A Song of Ice and Fire fans have been waiting for The Winds of Winter for years. While we keep at that, what else should we read to keep ourselves occupied? We give you some of our picks. Tell us yours!
DAN: I wanna start with the obvious: if you’re a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire and/or Game of Thrones but have somehow never read The Lord of the Rings…do that. Pretty much every work of fantasy fiction in the past 50 years owes something to LotR, and A Song of Ice and Fire is explicitly built on turning some of the tropes introduced by those books on their head. It’s essential fantasy reading.
For my actual pick, I’m going to recommend The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell, one of Martin’s contemporaries. Cornwell writes a lot of historical fiction, but The Warlord Chronicles is my favorite the one I’ve read, and it shares some key elements with A Song of Ice and Fire.
The series consists of three books: The Winter King, Enemy of God and Excalibur. As that last title implies, it’s a version of the Arthurian legend, but written in an exhaustively researched way that grounds it in reality, similar to how Martin’s tale about dragons and ice zombies is grounded by real-world politics and believable characters. It also shares a certain iconoclasm with Martin’s series, as it deconstructs the romantic ideals surrounding medieval chivalry to reveal the vulnerable, complicated people behind the gleaming armor. Finally, like ASOIAF, The Warlord Chronicles features an unusually high number of interesting female characters for a fantasy series, with Arthurian standbys like Nimue and Guinevere being particularly memorable.
Guy Ritchie is currently making a six-film cycle about the King Arthur legend based on nothing in particular (unless you count greed). Why no one’s ever adapted The Warlord Chronicles to the screen, I have no idea. It’s the most absorbing version of the Arthurian legend I’ve ever encountered, but until Hollywood learns what’s good for it, the books will more than suffice.
COREY: My pick for reading material is the Temeraire novels by Naomi Novik. These books follow the adventures of a talking, intelligent dragon named Temeraire and his captain William Laurence. Novik treats dragons as just another member of the animal kingdom, neither mystical nor all-powerful. She goes into great detail about their health, behavior, and various abilities according to breed, so after a few pages you simply accept them as part of this world, although some possess great intelligence.
The novels are set during the Napoleonic Wars, with Temeraire and Laurence serving in the British aerial forces. Any fans or history or warfare will enjoy the great detail Novik puts into her novels, although events are obviously changed by the presence of dragons. There are nine novels in the series, and before it’s all said and done Temeraire and Laurence have visited every corner of the globe except North America. Australia, Peru, France, Russia, China, and Africa all make appearances, and each has different species of dragons.
Novik does a wonderful job of adapting the world to fit the presence of dragons, inventing harnesses that allow men and women to ride them and incorporating them into the navel and ground tactics used by nations to wage war. It can get a bit gimmicky for each novel to move our characters from one part of the planet to another, but the threads eventually come together to create a satisfactory ending. Despite being nine novels deep, the series reads quickly, much faster than a read-through the current five novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series. Also, unlike with that series, you can actually read the entire Temeraire saga from start to finish.
Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) was once attached to adapt the novels into movies, but currently that project has been shelved and the rights have reverted to Novik.
RICHARD: I’m going to cast my net a bit wider here, but stay in the sci-fi/fantasy realm. My recommendation is the Nebula Award-winning novel Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. It’s the first book in VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, and it’s a beautifully written mind-bender. The story concerns Area X, a part of Earth cut off from humanity for decades. Why? Because the ecology of the region has taken a bizarre and uncontrollable turn. The book follows the members of the 12th expedition (prior expeditions have either vanished or come back changed) into Area X and the strange new world they uncover.
The following books in the trilogy, Authority and Acceptance, further delve into the apparently bottomless mystery of Area X from different points of view (including the inscrutable but unnervingly compromised government division attempting to decipher the ‘nature’ of the place). If you’re looking for a wild, weird ride, I’d highly recommend Jeff’s trilogy.
Also, Paramount Pictures has made Annihilation into a huge feature film directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina) and starring Natalie Portman, Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Gina Rodriguez. It’s slated for release in September and its on a lot of most-anticipated films of 2017 lists. I’d highly recommend reading the book(s) first.
RAZOR: Depending on how high your tolerance for high fantasy goes, I’ve got the perfect series for you: Malazan Book of the Fallen. Author Steven Erikson has written 10 novels in this series, starting with Gardens of the Moon, as well as eight other novels that branch off from the main series. As I mentioned, this is high fantasy — Erikson actually drew inspiration from playing through Generic Universal RolePlaying System (GURPS) campaigns with his friends.
Tattersail, Whiskeyjack, Quick Ben, Fiddler, Dancer and Topper are just some of the odd names you’ll encounter in the Malazan series. Each novel is so minutely fleshed out that you feel like you’re playing through a tabletop campaign alongside Erikson and his friends.
The books are dark and gritty, and are not for beginners in the world of fantasy literature. Erikson uses what has been described as “High Magic” when writing fight scenes between battle wizards, demons, and a demigod named Anomander Rake who wields a sword, Dragnipur, that traps the souls of his foes.
When drawn from its sheath, the sword groaned awake, emitting chains of smoke and filling the air with the sounds of creaking wheels and a chorus of hopeless moaning. Even sheathed, it emanated terror.
KATIE: I’ll take a different tack here and suggest that instead of their nearest bookstore, fans hit up the internet for ASOIAF fanfiction.
George R.R. Martin has expressed his dislike of fanfiction before, and he has a fair point — it can be a slippery slope for authors of the original work. It’s also been a nightmare for fans in years past (most notably, perhaps, when Anne Rice sicced her lawyers on fanfic writers).
Nowadays, though, fanfiction is commonplace, and some of it has become as famous in its niche as the original work in the wider public. Take the Harry Potter-inspired “My Immortal,” which has gained notoriety as the worst fanfic ever written. Posted online between 2006-2007, the fic continues to raise debate of authenticity; that is, did the anonymous author intend for it to be this terrible, or can someone actually write this poorly?
That’s an extreme example, because quite frankly, I have read fanfiction that’s worlds better than some published work out there. I’m talking prose, plot, and character development alike, and there’s so much variety. If you check out the Game of Thrones/ASOIAF tags on Archive of Our Own, you’ll find every possible pairing in every possible setting, from canon to alternate universes. Some stories read as possibilities for the series, and others are just fun explorations of character. And so much of it is worth a look.
Many people have pointed out that the show itself is something of a fanfiction of Martin’s books. While the show’s purpose is to cut corners in efforts to make the story work efficiently onscreen, they do so in a way similar to a fanfic writer’s brainstorming. “What if Sansa went to Winterfell instead of staying in the Vale? What if Arya was the one to avenge the Red Wedding? How would the story change, and what would it do for their character arcs?” Or, alternatively, “What if Westeros was a modern-day high school? What if Jon knew of his parentage all along? What if Jaime and Brienne admitted to their obvious sexual attraction to one another? Instead of flirting over Sansa’s new dress, what if she and Jon just cut the pretense and made out already? Is there a chance for Daenerys and Yara, or is there something simmering between Daenerys and Tyrion now?”
The possibilities are endless, and the aforementioned exist in many forms across the internet. Why not skim through fanfic while you’re waiting on the real thing? We’re all scouring message boards for new theories, which, in part, is what fanfiction is — theories that are written creatively rather than academically. Even if you don’t end up intrigued for what’s to come in canon, you will undoubtedly find some entertainment in the meantime.
Since a poll would basically require us to list out every book there is, we’re foregoing one this week. But we’d love to hear what you’re reading while you wait for The Winds of Winter!
Via http://winteriscoming.net/2017/04/15/small-council-books-read-wait-winds-winter/
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