Reading Recs: Diana Wynne Jones and C.J. Cherryh

[chomiji]

These are mostly for smillaraaq. Somewhere deep in the guts of the Meta Thread from Heck (f-locked, I am afraid), which started out innocently as a notice of a fic posting on my other account and now exceeds 300 posts, she mentioned that she had not read much (or did not recall much) Cherryh, and as CJC is about my favorite SF writer, I felt this needed to be remedied. And when I said so, she said she'd also appreciate recs for DWJ - who is one of my favorite fantasy authors. So, without further ado ... .

Diana Wynne Jones

• Apropos of some of the themes showing up in "Cupidity", I have to rec Fire and Hemlock, which is probably her most complex book. Curiously enough, rushthatspeaks has just written a marvelous essay on this book, but you should on no account read the essay until you are finished with the book.
   
• As smilla is a dog lover, I must rec Dogsbody - and hope that it will not break her heart.
   
• For something much lighter, and very cleverly silly, I recommend Archer's Goon.
   
• Because smilla is something of a gamer, because it has one of DWJ's best (albeit saddest) endings, and because it is a less-well-known book than it deserves, I recommend The Homeward Bounders.
   
• And because it is my favorite aside from those I have recommended, and because it involves a science fiction convention, the Lyke Wake Dirge, centaurs, and Babylon, I recommend Deep Secret

C.J. Cherryh

• As a standalone, as a cool book about martial arts in a fantasy oriental setting, and as CJC's best fantasy, I recommend The Paladin.
   
• As a tough, no-nonsense short series about what it's like to be a cog in the future industrial and military complexes, I recommend Heavy Time and its sequel Hellburner. This will also introduce the Company Wars, the subject of several additional novels.
   
• As either a standalone, or as an introduction to her Compact Space books, I recommend The Pride of Chanur, which is a good example of one of CJC's most famous and durable themes, the human being as the alien. It is also pretty much a space opera, and fun. And if you like it, there are 4 more books in the series. (And Pyanfar Chanur is one of my most enduring POV characters! Gods be feathered, I am that long-suffering Hani ship's captain ... !)
   
• And because smilla likes dark themes about the evils that people do, I recommend Cyteen, with the caveat that the introductory section can be slghtly sticky going as CJC sets up the political situation from the opposite POV of the Company Wars books. These are the Bad Guys of those books, and the book covers themes of identity, what it is to be human, what makes a person him or herself, and what it is like to be brilliant in a world of lesser minds, against a setting where cloning - ranging from production of custom children for the wealthy to supplying slave labor for a developing world (and including the production of attractive "companions" for those who can afford them) - is common. Unsettling and involving.

Enjoy!

Comments

[chomiji]

I'll need to dig out copies of the books and do some scanning. But thanks for the offer!