Books are my gateway drug

[raincitygirl]

My mother has a 17 year old tutoring student who's into fantasy fiction and going on a parentally enforced trip to Las Vegas in spring break. She's looking for book suggestions to while away the painful hours while her parents are at the casino. So far I have fervently recommended Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London series, practically anything by Terry Pratchett, and Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series. English is not her first language, so while the Alexander books are technically children's fiction, she might find the prose a little easier to digest. I might start her out with the first Tiffany Aching book, as Pratchett's adult Discworld books can be kind of...wordy.

Is there anybody obvious I'm missing? As I look over my list, I discover that it's lily white. I started N.K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms last year, then got bogged down and abandoned it. But kattahj recently recced it highly so I'm thinking about giving it another try.

So many books, so little time! Seriously, though, if you can think of a good author, please feel free to mention names and book titles. I have to say, Vegas is not high on my list of places to visit either. Anti-Vegas, pro-fantasy solidarity. You know what's going to happen, though? I'm going to spend half my weekend looking through my shelves searching for books to lend this kid, and then I'm going to start re-reading things, and bang, there goes the other half of my weekend.

Comments

[legionseagle]

Pratchett and Gaiman, Good Omens, Gaiman Stardust, Neverwhere, Aaronovitch Rivers of London/Midnight Riot. Le Guin's Earthsea, except that the gender politics are pretty awful in the three written in the 60s/70s and then she tries to fix the gender politics in the last two and the world-building goes skew-whiff.

I don't know what her pro stuff is like but judging on her fanfic Sarah Rees Brennan's The Demon's Lexicon should be pretty good.

[raincitygirl]

Thank you!

[sorrel]

The big one that I see missing from that admittedly-awesome list is Tamora Pierce. If English is a second language, I don't really recommend the Beka Cooper trilogy (most recent series) because of the heavy use of fictionalized slang and purposeful misspellings (it's diary format for a common-born medieval fantasy policewoman) but everything else should be just about perfect. Tamora Pierce is always my go-to author rec for anyone who likes books about ladies doing awesome things. And different awesome things too! Her main series has a girl who dressed as a boy to be a knight, and a commoner with animal magic, and then the first girl to legally go through knight training as a female, and a teenage spy, and the aforementioned policewoman, and... they're all just really good, okay? And her other main series, the Circle of Magic, is shorter and possibly a little more accessible for a new reader, but also younger-young adult fiction than some of her other stuff. Oh! And she writes about sex and birth control and she's had gay character and transgender characters and tons of ladies who didn't marry the first guy they slept with! Oooh, also several characters of color, though only a couple who are main characters, since her fantasy homelands are very European. She does really fantastic other-cultures, too, using feudal japan or imperial china or Africa as a base without romanticizing or exoticizing them. (At least to my own lily-white eyes, someone else might have a completely different impression!)

Okay, so, I might have rambled a bit there, but... Tamora Pierce. Bastion of my childhood, bastion of my teenage years, still on of my top favorite authors as an adult.

[raincitygirl]

Thank you for the rec! I'll pass the info along, and I suspect i'll be dipping into a Tamora Pierce book myself as well. What would you recommend as a good book to start with?

[sorrel]

If you're going to do a thing, do it right, so... start at the beginning. Alanna: the First Adventure, the first of her Song of the Lioness quartet. I do warn that her early books don't have the polish or complexity that her later works do, it's been actually really fascinating to see her grow as a writer. Song of the Lioness was actually originally one longer book, and her publisher had her split it into four for a younger audience, and you can really kind of tell. It also has a purple-eye protagonist who becomes The Best At What She Does and is favored by the Goddess. HOWEVER, even with those caveats they're still damn good books, and her works only get better from there. Kel, in her third quartet, is probably my favorite heroine because she's tall and broad-shouldered and sort of patient and wry, and physically she's one of the few book heroines who ever looks like me. (I am a giantess.) But they're all good. If a dozens-long series is a little daunting to start, you can also ease in with her Magic Circle books, which are a little more young-young adult, but really good. I think you can also start pretty easily with the Beka Cooper trilogy, since it's a prequel to the Tortall series by a couple hundred years, so it doesn't require any knowledge of the universe. It's also her newest and thus her best series- like I said, you can really see her writing grow over the years as she hones her craft. The diary format is a little odd, but really immersive once you get used to it. So basically: either Song of the Lioness quartet or the Beka Cooper trilogy would be excellent places to dive into her main world. And it is, hands-down, my favorite fantasy world.

[mrsdrjackson]

I agree, start with Alanna for the Tortall books. Her other series (Circle of Magic) is also quite good. :D

[kaydeefalls]

STRONGLY seconding Tamora Pierce. I grew up reading her Tortall books, and they were hugely influential on my worldview. Start at the beginning (Alanna: the First Adventure, the rather blandly named first book in the Song of the Lioness quartet) and proceed in order from there. While her earlier books are less polished, the protagonist (Alanna, a girl who disguises herself as a boy for years in order to become a knight) is spectacularly kickass, and remains a strong presence in all the following series in the Tortall universe.

Also recommend Patricia C Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles, which twist all kinds of fairy tale tropes upside down and backwards and are very, very funny. Both Wrede and Pierce are YA authors, but don't ever dumb down their subject matter (though Pierce tackles more difficult issues than Wrede), so their writing should be fairly accessible to non-native English speakers.

[raincitygirl]

They're both going on the list. Thank you!

[mrsdrjackson]

Strongly STRONGLY third the Tamora Pierce rec and very much second the Wrede rec as well. I just finished my 10th reading of The Enchanged Forest Chronicles last month. ;)

[raincitygirl]

Thank you for the recs.