Five Bubble Book Club discussion

A few ideas in our previous year-end polls

Elantris (Elantris, #1)
Pandora's Star
The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1)
The Name of the Rose
The Given Day (Coughlin #1)

Some series starters on my shelf:

The Final Empire(Mistborn #1)
by Brandon Sanderson

Six of Crows (The Six of Crows Trilogy #1)
by Leigh Bardugo

Sins of Empire (Gods of Blood and Powder #1)
by Brian McClellan

The Physician (Cole Family Trilogy #1)
by Noah Gordon

And of course, this one is always there if we are feeling it.

The Eye of the World (The Wheel of Time #1)
by Robert Jordan

Long Series Starters in Science Fiction:

- The group already started Peter F. Hamilton's Commonwealth Saga with Pandora's Star (for "Defence"). If you've finished that duology and liked it, I'd suggest going on to his The Dreaming Void trilogy.

- The group has picked up Iain M. Banks's The Culture series in volume 2 with November's The Player of Games (for "Election"). One can either go back for the first in this series of independent novels with Consider Phlebas, move on to the next, Use of Weapons, or to any other volume (my wife loves Look to Windward). Fair warning, in most of these books Banks tries hard to kick you in the gut with a twist ending.

- James S.A. Corey has written an outstanding series of long books: The Expanse series, starting with Leviathan Wakes. I've only read the initial trilogy of the nine planned volumes (8 in print now), but Corey's writing could described as "Peter F. Hamilton-light": you get the same multiple strands of story weaving together, just fewer of them.

- C.S. Friedman's wonderfully long and complex coming-of-age/adventure/cyber-mystery story, This Alien Shore, becomes a duology on Election Day 2020 with This Virtual Night. I've no idea how the sequel will go, but I've preordered it, and can wholeheartedly endorse the initial volume as a long book in its own right.

Long Series Starters in Fantasy:

- Guy Gavriel Kay's magnificent duology The Sarantine Mosaic opens with the relatively self-complete novel Sailing to Sarantium, describing the journey of a mosaicist to an alternative Byzantium. After reading it's second volume (Lord of Emperors), you're all set to understand the echos of the past that appear in the rest of Kay's recent fiction: a very loosely connected series of novels that ricochets across Europe from England to the Balkans and forward in time to the Renaissance. In Lord of Emperors you will also have read the best fantasy treatment of food and of cooking as art that I've run into. Kay's work here is perhaps best described as alternative history/magical realism: the magical element is minimal in them, but essential.

- Mary Stewart's long Arthurian trilogy starts with The Hollow Hills. I haven't read this since my teens, but its magnificent imagery has stuck with me. It set a high bar for Arthuriana, that I don't think has been bettered.

- That said, Stewart's work may be rivalled by Jack Whyte's longer 9-book series The Camulod Chronicles, starting with The Skystone. Trick is, Whyte tells the story of Arthur as pure historical fiction! That he can explain the magical elements of the Arthur saga in completely real-world terms is amazing. (But that same fact makes this series a marginal selection for an SFF reading group.)

Long Single Books:

- Newly back in print is John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting. This is a incredible book of politics, intrigue, warfare, vampirism, magic, and much else in late Medieval Europe. In case you hadn't guessed, this book is just chock full of ideas expressed in beautiful prose. No audiobook production is licenced for North America (yet?), but at least we now have an ebook!

- Freedom and Necessity by Steven Brust and Emma Bull is another long, spectacular work of politics, magic, and intrigue, set in the mid-1800s. This one is an incredibly chewy work by two excellent writers. Again, sadly, there is a recent ebook (and fairly inexpensive), but no audiobook.

- Ventus by Karl Schroeder is one of the best post-Singularity novels I've ever read. It's almost "Sword and Singularity" at the start, but graduates to full-bore "New Space Opera" by the end. It's an outstanding and entertaining work.

I'm going to leave it there -- these are may more, both long and series starting, but these are among the very best I've read.

Thank you Robert for the new possibilities.
Just for some context: this year we have read 5 fantasy books and 6 sci-fi.
For the holiday long read, we have done one fantasy two years back (Jonathan Strange) and one sci-fi last year (Dune).
The pendulum seems to be pointing to a fantasy book this time, but we will see.

I'll offer one more fantasy option then: God Stalk is a moderate-length book (~271 pages) that begins P.C. Hodgell's long Chronicles of the Kencyrath series.

These books have detailed world-building, careful (often surreally imagistic) wordsmithing, delightfully flawed characters, and imaginative plotting. They are not your normal Tolkienesque quest story, but a bildungsroman working gradually toward an apocalyptic ending.

Fair warning: this series isn't complete; although, I think Hodgell is closer to that than I had expected. She's said online that she's working on the 10th book now and simultaneously plotting the finale.

I've been following this series since 1982, and it has not grown old on repeated rereadings. I'm delighted that that there are now ebooks and audiobooks available for the series! If you want a low-investment single book that could open up a larger body of work if you like it, then I'd recommend this one.