Thursday, August 28, 2014

Changing Reading Habits

Picked up Kameron Hurley's Mirror Empire on Tuesday, and in a bit of a fanboy moment yesterday, I tweeted this about changes in my reading habits:
I haven't yet started Mirror Empire (I really want to finish Ancillary Justice first!), but my sense is that Eye of the World might be better replaced by Pawn of Prophecy if I still had that (orphans feature prominently in each book, I believe).  The tweet's a little misleading, since I recently finished re-reading The Wheel of Time and L. E. Modessitt is actually goto comfort reading for me (and specifically Parafaith War), but the basic point remains.

My fantasy used to be straightforward Tolkienesque pseudo-medieval.  Now, I'd rather have a woman writing a book that explores and challenges some of the assumptions in the genre.  I like science fiction (I actually find Ancillary Justice some of the "harder" sci-fi I've read in a while, and it's certainly grander in scale than Modesitt), but again I'm gravitating towards things that challenge me and many of the assumptions in the genre.

After juxtaposing those 4 books, I was most struck that Ancillary Justice and Parafaith War both treat religion seriously, an inclusion I particularly enjoy, and suspect that after finishing Ancillary Justice I may well want to consider those two books in conversation.

All that for the future, however.  For now, I'm going to enjoy some of the new books I'm reading!

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