Friday 11 October 2013

Recommended Reading by Professionals... with Violette Malan

In this series, I ask various publishing professionals (including authors, bloggers, editors, agents etc.) to recommend 2-3 authors or books they feel haven't received the recognition they deserve.

Today's recommendations are by Violette Malan. Violette Malan lives in southeastern Ontario with her husband. People tend to ask her about the choreography of stripping – and she'll answer – but most of the time she's the author of the Dhulyn and Parno novels, and the Mirror Lands novels, fantasies available from DAW. You'll find her on Facebook, on Twitter, and check her website.

  1. Howard Andrew Jones - I really enjoyed Jones' Desert of Souls and The Bones of the Old Ones, two novels chronicling the adventures of the scholar Dabir, and the guard captain Asim. First, they're sword and sorcery, my own preferred genre. Second, I felt there was actually a flavour of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin – the intellectual and the man of action, coming together to form the perfect campaigning duo. Third, they're set in the world of the Arabian Nights, one of my favourite story cycles.
  2. Kari Sperring - Think of a cross between Gene Wolfe and Alexandre Dumas, and you've got a fair idea of Sperring's work. Her two novels, Living with Ghosts and The Grass King's Concubine, are compelling, multi-layered and dark. Her worlds are completely imaginary, and yet they're imbued with a subtle familiarity that adds to their complexity. It's not often we can get truly alien perspectives in fantasy, but we can find them here. Not for the faint of heart, but irresistible.
  3. Dave Gross - Gross' Radovan and Count Jeggare novels are set in the Pathfinder universe, though you don't have to be familiar with that setting to thoroughly enjoy them. The series starts with Prince of Wolves, and the latest is King of Chaos, but each is a stand-alone adventure, so you don't have to read them in any particular order. An unusual touch is Gross' use of two first person narrators.  As the pov alternates between the two main characters, we not only get broader story lines, but occasionally different – and amusing – perspectives on the same events.
Stay tuned for the next post where we learn whom David Lomax thinks we should be reading more of!

No comments: