The New Yorker, one of my favourite magazines, has posted a little ‘intro to fantasy’ which is shockingly pedestrian in its recommendations. Well, that’s unfair. Tad Williams and Terry Goodkind are shockingly pedestrian. Terry Brooks is pretty pedestrian. Robin Hobb is actually pretty good and the sort of thing I’d suggest if making recommendations to someone who had just read Tolkien, as is Patrick Rothfuss. Guy Gavrial Kay is also great but Steven Erikson is just wacky. For new fantasy readers? Hell no.
What’s sort of interesting about this is that there’s no George R. R. Martin on the list. I thought it might be because it was an unfinished series, but so are the Erikson and Rothfuss series.
So what would be on my list? Well, I think I’d keep Robin Hobb, at least the Assassin trilogy, and Patrick Rothfuss. Then I’d add in George R.R. Martin and Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea books (yes, all of them). Then I’d toss in Scott Lynch’s wonderful Gentlemen Bastards stuff and probably, for a kicker, put in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station. I’ve tried to keep this in the spirit of the original list – easy books that are within the mainstream of fantasy, but Miéville is there to show that it can be so much more as well…
Mark Charan Newton has already posted a list which does the opposite – it tried to completely counter the New Yorker list. I’m sure it will be the first of many.
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