Jo Walton’s Eight Books From the Last Decade that Made Me Excited About Fantasy

Jo Walton’s Eight Books From the Last Decade that Made Me Excited About Fantasy

chrysantheOver at Tor.com, Hugo Award-winning author Jo Walton celebrates the eight fantasy novels that most excited her about the genre in the last decade.

Her list includes Yves Meynard’s Chrysanthe, which we last discussed here. Here’s what she said:

Yves Meynard’s Chrysanthe is in the tradition of Gene Wolfe and Roger Zelazny, and beyond that of Dunsany and Mirrlees. It also has modern sensibilities, and because Meynard is from a different culture — he’s an award-winning novelist in French — it’s distinctly different from most of what we see on the shelves labelled as fantasy. This is a quest through shadows that leads to unexpected places. So much fantasy uses magic in a logical way — I’ve called it “realist magicism.” Of everything I’ve mentioned here, only this and A Stranger in Olondria are doing anything that isn’t that. I like it to make sense, but I also like the incredible flowering of the imagination you get in things like Chrysanthe.

Jo’s list also includes Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria, Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet, Sarah Monette’s Doctrine of Labyrinths series, Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles, Steven Brust’s Dzur, and two others I’ll leave as a surprise.

Check out the complete list here.

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Any BG fans read Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet and care to share their thoughts on the series?

I tossed the question out on Facebook and received a thorough reply that reinforced my interest generated here.

I’ve found 2-volume omnibuses of the series on Amazon…put them on my wish lists 🙂


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