2015: Empires, Assassins, and Dead Kings

Overlord posted the list of the 50 best fantasy books released in 2015 at Fantasy Faction today and it made me realize that I have not read any book that has been released since 2014. Aside from Stealer of Flesh from 2012 and The City of Dreaming Books from 2004, the most recent fantasy books I enjoyed are all from way back in the 90s or a lot earlier. I tried reading some others, like Gardens of the Moon, The Lies of Locke Lamora, and Tome of the Undergates, but got bored by all of them very quickly.

Going through a list of 50 books that a group of well read fans of the genre considered the best of the year, you’d expect to find a good number of works worth reading. But the sad truth is that there’s only two among them that at least somewhat caught my attention but also sounded pretty cliched. As far as I am able to tell, the whole fantasy market is currently dominated by stories of assassins murdering kings and emperors and starting a huge succession crisis, and it seems to have been for several years now. And I just don’t care at all for either assassins or court politics.

I always thought I am not asking for much, but stories about exploring ancient wonders and encountering monsters seem to be pretty much gone for the time being. There has been some whispering in the shadows for a while that Sword & Sorcery appears to be in a good position for a comeback, but so far this really does not appear to have materialized at all. Maybe there are some people writing stuff of this kind, but if that’s the case it’s apparently not promoted as such. Trying to find anything of that kind seems to be mostly a very fruitless endeavor. The one honorable mention as an exception to this is William King, who is mostly known for his licensed works for Warhammer. I really should read some more of his books. Stealer of Flesh really wasn’t bad, but it’s very similar to Karl Wagner and I’ve been given priority to the old master for the last year.

2 thoughts on “2015: Empires, Assassins, and Dead Kings”

  1. Hey Yora, not sure if we’ve already mentioned this to you, but you should try Jen Williams’ books (The copper promise and The iron ghost, with The silver tide being published in 16) – I think they fit into your Sword & Sorcery idea (as I understand it)

    1. Oh, somehow that one went past my radar. The Copper Promise rings a bell but somehow I lumped it together with Locke Lamora and Farseer. Looking up the description it does actually sound pretty cool.

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