One of the best things about Fantasycon was that I found out about a lot of great authors. Thrilled with my new discoveries, I dived in and am just now emerging from a huge reading bender of British urban fantasy, gritty eyed and with a head full of monsters and mayhem. It was wonderful. These are the books I read and I would recommend any of them:
The Sweet Scent of Blood by Suzanne McLeod
The Naming of the Beasts by Mike Carey (I *really* wish I'd read these in order instead of grabbing five before three and four. It would have been even more awesome)
Into the Nightside by Simon R Green (an omnibus of Something from the Nightside and Agents of Light and Darkness)
However, I have learned the hard way not to stay in one genre too long. The corpse of high fantasy lies broken behind me on this path, burned out and lost to me, maybe forever. Can't let that happen again. Time for a change.
I've been meaning to read some of Georgette Heyer's books for a long time, because I've heard so many good things about them. Sarah Rees Brennan has talked about them in glowing terms, and I like her own books so much that I'll read pretty much anything she recommends.
Unfortunately, regency romances: possibly not a good choice of genre coming straight after an urban fantasy marathon. I like me some romance, I really do, but when you've just read books where vampires and demons are threatening everything the world holds dear, it's really hard to get excited about someone risking their position in the echelons of those born rich and entitled just by marrying someone not quite as rich and entitled as they are. None of them seem to work for a living. It's enough to make me come over all Bastille Day.
I don't plan to quit just yet; I'm only a few pages in. However, I might need to pick a different genre first and work my way down to that gentler level of sex and violence, where a bad marriage or being caught with your voluminous knickers down is possibly the worst thing that can happen to you.
Yes genre hopping is a dangerous thing. I'm afraid to say that after devouring dystopian The Hunger Games and then returning to edits on my own contemporary YA novel, mine seemed dull in comparison. In saying that, I think most contemporaries would seem dull compared to THG. Hard to focus on editing when I just want to find out what happens in the next book. Damn you, Suzanne Collins!
ReplyDeleteI know exactly what you mean. When I don't want to work very hard at reading, I dive into some of the free romances for kindle. They're all very easy, light reading, with guaranteed happy endings. I like the cowboy ones best, either modern or old West. Cowboys are almost as good as Ranger... :)
ReplyDeleteI definitely have to read The Hunger Games at some point.
ReplyDeleteMy girls have both read The Hunger Games and keep trying to get me to read the series. But I'm afraid they're gonna make me cry, and I HATE books that make me cry.
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