Some Dark Fantasy Book Recommendations Without Sexual Assaults

Around the time grimdark emerged as its own genre I was getting tired of traditional fantasy tropes and wanted something new. It seemed perfect timing. I read Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy and it so expertly reverted the fantasy tropes I was familiar with that I loved them.

Something strange happened after that though. Other books I picked up seemed to be less a clever conversation with the past and more just a glorification of abuse and violence. Suddenly fantasy books didn't leave me feeling better about myself and the world, they made my escape from the real world into a hellscape of rape and gratuitous violence. So I stopped reading grimdark. I also started and stopped reading urban fantasy (for several reasons but the standard list of things that started happening to all the protagonist - lost memory, got raped - was a deciding factor) and started reading more science fiction.

I've hit a point in my life where I'm not willing to finish a book I'm not enjoying, and with a few exceptions I now stop reading if there's a rape scene or if there are no redeeming protagonists. If I don't want to main characters to succeed in their goals...

So here's a list of books that have darker themes but (as far as I can remember - PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I'M MISREMEMBERING) do NOT have rape scenes. They do have other violence and can be really intense at times (I often need to break up series so I don't get too depressed reading some of this stuff), but there are no sexual assaults.

I haven't been reading as much fiction lately, and dark fantasy isn't my favourite, so this will be a short list. If you've got others, please leave a comment as I'm always looking for good, rape free fantasy.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickenson - I just finished reading the first 3 of an incomplete 4 book series about a woman whose island was colonized by a major empire, destroying their way of life. Baru determines to join the Empire and destroy it from within. There is betrayal, rebellion, colonization, mutilation, and more.

Armed in Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield - Set in an alternate medieval Belgium, a woman must find her undead husband to secure her daughter's inheritance. There's war, a hellmouth, and women doing what they must to survive.

The Emperor's Blades by Brian Steveley - The first book in a completed trilogy (there's also a standalone, Skullsworn, set in the same world and focused on an assassin/priestess). The Emperor has died and his three unprepared children must deal with the fallout. Contains assassins, eagle mounts, subtle magic, armies, fanatical priests, etc.

City of Stairs* by Robert Jackson Bennett - I'm currently reading a different series of his, but I think City of Stairs is the grittier book. There are hints of assault (ie, it's known assault happens in this world) but there are no on page assaults. The plot centres around a female diplomat sent to uncover a murderer in a colonized city. (If you ever thought computer programming would make a cool magic system, I highly recommend Foundryside.)

Waking Fire by Anthony Ryan - An interesting completed trilogy about a society built on the use of dragon blood in a world where few dragons remain. There are navel battles, betrayals, wars, etc.

Lamentation by Ken Scholes - The first of a completed 5 book series that was so intense I needed a break between books. When an ancient device destroys the city of Windwir, war comes to the Named Lands. There is a lot of violence, sometimes graphic torture, assassination, political intrigue, plots within plots within plots.

This next book isn't technically grimdark (being older than that label) but the author really puts her characters through the ringer (which is true of all the books I've read by her).

Transformation by Carol Berg - The first of a trilogy but can easily be read as a standalone. A slave who used magic in the past must help his new master overcome his possession. This is one of my favourite novels because there's a surprising amount of humour to it. Black humour, to be sure. It also doesn't pull any punches. There is off page assault (it's clear the protagonist was assaulted in the past and he tries to warn another character who is assaulted off page).

Carol Berg's Song of the Beast is also a brilliant book, but so harsh I've only been able to read it once.

Another hesitant recommendation is The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter*. One side character is assaulted off page, which results in several things going bad for other characters (who try to avenge it). The book is about a man in a structured society who manages to go beyond his station. So much violence and fighting. I haven't read the second one so I'm not sure if the protagonist remains someone I can root for.

If you've had enough dark fantasy and want a palate cleanse, E. K. Johnston's The Afterward is excellent. It's about a group of female knights (one of whom is transgender and several of whom are gay) who go on a quest to defeat the bad guy. It will leave you feeling good about the world.

[*Sorry, I wrote this quickly and have edited out some typos like "City of Stars" and Evan Winters. My apologies.]

Recommended Reading by Professionals with Dru Pagliassotti

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Dru Pagliassotti, whose first novel, Clockwork Heart, won the Romantic Times Book Reviews’ Best Small Press Contemporary Futuristic Novel award for 2008. Book two, Clockwork Lies: Iron Wind was released in March of this year and book three, Clockwork Secrets: Heavy Fire is out this September. She’s written numerous short stories, a horror novel (An Agreement with Hell), and edited several works, including a scholarly book on Japanese yaoi, or boy’s love manga.

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Self-publishing has taken off over the last few years, but there are so many self-published books available, of such wildly varying quality, that it’s difficult to figure out what’s worth the effort and what isn’t. Here are a few self-published novels I’ve enjoyed recently — each contains romantic elements, so I’ve tried to provide a little something for everyone.

1. Lindsay Buroker: In the steampunkish fantasy Emperor’s Edge series, Imperial law enforcer Amaranthe Lokdon is ordered to hunt down the infamous assassin Sicarius. However, common political enemies and goals soon throw them together to create a band of misfit vigilantes dedicated to saving the empire. The Emperor’s Edge novels combine politics, humor, m/f romantic tension, and high adventure in a consistently engaging manner. (Emperor’s Edge [this book can be downloaded for free], Dark Currents, Deadly Games, Conspiracy, Blood and Betrayal, Beneath the Surface, Forged in Blood I & II, plus misc. short stories).
   
2. Catherine M. Wilson: When Women Were Warriors is a Bronze-Age-themed fantasy trilogy and coming-of-age story that follows young Tamras as she leaves her mother’s household to enter the local ruling matriarch’s, where she will train to become a warrior. Along the way, she heals the shunned warrior Maara, who becomes her mentor and counselor. The novels are a thoughtfully written, woman-centered contemplation on the nature of responsibility, maturity, love, and courage. I found the series’ f/f romance and world of mutually respectful gender equality to be a quietly refreshing change from the fantasy-fiction norm. (The Warrior’s Path [this book can be downloaded for free], A Journey of the Heart, A Hero’s Tale).
   
3. Jordan L. Hawk: The Whyborne & Griffin series offers a combination of steamy m/m romance and unearthly Lovecraftian horror. While I doubt HPL would have approved of the relationship between the scholarly linguist Percival Endicott Whyborne and the haunted ex-Pinkerton Griffin Flaherty, I expect he would have appreciated the damnable tomes, deadly labyrinthine caverns, and unsavory ancient artifacts that pepper this occult-mystery series set in the late 19th century. (Widdershins, Threshold, Stormhaven, Necropolis).

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Due to time constraints and other factors this will be my last Recommended Reading post.  Kristin from My Bookish Ways will be taking over the column for SF Signal. So if you'd like to see more recommendations by professionals posts, you'll have to head over there.

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Sharon Shinn

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Sharon Shinn. Sharon Shinn has published 24 novels, one collection, and assorted pieces of short fiction since her first book came out in 1995. Among her books are the Twelve Houses series (Mystic and Rider and its sequels), the Samaria series (Archangel and its sequels), the Shifting Circle series, and the Elemental Blessings series. In 2010, the Romantic Times gave her the Career Achievement Award in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category, and in 2012, Publisher’s Weekly magazine named The Shape of Desire one of the best science fiction/fantasy books of the year. Three of her novels have been named to the ALA’s lists of Best Books for Young Adults (now Best Fiction for Young Adults). Her newest Shifting Circle book, The Turning Season, will be published in November.

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These are all books I read between the ages of ten and fifteen, and that I have read many times since, and that have stayed with me my whole life. So of course I think everyone should read them.

1. The Gammage Cup by Carol Kendall
   
   
   In the serene Land Between the Mountains, all the small people known as Minnipins are pressured to conform, particularly as the twelve villages compete with each other to win the prestigious Gammage Cup given out to the most perfect village. But five quirky individuals in Slipper-on-the-Water refuse to dress in boring colors or stop speaking in silly rhymes, so they’re banished while the competition is under way. It’s while they’re out in the wild, trying to survive on their own, that they spot the evil Mushrooms trying to breach the mountains and invade the valley. Relying on their courage and their friendship, they defeat the Mushrooms and save the Land Between the Mountains—and win the trophy for their village.
   
   
   This was my first exposure to the trope of a band of misfits who take on great evil and save the world, and I never got over it.
   
   
   
2. The Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton
   
   
   Edward and Eleanor live with their eccentric aunt and uncle in a wonderful old house in Massachusetts. They discover a hidden room high in a turret, and they learn that, long ago, two children disappeared one night while sleeping in this very room. There’s a poem etched into the window glass, and when they start spending the night in the tower, the events of their dreams match the verses of the poem. They soon realize they aren’t dreaming after all, but chasing after those missing children and having real adventures—which put them in real danger. If they don’t solve all the clues in the poem, they too could disappear.
   
   
   In one chapter, Eleanor and Edward are trapped inside a giant nautilus shell on a beach as the tide starts coming in. They make their way from the smallest chamber to the next biggest one and the next biggest one, but each time the door between chambers only opens when they do something worthy. Tell a riddle, solve a math puzzle. Their accomplishments must get bigger each time a chamber gets bigger. They’re finally in the very largest chamber—but they can’t think of anything momentous enough to free themselves. And then a wave comes in and lifts the shell and almost carries it out to sea…
   
   
   I will never forget my fear and excitement the first time I read that scene. To me, this book is about the potential for magic all around us, all the time. I’ve never stopped looking for my own poem full of clues and mysteries.
   
   
   
3. Enchantress From the Stars by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
   
   
   A spaceship full of operatives from an advanced civilization makes a stealthy approach to the primitive world of Andrecia—which has just been invaded by a third civilization not quite as advanced as the first one. Elana is on the first spaceship with two other team members, and their goal is to save Andrecia from the invaders, without letting the inhabitants know that extraterrestrials actually exist. Elana lands on Andrecia and takes the role of an enchantress who devises nearly impossible quests for the bravest of men, and when they succeed, she gives them magical devices to help them slay the “dragon” that has started to destroy their world. Of course, the devices are really high-tech tools and the “dragon” is really giant machinery brought by the invading forces.
   
   
   The book alternates between the self-aware science fiction narrative of Elana’s voice, and the fairy-tale style of Georyn, a brave Andrecian who wins magic from the enchantress’s hands. "At the edge of the Enchanted Forest there lived a poor woodcutter who had four sons…"
   
   
   I read this book before I ever watched an episode of “Star Trek,” so this is where I learned the basic tenets of the Prime Directive. It made me think differently about fairy tales, history, and space exploration, and introduced me to the idea that two different people will have vastly different takes on the same events. And it’s a love story. It has so many elements that have stuck with me forever.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Leah Bobet

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Leah Bobet. Leah Bobet's first novel, Above, was nominated for the 2012 Andre Norton Award and the 2013 Aurora Award, and her short fiction has appeared in several Year's Best anthologies and as part of online serial Shadow Unit.  She lives in Toronto, Ontario, where she edits Ideomancer Speculative Fiction, picks urban apple trees, does civic engagement activism, and works as a bookseller at Bakka-Phoenix Books, Canada's oldest science fiction bookstore.  Leah's second novel, On Roadstead Farm—a literary dustbowl fantasy where stuff blows up—will appear from Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2015.

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Recommending books is a bit of a tricky business: No book's all good or all bad, just good or bad for that reader and what they enjoy in a story. That said, as a reader who loves character-driven, literary SFF which displays an author's sheer skill, here are a few books I think deserve much, much more love:

1. Desideria by Nicole Kornher-Stace
   
   Nicole Kornher-Stace's first novel flew way too far under the radar when it came out in 2008, and deserves to be handed to any fan of Caitlin R. Kiernan, China Miéville, Catherynne M. Valente, or Gemma Files. Set in a created city that's not-quite-French, not-quite-Renaissance, Desideria plunges us into the mystery of how its protagonist, amnesiac actress Ange St. Loup, ended up in a madhouse accused of arson and murder—and tells the story of her theatre company's last, fateful play. Where the sheer, impressive ambition comes in is in the third strand of the story: The text of the play itself, written in its own voice, with its own flair and style, tying both Ange's fate, the theatre's, and the company's together. If you're not a structural reader, it's daunting. If you are? It's brilliant. Kornher-Stace's rich, lyrical prose bolsters and ornaments that structure, in the most literal sense of the word: wordcraft to enhance what's already there, which is stylistically gorgeous on a sentence-by-sentence level and transparent enough to not get between the reader and the story.
   
   The one drawback is the pace: Desideria starts slow, and demands patience in the first quarter before it starts to roll full-speed. I'd personally recommend giving it that patience. I found the results ultimately worthwhile.
   
   
2. Finder by Carla Speed McNeil
   
   Finder has been quietly drawn and written and published since 1996—sometimes in colour, sometimes in black and white—and it is some of the best science fiction work I've ever read: a far-future Earth replete with nomads and domed city-states, massive corporate culture, and an overwhelming sense of socially aware, intelligent wonder. It's been celebrated to the moon and back in comics, and I'm barely sure anyone in SFF has read it.It's also, quietly, one of the most diverse works of science fiction I've ever read: described by its creator as "aboriginal science fiction," its regular cast includes a half-aboriginal protagonist, a South Asian polyamorous academic, a genderfluid teenager, and whole piles of very different assumptions on how people do being people. It's not quite Samuel Delaney, not quite Ursula Le Guin, not quite a lot of things while it tells some incredibly moving stories on the backdrop of this world: The fourth installment, Talisman, is one of the most moving love letters to reading, writing, and books I've ever read.
   
   Start at the beginning: While Finder doesn't need to be read in order, I find it helps.
   
   
3. Resurrection Man by Sean Stewart
   
   Sean Stewart's work is largely hard to find these days: Sean Stewart has moved onto games writing, and with the exception of a few titles reprinted by Small Beer Press and the award-winning Galveston, his novels are mostly out of print.
   
   Which is too bad, because this book is my heart.
   
   Resurrection Man deals with some of the perennial Stewart topics: families, and the shattering
   and mending thereof; what to do when you discover you’re really a rather bad and selfish man;
   getting your balance in a world that’s broken; putting the broken right. On a holiday home, Dante Ratkay—scientist, sibling, with the power to see secrets and omens in a world where magic's leaking slowly through the streets—finds his own corpse laid out in the boathouse, and what it spills are the secrets, needs, and tensions in his large and loving family. The outcome is glorious. And tragic. And right.
   
   Stewart's prose is utterly beautiful: It is a musical instrument, delicate and restrained until it's slicing open your belly. He never shies away from acknowledging the complexity of other human beings, and of our own messy selves. The world he builds here, and in companion novels Galveston and The Night Watch, is doom-tinged with subtle magic that takes your breath away.
   
   
   If I could bribe any author to write just one more book, it would be him.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Mark L. Van Name

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Mark L. Van Name. The CEO of a marketing and technology assessment firm, Mark L. Van Name has written five Jon & Lobo SF novels (One Jump Ahead, Slanted Jack, Overthrowing Heaven, Children No More and No Going Back), numerous short stories, and edited three anthologies. He’s also a spoken word artist.

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I debated for some time whether to use this opportunity to try to highlight forgotten gems or focus on new writers deserving of your time, but in the end I surrendered to my feelings and decided to highlight three writers whose work I am passionate about.

1. Though he’s a New York Times bestselling writer whose works have won a slew of mystery awards, James Lee Burke is still not only underappreciated, but also underappreciated as a fantasist. His Dave Robicheaux series stands as one of the greatest achievements in series fiction and indeed in all of fiction. Though the books sit in the mystery sections of bookstores, Robicheaux’s views of the world and of time itself carry a distinctly fantastic tone, with the dead and the living sharing our existence, only the sheerest of curtains separating them. The books’ settings, particularly those in Louisiana, are at once both perfectly realized renderings of our very real world and landscapes as alien to most of us as the surface of any distant planet. His prose is a joy to read and lyrical beyond the abilities of all but the very best of us. You cannot go wrong reading any of these novels, though as you might expect I recommend starting with the first, The Neon Rain.
2. Alfred Bester is a giant in our field, a man whose influence is hard to overstate and whose best works in the 1950s set a standard that few have surpassed. Ignore his comeback fiction and focus on his output from the fifties, and you will see a body of work that is stunning in its intensity and range—and that still holds up superbly, though much fiction from that period does not. His two major SF novels, The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination, are amazing works that repay repeated re-reading. His short pieces from that decade are also consistently strong and often amazing. I’m not one of those people who believe there is anything we all must do to claim to be SF fans; if you think you are, you are. I do, though, feel that if you consider yourself any sort of fantasy or SF fan, there’s a good chance you’ll be glad you gave Bester your time.
3. My understanding is that his works sell far better in the UK than in the US, and I admit to having no idea how well he does in Canada, but even if he’s topping the bestseller lists everywhere and lighting cigars with hundred-pound notes, Nick Harkaway deserves more success. His two novels, The Gone-Away World and Angelmaker, are amazing achievements, singular books unlike each other and distinctly different from anything else you’re likely to have read. I won’t try to summarize them, because no summary will do justice to either; I simply encourage you to give them a go. I will warn that for some readers I know, Harkaway’s work took a while to stick, but I believe you’ll find they are worth that initial investment. (I did not have that problem with either book; each charmed me right from the get-go.) Spend some time in one of Harkaway’s worlds, and our own reality will, when you return to it, vibrate with just that little bit of oddness that is part of the hangover we experience when we return from the very best fantasies.

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Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Kristen from Fantasy Cafe

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Kristen, who blogs at Fantasy Cafe. I've been a huge fan of her site since before her amazing Women in SF & F Month in April of 2012.  The reception for the series was so good she repeated it in 2013 and has just announced that she'll be doing it again this year.   If you’re interested in seeing all the wonderful posts she gathered for her series, here are the link lists for 2012: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5 and final thoughts; 2013: week 1, week 2, week 3, week 4, week 5 and final thoughts. She also did a round-up of book lists featuring female authors. Her ‘Leaning Pile of Books’ feature is a great place to learn about new titles and she’s constantly posting new book reviews. She also does author interviews and hosts guest posts.

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It was difficult to choose only three books that do not receive the amount of recognition I believe they deserve—there are so many to choose from! In the end, I went with three of my favorites that are not exactly unknown but are not read and discussed as much as I think they deserve. I also liked that this worked out to include one fantasy, one science fiction, and one young adult speculative fiction book.

1. Transformation by Carol Berg is one of those rare books that captivated me from the very first sentence and kept me riveted until the very end. The magical aspects are unique, and I found the way they were expanded upon over the course of the trilogy well developed and surprising—but the first book remains my favorite because the slowly developing friendship between arrogant Prince Aleksander and his slave Seyonne was so gripping. This was my first experience reading one of Carol Berg’s books, and all of her books I’ve read have wonderfully developed characters, but Aleksander and Seyonne are the two I remember most fondly.
2. Warchild by Karin Lowachee is another one of those extraordinary books that made me care from the very beginning and left me truly sad when I reached the end and had no more pages left to read. The powerful second person account of the pirate attack on eight-year-old Jos’s spaceship is personal and terrifying and is one of the best openings I have ever read, both action-packed and intensely emotional. Jos came to life as a character, and I actually missed him once I finished reading the book. This book is a fairly recent discovery for me—I haven’t even read the next two yet!—but it is one of my favorite books in the world.
3. I was thrilled to see Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone well-received, but I still do not see her previous books mentioned that often. That’s a shame because they are also wonderful, and I particularly love Lips Touch: Three Times, a book containing three exquisitely written stories. Laini Taylor writes like nobody else, and her prose particularly sparkles in this collection. “Spicy Little Curses Such As These” is a beautifully written feat of storytelling, but my favorite story is “Hatchling.” It drew me in with its creepy opening, in which Esme awakens to discover that she has both an eye and memories that are not her own. It’s delightfully dark, and if I hadn’t already been convinced that Laini Taylor was a master storyteller and wordsmith by that point, this story would have done just that.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Jack Campbell

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Jack Campbell. Jack Campbell (aka John G. Hemry) is a retired U.S. Navy officer and the New York Times bestselling author of the Lost Fleet and Lost Stars series.  His most recent books are The Lost Stars - Perilous Shield and the stand-alone alternate history novella "The Last Full Measure".  Coming in May will be the next Lost Fleet book, Beyond The Frontier - Steadfast. He’s also written several SF novels as John G. Hemry (one series featuring Sergeant Ethan Stark and another, Paul Sinclair), and a lot of short stories.

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1. Madeleine Robins' Sarah Tolerance stories are noir detective stories with an alternate history twist (among other twists). Imagine The Maltese Falcon or The Thin Man set in Regency England, with an Agent of Inquiry (private investigator) named Sarah Tolerance whose mind is as sharp as the sword she wields with expert skill.  Miss Tolerance moves from the lowest whore houses of London to the heights of society as she pursues mysteries, solves murders and avoids threats to her life. Point of Honour, Petty Treason, and The Sleeping Partner are sometimes mistaken for Regency Romances, but anyone who likes a good detective novel where the hardboiled protagonist has to stir the dregs of society to find the answers to mysteries should enjoy these brilliantly realized stories. They'll also learn some sword play, since Madeleine Robins makes her fights as realistic as everything else about the period.
2. We're coming up on the one hundredth anniversary of Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany, which was originally published in 1915. He was one of the first writers of modern fantasy, and this collection of what are now called short short stories gives a good look at how brilliant he could be. The short pieces are sometimes moody, sometimes humorous, sometimes just plain beautifully written, but they are never boring. They don't feel dated, either, in their comments on modern trends that seem just as pointed and relevant now as they were when written (such as the vision of an angel angrily adding on to hell to make room for the marketers who sold unsafe food for children). You don't have to buy this book (it's available online in a variety of forms), and it's well worth the time to see a real artist of words at work. Just one of the shortest pieces in here, "After the Fire", sets out in three short paragraphs what others have used entire novels to try to say.
3. The books in Kristine Smith's Jani Killian series (Code of Conduct, Rules of Conflict, Law of Survival, Contact Imminent, and Endgame) never got the attention they deserved, but they are still out there for anyone who wants an excellent read steeped in espionage and double-dealing that captures the reality of it all better than most thrillers set in the modern day. (They are real enough to make me wonder if "Smith" knows more about that sort of thing than she lets on.) The books accurately evoke the life of an undercover operative in a tale in which Jani never really knows who to trust and sometimes can't even tell who she herself really is.  Aliens, interstellar travel and genetic engineering further complicate things. Jani is a great character in a great story. Kristine Smith is working at getting the earlier books re-released in ebook format and possibly POD, so keep an eye out for them.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Maurice Broaddus

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Maurice Broaddus. Maurice Broaddus has written hundreds of short stories, essays, novellas, and articles. His dark fiction has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and web sites, including Asimov’s Science Fiction, Cemetery Dance, Apex Magazine, and Weird Tales Magazine. He is the co-editor of the Dark Faith anthology series (Apex Books) and the author of the urban fantasy trilogy, Knights of Breton Court (Angry Robot Books). Visit his site at www.MauriceBroaddus.com.

I tend to hope around in genre, from science fiction to fantasy to horror, both in what I write and what I read.  So it was tough trying to narrow down a list of 2-3 impactful but overlooked works until I made my criteria books have I come back to read again and again.

1. My favorite genre to read is crime fiction, so I was already a huge Walter Mosley fan.  When I found out that he’d written a collection of short stories, I snatched it up immediately.  Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World (2001) had a huge impact on me and is one of those collections that I rarely hear anyone talk about.  A series of nine interconnected tales about a dystopian future where rich technocrats rule and poverty is basically considered a crime.  The world-building is dizzying and he piles idea on idea on idea while speaking to issues of race and class.  This book is second only to Octavia Butler in terms of writers that have inspired me to find my unique voice.
2. I was torn for my fantasy pick.  There are two books that immediately leapt to mind as being under-rated.  The first is Patrick O’Leary’s The Gift.  Beautiful, complex, and layered, the book speaks to the power of story by nesting story within story within story to great effect.  On the other side of the fantasy scale is Charles Saunders Imaro, a tale some would say is simply a “black Conan” tale, except for Saunders wonderful story telling style, world-building, and exploration of character and cultures.
3. When it comes to horror, I think of Brandon Massey.  I’ve been a fan of his since Thunderland, back when people were running around calling him “the black Stephen King” which was honestly what caught my attention.  With his brisk plotting style and keen characterization, I quit thinking of him as a “black Stephen King” and he became “Brandon Massey.”  It was his Dark Dreams anthology series that introduced the world to many up and coming African American horror writers, including Lamar “L.R.” Giles, whose debut novel, Fake ID has just been released.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Rethinking Gender Part 2

Posting my review of Ancillary Justice this week got me thinking about gender in books again.  Paired with Bookworm Blues’ post from last week, where she reflects on how some people have recommended books to her with the proviso ‘but you’d probably not enjoy it because you’re a woman’, I started thinking about my own relationship with gender and books.

I’ve personally never had anyone say that I wouldn’t like a book because of my gender (for which I’m grateful), but it reminded me of something I’d noticed over the holiday season when I was working extra at the bookstore.  I realized that when men asked me for book recommendations I avoided recommending books by women unless I’d read the book in question and knew there was limited/no romance.

This disturbed me because I was assuming that men wouldn’t want books written by women and/or men didn’t want romance in their books.  Granted, I tend to ask what other books a reader liked before recommending something and try to fit my recommendation within that framework.  But the fact that I automatically defaulted to ‘dude wants stereotypical dude book’ was an awkward revelation for someone who believes women write books equal to men.

It was also disturbing because I wasn’t sure if this was something I’ve always done and only recently become aware of or if my aversion to recommending female authors was because of all the posts I’ve read on the internet by and about men saying they don’t read female authors.

The posts have made me more aware of the female authors out there and I’ve made a point of displaying them on endcaps, but it still disturbs me that I could be actively preventing men from reading women by assuming they don’t want to read books by women.

I’m personally not keen on romance plots (though I like sexual tension in books - as it tends to create fun dialogue and situations), so I generally look for books by women - and men, since they write romantic plots too - that are light on or missing the romance and are, instead, heavy on plot.  I also tend to recommend books I’ve personally read, since it’s easier to be excited about a book - and pass on that excitement - when you liked it yourself.

It’s also only something I’ve done with regards to SF, probably because I’m more widely read in fantasy and so have more I can recommend.  I’ve been reading more SF lately, including books by women, so I plan to make more female SF recommendations in future.

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Michael Rowe

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Michael Rowe. Michael Rowe is an award-winning journalist and literary nonfiction writer. He created and edited the critically acclaimed horror anthologies Queer Fear and Queer Fear 2, has written numerous short stories, and published two horror novels: Enter, Night and the recently released Wild Fell.
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If you’re like me, when you find a magnificent horror novel, you tend to keep it around. My shelves are groaning with the books I’ve read over the years that have stayed with me. Unlike most long ago loves, however, the books are always there, waiting for you with open arms when you find yourself wistfully reminiscing, especially on a stormy night when the power goes out and the house is lit with candlelight and shadows. Among the books I’ve loved are two particular favourites, one old and one new, shared here.

1. Bernard Taylor’s Sweetheart Sweetheart is a classic English ghost story I read when it first came out in 1977, and a book that I have reread several times in the interim between then and now, and which has influenced my aesthetic as horror writer and as a reader. In many ways it’s a classic haunted house story set in the English countryside. It concerns problematic homecomings and the inexorable, deadly power of the past to assert itself into the present in order to settle old scores through supernatural agency. The vengeful ghost at the heart of Sweetheart Sweetheart is one of the most finely wrought examples of female supernatural malevolence in 20th century horror fiction, and I imagine that Rosa Blackmore, the ghost in my novel Wild Fell, owes more than a passing nod to Taylor’s influence. There’s a reason why the late Charles L. Grant, himself a master of “quiet horror,” picked Sweetheart Sweetheart as one of the 100 greatest horror novels.
2. My favourite horror novel of 2013 was, hands down, The Heavens Rise by Christopher Rice. The author of five New York Times bestselling thrillers, Rice made his supernatural debut this year with a southern gothic tale which, among other things, is about the potential effect of the annihilating rage of thwarted love. In Marshall Ferriot, the novel’s handsome, sociopathic antagonist, who acquires the power to completely and utterly take over the minds of his victims to devastating effect when he becomes infected by a mysterious parasite deep in the Louisiana bayou country, Rice has created the most terrifying sort of monster possible—the kind whose darkness is entirely hidden from view until things—and people—start to die around him. True to literary roots, Rice flavors The Heavens Rise with the mysterious disappearance of an entire family and the hunt for answers, as well as with a dash of social commentary on race, class, and gender. But make no mistake, The Heavens Rise is a ne plus ultra horror novel, a beautifully written one I’m not ashamed to say gave me a nightmare or two.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals with Jessica Strider (x2)

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

I don’t intend to do this often, but with working extra for Christmas and everyone being busy, I wasn’t able to get all the recommended reading posts that I’d hoped. So here I am, filling in a gap.

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1. I noticed K. M. Ruiz’s Mind Storm when it first came out in 2011. It’s the first book of a duology completed in Terminal Point and recently reprinted as an omnibus edition under the title Strykers. The novel’s set in a post-apocalyptic future where only ‘clean’ genes, untainted by the radiation that’s mutated humanity and given some people psychic powers, are valued. The majority of psychics are either controlled by the government or are part of the Stryker Syndicate, led by a politician the world believes is a clean gene’d human. It’s a tightly written novel with a lot of action and some great political intrigue.
2. M. J. Locke (aka Laura Mixon)’s book Up Against It blew me away. It’s set on an asteroid cluster which depends on methane ice shipments for water, air, and energy. When it’s most recent shipment is destroyed in an explosion, the colony’s resource manager scrambles to figure out what happened and find a new source of ice before their mayor sells them out to the Martian mob. There’s an AI, a transgendered character, lots of intrigue and decent amounts of action. I can’t understand how this book slipped under the radar.
3. One series I really enjoyed is Chris Evans’s Iron Elves trilogy, starting with A Darkness Forged in Fire. It’s set in a fantasy world where one nation has discovered gun powder and invaded and enslaved several others. A falling Red Star marks the return of dark magic, fostering rebellion. So the Empire sends the reinstated Iron Elves (named after a disbanded regiment that now suffers from a lack of actual Elves) led by disgraced Elf Konowa Swift Dragon, to find the pieces of the star before other interested parties do.

Stay tuned for the next post where we get more reading recommendations.

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Andrew Post

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Andrew Post. Andrew Post has been writing science fiction and horror stories for years and has been published in several literary magazines. His first novel, Knuckleduster, came out last year. His second book, Fabrick, was released earlier this month.

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1. With Simon West-Bulford’s The Soul Consortium, readers are taken on an extraordinary journey beyond death with Salem Ben. While scouring through multiple lives, he discovers a terrifying recurring element—a malevolent entity who never seems to age who’s managed to sprinkle himself throughout time. Combining hard sci-fi with a dollop of horror, The Soul Consortium’s wondrous, lyrical prose and excellent pacing (a hard combination to achieve, any writer will tell you) make this an absolutely fantastic debut.
2. Sam Thorton, hard-bitten protag of Chris F. Holm’s The Collector series (Dead Harvest, The Wrong Goodbye, and The Big Reap), is one of the most engaging and interesting main characters I’ve come across in a long time. Mixing noir and horror may not be a completely fresh idea, but Holm, makes it feel like it’s never been done before—and with astoundingly page-turning results.
3. In a city that’s been built up rather than out, pain mage Rojan Dizon accepts an assignment that’ll take him to a variety of depths. Fade to Black by Francis Knight is a rollicking steampunk-but-not-quite thriller that glows with fabulous characters, a speedy pace, and Knight’s unmatched world-building. Continuing with Before the Fall and Last to Rise (set to release later this month), readers will have plenty more adventures after Fade to Black with the likeable pain mage.

Stay tuned for the next post for more reading recommendations!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with David Lomax

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by David Lomax. David Lomax is an English teacher who's dreamed of writing since he was eight. His first novel, Backward Glass, has just come out from Flux books.

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Violette Malan

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Violette Malan. Violette Malan lives in southeastern Ontario with her husband. People tend to ask her about the choreography of stripping – and she'll answer – but most of the time she's the author of the Dhulyn and Parno novels, and the Mirror Lands novels, fantasies available from DAW. You'll find her on Facebook, on Twitter, and check her website.

1. Howard Andrew Jones - I really enjoyed Jones' Desert of Souls and The Bones of the Old Ones, two novels chronicling the adventures of the scholar Dabir, and the guard captain Asim. First, they're sword and sorcery, my own preferred genre. Second, I felt there was actually a flavour of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin – the intellectual and the man of action, coming together to form the perfect campaigning duo. Third, they're set in the world of the Arabian Nights, one of my favourite story cycles.
2. Kari Sperring - Think of a cross between Gene Wolfe and Alexandre Dumas, and you've got a fair idea of Sperring's work. Her two novels, Living with Ghosts and The Grass King's Concubine, are compelling, multi-layered and dark. Her worlds are completely imaginary, and yet they're imbued with a subtle familiarity that adds to their complexity. It's not often we can get truly alien perspectives in fantasy, but we can find them here. Not for the faint of heart, but irresistible.
3. Dave Gross - Gross' Radovan and Count Jeggare novels are set in the Pathfinder universe, though you don't have to be familiar with that setting to thoroughly enjoy them. The series starts with Prince of Wolves, and the latest is King of Chaos, but each is a stand-alone adventure, so you don't have to read them in any particular order. An unusual touch is Gross' use of two first person narrators.  As the pov alternates between the two main characters, we not only get broader story lines, but occasionally different – and amusing – perspectives on the same events.

Stay tuned for the next post where we learn whom David Lomax thinks we should be reading more of!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Joshua Bilmes

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Joshua Bilmes. Joshua is the president of JABberwocky Literary Agency, which he founded in 1994. He has been a literary agent for over 27 years, having made his professional debut at the Scott Meredith Literary Agency in 1986. His client list includes a large number of SFF authors including Charlaine Harris, Brandon Sanderson, Elizabeth Moon, and Jim C. Hines.  He also blogs about the business, movies, tennis and more.

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Here are three authors off of the JABberwocky list with a book or books that I would consider to be under-appreciated at the moment.

1. Since I'm doing this for a Canadian-based blog, I want to start off by talking about Tanya Huff's The Silvered.  Tanya's written a lot of novels, but this is one of her very, very best, and even more than that, it's something that's fresh and distinct in a genre that often can't be called either.  It's got werewolves, but not like what we're used to.  This isn't a horror novel with a few werewolves threatening human society.  It's not even a werewolf novel set amidst a group of werewolves within the world as we know it.  Those would be too easy!  And when I say it's set in an entire werewolf culture created by Tanya herself, that doesn't mean what you'd think it means from all the other werewolf novels you've read.  It's a world where men are from werewolf warrior genes and women are from magery, the men and the women both powerful in their own right and yet mutually dependent on one another.  Within that world, the plot itself has lots of things that will be familiar and welcoming to fantasy readers.  The ruler of the neighboring kingdom is trying to fulfill a prophecy.  The perilous journey that Mirian and Tomas embark on in the novel hearkens back to other work, including the male/female interplay of Sing the Four Quarters (another of Tanya's very best books) or of the classic quest journey of The Fire's Stone.  At no point can the familiar ingredients be entirely separated from the overall freshness and imaginative conceptualization of the world itself.  This is a story that could only be taking place in this book at this time.  If you like fantasy, you ought to be reading this novel.  If you're reading this novel, you'll be recommending it.  It almost suffers from "just" being one of the very best novels from an author who's written so many really good ones.
   
2. Switching gears a bit, the next book I'll recommend is a nuts-and-bolts piece of science fiction called Infoquake and the other novels in the Jump 225 trilogy by David Louis Edelman. Back before Apple came up with the idea of an app store for the iPhone, David Louis Edelman came up with the idea of an app store for the human mind.  Buy enhancements for your eyesight or other intriguing things and plug 'em in!  A lot of the things that came along with the Apple app store were also anticipated by Edelman.  The eye focuses on the best-selling apps, so it's very important to become a best-seller or to be first out with a particular something.  Against that backdrop, somebody's playing around with a very powerful new app, both for what it can do and for the computing power it requires.  It's called Multi-Real, and it's an app that can run through versions of the future like a chess computer looking at the different outcomes of different moves, and find its way to the future.  A lot of people want to own the app, in both senses of the word -- as buying it for themselves or being the one it has to be purchased from.  People in both business and government.  There isn't a full appreciation of the impact of having this much processing power going to run through so many versions of the future for so many people at the same time.  Hence, whomever owns the app has the power to do a lot of danger.  These novels are full of action, ideas, political intrigue, and much much more.  When Infoquake came out, it got a lot of attention and made a lot of Best-of-Year lists and award ballots.  But in the half dozen years since all of that, the series has kind of fallen off the radar, and it shouldn't.  These are books as eerily predictive of technological advancement as William Gibson's Neuromancer.  You should be reading these books now, and people ought to still be reading the Jump 225 trilogy another dozen years from now.
   
3. Finally, if it's possible to consider an international best-selling author to be under-appreciated, I'd make that case for Peter V. Brett. And it all has to do with his covers.  In fact, if you're ever wondering if covers make a difference, if covers sell books, Peter V. Brett and his Demon Cycle series answer that question.  His last book was #3 on the British bestseller lists, #5 on the German lists, and "only" #19 on the US lists, and it's because of the cover.
   
   
   
   Peter wrote this great first novel called The Warded Man (Painted Man in the UK). As a rule, people who pick up the book like it a lot, and they eagerly wait for the author's next book, and they tell all their friends, and it's the kind of thing from which bestsellers are made as they've been here.  But the biggest job a publisher might have is to get people to pick up the book in the first place.  In the UK and Germany, the publishers did a really good job of that.  If you look at the original hardcover cover for the Del Rey edition in the US, not so much.  It was a cover by committee, with a realization that it wasn't a great fantasy cover, so fantasy ingredients kept being added in, but it never quite worked.  Ultimately, the publisher realized this and switched to the better UK covers and/or UK cover artist for the next books in the series, and sales in the US started to pick up a lot when they did so.  Strange, isn't it?  The same book, but with a different cover it all of a sudden starts selling like it's got different words inside! So I don't have a time machine to go back and put a great cover on the first US edition of The Warded Man.  I can't do that, but I figured I'd use my soap box here to try and make up for it!

But I don't want to just be talking about a great first novel from commercial terms.  And creatively, what makes Peter's Demon Cycle work?  To go full circle some, it's not dissimilar to what makes Tanya Huff's The Silvered work so well.  He's got a lot of ingredients from other great fantasy series.  Good magic system and kick-ass good fight scenes and epic scope and rich world-building.  But a lot of fantasy writers who usually have that are doing it within the very familiar same-old same-old fantasy worlds that we've been in.  The demon magic in Peter's universe isn't that same-old.  More important, the magic has real implications for how people act in the world itself, so when you're spending time in the world you know you're spending time in Peter's world, and not in Tolkien's.  Pretty much all of these things could be said of Tanya Huff's The Silvered as well.  Tanya and Peter are very different authors.  Tanya's a little more the romanticist as you think of it in a romance novel, while Peter is maybe a little more the capital "R" Romanticist.  What both share is the ability to deliver the things readers want in unexpected, fresh and inspiring ways.  The Silvered should be talked about as much as Peter V. Brett.

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Stay tuned for the next post where we learn whom Violette Malan thinks we should be reading more of!

Recommended Reading by Professionals... With Jim C. Hines

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend two or three authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve. Today's recommendations are by Jim C. Hines.

Mr. Hines is the author of the Jig the Goblin series, the Princess series and several short story collections.  Libriomancer, the first book of his urban fantasy Magic ex Libris series, has just been released in mass market, and the second book, Codex Born is now out in hardcover.  He won the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer due to his awesome blog.

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1. Marie Brennan is a fantasy author who writes flat-out gorgeous books. Her latest book is A Natural History of Dragons, which is a memoir-style novel about Lady Trent, who eventually went on to become the world’s greatest dragon naturalist. She’s like Jacques Cousteau of the fire-breathers. Brennan’s Onyx Court series is richly researched historical fantasy, exploring the London-based fairy court’s history over the centuries. The only downside to reading Brennan’s work is I always walk away feeling jealous of how smart she is...
2. Kelly McCullough’s books are just plain fun. I devoured his WebMage books, which blend magic and mythology and computer hacking. And there’s a goblin who’s also a laptop. I was skeptical when I picked them up – a magical system based on computer software? – but McCullough makes it work. Oh, and Kelly sometimes dressed up like a faun and tromps around in Neil Gaiman’s backyard, so there’s that too.

Stay tuned for the next post where we learn who James Knapp thinks we should be reading more of!

Recommended Reading by Professionals With... Brandon Sanderson

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Brandon Sanderson! Best known as the man who finished Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, Sanderson has written a number of books including Elantris, the Mistborn trilogy, The Alloy of Law, Warbreaker and The Way of Kings. He's also written several books for younger readers, including his newest novels, The Rithmatist and the forthcoming Steelheart. Along with several other authors he hosts the Parsec Award winning and Hugo Award nominated podcast, Writing Excuses.

[Note: this message was transcribed from a recording by Mr. Sanderson specifically for this post.]

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People often ask me to recommend books I feel deserve more attention than they're getting. This is hard to do for two reasons. First, I have trouble deciding whether I should recommend the old standbys I've been recommending forever, or if I should recommend the new voices. And two, I just don't know which books the everyday readers are chatting about. Before I was a writer, I was more in tune with what my friends would talk about. Nowadays, most of my friends are industry professionals, so I know what the industry professionals are talking about, but not what the average fan is reading. With that preamble in mind, here are a few book recommendations, though perhaps people are talking about these books, and I just don't realize it.

1. I really do feel that Guy Gavriel Kay — his new work and his old — still doesn't get enough recognition. He's one of the great writers of the genre, and he's amazing. His writing is beautiful, interesting, fun and exciting, but also lyrical. He has a series out right now. The first one is called Under Heaven, and the second one, River of Stars, just came out. If you've never read Guy Gavriel Kay, his classic Tigana is one I often recommend.
2. I think N.K. Jemisin is doing some very fascinating things in fantasy right now. She's a great storyteller. I do know that people in industry are talking about her a lot. I don't know if your everyday fans are noticing her books enough, but certainly if you haven't heard of her, look up The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It is a fantastic novel. I will put a slight content warning on both Tigana and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, for those who are concerned about those sorts of issues.
3. And one more recommendation. For a long time, my standby was Daniel Abraham, but I think everybody's reading him now because he's got these cool series coming out that everyone loves, so I'd like to point out a new author, Brian McClellan. He's a former student of mine, who just had the first in a series come out with Orbit. The book's called Promise of Blood, and it's quite good. It's a flintlock fantasy, where people are using magic mixed with gunpowder in really cool ways.

Stay tuned for the next post where we learn which authors Jim C. Hines thinks we should be reading more books by!