A Look At The Latest In Fantasy
Orson Scott Card has defined fantasy, as opposed to science fiction, as a story about things which couldn’t happen. In other words, there are wonders and magic.
Recently fantasy has had a bit of a growth spurt in traditional Christian publishing, and a few trends are becoming apparent.
First, a category that continues to have success is legend. Robert Treskillard is leading the way with The Merlin Spiral series, a new version of the Merlin and King Arthur story. Following Treskillard’s debut novel, Merlin’s Blade, the second in the series, Merlin’s Shadow released this month.
Sigmund Brouwer also makes use of the same legend in his young adult series Merlin’s Immortals. Book three, Martyr’s Fire, came out this month as well.
Refashioned fairy tales also continue without losing steam. Melanie Dickerson leads the way. In January 2013 she released The Fairest Beauty, a Sleeping Beauty story, and next month The Captive Maiden, a reworking of Cinderella, is due out.
Alternate medieval fantasies seem to be doing well. R. J. Larson and Patrick Carr are two authors with successful series set somewhere else, though the place has a decided medieval feel to it. Carr’s The Staff & The Sword trilogy consists of The Cast of Stones, A Hero’s Lot, and A Draw of Kings due out in January. Larson’s Books of the Infinite include Prophet, Judge, and King.
Dystopian fantasy is a fourth category that traditional Christian publishers are producing, with Jill Williamson leading the way. Her Safe Lands series, set in this world in some imagined future, begins with Captives. Outcasts is due to release in January.
Evan Angler also has a dystopian fantasy series, aimed at a middle grade audience. The Swipe Series consists of four books so far, with Spark launching in November.
Myth is another subdivision of fantasy, and Anne Elisabeth Stengl leads the way in Christian myth with her Tales of Goldstone Woods. An illustrated novella, Goddess Tithe, is due out next month, and Shadow Hand will be available in February.
Donita Paul’s Realm Walker series seems as if it falls within this category as well. The first of the series, One Realm Beyond, will be available in January.
I’ve only scratched the surface of the books that are out or that will be soon. There are fantasies available from independent publishers too, and many more from self-publishers.
I can’t help but think a list like this might be a good starting point for Christmas shopping. What fantasies can you add that people should put on their “buy this for a Christmas gift” list? Which ones would you like to receive? (After you leave that comment, be sure to direct the person most likely to buy you a Christmas present to read Spec Faith! 😉 )
I am a huge Orson Scott Card fan, and have been thrilled by his new series, Pathfinder. The first two books are out–Pathfinder and Ruins. And I hate having to wait for the next book, but must. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves time travel, physics exploration, and deep characters.
Your description sounds like something Card would write based on the things I’ve reading his chapters of Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction.
Are you still writing your fairytale stories, Susanne? I haven’t heard anything about them recently.
Becky
Is there anyone who has read both the Winds of Light and Merlin’s Immortals versions of Sigmund Brouwer’s series? The back copy of the new is identical to the old so why is he rewriting them? It was one thing when they rereleased it as one novel with one new scene added in but this is getting ridiculous.
Hmm, fantasy. Let’s see.
Rachel Starr Thomson is a very underrated author. Her Worlds Unseen books are good high fantasy, if you like the standard type.
For YA, Melissa Turner Lee’s Earth Painter books are good.
For me, a couple of classics are John White’s Archives of Anthropos books, the first being “The Tower of Geburah,” and John Bibee’s The Magic Bicycle.
There’s also some steampunk out there, with books like Crosswind and Armored Hearts.
I guess for myself, I’d wind up getting hard copies of books. I use Kindle heavily, but if I had the room, I’d keep paper copies and make my own library.
David, thanks for these titles. I need to get me a Rachel Starr Thomson book. I’ve enjoyed her blog, so I know she’s a good writer. I’m not a fan of John White’s books though. I thought they were too predictable. The Magic Bicycle. I just saw that on TV last night, I think. It was the name of a company creating . . . some new technology. I think. Wish I could remember what show. Anyway, I’m not familiar with the story, but I wonder if the TV program was purposefully referencing the book. And of course now I wonder why.
Becky
I don’t think it would be, it’s obscure even by the standards of Christian fiction. A boy named John and his old red spirit flyer bicycle have to face off against the spiritual evil behind a new corporation in town. It’s got some vivid, even nightmarish imagery at times, with the evil Daimones as the spiritual power behind Goliath toys dragging people around by the chains on their hearts with hooks, and massive snakes appearing now and then.
Future volumes go into a middle-grade dystopia as Goliath starts to take over the town and even the USA. There’s really not much like it out there.
I would recommend Tales of Goldstone Wood to anyone who loves fairy tales,
Galadriel, I had a hard time placing Tales of Goldstone Wood, but as soon as you said “fairy tales,” I thought, well, sure, since fairies are main players in nearly every book!
But she isn’t trying to rework stories of old the way Melanie Dickerson does (and I don’t remember a single fairy in the books of hers I’ve read). Rather, it seems to me, Anne Elisabeth has created a new myth, much the way Tolkien did, only with fairies. 😉
Becky
I was thinking fairy tales like George MacDonald’s.
I could quibble and say a lot in “science fiction” couldn’t happen either. Leaving aside much in STAR TREK and STAR WARS, for example, in “black boxing” with invented elements and what not, the whole secular genre’s blind faith in naturalistic evolution is fantastic by many a definition of the word, including Mr. Card’s. It simply couldn’t happen. FOOTFALL by Niven and Pournelle is a terrific sci-fi alien-invasion classic, as their THE MOTE IN GOD’S EYE is a classic first-contact novel, but neither could ever happen because neither alien species involved could ever evolve naturally. And an uber-example of evolutionary thinking gone berserk, THE KILLING STAR, can’t happen either, a good thing too as otherwise we’d be facing a galaxy full of creatures much more likely to “do unto us what we’d do to them and do it first” than to greet us in peace.
How about so-called “science fantasy”? It’s not Christian but the Incomplete Enchanter series (Harold Shea, chief protagonist) is a superb example of fantasy where magic works by definable mathematical and scientific laws. I like the concept and it got absorbed into my own eclectic brand of Christian speculative fiction (dulce et decorum, contact me for details).
Well, I guess it depends if you view science fiction as predictive, or more along the lines of “what if?” Usually evolution is used to add plausibility to cool “what if” ideas, more than predicting what’s really out there. You could probably argue that even the sanest “what if?” could never happen. 80s science fiction was full of the idea of moon bases or inhabiting Mars before we got some scale of the difficulty and cost those ideas have.
It’d be nice to have a SF guide, but the big CBA publishers seem to ignore science fiction as a genre these days.
Rebecca,
There are a number of excellent writers out there: Kat Heckenbach, Kessie Carroll, Rebecca Minor, J.L. Mbewe, R.A. Huffman, K.G. Powderly, J.C. Lamont, Jon Saboe, Aaron DeMott, Lars Walker, Robert Don Hughes, Mark Sebanc, Pauline Creeden, Greg Mitchell, and if you don’t mind a self-plug, yours truly. This is the tip of the iceberg; I know there is a plethora of authors out there worth exploring.