Well, despite Matthew's negative comments, I'm a big fan of John Crowley,
although i would admit that for some tastes he overwrites a bit. I would
suggest trying his supposedly SF novel, Engine Summer, also a story about
story, but shorter, tighter, than Little, Big. Meanwhile, his ongoing
Aegypt sequence is profound I believe, & he has some amazing short stories
& novellas.
I'm a bit of a fantasy slut in that I can read some not too good stuff; on
the other hand, I can't stand many of the the most best-selling series. I
have assumed everyone knows LeGuin, so she need not be mentioned. Elizabeth
Hand has written some interesting works that straddle horror, fantasy & SF
all at once.
I was pleased to see Candice mention Yarbro's Count St Germaine sequence,
in which the vampire is the good guy, & folks like Savanarolla are the
evil-doers, as indeed he was. She's a heaby duty romantic, but she has
studied her history (ies) carefully...
For a punk vampire written with gory glee, check out Nancy A Collins's
Sonja Blue, with its first title, wonderfully apt, Sunglasses After Dark.
Also hugely entertaining for me are Kim Newman's Dracula novels, full of
every pop culture allusion from each period he could manifest...
And for people who like Victorian 3 deckers, try Steven Brust and Emma
Bull's Freedom and Necessity (1997), a wonderful farrago of epistolatory
overreaching...
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
not random, these
crystalline structures, these
non-reversible orders, this
camera forming tendencies, this
edge of greater length, this
lyric forever error, this
something embarrassingly clear, this
language we come up against
Kathleen Fraser
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