Speculative fiction books/series that deserve more attention

[peterbound]

It's Daniel Polansky (not Polanski) and Harry Connolly (not Connoly). Stephen Blackmoore has actually written four very good UF novels: City of the Lost; Dead Things; Broken Souls; and Mythbreaker—the first three are part of his "LA noir" series. [He's also written a stupid space opera and a couple of novellas not worth mentioning.] I concur with your recommendations re all of the above except for Connolly's kickstarter fantasy. And I liked Belcher's urban fantasy Nightwise at least as much as his Golgotha books.

 

I was typing that list in the back of a fire truck, on the way back from a call on my fucking iPhone.  Thanks for the breakdown of my spelling mistakes.  Gezus. 

 

Myth breaker was fucking idiotic, so i chose not to include it.  

 

Nightwise was great, although I felt like he was trying a little too hard to channel some Mike Carey/Hellblazer. 

[Puntificator]

Thanks for the breakdown of my spelling mistakes.  Gezus. 

 

Myth breaker was fucking idiotic, so i chose not to include it.  

 

Nightwise was great, although I felt like he was trying a little too hard to channel some Mike Carey/Hellblazer. 

I wasn't doing a breakdown of your spelling mistakes, or I would have corrected the rest of them, like the misspelling of Rachel Aaron. I was only correcting the names of the authors who had written books I liked, and it was for the sake of other posters who might want to actually find their books. Places like Amazon can get led astray by a search that's off by even one letter. Other than this, I don't care how you spell, as long as I can understand what you're saying.

And whatever you may have thought of Mythbreaker, there were three other relevant Blackmoore novels, but you said he had published only two; for the sake of clarity, you should've mentioned which two books you actually liked and were recommending. 

[voodooqueen126]

I can't believe that no one seems to have mentioned the Obernewtyn Chronicles yet.

I just finished reading the final book this afternoon.  Started reading it last night and barely slept or ate till I finished.

The journey that began before I was born, that I began in primary school, is finally over.

[Bjornbert]

I second the Unwrapped Sky reccomandation. Brilliant book. Can't wait for the sequel

The City of Stairs needs more attention. It's really popular around some circles, but everybody should talk about it

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

On what basis do you call it Steampunk? 

I mean, the narrow definition of Steampunk is a pseudo-Victorian Britain (or at least pseudo pre-WWI Europe) where coal-powered technology has enabled greater technological development than occurred in real life. It's also heavily into cosmetic attributes such as airships, goggles, pistons, and leather coats, and likes to think of itself as reviving old-school science-fiction adventure stories of the pre-Golden Age type (in reality, H.G. Wells would have a hard time recognising the sub-genre, but I digress).

Perdido Street Station is very definitely secondary world, features demons and other alien critters, plus some deus ex machina in the form of Giant Spiders. It's also entirely urban. So why not call it urban fantasy instead? Or why not just call it Speculative Fiction, since it prevents these stupid classification arguments from arising in the first place. If you do call it Steampunk, does it belong to the Science-Fiction genre or the Fantasy genre, or is it outside them both (since you are so adamant that we cannot use an evil umbrella term to link these genres up).

RBPL,

Exactly.  

PB,

What's wrong with using the umbrella term "Speculative Fiction" or "Spec Fic"?  I sincerely do not understand your objection.

[Astromech]

I second the Unwrapped Sky reccomandation. Brilliant book. Can't wait for the sequel

The City of Stairs needs more attention. It's really popular around some circles, but everybody should talk about it

City of Stairs was very well-received and will probably be talked about more with the release of the second book in that series, City of Blades in January. Robert Jackson Bennett deserves more praise. Hopefully this current series leads to new readers and fans.