The Quick Fire Fantasy Tag

Wonderfully evocative and mythic, set in a medieval Russian village on the depths of winter, Vasilisa Petrovna listens to the fireside legends her nurse tells her and the ancient superstitious rituals – legends and rituals that have been cast aside by the emergence of the Christian Church.

Little does she realise that those stories were in fact true and she about to be swept into the war between Morozko the Winter King and his brother Medved the Bear.

Vasya is a wonderful creation who matures from a terrified young girl to an outcast to a reckless warrior to a fully fledged witch on a par with Baba Yaga. Oh and she has a talking horse, Solovey, the nightingale of the title of the first book.

And the world building is exquisite: the terrors and uncertainty of a world on the verge of modernity, coming to terms with its history and trying to reconcile its past with its present. Added to that, Arden’s language is wonderfully evocative and potent, creating the depths of a Russian winter.

I will always, always recommend Frances Hardinge to anyone: students I teach, their parents, colleagues, friends… strangers in my local Waterstones, going against the recommendation of their own staff. She weaves strange and bizarre narratives with compelling characters, genuinely thoughtful ideas and deeply considered – within robust plots and a sparkling delight in language.

I have heard a lot of love for N. K. Jemisin, but I have never read her. And I do love some urban fantasy so, this is an exciting opportunity.

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

I rarely re-read any books: I don’t know, it feels more like work, more like study, than reading, perhaps. And as an English teacher, I do a lot of studying!

However, one series which, in my reading world is monumental is China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy: Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council. They are not a trilogy in the sense of being continuous but they came as a breath of fresh air devoid of the traditional western medieval monarchist structure and patriarchy. They are rich, potent overtly political (perhaps overly so in places) featuring the Remade, khepri, grindylow, garuda, cactacae, vodyanoi and so many more fantasy races. Genre hopping, they are steampunk fantasy informed by westerns and Moby Dick and detective fiction.

In the world of Bas-Lag, where the novels are set, slakemoths terrorise the night, dimensions and flesh are at least semi-permeable, vast armadas of boats are bound together as a city, machines gain sentience… it is a remarkable chaotic imaginative creation.

The Priory of the Orange Tree is a sprawling fantasy novel with a diverse cast braking down most of the traditions of the genre. Fantasy is full of patriarchs? The Priory has at its centre the Queendom of Inys. Fantasy diminishes its female characters? The Priory abounds in kick-ass dragon-riding female warriors, the Red Damsels of the Priory, magical female assassins, eternal female witches. Fantasy is not diverse? The Priory throws in a range of sexualities, inter-racial relationships and identities.

On top of that, there is a cracking plot: a race against time to discover the secret to repelling The Nameless One, an ancient dragon bound a thousand years ago for just one thousand years – a fact that people seemed to have forgotten.

It’s no surprise to those who follow my blog that I loved this novel – and in fact The Night Circus which preceded it.

She writes so sensuously that it is a real pleasure to read!

With The Starless Sea, she creates a celebration of and ode to books and writing and language – and honey and bees.

Imagine a hidden library containing and perhaps creating all the stories, myths, narratives and legends in the world, (almost) eternal and boundless hidden beneath (or behind or between?) the surface of the earth. And a door painted on the side of a wall could lead you down into it with its own rituals and relics and its dangers.

Delightful novels which could have been in a number of the categories and are just too wonderful not to (very cheekily) mention.

Men who can remember all possible futures, men who slowly transform into stone… and the men who love them.