Despite loving to post new Cover Art for novels, I don’t do a whole lot of posts about videogame Box Art. When I saw the artwork for Borderlands the upcoming FPS/RPG hybrid from Gearbox and 2K Games, I knew I had to go out on a limb.
So rad. It’s nice to see some publishers still willing to take a chance with their box art, instead of just resorting to the same lame-o designs we see all over the place. 1up.com has a nice preview, if you’re interested in learning more about Borderlands.
The New Yorker is about as uppity and high-brow as it gets, so imagine the shock when they ran an online article about the best jumping in points for our great genre. And, you know what, the list is pretty damn good.
I’ve read a few best-selling fantasy series – Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, His Dark Materials, Twilight, Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, The Dark Is Rising – but I would never describe myself as an aficionado. First because all these books are on about a fourth-grade reading level, and second because I read them for their best-sellerness, not their fantasy-ness (to stay in the loop, I tell myself).
[…]
I asked [a friend] what he would recommend for someone like me – a beginning fantasy reader ready to graduate to more serious (but not too serious) fare. Here are his picks, complete with explanations of their greatness. He sent them to me with the reassurance that ‘there is no shame in being a real fantasy reader.’
The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams
This is the stereotypical epic fantasy that begins with a young, inexperienced, immature youth toiling away as a kitchen boy in a castle, daydreaming his life away. […] And it’s easily the best in the genre’if you want to read a classic epic fantasy series that is not the Lord of the Rings, start here. Williams has several other books (the Otherland series, “The War of the Flowers”) that are also worth reading.
Considering Memory, Sorrow and Thorn is my favourite completed work of Epic Fantasy, I’d say they hit the nail on the head with their first choice. It’s a slow burn in places, but a great look at what can be achieved with the basic framework laid down by Tolkien.
Anything by Guy Gavriel Kay
For those who don’t want to jump into a long series right away, Kay has written a number of standalone novels that take place in alternate worlds with a similar geography and history to our own, and they are all excellent. His strengths are strong characters and fantastic set pieces […] Kay also has a rather flowery writing style, which in most cases adds to the romance of the novel, although in some books (not listed here) he can get a bit carried away. Two of the books in the Fionavar Tapestry were the last books that I can remember making me cry.
Kay is a personal favourite of mine, and it’s nice to see he author of the article not confining his choice to only one of Kay’s novels. He’s an author who I save for a rainy day, when I feel like I’m beginning to become jaded on the genre, and he always sucks me right back in. His novels probably hold the most appeal for those who don’t read within the genre.
Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind
A fabulous single-volume epic fantasy. […] Sadly, Goodkind did so well on this completely self-contained fantasy that he wrote ten sequels, each one worse than the one before and more prone to excruciatingly long Ayn Randian monologues from the main characters. Read this book, and then pretend the others don’t exist.
Yeah, yeah, Terry Goodkind sucks. I know… but so does the author of the list. But, he’s right that Wizard’s First Rule (and a few of the following books) was a decent novel, and an easy starting off point for anyone looking to get into Fantasy. Plus, it only barely hinted at the tripe that Goodkind would start trying to sell.
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