them in a solid way, not overdone.)
It was recommended by Neil Gaiman. He had been talking about the book and the author Susanna Clarke for years before the book came out. It was a very long gestation for the it. But it apparently became a "publishing phenomenon" when it finally was released. It was also unusual in that the publisher is not a "fantasy publisher". (What's up with all those divisions anyway?)
Whatever else one thinks of it, one thing is clear: it is a very seminal* novel. Those do not come out often.
*Of, relating to, or having the power to originate; creative. - Highly influential in an original way; constituting or providing a basis for further development. (Online dictionary.)
Which confuses me a little, I thought the Hugo was only for SF, not fantasy.
ReplyDeleteActually, according to the definition of the award in the WSFS Constitution, "Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year." [Emphasis mine.] This is also covered on the Official Hugo Awards FAQ (scroll down to the question "Aren’t Hugos just for Science Fiction?").
One of the key reasons for the Hugo Award being all-encompassing is the difficulty of definitions. You can't easily draw a line between SF and Fantasy -- think Dragonriders of Pern for the classic example. Furthermore, Hugo Gernsback himself is said to have had such a strict definition of what "scientifiction" was that almost nothing ever awarded a Hugo would have met it. So rather than get in to endless (and pointless) arguments over whether something is "sufficiently science fictional," we give an award for all SF and Fantasy instead.