What happens when you start reading mythology when you’re so young that you don’t realize that, although the books are shelved in “non-fiction,” myths aren’t considered “real”? If you’re me, you grow up and start writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, because alternate realities seem just as valid as our consensual world. I think mythology is also why I like reading (and writing) books with characters who are not all human. I didn’t realize it until I finished coming up with my “five books” for this list, but there a lot of non-humans in there, and even the humans stretch the boundaries of what it is to be “normal.”
I wrote...
Aurora Borealis Bridge
By
Jane Lindskold
What is my book about?
Just so you know, this story started inLibrary of the Sapphire Wind…When Peg, Meg, and Teg were summoned Over Where, vast and varied life experience (along with wide reading choices) helped them to adjust to a world where they were the only humans, magic was real, ships could fly, and reincarnation was a fact.
In the company of the “inquisitors,” Xerak, Grunwold, and Vereez, the mentors discovered within the Library of the Sapphire Wind revelations that transformed the young people’s pasts into a tangle of lies and half-truths. But there remain questions. By the time these are answered, the mentors and their young allies will deal with kidnappings, betrayal, arcane artifacts, romantic intrigues, and the inescapable reality that past lives cast long shadows.
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The Books I Picked & Why
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
By
C.S. Lewis,
Pauline Baynes
Why this book?
The entire Chronicles of Narnia were go-to books when I was a kid, but The Voyage of the Dawn Treaderwas a favorite then, and remains one to this day. I loved this book because it wasn’t about war or fighting evil. Instead, it was about exploration, about discovering what wonders might lie over the horizon. Also, Eustace is sucha difficult character, and his growth into someone we can like doesn’t come through miracles or being a Chosen One, but through learning to admit his errors and learn from them. Add in Reepicheep, the universe’s best heroic mouse, and what isn’t there to love?
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The Dragon and the George
By
Gordon R. Dickson
Why this book?
This is the first portal fantasy I remember reading where the people going through the portal were ordinary, believable adults. I first read it when I was in college, and the graduate student protagonists were facing challenges that I knew were coming up for me, which made them all the more appealing. The non-human “outsider” perspective thrust upon Jim Eckert when he suddenly finds himself in a dragon’s body also appealed to me far more than those portal fantasies where the protagonists are automatically hailed as heroes and saviors.
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Nine Princes in Amber: The Chronicles of Amber
By
Roger Zelazny
Why this book?
The entire ten-volume Chronicles of Amber is a portal fantasy in which there is no portal. Instead, the ability to journey between realities (known as “Shadows”) is inherent to scions of Amber, the one reality of which all others are shadows. As is the case in many of Zelazny’s works, the main characters are immortals or the closest thing to them, and they have left echoes of themselves in many realities. I loved the richness of the concept, the mythic overtones and undertones, and how the greatest transformation in the course of the story is in how the characters perceive themselves. At the start, so many are arrogant would-be kings. By the end, they realize what they’re lacking, and that immortal power and pretention are not enough.
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Every Heart a Doorway
By
Seanan McGuire
Why this book?
Even I was very young, every time I read a portal fantasy, I wondered how the kids (because so many portal fantasies are about kids) coped after they were sent back home and had to deal with their ordinary lives. After all, they’d been heroes or saviors or found true love or whatever. Now they had to go back to school and go to bed on time? Seanan McGuire did what I never thought of doing, and wrote a book that addresses this question. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a good tale in its own right, with a cast of lively characters, and an interesting setting. But Every Heart a Doorway is special to me because it addresses that “there’s no place like home” is a lot more complicated than it seems.
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Summer in Orcus
By
T. Kingfisher
Why this book?
So many portal fantasies take place in settings that are a sort of generic Europe. Summer in Orcus is a delight on many levels, but one of the best is that Orcus, where twelve-year-old Summer finds herself after a completely atypical encounter with Baba Yaga, is odd enough that it makes Alice’s Wonderland seem normal by comparison. By the end of her journey through Orcus, Summer finds her heart’s desire. However, it’s nothing like the power, glory, romantic love that are more usual, but something much more deceptive and deep.
