There was the one pretty fucked up Ship Mind in surface Detail that possessed people who we "into it"It was still considered fairly fucked up
And even they were ultimately a fairly moral person, just one who was very, very clear from the outset that they were a horrible monster because why would you make a warship to be anything else? (The culture dosent name their battleships things like Murderer-class or Abomination class in the case of that character for jollies -it's a reflection of what they actually think of having battleships). But he's very careful to undoe any actual damage he might inflcit to innocents, and protect people under his charge
Surface Detail remains probably my outright favourite, but Excession & Look to Windward are also amazing.
There's a line somewhere that for unclear reasons humanoids are just the most common phenotype.
Remember also that the Culture wasn't 'human' founded. It was founded by a dozen or so races that were all humanoid and part of the initial Culture thing was all of them altering their genetics so they could interbreed. Banks doesn't really dwell on the differences from human very much. The majority of characters in Hydrogen Sonata are vaguely reptilian but it's mentioned once or twice and then just sort of moved on from because it isn't really important.
It's important to the extent that they weren't part of the genetic engineering that makes them part of the Cultureture in terms of being mutually sexy. Like, it's not just about being able to physically reproduce, but the behavioral side as well.
There was the one pretty fucked up Ship Mind in surface Detail that possessed people who we "into it"It was still considered fairly fucked up
And even they were ultimately a fairly moral person, just one who was very, very clear from the outset that they were a horrible monster because why would you make a warship to be anything else? (The culture dosent name their battleships things like Murderer-class or Abomination class in the case of that character for jollies -it's a reflection of what they actually think of having battleships). But he's very careful to undoe any actual damage he might inflcit to innocents, and protect people under his charge
Surface Detail remains probably my outright favourite, but Excession & Look to Windward are also amazing.
I mean with a name like Failing Outside Normal Moral Constraints
There was the one pretty fucked up Ship Mind in surface Detail that possessed people who we "into it"It was still considered fairly fucked up
And even they were ultimately a fairly moral person, just one who was very, very clear from the outset that they were a horrible monster because why would you make a warship to be anything else? (The culture dosent name their battleships things like Murderer-class or Abomination class in the case of that character for jollies -it's a reflection of what they actually think of having battleships). But he's very careful to undoe any actual damage he might inflcit to innocents, and protect people under his charge
Surface Detail remains probably my outright favourite, but Excession & Look to Windward are also amazing.
I mean with a name like Failing Outside Normal Moral Constraints
One of my favorite things about Surface Detail is on how many levels is title works.
FONMC is a jackass on the surface, but actually a fairly stand up person when you get past that, if an aggressively abrasive one. The main plot can be argued to be surface detail to a very clever bit of Culture fuckery. Ledej is so much more than her Tattoos. Veppers is totally incapable of looking past the surface of things
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I'm about halfway through Harrow the Ninth and it's wild to me how easily I've been made to care about these books.
They feel completely effortless, like Muir is writing with a casual flick of the wrist, but they're somehow seeping into all the nooks and crannies in my brain.
There was the one pretty fucked up Ship Mind in surface Detail that possessed people who we "into it"It was still considered fairly fucked up
And even they were ultimately a fairly moral person, just one who was very, very clear from the outset that they were a horrible monster because why would you make a warship to be anything else? (The culture dosent name their battleships things like Murderer-class or Abomination class in the case of that character for jollies -it's a reflection of what they actually think of having battleships). But he's very careful to undoe any actual damage he might inflcit to innocents, and protect people under his charge
Surface Detail remains probably my outright favourite, but Excession & Look to Windward are also amazing.
I mean with a name like Failing Outside Normal Moral Constraints
One of my favorite things about Surface Detail is on how many levels is title works.
FONMC is a jackass on the surface, but actually a fairly stand up person when you get past that, if an aggressively abrasive one. The main plot can be argued to be surface detail to a very clever bit of Culture fuckery. Ledej is so much more than her Tattoos. Veppers is totally incapable of looking past the surface of things
Also it was nice to scratch an iterative hero and find a favourite old sociopath
Well, I finished up The Left Hand of Darkness, and was eventually glad to have started it. About halfway in, it really did pick up quite a bit and felt like it wasn't just meandering anymore. I do get how all the rest of the stuff could be rewarding for a re-read, now that you've read it once and understood more about the people of their world and their culture. It would no doubt fill in nooks in crannies in that understanding. I'm not sure I'll ever do that, but I can understand why it's there.
At some later point, I'll hit up The Dispossessed on initiatefailure's and credeiki's recommendation.
I moved on to Mary Roach's latest book, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. Its topic is the "curious science of human-wildlife conflict." I have read every other one of her books and have never been disappointed. Her writing style makes all kinds of weird or gross topics a pleasure to read.
Had a good time finishing up The Merciful Crow recently, some really solid YA that does a good job of establishing an interesting world with believable stakes without getting super bogged down. And also there's tooth-based magic spells and mammoth-rider. It's a good time if also a bit heavy in terms of content, since it's about a woman from an oppressed underclass fleeing murderous racists during a horroble thousand-year plague.
Had a good time finishing up The Merciful Crow recently, some really solid YA that does a good job of establishing an interesting world with believable stakes without getting super bogged down. And also there's tooth-based magic spells and mammoth-rider. It's a good time if also a bit heavy in terms of content, since it's about a woman from an oppressed underclass fleeing murderous racists during a horroble thousand-year plague.
Sci Fi is going in some weird directions.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Anybody got recommendations for new horror? Or even just new-ish horror authors of the last decade or so I might not have heard of?
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey springs to mind. It would be more of a suspense/thriller if it were a movie but really feels like a very human horror novel.
Anybody got recommendations for new horror? Or even just new-ish horror authors of the last decade or so I might not have heard of?
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey springs to mind. It would be more of a suspense/thriller if it were a movie but really feels like a very human horror novel.
I actually bought that one yesterday. A coworker is a beta reader for them and recommended me their upcoming Just Like Home, which I pre-ordered on the basis that I enjoyed Magic for Liars but felt like it was a bit rough around the edges and I'm told Gailey's prose has improved leaps and bounds between that and Echo Wife with Just Like Home being even better.
Went back and finished The Afghanistan Papers. I had read half of it last summer but needed to take a break from the subject, as I had been reading about nothing but Afghanistan for a few months as that war reached its dramatic climax.
It's a pretty amazing work of journalism. I have a generally negative view of the Washington Post, especially regarding their foreign policy stances, but this book is the kind of reporting I wish we had seen more of over the last 20 years. It's almost entirely from the American perspective, so it's not a good book from which to learn about Afghanistan itself or the conditions on the ground there during the war. But as a documentation of the incredible dishonesty, incompetence, brutality, and general malfeasance of the US government it is indispensable. By repeatedly suing the US government, the WaPo team behind the book gained access to all sorts of previously classified documents, and those documents consistently demonstrate that the Bush and Obama administrations constantly lied to the public about pretty much every aspect of the war. The Obama admin was actually the worst in this regard, not because the Bush team was more intrinsically honest, but because the war was going so badly during the Obama years that publicly misrepresenting it as a success required a pathological hatred for the truth. This was as true of Obama himself and civilian officials (e.g. the State Department) as it was of his generals; all would suppress inconvenient data, twist figures, and just generally make statements that they knew for a fact to be false. And not on one or two occasions; there are dozens of examples of officials saying something like "this is a disaster, we are losing horribly" in private and then going in front of reporters the next day and saying "we're winning, everything is going great, we are making progress." "Progress" is the term they loved most, constantly claiming that progress was being made even though the only real progress was that of the Taliban.
The moral of the book is that when government officials say things, particularly regarding issues of war, never ever believe them, regardless of what political party they are aligned with.
One part that I found noteworthy/disturbing: in 2009-2010, the Obama admin tried a new approach to get Afghan farmers to stop growing opium: convince them to plant other crops. The UN released figures at the end of 2010 showing a vast reduction in opium yields; understandably, the Obama administration advertised this as proof of the success of their program. However, the UN later privately admitted - to involved governments, not to the public, that they themselves had been falsifying data for the past two years, and that the opium yields were much larger than their knowingly forged data implied.
I'm quite used to the US government lying constantly, and I'm not so naive as to think that the UN is totally reliable or honest, but I still found this piece of information to be a little surprising and quite upsetting.
Anyway, it's not the first book I'd recommend if someone wants to understand the US-Afghanistan war - Mike Martin's An Intimate War is overall the best for that, in my opinion - but it is an important work of investigative journalism and will go down as a necessary part of the war's history.
edit - also, thought I'd share this hilarious quote:
...the Taliban once sabotaged a bridge in Laghman... US officials were eager to replace it. Within a week they hired an Afghan construction firm to erect another one.
It turned out that the owner of the construction firm had a brother who was in the local wing of the Taliban. Together, they had built a thriving business: the Taliban brother blew up US projects, and then the unwitting Americans paid his sibling to rebuild them.
There's also Sun Down Motel and The Broken Girls by Simone St James.
Wound up reading Sun Down Motel on the plane over the weekend. It was really good. Less straight-up horror (though it's got some firmly creepy bits) and more supernatural-infused mystery. Will have to check out The Broken Girls.
Also check out Entropy In Bloom by Jeremy Robert Johnson and The Cipher by Käthe Koje.
I've read Entropy in Bloom. It was good but I liked his Skullcrack City more. Didn't really care for In the River. But this reminds me I still need to read The Loop, so thanks for the reminder
The Cipher sounds interesting. Added to the list. Thanks!
Unrelated edit:
Anybody else read Tchaikovsy's Eyes of the Void? Toward the end I abruptly realized that the series is The Fast & the Furious crossed with a reskinned Cthulhu mythos.
The main cast are a group of social outcasts who use their skills in fighting, hacking, fancy driving, and being a grease monkey to carry out super-spy missions despite not being any sort of sanctioned government agents (except for the one who is) and are all about Fambly.
All against a backdrop with sorcerers who are driven mad by using their powers; a vast, insane intelligence at the center of (un-)reality; ancient and incomprehensible monsters who destroy other species without apparently even noticing them; mind-control insect aliens; and radially-symmetrical elder things almost as ineffable as the monsters with technology humans can't understand, much less replicate.
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Are there good books to replace reading Harry Potter to kids? My daughter is going to be 5 soon, and I can read her The Hobbit again, and I was debating reading the Potter books, but even though I wouldn't be giving that cunt any money, I still don't necessarily build an enjoyment for the Potterverse.
I was thinking mistborn, or maybe like the Redwall series? It's been so long since I've read any books from before the YA money grab market.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Are there good books to replace reading Harry Potter to kids? My daughter is going to be 5 soon, and I can read her The Hobbit again, and I was debating reading the Potter books, but even though I wouldn't be giving that cunt any money, I still don't necessarily build an enjoyment for the Potterverse.
I was thinking mistborn, or maybe like the Redwall series? It's been so long since I've read any books from before the YA money grab market.
Terry Pratchett has a couple YA books, some Discworld. The Tiffany Aching books come to mind, at least the first couple. That series grows up and transitions out of YA. Maurice and his Amazing Rodents. Also the non-discworld Nation.
Are there good books to replace reading Harry Potter to kids? My daughter is going to be 5 soon, and I can read her The Hobbit again, and I was debating reading the Potter books, but even though I wouldn't be giving that cunt any money, I still don't necessarily build an enjoyment for the Potterverse.
I was thinking mistborn, or maybe like the Redwall series? It's been so long since I've read any books from before the YA money grab market.
The Potter books seem like something you'd want to wait a bit longer on, to me (Rowlings' issues aside). My wife started reading them to my son around 10. Might be different for different kids, though.
Are there good books to replace reading Harry Potter to kids? My daughter is going to be 5 soon, and I can read her The Hobbit again, and I was debating reading the Potter books, but even though I wouldn't be giving that cunt any money, I still don't necessarily build an enjoyment for the Potterverse.
I was thinking mistborn, or maybe like the Redwall series? It's been so long since I've read any books from before the YA money grab market.
Honestly Percy Jackson is pretty great, and Narnia is still solid. Lots of new series as well. My 5 year old really enjoyed the 5 worlds graphic novel series. Through Libby (local or state library phone/tablet app) you can get a lot as audiobooks as well, to save your throat.
Argh, Narnia. That's a book series I really started regretting reading to my son. Son of the sequels are pretty shoddy, and the writing is even clunkier to the modern ear (and mouth) than Tolkien. And the last book ends with everyone going to Fantasy Heaven and leaving behind one family member forever because she refused to believe.
Are there good books to replace reading Harry Potter to kids? My daughter is going to be 5 soon, and I can read her The Hobbit again, and I was debating reading the Potter books, but even though I wouldn't be giving that cunt any money, I still don't necessarily build an enjoyment for the Potterverse.
I was thinking mistborn, or maybe like the Redwall series? It's been so long since I've read any books from before the YA money grab market.
I give a huge +1 +1 +1 to Ursula Vernon. Her books Nurk, Castle Hangnail, Hamster Princess, and Dragonbreath are prime reading for that age group. They are funny, filled with fun characters, and are just delightful for that age.
My 6 3/4 y.o. is reading the Ralph S Mouse books right now and loves them. Shame there were only three! These days there would be at least a dozen.
In fact, this is probably the main barrier to me starting her on Redwall right now. So many kids books about mice! I don't know how (if) they keep them straight.
I haven't read them yet but apparently they consider Le Guin's earthsea books YA so that might be a good read to? Set's them up to later love a master of fiction
Argh, Narnia. That's a book series I really started regretting reading to my son. Son of the sequels are pretty shoddy, and the writing is even clunkier to the modern ear (and mouth) than Tolkien. And the last book ends with everyone going to Fantasy Heaven and leaving behind one family member forever because she refused to believe.
Eh, they'll forget it soon enough. For us it was like the 3rd or 4th series he got into. A few of the middle books are pretty solid. That said - there's a ton of great options these days in both book and graphic novel form.
Argh, Narnia. That's a book series I really started regretting reading to my son. Son of the sequels are pretty shoddy, and the writing is even clunkier to the modern ear (and mouth) than Tolkien. And the last book ends with everyone going to Fantasy Heaven and leaving behind one family member forever because she refused to believe.
Eeeeh, that’s not exactly how it goes given that ultimately Lewis was basically a universalist, but it seems to read that way from an American Protestant perspective. Basically she was in a “lesser” part because she cared more about lipstick and boys than Aslan. So chauvinist, yep; but not like she was in eternal hell or anything because of it. It’s problematic but in a discussable way? It’s not great but it’s definitely hmmmmm. I can completely understand avoiding them, though.
Argh, Narnia. That's a book series I really started regretting reading to my son. Son of the sequels are pretty shoddy, and the writing is even clunkier to the modern ear (and mouth) than Tolkien. And the last book ends with everyone going to Fantasy Heaven and leaving behind one family member forever because she refused to believe.
Eeeeh, that’s not exactly how it goes given that ultimately Lewis was basically a universalist, but it seems to read that way from an American Protestant perspective. Basically she was in a “lesser” part because she cared more about lipstick and boys than Aslan. So chauvinist, yep; but not like she was in eternal hell or anything because of it. It’s problematic but in a discussable way? It’s not great but it’s definitely hmmmmm. I can completely understand avoiding them, though.
It does set you up for reading "The Problem of Susan and Other Stories" by Neil Gaiman.
Argh, Narnia. That's a book series I really started regretting reading to my son. Son of the sequels are pretty shoddy, and the writing is even clunkier to the modern ear (and mouth) than Tolkien. And the last book ends with everyone going to Fantasy Heaven and leaving behind one family member forever because she refused to believe.
Eh, they'll forget it soon enough. For us it was like the 3rd or 4th series he got into. A few of the middle books are pretty solid. That said - there's a ton of great options these days in both book and graphic novel form.
Since we're talking about book suggestions to read to a kid, I was mainly speaking about how much *I* didn't like having to read it.
I haven't read them yet but apparently they consider Le Guin's earthsea books YA so that might be a good read to? Set's them up to later love a master of fiction
I read them as an adult but I'd certainly put them in the category of "would have loved this in early adolescence.", and since folk were talking about China Mieville recently I'd put his Un Lun Dun in the same spot.
But you nailed it, any road that leads to Le Guin is a good road to get on.
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The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes.
-John Stuart Mill
On that note, I found an old bag with my Belgariad and Malloreon sets. The last of the Malloreon books came out in Swedish as I was in 7th-9th grade, and I loved that stuff.
Also in that bag: a bunch of Nick Carter, Remo Williams and Casca novels I started stealing from my grandfather's shelves when I was 12 or so.
Oh man, Belgariad/Mallorean. That's a blast from the past
Worth noting that some stuff has come out that Eddings and his wife were abusers. So that may sway you against. It's also worth pointing out the books get pretty dark at points, and i suspect they're honestly quite dated in some respects (it's been yonks since i've read them). On the other hand, they are very quippy, and while they might be the tropiest trope fantasty that ever troped, it's at least self-aware and amusing about it.
Both he and his wife are dead as Dillinger, so you can buy their books safe in the knowledge that they aren’t profiting.
I don’t think they get particularly dark, and would say they’re more aimed at a teenage market than adults. The second series, the first book aside, is entirely skippable. Even characters start commenting on how this is all a bit samey.
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And even they were ultimately a fairly moral person, just one who was very, very clear from the outset that they were a horrible monster because why would you make a warship to be anything else? (The culture dosent name their battleships things like Murderer-class or Abomination class in the case of that character for jollies -it's a reflection of what they actually think of having battleships). But he's very careful to undoe any actual damage he might inflcit to innocents, and protect people under his charge
Surface Detail remains probably my outright favourite, but Excession & Look to Windward are also amazing.
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It's important to the extent that they weren't part of the genetic engineering that makes them part of the Cultureture in terms of being mutually sexy. Like, it's not just about being able to physically reproduce, but the behavioral side as well.
I mean with a name like Failing Outside Normal Moral Constraints
One of my favorite things about Surface Detail is on how many levels is title works.
FONMC is a jackass on the surface, but actually a fairly stand up person when you get past that, if an aggressively abrasive one. The main plot can be argued to be surface detail to a very clever bit of Culture fuckery. Ledej is so much more than her Tattoos. Veppers is totally incapable of looking past the surface of things
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They feel completely effortless, like Muir is writing with a casual flick of the wrist, but they're somehow seeping into all the nooks and crannies in my brain.
Also it was nice to scratch an iterative hero and find a favourite old sociopath
At some later point, I'll hit up The Dispossessed on initiatefailure's and credeiki's recommendation.
I moved on to Mary Roach's latest book, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. Its topic is the "curious science of human-wildlife conflict." I have read every other one of her books and have never been disappointed. Her writing style makes all kinds of weird or gross topics a pleasure to read.
Sci Fi is going in some weird directions.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Stephen Graham Jones. Specifically The Only Good Indians
Caitlyn Starlin The Luminous Dead
David Wellington - The Last Astronaut
Grady Hendrix
Paul Tremblay Head Full of Ghosts or Survivor Song
T Kingfisher The Hollow Places and The Twisted Ones
Sara Lotz The White Road
Alma Katsu The Hunger
Adam Neville Last Days
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I've read about half of those. Will check out The Last Astronaut, The White Road, The Hunger, and Last Days. Thanks!
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey springs to mind. It would be more of a suspense/thriller if it were a movie but really feels like a very human horror novel.
I actually bought that one yesterday. A coworker is a beta reader for them and recommended me their upcoming Just Like Home, which I pre-ordered on the basis that I enjoyed Magic for Liars but felt like it was a bit rough around the edges and I'm told Gailey's prose has improved leaps and bounds between that and Echo Wife with Just Like Home being even better.
It's a pretty amazing work of journalism. I have a generally negative view of the Washington Post, especially regarding their foreign policy stances, but this book is the kind of reporting I wish we had seen more of over the last 20 years. It's almost entirely from the American perspective, so it's not a good book from which to learn about Afghanistan itself or the conditions on the ground there during the war. But as a documentation of the incredible dishonesty, incompetence, brutality, and general malfeasance of the US government it is indispensable. By repeatedly suing the US government, the WaPo team behind the book gained access to all sorts of previously classified documents, and those documents consistently demonstrate that the Bush and Obama administrations constantly lied to the public about pretty much every aspect of the war. The Obama admin was actually the worst in this regard, not because the Bush team was more intrinsically honest, but because the war was going so badly during the Obama years that publicly misrepresenting it as a success required a pathological hatred for the truth. This was as true of Obama himself and civilian officials (e.g. the State Department) as it was of his generals; all would suppress inconvenient data, twist figures, and just generally make statements that they knew for a fact to be false. And not on one or two occasions; there are dozens of examples of officials saying something like "this is a disaster, we are losing horribly" in private and then going in front of reporters the next day and saying "we're winning, everything is going great, we are making progress." "Progress" is the term they loved most, constantly claiming that progress was being made even though the only real progress was that of the Taliban.
The moral of the book is that when government officials say things, particularly regarding issues of war, never ever believe them, regardless of what political party they are aligned with.
One part that I found noteworthy/disturbing: in 2009-2010, the Obama admin tried a new approach to get Afghan farmers to stop growing opium: convince them to plant other crops. The UN released figures at the end of 2010 showing a vast reduction in opium yields; understandably, the Obama administration advertised this as proof of the success of their program. However, the UN later privately admitted - to involved governments, not to the public, that they themselves had been falsifying data for the past two years, and that the opium yields were much larger than their knowingly forged data implied.
I'm quite used to the US government lying constantly, and I'm not so naive as to think that the UN is totally reliable or honest, but I still found this piece of information to be a little surprising and quite upsetting.
Anyway, it's not the first book I'd recommend if someone wants to understand the US-Afghanistan war - Mike Martin's An Intimate War is overall the best for that, in my opinion - but it is an important work of investigative journalism and will go down as a necessary part of the war's history.
edit - also, thought I'd share this hilarious quote:
Wound up reading Sun Down Motel on the plane over the weekend. It was really good. Less straight-up horror (though it's got some firmly creepy bits) and more supernatural-infused mystery. Will have to check out The Broken Girls.
I've read Entropy in Bloom. It was good but I liked his Skullcrack City more. Didn't really care for In the River. But this reminds me I still need to read The Loop, so thanks for the reminder
The Cipher sounds interesting. Added to the list. Thanks!
Unrelated edit:
Anybody else read Tchaikovsy's Eyes of the Void? Toward the end I abruptly realized that the series is The Fast & the Furious crossed with a reskinned Cthulhu mythos.
All against a backdrop with sorcerers who are driven mad by using their powers; a vast, insane intelligence at the center of (un-)reality; ancient and incomprehensible monsters who destroy other species without apparently even noticing them; mind-control insect aliens; and radially-symmetrical elder things almost as ineffable as the monsters with technology humans can't understand, much less replicate.
I was thinking mistborn, or maybe like the Redwall series? It's been so long since I've read any books from before the YA money grab market.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
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Terry Pratchett has a couple YA books, some Discworld. The Tiffany Aching books come to mind, at least the first couple. That series grows up and transitions out of YA. Maurice and his Amazing Rodents. Also the non-discworld Nation.
The Potter books seem like something you'd want to wait a bit longer on, to me (Rowlings' issues aside). My wife started reading them to my son around 10. Might be different for different kids, though.
Honestly Percy Jackson is pretty great, and Narnia is still solid. Lots of new series as well. My 5 year old really enjoyed the 5 worlds graphic novel series. Through Libby (local or state library phone/tablet app) you can get a lot as audiobooks as well, to save your throat.
I was into the animorphs probably a little older lol.
The Redwall books might be fine. A 5 year old may not pick up on them being the same story reskinned constantly.
Good night moon of course.
I forget which ones are which but Giaman has some kids books I remember enjoying
In fact, this is probably the main barrier to me starting her on Redwall right now. So many kids books about mice! I don't know how (if) they keep them straight.
Eh, they'll forget it soon enough. For us it was like the 3rd or 4th series he got into. A few of the middle books are pretty solid. That said - there's a ton of great options these days in both book and graphic novel form.
Eeeeh, that’s not exactly how it goes given that ultimately Lewis was basically a universalist, but it seems to read that way from an American Protestant perspective. Basically she was in a “lesser” part because she cared more about lipstick and boys than Aslan. So chauvinist, yep; but not like she was in eternal hell or anything because of it. It’s problematic but in a discussable way? It’s not great but it’s definitely hmmmmm. I can completely understand avoiding them, though.
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It does set you up for reading "The Problem of Susan and Other Stories" by Neil Gaiman.
Since we're talking about book suggestions to read to a kid, I was mainly speaking about how much *I* didn't like having to read it.
My son was fine with hearing it.
I read them as an adult but I'd certainly put them in the category of "would have loved this in early adolescence.", and since folk were talking about China Mieville recently I'd put his Un Lun Dun in the same spot.
But you nailed it, any road that leads to Le Guin is a good road to get on.
-John Stuart Mill
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On that note, I found an old bag with my Belgariad and Malloreon sets. The last of the Malloreon books came out in Swedish as I was in 7th-9th grade, and I loved that stuff.
Also in that bag: a bunch of Nick Carter, Remo Williams and Casca novels I started stealing from my grandfather's shelves when I was 12 or so.
Worth noting that some stuff has come out that Eddings and his wife were abusers. So that may sway you against. It's also worth pointing out the books get pretty dark at points, and i suspect they're honestly quite dated in some respects (it's been yonks since i've read them). On the other hand, they are very quippy, and while they might be the tropiest trope fantasty that ever troped, it's at least self-aware and amusing about it.
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I don’t think they get particularly dark, and would say they’re more aimed at a teenage market than adults. The second series, the first book aside, is entirely skippable. Even characters start commenting on how this is all a bit samey.
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