It’s not a huge surprise when multiple works deal with the same basic idea. Some ideas are quite obvious: a robot renegade cop; a murder in a small town struggling with encroaching modernity; World War II time travel. What’s much more interesting is when the works share a very narrow scope.
Sometimes a newer work’s creator is (apparently) unaware of their predecessor. For instance, Suzanne Collins said she didn’t hear about Battle Royale until after she turned in the MS for The Hunger Games. Yet each work is about teenagers, selected by lottery, being forced into an undisclosed location, where they are armed, surveilled, and encouraged to kill each other; all in order to help prop up a deranged society.
Then again… Christopher Nolan claims he was mostly unaware of Paprika while making Inception… so maybe we shouldn’t be so credulous when Westerners say they aren’t ripping off the Japanese.
But we’re getting away from what I wanted to talk about: books addressing bureaucratic dysfunction in the secret branch of the British government that protects the homeland from supernatural threats. The two primary series here, that I’m aware of, are Charles Stross’s The Laundry Files and Daniel O’Malley’s Checquy series. Both are very fun combinations of workplace humor and sci-fi/horror action. Stross, who began first, leans more into horror. O’Malley leans more into humor, but they’re definitely walking the same territory. Remarkably, O’Malley says he hadn’t heard of the Laundry series before his first book came out and people started calling it a rip-off. (Source: my friend asked him at a book signing).
Honorary members of this category are:
- Apparent commenter favorite the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch, otherwise ineligible by being about the Metropolitan Police
- Torchwood, otherwise ineligible by being a TV show
—
What’d I leave out? What are some extremely specific genres you like? Or you can say anything at all about reading recommendations, really.
(Remember to buy any books via the Balloon-Juice Amazon affiliate link!)
Anotherlurker
I am partial to historical mystery fiction, specificly the works of Barbara Hambly and her “Benjamin January” Series and Lindsey Davis and her “Marcu Didius Falco” series.
Doug R
So shows like Legends of Tomorrow would be out then?
Major Major Major Major
@Doug R: I’ve never watched it! Not claiming to be an expert here.
Schlemazel
I just started reading the Laundry series this week. I love the guys ability to turn a phrase and he has a great ear for how bureaucracies work. Not government but industry with all its BS. There are many great passages. Despite that I am not really enjoying the book. It is a bit . . . too much.
schrodingers_cat
I am thinking of reading Sacred Games, after watching the Netflix show. I haven’t read any fiction in more than a year.
Major Major Major Major
@Schlemazel: I find that Stross gets less “look at me!” as the series develops… if you want to wait that long.
VOR
The show Warehouse 13 was along these lines, but set in America. The premise is certain objects are created which have seemingly magical effects. We don’t understand them, but maybe we will someday. Therefore the potentially dangerous objects are collected and stored in a facility known as the Warehouse. It is the 13th incarnation of the Warehouse, which dates back to Alexander the Great.
pnwjmk
I love both the Laundry Files and the checquy books, but I’d also recommend Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. Similar sense of British humor, and makes your brain spin time travel
aliasofwestgate
I’ve definitely heard of The Laundry Files. I have yet to read them though. TNT’s The Librarians tv series is in this particular genre in the discussion. The movies started in the 00s, i think. Then they got 4 years of tv series. I have no idea what John Rogers and his crew are up to next.
MobileForkbeard
The “ONSET” book series by Glynn Stewart is similar in concept. Essentially: magically powered people are (as discovered and if temperamentally eligible) are inducted into ONSET, a secret US military or police branch that deals with Supernatural events.
It’s also not great. Fun reading, relatively light reading initially and gets a little full of itself as it escalates in later books. Still fun if you’re looking for something simple and quick to read, but I would vastly recommend The Laundry Files over it.
The Pale Scot
I enjoyed Torchwood, the way they tied Capt. Harkness into a future “Face of Bo” was great foreshadowing. And Eve Myles is way cute. “Bloody Torchwood”
If Idris becomes Bond I guess he will never be The Doctor, that’s a disappointment.
Major Major Major Major
@VOR: oh yeah I forgot about that show! It was some alright fun, not quite Eureka-level.
Chetan Murthy
@Major Major Major Major: I tried to start reading the first one. Uh …. I don’t know if this happens to others, but being a computer scientist and somewhat-math-type makes it really, really difficult to read the way he drags in stuff from CS in ridiculous ways. It’s like how a doctor must feel watching House, MD: I remember an episode where they’re running thru the list of treatments they’ve tried, and one of the fellows askes “what about acetaminophen?” and even I lost it [and I *love* that show]..
Does that get better as the book (or series) unfolds? Or am I looking at “nails on a chalkboard” levels of reference to stupid CS shit throughout?
Schlemazel
@Major Major Major Major:
I am soldiering on because there are gems to be uncovered. Thanks for the heads up.
Not humor but I loved the concept of True Blood to be fantastic but the execution bogged down badly. Loved the first book, liked the second and gave up after the fourth. There was so much potential in vampires out and about in real life but instead she dragged in every mythical being in the history of mankind & invented all sorts of petty jealousies that detracted from the concept.
Mary G
@Schlemazel: Ditto, have read a couple of them and admire them, but don’t love.
Off topic: It looks like the second teen is going to become an official member of the household, due to insane family. Trying to find Mom to get her enrolled in school (didn’t get around to it last year until she had missed three weeks of school) and medical power of attorney. Male teen’s mother wrote and made them both sign a contract agreeing to curfew hours, no drugs, no drinking, grades must be good, house chores. and everyone goes to family and/or individual therapy. The kids promptly asked if we could get a dog, and since I’ve been looking forever, and they signed a contract extension that they will be in charge of poop patrol and exercising, I said yes.
Just impulsively applied to adopt Rosie and possibly her sister Poppie too. I’ve always wanted a golden retriever and they almost never come up. I suspect this might be a bait and switch, since they’re on Petfinder, but not the rescue’s own website.
And to add a bit on topic, loved “The Art of Racing in the Rain,” narrated by a dog named Enzo, a tearjerker that I just adore.
ETA: Lev Grossman’s the Magicians series is one I enjoyed a lot. SyFy did a series of it, but I like the books better.
chris
@Major Major Major Major: I was going to say “a better writer” but that works too.
I’m all up to date on Stross but have never heard of O’Malley so he’s now on the list, sounds like fun. Also fun, but not British, The dresden Files by Jim Butcher. Wizards and demons! In Chicago!
Way OT but the pictures, squeeee!
Joyce Harmon
@VOR: And very similar to Warehouse 13 – The Librarians. Started as a series of TV movies The Librarian. The Library is a storehouse of mystical objects like WH13.
Major Major Major Major
@Chetan Murthy: I think Stross is sort of doing it winkingly, given his background as a technical writer and CS type. But regardless, it gets better, if you can stick around.
Schlemazel
A couple of other humor/horror novels worth the time
“Damned” by Chuck Palahnuick. A 13 YO girl wakes up in Hell & discovers she is a great recruiter of souls. She decides Hell needs to be redecorated and at the end of the novel sets off to unseat Satan. I hope that means a sequel.
“Fat White Vampire Blues” by Andrew Fox- The poor guy can’t lose weight because of the food his victims eat!
Chetan Murthy
_Declare_ by Tim Powers. This was discussed a while back when we talked about Kim Philby and other spy-related stuff. I forget who recommended it to me, but … DAMN. Holy moley it was great. I mean, so great. British spies, and a thru-line that explains all of 20th-century history. And genies! What more could you ask for?
Major Major Major Major
@chris: lemme just embed that for you
jeffreyw
@Major Major Major Major: I was hoping that they would finish the story arc but they left it at a cliffhanger. It looks like the series will be good but damn their eyes for that ending.
Major Major Major Major
@Mary G: I’ve only seen the magicians tv show. It’s a little grimdark for me, and has some structural deficiencies, but has its moments.
@chris: yeah, Dresden Files is fun, inspiration for my next novel too.
frosty
John Scalzi’s first novel Old Man’s War was so similar to The Forever War that people thought he’d consciously copied it. Nope. IIRC in the preface he said that if he’d read Forever War first he would never have had the nerve to write his own book. Or something along those lines anyway.
ETA: Nice edit fix!
Doug R
@Major Major Major Major: It has a super secret enforcement bureau that travels through time. Also a good excuse to put some DC comic book heroes into action, the show is at its best when embracing its gonzo premise. Although shooting in Canada gives them that little bit of distance to go a little bit further than other mainstream shows in peeling back American history.
Doc H
@Chetan Murthy: Seconding the Declare recco – it got me to put Treason in the Blood (bio of Philby père et fils) on the TBR stack.
jeffreyw
@jeffreyw: Ooops, that was supposed to be a reply to @schrodingers_cat:
dmsilev
@Schlemazel: The first few Laundry books, he’s very deliberately aping different espionage novel styles (for instance, the second book is a James Bond story), but after about the third or so book, he’s really doing his own thing and the books get better as a result.
James E Powell
@Chetan Murthy:
Or like how every lawyer feels watching any lawyer movie or TV show.
aliasofwestgate
@Doug R: CW wanted a team up show. So they picked a lot of their second stringers. Yes, it works best when it throws caution to the wind and embraces the utter crackiness the premise allows. Right now Legends of Tomorrow is my favorite of the CW DCtv shows. It does a lot of things right and has done so unapologetically since season 1 when it was still finding its footing.
Gelfling 545
I love the Laundry Files and especially loved the Annihilation Score in which the increasing seeming invisibility of women as we age is a factor.
Chetan Murthy
@James E Powell: It’s the one thing that “magic == spells and amulets and unicorn horn” has going for it: none of that stuff is real, so nobody can get ill watching them mangle the reality in a million ways.
Major Major Major Major
@Gelfling 545: is *that* the book where a character’s superpower is that she’s an older woman and so people pretend she isn’t there? Or something like that?
Johannes
@The Pale Scot: Elba as Bond makes tons of sense, but I think he’d have some hard sledding as the Doctor, because he’s so obviously a hero-type that he’d never be able to be underestimated, which is core Doctor schtick. Even Tennant was pushing it, and he’s less obviously the lead than Elba.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: Well, she also had the Violin From Hell (pretty close to literally so) as an additional power, but yes.
Schlemazel
@dmsilev:
I accidentally started with the fourth book . . .
Bruuuuce
I’ll note that I have weaknesses for two genres: urban fantasy (especially by Charles de Lint or Seanan McGuire) and humorous fantasy (especially Tom Holt, or the Garrett, PI series by Glen Cook). That gives me plenty to read.
For those who mentioned the Dresden Files, I live in fear of the day Harry Dresden meets October Daye in some version of Faerie that’s a cross between the two worlds’ versions.
MattF
I’m mildly embarassed to admit that I’ve read all the Laundry File books as well as both of the O’Malley books. I guess I do a lot of reading…
I liked both author’s books– and I’m pleased to hear that O’Malley didn’t know of Stross’ books. No spoilers, but I think the premise of O’Malley’s first book is brilliant.
Gelfling 545
@Gelfling 545: The upcoming one seems to be rather timely. From the overview: “The United States president has gone missing. Not that Americans are alarmed. For some mysterious reason, most of the country has forgotten the executive branch even exists. Perhaps it has to do with the Nazgûl currently occupying the government and attempting to summon Cthulhu.”
chris
@dmsilev: Can’t remember where I read it but Stross gives a lot of credit to Len Deighton’s early novels too.
Major Major Major Major
@Gelfling 545: Stross did say that his outlined plot took a hard swerve after Brexit and Trump…
Gelfling 545
@Major Major Major Major: It’s not really a superpower per se but she does make use of it to resolve the danger.
Major Major Major Major
@Gelfling 545: it reminded me of the Somebody Else’s Problem Field in one of the Hitchhiker’s books, which made something invisible by convincing the viewer that it was somebody else’s problem.
The Midnight Lurker
Thank you, Major, for pointing out the plainly obvious to trained, professional observer. I order books from Amazon all the time, and until you posted it, I had never ‘seen’ the Amazon logo right there. In my face.
Just the other night I was bellowing that we had to be more supportive of the site, even if it meant putting up with ads. I am stupid.
I blame Obama.
danielx
Anything by Alan Furst, but Night Soldiers is probably his best. The Bernie Gunther books by Philip Kerr are excellent, the Berlin Noir trilogy best to begin. From March Violets, set in 1938:
Bill Arnold
@Chetan Murthy:
Up to you, but I suggest lightening up a bit. (When Knuth Volume 4 (4A) finally became available (the censored version, cough), bought it just to put next to the others on a bookshelf in office at work, in part as a homage/joke to the early Laundry books. If anyone noticed they didn’t obviously acknowledge it.)
Big fan; I don’t particularly like the darker aspects of the Laundryverse, but they’re well-drawn. (I loved the Elven Princess story (The Nightmare Stacks, minor spoilers in review), not my absolute favorite elven princess story but 2nd.)
Tony Jay
@Schlemazel:
Trueblood, or at least the series of novels it was based on (The Southern Vampire Series?) is, I think, an example of the type of duplicate series MMMM is talking about. The basic premise is similar to the Anita Blake Chronicles which came out around the same time (vampires go mainstream, which doesn’t go well because, you know, blood-guzzling superpowered gang of inhuman nutters) which I surprised myself by really enjoying until they didn’t do much jump the shark as straddle the shark and have page after page of uncomfortably rapey sex with the poor, confused creature. Seriously, it goes from being a sort of supernatural crime procedural staring a (very) straightlaced ‘no sex before marriage and – definitely – no sex with the monsters’ blue-collar necromancer who also happens to be very good at the incredibly dangerous job of killing rogue vampires into a… well you’d have call it a soft-porn pastiche of itself where the main character has endless bouts of rough, only-tenuously consensual sex with just about everyone she meets. The change in focus was… enough to get me to stop buying the series. Apparently the writer divorced her husband and got together with a partner who was into a more adventurous brand of coitial action and since she was already writing the main character as her Mary-Sue… Yeah, nuff said. Pity, I really liked that series.
Marcopolo
Wish I actually had time to fully participate in this thread, however dinner preparation calls. In lieu of actually reading the whole thing and commenting let me suggest the Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde which seems to fit the idea of secret British gov’t agency full of agents trying to keep the world safe.
I’ve read the first three books in the series and they were fun and witty as you might expect. I highly recommend. Off to dinner work now.
Tony Jay
@Tony Jay:
Paragraph breaks? Wherefore art thou you fuckers?
Bill Arnold
@dmsilev:
She’s a f-ing Combat Epistemologist ffs! :-) And that invisibility is a real superpower.
SFBayAreaGal
@Major Major Major Major: Dresden Files was made into a t.v series on the Syfy channel a few years ago. I believe it lasted a year.
weasel
@Chetan Murthy: I was just going to pop in and recommend Declare. Love it and it reminded me very strongly of The Laundry Files (though more serious and less over the top). Has Powers written anything else in that line?
Major Major Major Major
@Marcopolo: Fforde came up while I was researching this but, as I hadn’t read him… but he’s on the list now!
Mary G
It\s YA, but this old lady still really liked The Leviathan Trilogy by Scot Westerfeld. It’s WWI, sort of steampunk-ish, but the Germans have developed all the iron machines, and the British, inspired by Darwin, have developed biological technology – their big ship is a genetically engineered whale. I got the audiobooks narrated by Alan Cumming from the library, and he is fantastic. His autobiography, “Not My Father’s Son” is also phenomenal, though his childhood was beyond harrowing, so don’t read it if you’re easily triggered.
Gelfling 545
@Tony Jay: I really liked Harris’s Lily Bard series. The main character has survived horrible things and has become very brittle and reclusive but steps out of her comfort zone in times of crisis and takes no shit whatsoever. It’s tone is rather dark but it’s quite well done I feel.
I felt the books that became the True Blood series went on too long and the finale was rather flat. Her Midnight, Texas books spin off 2 characters from the vampire series and seem promising.
Gelfling 545
@Bill Arnold: And isn’t that just the best job title in the world!
Alex
Vampire private eye in a major city is another really specific theme. As far as I know, the TV shows Moonlight and Angel were developed independently, and also Tanya Huff’s excellent Blood book series (and its not so great TV adaptation). Her later books in the Smoke series make a joke of it by having the action take place on the set of a vampire detective TV show.
schrodingers_cat
@jeffreyw: Motwane (the show runner) said that Netflix wanted every episode end to have a hook, so that people would continue to watch.
dfinberg
@Bruuuuce : Try “The last adventure of Constance Verity.” Or any A. Lee Martinez really.
Major Major Major Major
@Gelfling 545: I feel like Mo would disagree.
Chetan Murthy
@Alex: Remember _Forever Knight_? Back in the early 90s? Vampire police detective. TV series set in Toronto IIRC.
schrodingers_cat
I love movies and shows set in amchi (our) Mumbai. Kashyap’s Black Friday is a masterpiece. Searing and real. Its based on the investigation of the the 1992 Mumbai blasts. Sacred Games flirts with greatness but does not quite get there.
Gelfling 545
I’ve been reading Richard Kadrey’s Sandman Slim novels thereby escaping to a fictional hell to avoid our current mundane one.
Also read the Witches of Lychcroft by Paul Cornell. An ill assorted trio have to defend the borders of reality as drawn about their town. One of the heretofore unsuspecting witches is the local vicar.
Gelfling 545
@Major Major Major Major: Oh, I wouldn’t want to BE one.. i just think it’s an outrageously cool title.
Major Major Major Major
I’m off to the park to enjoy some, er, botanicals. You kids play nice!
Bruuuuce
@dfinberg: Thanks. Sounds kind of like a self-aware Mary Sue wanna-not-be, which could be all sorts of fun
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat:
How? Seriously, how? I generally have at least four books going at a time with a mix of fiction and non.
Frankensteinbeck
I came up with a breakfast-obsessed, super-friendly robot with food-based weapons without ever having seen Pancake Robot, so yeah, there’s no stretch of idea too exotic to be invented separately.
…oh, Gerty Goat, you are truly my greatest creation.
Shana
I have loved almost everything written by Connie Willis. Her masterpiece is Doomsday Book where they’ve figured out time travel but because you can’t take anything to the past that wasn’t made the way things were then, or bring anything from the past to the future it’s become the realm of historians. Grad students go back to the time they’re studying for research. A student goes back to the mid-1300s England but the coordinates were a little off and she ends up at the period when the Black Death is coming through. Amazing book.
She’s also written Lincoln’s Dreams where someone is having RE Lee’s dreams. Bellwether about someone researching how fads start. To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is also time travel and a riff on Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat. Blackout and All Clear which is a two parter about time travel going back to WWII. And most recently Crosstalk about a surgery that allows couples to “connect” on a deeper emotional level that doesn’t actually work the way they thought it would.
She’s generally considered Sci Fi but not usually in the alien way. There’s usually a fair amount of bureaucratic complication, or missed connections which keep the plots going. Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.
Major Major Major Major
@Gelfling 545: sandman slim is fun! Kadrey is great on twitter. I also named a Pandaren shaman after him.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t know, its very unusual for me. I usually eat books. I guess I am not feeling like myself.
Bluemouser
I really like Madeline Miller’s Greek myths based books. She kinda flips what you would expect from the traditional myths. Song of Achilles is a love story. Circe on the other hand read more like an action adventure
One of the better mangas I’ve read are A Silent Voice (Koe no Katachi) , Orange and Ajin.
Tony Jay
@Gelfling 545:
I hadn’t even heard of that series. I’ll have to check it out.
Schlemazel
@Tony Jay:
That is sad. Like I say, I love the concept of there actually are vampires and now they can live in the open but of course people don’t like them. So much potential to be wasted on romance novel level writing
Major Major Major Major
@Shana: I tried Crosstalk but it wasn’t for me. I liked the start though.
Tony Jay
@Shana:
Oh, now all of those sound right up my street.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chetan Murthy: Wow, I do. It was on late, late night, so night owls like me ended up watching it.
Shana
@Major Major Major Major: Have you read anything else she’s written?
@Tony Jay: I hope you enjoy her writing.
We named our cat Kivrin after the main character in Doomsday Book.
piratedan
I’ve really enjoyed the O’Malley books (only two so far I believe) which have an adult Miss. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children feel to them (imho) where the characters are fleshed and whole. As for SF Noirish feel of things, I still look back a fair number of H. Beam Piper’s Paratime stories quite fondly, where as on the Fantasy side you have Cook’s Garrett PI books (the metal mysteries) and the Hawk and Fisher stories by Simon R Green are pretty good reads as well.
RSA
@Gelfling 545:
I liked that series a lot. A couple of others in a similar urban fantasy vein:
Harry Connolly, the Twenty Palaces series
Mike Carey, the Felix Castor series
I’m a fan of seeing a hard-boiled detective/protagonist deal with magic. (Not so much Harry Dresden, though, partly because the early novels in the series are not very well written. The TV show was solid, surprisingly.)
gene108
@Tony Jay:
I share your opinion of the Anita Blake series, and its turn to monster-woman-steamy sex got me to stop reading: But I think the “50 Shades of Grey” type fans keep the series afloat now.
CarolPW
@Shana: I adore her books, particularly Bellwether and To Say Nothing of the Dog. Very recommended for reading now since the real world is currently so dire.They are hugely entertaining. Also very much liked The Doomsday Book, but reading graphic descriptions of the effects of the bubonic plague doesn’t much appeal right now unless it improves your imaginary vision of something that should happen to all members of a certain party.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Trump. I’ve gone back to a lot of familiar favorites because they don’t fucking end with Trump as president and I know it as I begin the re-read. In the past two weeks, I re-read the the Hobbit and LOTR. FWIW, the Merry and Pippin coming of age story is really my favorite part.
RSA
@Tony Jay: My wife picked up the first few novels in Harris’s Southern Vampire/True Blood series, and I read them afterwards. I don’t think we got as far as the point you describe.
I do remember thinking, as happens whenever I come across a vampire romance, that in the real world we don’t give violent murderers a break because they’re youthful and sexy. Not as a general rule, at least. Even if they haven’t killed anyone lately. But in Harris’s world, vampires sort of slide by (maybe with the help of political influence? I don’t remember.)
Mary G
I guess the Sad Puppies or others of their ilk were threatening to demonstrate against political correctness outside of this year’s Hugo Awards, because the members persist in nominating people who are not white men with libertarian/authoritarian philosophies. I even saw where they had volunteers in pink shirts to escort attendees between venues.
Worked out about as well as the Unite the Right 2 last weekend:
When are these people going to relinquish the fantasy that they are some kind of silent majority?
Heidi Mom
@Mary G: Two goldens — think of the joy! When I spotted one on our last vet visit I said, “Sunshine in human form.” My husband said, “You mean ‘canine form.'” Right — canine form is higher praise, anyway.
Heidi Mom
@danielx: I second both of your author recommendations. A pretty good movie was made of one of the Furth books — Spies of Warsaw, starring David Tennant. I think it’s available for streaming on Netflix.
Omnes Omnibus
Why did my last comment vaporize?
OldDave
Off topic (somewhat) to this thread – but a week or so back a front-pager posted about the “Bone” graphic novel series (was it you, M*M*M*M?). I bit, bought the first book of nine. The rest followed in short order. I’m currently wrapping up book 7 (Ghost Circles) and about to dive into the penultimate one.
Thanks!
Tony Jay
@Schlemazel:
It was sad. They were far from great works of literature but the central conceit was pretty smart. All the monsters of myth were real, but either so rare or good at staying of humanity’s radar that they might as well have been fictional. Vampires were treated like serial-killer/cult leaders who the cops brought in professional vampire hunters to deal with, werewolves were treated like rabid animals, even if they were schoolteachers, necromancers made a nice living raising the dead so they could give evidence against their killers, etc.
Then she turned them hard into out-and-out self-fantasizing porn. It’s like if halfway through Lord of the Rings Frodo discovered that the One Ring made him want to have rampant sex with orcs (who all suddenly thought he was incredibly sexy too) and Frodo was okay with with that.
PROB I can’t help but think that she shot herself in the foot with that. Yeah, she’s made a lot of money out of her audience, but the original thrust of the series seemed designed for a TV adaptation. Hard to do that when half way through it goes from House MD to Nip/Tuck Extreme.
Mary G
@Heidi Mom: Yeah, they have a rep for being dumb but so loving. A married couple who are both workaholics had a golden named Bob who was the world’s best escape artist. Every couple of weeks my house would be on his tour of the neighborhood. He’d come to the back door with a stuffed porcupine in his mouth and whine politely until someone came out and threw it for him as many times as they could. What a lovebug.
ETA: Adding my voice to the Connie Willis praise, especially those two books. She doesn’t sound anything like PG Wodehouse, but the delight in the ridiculous reminds me of him.
Omnes Omnibus
@Schlemazel:
Mnem is so going to kick your ass for that.
OldDave
@OldDave: It was Major**4, in his first Recommended Reading.
piratedan
@piratedan: and I completely forgot the Mongo Mysteries by George C. Chesbro… also a fun, if somewhat weird read :-)
Bex
@Anotherlurker: I like the Medicus series by Ruth Downie, most of which are set in Roman occupied Britain in the early 100s.
BruceFromOhio
What a fabulous thread this is. I’d given up on new reads having exhausted the Scalzi and Stephenson books, and the next title in the Expanse saga isn’t due until November. You’ve all kindly provided a host of possibilities, and I am most grateful.
BruceFromOhio
@Omnes Omnibus: it was subjected to the Someone Else’s Problem Field?
NotMax
Just peeked in – it seems no one has yet mentioned Shadows Over Baker Street.
@OldDave
Bone was a fun comic book series. Nice to hear it still holds up. Was hooked from the ‘winter comes to the valley’ scene.
Felanius Kootea
Tana French’s Irish Murder Squad series – damn good writing that reads more like literary fiction most of the time. I love her work.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s also a better male bonding story than Frodo & Sam or Legolas & Gimli.
Also too, this week I read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as part of my prep for watching Blade Runner 2049. I didn’t think it was very good. The movie – all versions – was better.
debbie
Have the vampire lovers here read any of Glenn Duncan’s books? I’m not much for vampires and the like, but I was so intrigued after listening to an interview with him on NPR, that I read his book “The Last Werewolf.” I loved it! If Tim Curry were to go supernatural, he’d be the book’s main character, Jake, a worldweary, louche kind of being. This book is the first of a trilogy and includes vampires too. He’s also written other supernatural kind of books like “Death of an Ordinary Man” and “I, Lucifer.” I’m not much for this kind of genre, but he’s definitely an awesome writer.
He also writes thriller books under the pseudonym of Saul Black. His first book, “The Killing Lessons” was terrifying; the second, “Love/Murder” fell a bit short for me, but again, this isn’t my genre.
Schlemazel
@Omnes Omnibus:
I wondered if that was a bit harsh. Lots of people love romance novels, including the mrs. To me the characters are too often single-dimensional and the stories trite and predictable. But I am sure there are lots of folks that don’t like the stuff I do.
All genre fiction can fall into a rut. Sci-Fi, Mystery, any of them. The formula is comforting to some readers and that is a good thing.
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Mentioned before, and something you might also like (or like re-reading) is ElfQuest. Was fresh, original and like nothing else out there when it hit the shelves in the late 70s as one of the initial spate of independently produced comics. Even acquaintances who would opt to be Pinocchioed in order to have a longer nose to look down upon comic books as a genre liked it.
But stick with just the original series (20 bi-monthly b&w issues initially, later collected into four graphic novels in color*). IMHO it wandered rather far afield after that during its full 40-year multi-series run.
*Quick check shows the latest incarnation seems to be hardcovers from DC under the ElfQuest Archives title.
normal liberal
This time I read through the comments-so many of my people here. I’ve read all of Charles Stross, but I’m in it for the windup of the Laundry Files. For those of you who weren’t sold on the early part of the series, it gets less “play with genre tropes” and much darker as it keeps going.
Connie Willis is genius and I wish there was more of her work out there. For me the standouts are Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, basically the opposite ends of her time travel work.
I also really enjoyed the Chequay books, and I hope there are more. They do get to Strossian levels of gore and ickiness, though. And the Dresden books are fun, although Butcher makes the occasional howler on Chicago way finding.
To add to the list on the sci-fi front, Alastair Reynolds, China Mieville, Ben Aaronovitch, Iain Banks (with the middle M), Nick Harkaway, and on and on.
NotMax
@NotMax
Italics fail and no edit option, am confident jackals can figure it out.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
I read a lot of Sci Fi but I thought Ancillary Justice (and the series) by Ann Leckie was a very fresh take. Set thousands of years in the future the main character is investigating a murder, she is a person who was once a spaceship. Anyone else read this series? I highly recommend it if you haven’t.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Coming late to the thread. I’m in a similar boat. I’m reading biography and history, but have not read any fiction in a while. However I am noting a lot of the recommendations in this thread series.
Gelfling 545
Just wanted to say that I think this was a perfect post for a Saturday afternoon/early evening when one wants to wind down with something interesting but not too taxing or, god save us, political.
Steeplejack
@Gelfling 545:
When my brother did his service in the Air Force (as thanks for payment for med school) he was known in the family as the combat ophthalmologist. Other brother had a whole comedy routine worked up about it.
Tony Jay
@gene108:
Yep. And a scary devoted bunch of fans they are too. Hamilton’s ego has a comfortable bubble nestled in their tightly gripping arms.
Steeplejack
@Alex:
On one of the third-tier cable channels I occasionally run across in my channel surfing—this one Korean—there was a series for a while called Vampire District Attorney. I watched a few episodes in slack-jawed amazement to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. I was.
(I see IMDB has it as Vampire Prosecutor.)
Anotherlurker
@Bex: I’ll note that and get it for Kindle. Thanks!
frosty
@Heidi Mom: @danielx: My favorite by Furst is The Polish Officer, but they’re all good. Two other authors besides him and Kerr who’ve worked the interwar and war years espionage/ crime milieu are David Downing and John Lawton.
Tony Jay
@RSA:
It’s not the Southern Vampire novels that go off the rails, it’s the similarity themed Anita Blake series. Harris maintained her theme and got a TV series out of it, Laurel K Hamilton went on a deep dive into her own psyche and got a rabid fan base but no TV option. Not surprising when you consider the swerve around Book Eight.
Miss Bianca
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ: Is that the one that won either the Hugo or the Nebula a few years back? I tried, but I could not get into it.
Right now I have a bunch of fiction recommended by authors and others on Tor.com queued up while I take a breather before finishing the Vorkosigan series (I have got all the way up to Cryoburn, and can’t quite face that one yet). So, I have The Island Stallion’s Fury by Walter Farley (and how the hell did I miss this one when I was a kid? Horses in…Spaaaaaaaaace!) and The Goblin Emperor (kind of a steampunk-meets-Tolkien vibe, slow-moving but nonetheless engaging). Queued up after that is Across a Star-Swept Sea, a YA sci-fi/fantasy take on The Scarlet Pimpernel with a girl in the Sir Percy Blakeney role. That one looks fun.
RSA
@Tony Jay: Thanks for clarifying! I misunderstood.
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: Just finished a re-read on ElfQuest myself not too long ago. Realized all over again just how huge an influence it had been on me. Totally got me back into comic books, for one thing. It also influenced my own faery and werewolf fiction, as well.
Felony Govt
I second the Jasper Fforde recommendations. I particularly love his Nursery Crime series. Inspector Jack Spratt, based in Reading.
And I need to thank Major Major Major Major for recommending William Gibson to me. I read and loved Pattern Recognition and just got the next book in the series from the library.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
I have found that in the age of Trump reading a lot of news, blogs, Twitter and other Internet stuff has cut into my book reading. Sort of like junk food driving out good food.
Felony Govt
In moderation, maybe I entered something wrong
frosty fred
I finished Ancillary Justice (in my old age I’m no longer shy about admitting I’ve bounced off books) but was not sufficiently absorbed to be motivated to keep up with the series. I did love the Island Stallion series back in the day, and I have read Goblin Emperor several times now.
BigHank53
Someone upthread was asking about other Tim Powers books. He’s been uneven, particularly in his earlier work, but there’s no way to go wrong with The Anubis Gates and Last Call.
Someone also mentioned Paul Cornell–his books London Falling and The Severed Streets are straight-up police procedurals about a group of London cops that acquire the Second Sight, and find a whole new class of crimes to try and solve.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: I tried to read a John Le Carre’ book, it was too damned close to RL. I also enjoyed the show The Americans far better when the Russian spies were a thing of the past.
ETA: I am spending way too much time reading Twitter.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mary G: The run-up to the “rally” was really bizarre. I don’t think the people who actually showed up were Puppies or Puppy-adjacent, but were supposedly part of a “National March Against Far-Left Violence”. Earlier discussion here.
Miss Bianca
@frosty fred: D’oh! It’s The Island Stallion Races that’s got the spacemen, not The Island Stallion’s Fury!
Amir Khalid
Nothing to add to the literary discussion, sorry, but I just couldn’r resist an opportunity for pedantry.
@Tony Jay:
1) Wherefore =/= where. Wherefore = why. (By “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” Juliet means, “Why you, a Montague, and not someone cool?”)
2) Thou is singular. Plural of thou is you.
As you were.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mary G:
Their whole worldview and the political complaints it produces centers around themselves as the definition of normal. That makes the conviction that women and minorities must be some tiny fringe that they vastly outnumber a common, easy outgrowth.
@James E Powell:
That one suffers because there’s no American cultural equivalent to the nobleman and his humble, devoted servant. Hell, as a part of the cultural consciousness it’s probably been dead fifty years in Britain. I wouldn’t know, there. But class issues were huge in England in Tolkien’s time, and Samwise’s simple, fanatical devotion fulfilled an archtype.
Tonk
The Nathaniel Cade series by Christopher Farnsworth is close to a US version of the Laundry Files.Cade is a vampire that has been bound to the office of the Presidency since the Civil War. But, the real protagonist is the vampire’s handler a former West Wing staffer that was caught in bed with the President’s daughter. The mission statement is to to protect the US from things that go bump in the night. Farnsworth has a timeline for Cade that references a lot of HP Lovecraft.
Tony Jay
@Amir Khalid:
Your pedantry is accurate and appreciated.
Steeplejack
@Anotherlurker, @Bex:
Let me recommend the Yashim novels by Jason Goodwin. Detective/investigator working for the Ottoman court circa 1830s. Great period detail; Goodwin is a scholar of the period who wrote Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire.
The series begins with The Janissary Tree (2006), which won an Edgar for best novel. Five books so far.
Gelfling 545
@Tony Jay: ?
Steeplejack
@frosty:
A lot of Furst tends to run together for me—an unfortunate side effect of binge-reading a series—but The Polish Officer stands out in my memory as the best, or most affecting.
Tony Jay
Right, I’m off to bed, since my continent is easy of most of you. I’ll leave with a question. What ideas do Juicers have for crazy sci-fi/fantasy style stories they probably won’t ever get around to writing?
To get the ball rolling, how about drunk time-travelers gift the ‘real’ King Arthur with nanotechnology that looks a lot like magic and he proceeds to restore the Western Roman Empire? Fast forward 700 years and the era of Richard the Lion-Hearted/Robin Hood/Saladin looks a tad different.
Or, global warming reveals a long hidden necropolis beneath the Greenland glacier. But that would place it’s construction before the birth of honor sapiens, so who could have built it, and why are archaeologists going missing from the research group recruited to investigate the site?
Go crazy.
Bruuuuce
@Anotherlurker:Have you been reading the second set of Lindsey Davis’ Rome books, centered on Falco’s (adopted) daughter? Not quite the same feel as the Falcos, but I like the shift in POV. It allows her to explore a whole different side of Roman society.
FelonyGovt
My comment was in moderation, then disappeared. I was recommending Jasper Fforde ‘s Nursery Crime Series, and thanking Major Major Major Major for the William Gibson recommendation.
CapnMubbers
@Miss Bianca:
@frosty fred: Third for The Goblin Emperor, have re-read several times also.
Graphic novels by Philippe Druillet: The 6 Voyages of Lone Sloane and Lone Sloane; Delirious. Space wanderer on a stone throne.
Steeplejack
@Bruuuuce:
Thank you! Something about your comment—maybe just the repetition of Falco’s name—finally jogged loose the memory of the other good series of novels set in ancient Rome: Steven Saylor’s Roma Sub Rosa, about Giordanus the Finder. The first one is Roman Blood (1991).
CapnMubbers
@CapnMubbers: Looked up the Amazon entry and would recommend searching for the 1973 printing rather than the reprint.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@Chetan Murthy: Came here to say this, and I see I am 4th in line.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@Miss Bianca: yes, that’s the one. It snagged the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C Clarke awards. It is slow going at first, coming across as a pure detective story at first but once it kicks in you see the genius of it. The world building is outstanding IMHO and quite original. It is quite cerebral but I like that kind of thing. And it’s more than a little bit of a feminist work..but not in an in your face kind of way. It’s just very different…hard to describe. I recommend giving it another shot.
As for the other books on your list, I haven’t a clue. Between two jobs and two kids, there’s not much reading time for me. :)
dnfree
@Tony Jay: Did you ever read Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”? Being old, I read it when it first came out in the early 1960’s, and it changed from a more or less traditional Heinlein book into some kind of….ultramodern thing right in the middle of the book. The sexual freedom is definitely from a male perspective. (It was lonely being a female SF fan in the 1950s and 1960s.)
J R in WV
Well, a great thread. I’ve gotten into online book buying, Kindle app on my Android tablet. Downloading html novels from Baen.
Ann Bishop’s series she is currently publishing is pretty good. Earth like world, but with a big hitch. There is more personality work than the average sci-fi series, there are werewolves, earth furies, water spirits, even vampires, tho not bloodthirsty monsters.
I’ve enjoyed the series, and if you haven’t gotten into it from the beginning, now there are a dozen or so of them. The supernatural folk are more tied to the earth than the humans, who appear to need supervision to keep them from tearing thing sup.
I’ve been into Tim Powers since his early work, and like all authors, some are better than others. Just ordered his latest book. The one with genies that explains the 20th century was truly great.
Love ALL of Charles Stross’s work, every bit of it. That white violin, that’s an amazing weapon, that can get the wielder as well as the targets. The Elven queen was pretty good as well.
Hammu Rajaneimi’s Jean le Flambeau trilogy, I’m into that on Kindle, my second attempt. If Stross likes it, I keep telling myself it must be good. But it’s pretty hard going to care about the characters, they’re so brittle and inhuman… What the hell is a “gevulot” anyway?, Etc, etc!
Thanks all for all your suggestions. I admit I still read Hamilton’s vampire series, the sex magic isn’t repellent to me, I skip over it, although sometimes it becomes more important to the plot as sex magic seems as realistic as wiccan majic with fires and herbs and salamanders. The Midnight TX stories are OK, tho I enjoyed the Sookie Stackhouse series – well, some of them were better than others. Interesting when her GGGrandfather turned up a Elf.
I’m sure there are great ruins under the Antarctic ice, isn’t that Chthulu’s home turf? Don’t want to visit either pole, ice and winter is better than 95 degree summertime, but only by a tiny bit.
Thanks again for all the suggestions!!
dnfree
@OldDave: Being cheap, I bought the whole set of nine as one book of over 1300 pages, and finished it. The plot was so-so, but I loved the characters and the interactions and that made up for the plot. Also (I mentioned this before), the references to “like Pogo” were what sold me, as a long-time Pogo fan, and I could see the resemblance between Smiley Bone and Albert Alligator.
This shows the resemblance if you don’t know Pogo.
http://geekosity.blogspot.com/2007/07/great-comics-bone.html
Alex
@Frankensteinbeck: Like Black Adder and Baldrick?
normal liberal
@Steeplejack:
Seconded. I wish I could remember who recommended them.
There’s also a companion cookbook-Yashim whips up lots of wonderful food in the novels.
Alex
@Steeplejack: @Chetan Murthy: I’ll have to check those out! Vampire detectives must have a compelling appeal if they even have them on other continents. Also, I would love to see a spinoff that was Vampire Public Defender.
NotMax
@J R in WV
Haven’t read it, but Stross certainly had good things to say about Hammers on Bone.
AThornton
@Frankensteinbeck:
Tolkien said Sam was based on his batman in WW 1.
There’s a lot of WW 1 in LoTR. The Dead Marches with their floating corpses and Mordor itself with its blasted landscape where Sam and Frodo crept from hole to hole to escape detection to name only two.
Major Major Major Major
@J R in WV: “What the hell is a “gevulot” anyway?”
They explain most of this stuff later on in the book.
The word itself is (much like many of the Martian terms) based on Hebrew, in this case the word for iirc ‘border’.
Ken
@Chetan Murthy: As MMMM said, the CS references lighten up as it goes on. They never go away, because – for very good reasons – magicians do not want to work any of the fundamental theorems in their heads.
Related to that, the version of vampirism in The Rhesus Chart is one of the nastiest I’ve ever read.
Sandia Blanca
Jasper Fforde, both of the series mentioned above (Thursday Next, and Nursery Crime)–marvelously inventive.
Ben Aaronovitch, who has updated the police procedural/cozy genre with all kinds of otherworldly creatures.
Diana Gabaldon, author of the wildly successful Outlander books, uses time travel, history, romance, carefully-sourced science, and just plain good writing to hold the reader’s attention for 800 pages at a time.
dm
The cod-math and CS in the Laundry Files books were a part of the fun for me.
I’m tempted to claim credit for recommending both Declare and the Jean le Flambeur books, since I have done so.
Joss Weedon claimed to have never seen Cowboy Bebop before making Firefly, too.
Yes on the Ancillary Justice books, though I do keep finding myself putting them down to read other things.
Things like: The Traitor Baru Cormorant, in which a young woman from a newly-colonized world goes off to the imperial academy. Her first posting is to another just-conquered world, where she uses weapons accounting to destabilize the empire.
Nine fox gambit, and sequels, which is alien while being very human — a young woman field commander, because of her success but borderline heresy, is implanted with the mind of a brilliant, but terrifyingly unstable strategist, in order to solve a thorny problem for the “Hexarchate”. The strategist is playing a very long game, one that the young woman discern, and appts as her own.
If the mental fizz of the Jean le Flambeur books carbonate your brain, definitely check out Nine fox gambit.
dm
Sigh, can’t edit.
Things like: The Traitor Baru Cormorant, in which a young woman from a newly-colonized world goes off to the imperial academy. Her first posting is to another just-conquered world, where she uses weaponized accounting to destabilize the empire.
Major Major Major Major
@dm: I don’t think Bebop and Firefly step on each other’s toes too much; I remember Outlaw Star fans being mad though.
Chetan Murthy
@dm:
Fixed.
dm
@Chetan Murthy: Country? Really? I thought it was all space-faring empire. But I guess you’re right — the voyages are by sea.
The sequel is about to come out. Time for a re-read, clearly. Thanks.
piratedan
also, I don;t know if anyone else has thrown any shout outs to the Thomas Harlan series that starts off with House of Flint set in a future-verse that had the Aztecs and Chinese Dynasties find their way into space and begin the colonization process….
ProfDamatu
@Tony Jay: And that’s pretty much exactly where I stopped reading – well, I gave it a couple more, then bailed. Just not my thing.
I stuck with the Sookie books until the end. Hated the ending, thought there was maybe a bit much of the “everyone wants her” trope in the later books, but it’s a series I still re-read occasionally, when I want a bit of brain candy. :-)
Where's my hammer
While not exactly about supernatural threats, Ian Tregillis’ WWII historical fiction trilogy The Milkweed Triptych is a close parallel.
Bonus: The author is, I think, a [former] colleague of Cheryl Rofer.