I’m dying trying to find a good fantasy book that works for a book club. Requirements:
* **Standalone**. (Allowing that sometimes individual books within an anthology have standalone stories, but usually they don’t work well on their own.)
* **Concise**. 550 pages or less.
* **Traditionally-defined fantasy**, if that makes sense. It should be centered around some fantastical things, like: **magic, races, beasts, cultures, planet, history**, etc.
* No speculative fiction that claims to be “fantasy” but isn’t fantastical (most Abercrombie, Gavriel Kay), no mystery novel with a talking octopus in it, no middle-grade fiction with a talking demon, no YA, no urban fantasy, etc. Regular-ish, traditional fantasy. **Nothing against the other stuff, but I want to introduce the group to good, solid sword-and-sorcery type of books.**
* **Not Tigana**. This is always the book suggested. (Already read it, and it’s also not very fantastical.)
Sorry for all the requirements, but appreciate any suggestions!
by daedelous
4 Comments
* If you can get your hands on it, *The Sword of the Land* by Noel-Anne Brennan is one of my favorites. It’s absurdly out of print, though. I treat my copy like it’s made of solid gold, haha.
* It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember loving *Swordspoint* by Ellen Kushner.
* I’d love to recommend some Robin McKinley, but she probably falls too much under the YA category for your tastes.
* *Uprooted* and *Spinning Silver* by Naomi Novik are both great, but again, they might be considered YA. I truly can’t tell anymore.
* *Elantris* and *Warbreaker* by Brandon Sanderson, but I assume if you’re a fantasy fan, you’ve either already read these or have written them off because you don’t like Brando Sando.
* If all else fails, just pick up a Terry Pratchett book at random and have them start reading it.
This is a tough one. Standalone fantasy is hard enough to find as it is; once you start adding additional caveats, you’re in for a world of disappointment (as you seem to have figured out already, since you had to come here for suggestions).
Agree with the other commenter, this is admittedly a tough ask. Most fantasy, unfortunately, tends to be series rather than single books, and wordy. I’m gonna give it some shots, though:
I think I have to throw in _The Hobbit_ by JRR Tolkien. Yes, it fits into longer series, but it can stand on its own. It’s eminently readable, and a classic for a reason. The Lord of the Rings came many years later; this is the book that *made* fantasy a genre.
_The Last Unicorn_ by Peter S. Beagle. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek (Schmendrick the Magician, anyone?) but it’s on just about every short list of the best standalone fantasy books.
_Three Hearts and Three Lions_ by Poul Anderson. Traditional “guy in our world gets transported to fantasy world” story from the early 1960s.
_The Luck of Relian Kru_ by Paula Volsky. It’s been a good thirty years since I’ve read this, but I remember it fondly.
_Stardust_ by Neil Gaiman. A “grown up fairytale,” and not a Disneyfied one, for the most part. The movie adaptation got prettied up and has a Hollywood ending, the book doesn’t.
*The Raven Tower* by Ann Leckie
*City of Bones* by Martha Wells
*Nettle and Bone* by T Kingfisher
*Phoenix Extravagant* by Yoon Ha Lee
*The Forgotten Beasts of Eld* by Patricia McKillip
*The Goblin Emperor* by Katherine Addison
OP, this is what I like too, and I agree it’s a hard thing to find. May I suggest:
The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany
White As Snow by Tanith Lee
A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar