Male & Female Authors
A few days ago, Kate Elliott and Katherine Kerr both posted on their LJs about women and fantasy. Now, gender issues aren't perhaps my favourite issues, but this time the subject caught my attention because I do think we've seen a frustrating development of fantasy in the last decade. Male writers write more and more "macho" stuff (gritty, violent
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I always look at books in terms of Venn diagrams. Where the taste of two people meet isn't always obvious.
The reasons you like ASoIaF might not be the same reasons I have. Therefore, when I say book X is like A Game of Thrones, I might be saying that it has lots of swear words, whereas you might think my recommendation means that it's full of descriptions of feasting :)
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Its absolutely true that any book recommendation really needs to be followed with an explanation of why you like a certain book and it is particularly true for ASoIaF.
Case in point, I always say I read it _despite_ the fact that no character is safe, not because as most others say. I read it for the character-driven story that combines so well with the world-building, I read it for the magical/supernatural aspects (not in spite of, as others would say) and I read it for the tragedy and romance.
I find it hard, though, to see why something like Deverry (at least the first quartet) wouldn't appeal to most ASoIaF-readers, however.
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The inclusion of romance in my own first novel was a complete accident -- a necessary plot point as far as I was concerned. But because of it, I ended up with far more female readers than male. And this despite the fact that I thought I was writing for boys!
I liked Deverry well enough, but never loved it. It's far, far too long since I read any of the books to understand why, however :(
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