December posting meme, part the second
Friday, 5 December 2014 14:56![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usuallyhats
(Still taking prompts, though with the caveats that I'm answering them in a random order, and also that current posting rate suggests it will take me til January, if not February, to answer everything...)
lokifan asked for my top five children's fantasy novels! (Er, I filtered this through my brain and it kind of interpreted "top" as "ones that made a big impression on me", which may not have been what you meant - sorry!) I did try and stick to children's books rather than YA, though there's one on here that probably is YA - it was published under the Point Fantasy imprint over here, iirc.
1. The Sword in the Stone - TH White. I loved this book growing up, and looking back it's got a lot of things that I still love to see in books - kindness, humour, a lovely mix of period accuracy and anachronism for comic effect - to the point that I can't tell if that's why I loved it so much, or if that's why I now love those things. It's shot through with serious questions like how to organise a society, and the duties, obligations of power, as well as being tremendously fun to read. I love it all, but the sequence leading up to Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone is particularly memorable: almost all readers will be aware of what's going to happen, but it's built up to with just the right balance of tension and inevitability. And the aftermath contains both the delightfully comic image of Arthur patiently putting the sword back and pulling it out again over and over again for a procession of surprised noblemen, as well as the hitting note of sadness and loss that's been lurking throughout the book. This is the end of Arthur's childhood, after all, and most readers will know that although the story of King Arthur is full of triumph and joy and glory, it's also, ultimately, a tragedy.
2. The Dark Is Rising sequence - Susan Cooper. (We can count this as one book, right? You can probably get an omnibus edition of it or something, I expect.) I came to this series through the BBC's excellent radio adaptation of the first book, Over Sea, Under Stone, which I listened to over and over again on my beloved cassette player. It was a rich and resonant adaptation that still rings in my brain, but I had no idea that it was based on a book, or that there were more, so stumbling across Greenwitch in my secondary school library was an unexpected joy, and that volume will always hold a special place in my heart. ♥
OK, onwards to things that aren't Arthurian...
3. The Immortals/Wild Magic Quartet - Tamora Pierce. (OK, this probably can't count as one book- wait, no, there was an omnibus edition, this totally counts.) These books basically shaped my ideas about what a fantasy series looks like, especially when it came to worldbuilding and the development of a coherent magic system. They also gave me an excellent heroine in Daine.
4. The Redwall series - Brian Jacques. (This isn't remotely one book. I am a filthy cheater.) I said that the Wild Magic books shaped my ideas about fantasy, but in a lot of ways that's true of these books too. I haven't reread these books recently, but I LOVED them as a child. They were really perfectly pitched for an older child audience: dense and rich, but not too overwhelming; containing comfortably predictable elements (there will be a feast and probably a small group of companions going on a journey; also at least one but no more than about three characters will die, and it will be sad but not devastating) but individually distinct. They had great characters and awesome description, especially of the aforementioned feasts, and did a really great job of setting up a world with both a past and a future to explore - it was always really satisfying to read about things you recognised from an earlier book, whether it was fleshing out the past or setting up the future.
5. Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones. (Hurray, finally something that is pretty unambiguously One Book!) What a good book: witty, unexpected, humane. This is the only one that I didn't actual read as a child, but when I did get to it, it became an instant favourite.
lokifan asked for my top five children's fantasy novels! (Er, I filtered this through my brain and it kind of interpreted "top" as "ones that made a big impression on me", which may not have been what you meant - sorry!) I did try and stick to children's books rather than YA, though there's one on here that probably is YA - it was published under the Point Fantasy imprint over here, iirc.1. The Sword in the Stone - TH White. I loved this book growing up, and looking back it's got a lot of things that I still love to see in books - kindness, humour, a lovely mix of period accuracy and anachronism for comic effect - to the point that I can't tell if that's why I loved it so much, or if that's why I now love those things. It's shot through with serious questions like how to organise a society, and the duties, obligations of power, as well as being tremendously fun to read. I love it all, but the sequence leading up to Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone is particularly memorable: almost all readers will be aware of what's going to happen, but it's built up to with just the right balance of tension and inevitability. And the aftermath contains both the delightfully comic image of Arthur patiently putting the sword back and pulling it out again over and over again for a procession of surprised noblemen, as well as the hitting note of sadness and loss that's been lurking throughout the book. This is the end of Arthur's childhood, after all, and most readers will know that although the story of King Arthur is full of triumph and joy and glory, it's also, ultimately, a tragedy.
2. The Dark Is Rising sequence - Susan Cooper. (We can count this as one book, right? You can probably get an omnibus edition of it or something, I expect.) I came to this series through the BBC's excellent radio adaptation of the first book, Over Sea, Under Stone, which I listened to over and over again on my beloved cassette player. It was a rich and resonant adaptation that still rings in my brain, but I had no idea that it was based on a book, or that there were more, so stumbling across Greenwitch in my secondary school library was an unexpected joy, and that volume will always hold a special place in my heart. ♥
OK, onwards to things that aren't Arthurian...
3. The Immortals/Wild Magic Quartet - Tamora Pierce. (OK, this probably can't count as one book- wait, no, there was an omnibus edition, this totally counts.) These books basically shaped my ideas about what a fantasy series looks like, especially when it came to worldbuilding and the development of a coherent magic system. They also gave me an excellent heroine in Daine.
4. The Redwall series - Brian Jacques. (This isn't remotely one book. I am a filthy cheater.) I said that the Wild Magic books shaped my ideas about fantasy, but in a lot of ways that's true of these books too. I haven't reread these books recently, but I LOVED them as a child. They were really perfectly pitched for an older child audience: dense and rich, but not too overwhelming; containing comfortably predictable elements (there will be a feast and probably a small group of companions going on a journey; also at least one but no more than about three characters will die, and it will be sad but not devastating) but individually distinct. They had great characters and awesome description, especially of the aforementioned feasts, and did a really great job of setting up a world with both a past and a future to explore - it was always really satisfying to read about things you recognised from an earlier book, whether it was fleshing out the past or setting up the future.
5. Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones. (Hurray, finally something that is pretty unambiguously One Book!) What a good book: witty, unexpected, humane. This is the only one that I didn't actual read as a child, but when I did get to it, it became an instant favourite.