Wanted: Susan Cooper for adults

[sepdet]

Actually, I was thinking, "I want to find a fantasy author like Tanith Lee, only less twisted." I love fantasy with overrich, dreamlike, mythic prose. It's why I like the best of Gaiman's Sandman stories, when people aren't being too awful to each other and the Lovecraftian element is absent.

So then I thought of Susan Cooper. She's got the dreamlike imaginativeness that I crave, but has real characters and dialog as well. I just ordered Seaward. However, most of her books are for an even younger audience than the Dark Is Rising series, so they probably lack some of the more mature worldbuilding and mythmaking elements that would be too hard or scary for wee ones. Not that I don't love children's books, but there's some minor chords you have to leave out of them.

I need to go back and make sure I've read all my George MacDonalds, as well. I think I've missed a few.

I want this first because they're the sort of books I enjoy, and second because too much writing for the web is atrophying my native imaginative style. I am a chameleon, and my writing style shifts. My favorite writing style tends to come out when I immerse myself in video games, movies, or books in that idiom. (Hence my return to FFXIII-2; it's got the blend of angst, myth, and dreamlike, MYSTlike vistas that tap into that wellspring.)

So, can you think of other authors that do that?

Cherryh comes to mind, too. I have only read Dreamstone and Tree of Swords and Jewels; any other recommendations of her work (which is almost too melancholy for me to bear, but I do love her writing)?

Comments

[owlmoose]

Have you read Cathrynne Valente's duology "The Orphan's Tales"? The prose is very poetic and rich, denser than I normally like but I found that it sang, and it's a wonderful story-within-story structure that I think you might like.

[sepdet]

"it sang": that's exactly the response I look for.

[heavenscalyx]

I have middle of the night brain, but two books that immediately come to mind with brilliant prose I want to roll around in are Toni Morrison's Beloved and Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.

[heavenscalyx]

I note that both are incredibly powerful stories and deal with superheavy material. Both have wonderful audiobooks available.

[heavenscalyx]

On waking, I have to reiterate: the material in these books is like the neutron-star material of literature, but both are really excellent and worth the work. Morrison writes the most beautiful prose I have ever encountered, the sort of prose one can only describe with food adjectives. I listened to Beloved on a version that Morrison read herself, and she's not the most brilliant reader on the planet, but I loved hearing her version, if you know what I mean.

For something lighter by Butler, I recommend Fledgeling, which is her vampire book, and my inspiration for Zoltan's family (which is like yet unlike Butler's vampires).

[sepdet]

I should get an audiobook of Beloved. It was required reading for a class at Pacifica called "The Epic Imagination," and it was indeed masterful and amazing, but it also gave me a relapse of my incredibly vivid nightmares, so I've been afraid to reread it.

We did get to hear a clip from Morrison's reading!

[heavenscalyx]

Also, Kelly Link's short stories are, reportedly, well-written and mythic and weird. I haven't read many, but she has several collections out.

[heavenscalyx]

There's also Terri Windling's The Wood Wife. Many of the anths she edits are very mythic and generally high-quality, such as Coyote Road, though that one has a couple of pedestrian stories and one outright offensive and terrible one, which is unusual for her anths.

Oh!!! Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Try her Fistful of Sky. Really excellent and magical. Hit up A for more recs for Hoffman.

[cumuluscastle]

Nina Kiriki Hoffman is awesome!

[sepdet]

And has etexts available for my ipad!

Purchased for my ipad. It's a bit of an extravagance getting ibooks, since I don't trust Apple to make them available to me always, but my arthritis thanks me for gettting books I don't have to hold.

[heavenscalyx]

More thoughts, on an actual keyboard instead of my iFish:
- Nalo Hopkinson's In the New Moon's Arms (novel) and Skin Folk (short story collection); A recommends her The Salt Roads, which I haven't had a chance to read yet
- N.K. Jemison's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, which is first in a trilogy of fantasy novels (I have read the second but not the third); her prose is not lush, but her characterizations are interesting and I think you'd particularly enjoy her worldbuilding and cosmology/mythology creation

[cumuluscastle]

Patricia McKillip! I recommend: The Changeling Sea, Ombria in Shadow, Alphabet of Thorn and The Book of Atrix Wolfe

I also second the Valente recommendation, because she does very intricate prose - she irritates me sometimes though, because she drops the plot for the prose at times I think.

I also really like Kij Johnson for her poetic fantasy, but she writes stories about cats and foxes turning human: Fudoki and The Fox Woman

[heavenscalyx]

I found Valente's prose strained, like she was working too hard to do a pastiche of Tanith Lee.

[cumuluscastle]

I just feel like she really wants to be intellectual and deep (haven't read a lot of Tanith Lee myself, mostly just the Unicorn books) and when I can see someone trying to do that it always turns me off.

[heavenscalyx]

Yeahhhh. It may be that some of her other work is better than the first Orphans Tales book struck me, but I haven't really gone back to see.

[akycha]

I definitely second Patricia McKillip for the moody fairy-tale setting: her prose is really lovely and the way she describes food makes me hungry.

[sepdet]

That's the name I was looking for! All of these are exciting recommendations, but there was one name I couldn't remember that I sensed it was time to try.

Thank you, everyone, for great recs!

[owlmoose]

Sometimes I see that in Valente's work, too, but I think it works in "The Orphan's Tales", because the plot isn't as important as the atmosphere.

I've never read McKillip and I really should. Do you recommend and particular one as a starting place?

[cumuluscastle]

McKillip writes stand-alones mostly, so you can start anywhere you like. She has a few series, including The Riddle-Master trilogy. Her style of writing for her earlier books is different though. I did not care for her science fiction as much as her fantasy either.

Some of my favourite books are: The Changeling Sea, Ombria in Shadow, Alphabet of Thorn, Od Magic and The Book of Atrix Wolfe.

I do like Valente too and I will read more of her books. I read In the Night Garden awhile back and I liked it. It reminded me a lot more of a series of fairy tales than of a novel. Since then I loved her The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland . . . I should try In the Cites of Coin and Spice. Perhaps being prepared for the format going into it will raise my enjoyment level.

[rivenwanderer]

John Crowley is the author I'm currently obsessing over. His prose is rich and heady and lovely. And he does fantastic things with meta, with books that tell the story of themselves and glimpses of conspiracies and miracles. Give "Little, Big" a try, and if you like it, move on to the Aegypt cycle. (They're both fairly light on the magic-is-definitely-actually-happening parts, but the *idea* of magic suffuses the books nonetheless.)