The most recommended saga books

A chronicle of four generations of women descended from Louisiana slaves. Grapples honestly with the turmoil within America’s Black community over issues of skin color.

This saga shows that while families can be longtime sources of anguish in our communities, they can also be long-term resources—and as I have experienced, sometimes the best and most sustainable resources—for challenging common assumptions about one another and growing beyond them.

Leave it to literary genius, Noire, to take the best of both literary worlds—street lit and erotica—and intertwine them into several tantalizing literary quickies. How can the result not be one of the best takes on urban love, especially when she curated some of the best in the business to contribute to the anthology?

Even though The Lord of the Rings is recognized as the classic of high fantasy, Tolkien himself was deeply influenced by Eddison’s book. It is here that the first concepts of the hero’s journey, while encased in a thrilling saga of protagonists against impossible odds are sown, and of the great worldbuilding that encapsulates such an epic.

Even though the story itself (a never-ending war between the honorable demon princes and an immortal witch king) is pure simplicity, Eddison added an amazing twist: he wrote it in 16th-century English. If you can imagine William Shakespeare writing Lord of the Rings, then this is it.

Some people may get turned off by the archaic prose, but once you get into it, the novel becomes a highly enjoyable romp, filled with action and adventure.

Thomas’s 2015 novel revolves around Eileen Leary, a tough Irish American nurse yearning to break the middle-class mold in which her life is set when her husband, Ed, a neuroscientist, develops early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Thomas describes his slow deterioration and the ravages inflicted on Eileen and their son, Connell, in drawn-out moments and exquisite detail. In an especially harrowing scene, Eileen stays up all night watching her once brilliant husband struggle with the simple task of tabulating the final grades in his community college class.

Though the narrative sometimes gets bogged down in minutiae, it is as unsparing an account of Alzheimer’s as I have ever read.

This book, from a fin de siècle Scotsman, is a classic of literature in its own right. It contains a perfectly brilliant reading of the sagas as well as other works of medieval literature. It has never been surpassed and is perhaps unsurpassable. Every sentence is an elegant gem, with one nonobvious insight after another. He just nails it. Ker reminds you that literary criticism need not be pretentious and badly written as it so often is. Treat yourself. 

I don't remember how I found this series, but I was immediately taken with the fast-paced romance stories featuring tough-as-nails women who find dragons as their mates. It’s tough to combine blood-thirsty and sexy, but somehow she pulls it off while mixing the species. Of all the series I’ve come across this one probably has the most raw sex, but it seems to work and isn’t too much to take. Sex is such a tricky thing in novels., it really needs to be done well or it’s a distraction. Again what I like in this series, is that the women drive the narrative. 

This book has been central to my research on women in Science Fiction although I am not a Horror fan.

Given how often women are thrown through gendered-based violence in different genres, Clover’s study brings many useful points for not only Horror itself, but also thrillers, action films, and Fantasy.

It investigates different facets of women’s representation and their fight against sexualized trials. My favorite chapters are those on the body in the slasher film, the discussion on women’s stories versus men’s stories, and the revenge narrative.

E.R. Eddison was an early fantasy novelist best known for The Worm Ouroboros, but like Poul Anderson, he also took a serious interest in bringing the ancient stories of the North into the modern age. Styrbiorn the Strong was his effort to capture the adventure of the old sagas by recreating a presumably lost full-length saga about the titular character. With Styrbiorn the Strong, Eddison built a convincing and original saga-inspired story from the fragments that exist about him (remaining references to Styrbiorn exist in Flatey Book, Eyrbyggja Saga, and the Heimskringla). The book was originally published in 1926 and features the sort of verbose and eloquent language typical of novels of that era, which itself is very un-saga-like, but is a joy to read. 

Not knowing Donal is an Irish man’s name, I devoured this story about four generations of Irish women, not nearly appreciating the author’s finesse in capturing a feminine perspective.

It’s another underdog story: Widowed Eileen is an outcast in her small town and has been disowned by her wealthy family. Her child Saoirse grows up in the shadow of Eileen’s so-called shame, and although they are decent people, their precarious social status creates obstacles and even danger outside the haven of their home. At first, Eileen’s harsh verbal exchanges with her mother-in-law offended me, but the humor and affection behind their tongue-in-cheek conversation became a delight.

Ryan gives us the flavor of Irish speech and culture, but more than that, he gives us four women we worry over and love.

While walking through a Barnes and Noble some thirty years ago, I stumbled upon Anthony Trollope—probably because he took up about three whole shelves. Curious, I chose one of his fifty novels and then another and another until I concluded that he is undoubtedly one of the most underrated authors in the English language. Both of his series—The Chronicles of Barsetshire and The Pallisers—make Downton Abbey look like upstairs/downstairs-lite. Highly recommended!