Baseball Savant emails about his daughter’s inarguably flawless taste in epic fantasy literature:
I know I’ve e-mailed you this but my 14-year old daughter has read the Lord of the Rings trilogy 3x and the Hobbit countless times. She loves them. She basically has them memorized. She collects them if she sees copies with a different cover. It’s crazy.
She read Throne of Bones in a week. After, she read Lord of the Rings again. So I asked her, how does Vox compare to Tolkien.
She hesitated and then said….”Hmmmm, I think Vox got him.”
What I really like about Throne of Bones is that it sucks you in so fast. The beginning pages with the painting! Whoa. Loved it.
That’s very flattering, of course, and I’m delighted to hear it, but honestly, it would be hard for me to disagree more. Here is how I rank some random authors on a broad and indistinct range of criteria I have not fully articulated. In some cases, it’s based more on their peak, in others, on their average. There is no particular rhyme or reason in this regard; even the greatest novelists have their occasional clunkers.
10/10: Immortals
Tolkien, Eco, Tolstoy, Murakami, Hesse, Maupassant, Poe, Wodehouse
9/10: First-Rate
Lewis, Tanith Lee, Dostoevsky, Adams, Gibson, Herbert, Mieville, Stephenson, Balzac, Calvino, Douglas Adams, Lovecraft, Fitzgerald, Soseki
8/10: Second-Rate
Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, Heinlein, Clarke, Barbara Hambly, Arthur C. Clarke, Pratchett, Keillor, Simmons, Zelazny, Howard
7/10: Third-Rate
Robert Anton Wilson, Katherine Kurtz, Ann McCaffrey, Raymond Feist, Eriksen, George RR Martin, Eddings, Card, Poul Anderson
6/10: Fourth-Rate
Gaiman, Asimov, Anthony, Bujold
At my very best, which is to say with ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT, I’d give myself an 8 to date. But I’d regard a 7 as perfectly reasonable, depending upon your tastes. And yes, I can explain each of these ratings in detail, but I’m not going to do so here.
MAILVOX: Just read your recent posts on Gaiman, was curious which book or two you would recommend starting with China Mieville? I have read about his work here and there and it seemed intriguing but never got around to it, am interested now upon seeing that you admire his writing.
I would read The City and the City, followed by Kraken, and then, assuming you enjoyed both of those, read his best, which is Embassytown.