yuletide_coal | The Dirty Energy Source

I'm tempted to recommend you the brick-sized novel I'm thinking of requesting, but I won't do that to you. (Plus it would out me since it's a very small fandom.)

AYRT

Awwww, I hope you get fic for it. :)

I was thinking of reccing Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (I'm not requesting it, but there are requests that I really want to see filled *is greedy but lazy*) but this comment speaks to me. No one should try reading something that long on a deadline.

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-19 18:18 (UTC) - Expand

If you're referring to A Place of Greater Safety, I think you definitely ought to rec it. I don't request it, but I eagerly await fic for it every year (and sometimes Yuletide does deliver).

Redshirts! It's a cheesy Star Trek send-up featuring two best friends who exhibit slashy vibes throughout. Plus there are alternate universes and some 'fated' levels of soulbondiness which are canon in-universe, if you read the codas. Also the audio version is read by Wil Wheaton, which is weirdly meta on its own.

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-19 17:03 (UTC) - Expand

What if my requests are only for one book, but this one book is part of a larger series that you might get hooked on?

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-20 01:38 (UTC) - Expand

Death by Silver - Gay Victorian detectives vs. murderous magical silverware!

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-19 22:21 (UTC) - Expand

The Blue Castle - L.M. Montgomery!

Miserable, repressed young woman finds out she's going to die and then goes out and gets herself the life she always wanted. Incredibly charming story, like the most charming story in all of yuletide, probably.

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-21 13:17 (UTC) - Expand

One of my fandoms is a picture book! I think there are a couple of other picture books out there in the tagset, too. Ultimate shortness!

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-19 16:51 (UTC) - Expand

Tour of the Merrimack. You literally don't need more than the first book even though it's part of a series.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde! Do you like vaguely supernatural Victorian literature? Do you like subtextually (not really even subtextually) gay Victorian literature? Age difference m/m ships? Implications of rentboys? Beautiful, wealthy young men who are actually semi-immortal creatures of debauchery? Really vivid descriptions of jewelry? Opium? You're in luck! The book is public domain, so there are plenty of cheap physical copies on Amazon, and it's available as an ebook on Project Gutenberg.

I'm also really interested in writing for this fandom, so if anyone feels inclined to request it...

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut, a short story by Stephen King! It's in his Skeleton Crew short story collection.

An elderly caretaker of summer homes in Bangor, Maine, tells his friend of Mrs. Todd and her obsession with finding the shortest route between Bangor and Castle Rock, where she and her husband lived for most of the year. Her shortcuts grow progressively shorter, until they do the impossible and shrink beneath even as-the-crow-flies distance. The caretaker notices Mrs. Todd is changing due to her obsession, and he isn't sure it's a good thing. But he finds it fascinating all the same.

One of my personal favorite stories!

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-19 19:13 (UTC) - Expand

The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells. 1897 sci-fi/epic disaster/survival story about the uncontrollable mass panic in Victorian London and the surrounding countryside when Martians attack and start burning people alive. Scary as hell and free on Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36

Chasing Charlie Duskin. It's a coming-of-age type story, a beautifully written one. It's fairly typical YA, to be honest, but I'd recommend it for the writing alone.

Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway!

It's basically about a mild-mannered watchmaker (who was the son of a notorious gangster, but is well out of that life, really) who gets caught up in a plot engineered by various shadowy organizations and a quasi-immortal dictator, all vying for a clockwork beehive with the potential to end the world. Loving sci-fi-tinged riffs on pulpy spy novel clichés ensue.

And it has SUCH a good cast of characters. Among them:

EDIE BANISTER (She is my favourite.), a little 90-year-old lady with a terrible pug, and a not-so-former superspy. (She's bi and has a complicated romantic relationship with the genius mathematician lady who creates the beehive doomsday device. She also has an extensive history of crossdressing for the purposes of missions and foiling plots to take over the world. SHE’S SO GREAT.)

And a motley crew of gangsters, thieves, submarine captains, attorneys, and various others. The language in the book is great fun, too--really verbose in a way that I found delightful (but might be a bit much for some). Basically, it's pulpy and clever while also being a bit philosophical and occasionally heartbreaking in the best way.

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-20 05:02 (UTC) - Expand

Mother of Demons! It is only one book long, it is a fascinating Bronze Age alien society of land squids with interesting personalities and a fascinating gender spectrum, and the humans are only half the story!

Wait wait, don't run away! It has a wide range of fascinating female characters, only a few of which are human, and none of whom are stereotypical. And the plot is exciting, yet has moments of deepness!

And it's available legally free here as part of this promotional zip file:
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/23-TheEasternFrontCD/Baen23-1635TheEasternFrontCD.zip

City of Thieves, by David Benioff. Historical fiction set in WWII during the siege of Leningrad.

Two unlikely dudes get separately tossed into jail, pulled out and tossed together to attempt to find a dozen eggs, of all things, for an army officer, when people in the city are starving and eating boot leather.

Funny, tragic, horrifying, amazing, all at once. Good book, I like it!

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-22 00:28 (UTC) - Expand

The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay is an absolutely gorgeous historical fantasy standalone novel set around Moorish Spain, about three people from vastly different lives thrown together in the face of civil war. Jehane bet Ishak is a pragmatic female doctor, Ammar ibh Khairan is a poet assassin temporarily banished from court, and Rodrigo Belmonte is an exiled captain. The three of them form an intense bond as their respective worlds start to crumble in the face of a looming war. It sounds grim, but there's a lot of love and humanity in it too.

It's beautiful, it's heartbreaking, there's a F/M/M OT3, canon gay, and excellent female characters (bless you, whoever nominated Miranda Belmonte!), it's just a really, really good novel.

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(Anonymous) - 2014-10-21 05:44 (UTC) - Expand

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers!

It's about a society in which books are valued above pretty much everything else. A dinosaur called Optimus Yarnspinner who inherits a perfect story from a deceased relative goes to Bookholm, the capital city of writers, printers, bookbinders, antiquarians and other bibliophiles, to find the author. The city sits on top of the mysterious catacombs that are filled with potentially dangerous creatures and valuable books - books with perfect plots, books that kill, books that drive people insane. This is why Bookhunters, mercenaries who explore the catacombs to return the books to the surface, are legendary figures. And somewhere in the center of the labyrinth lies the castle of the Shadow King...

The book is very descriptive, detailed, and sometimes meanders a bit. It's definitely fantasy, and the style could be mistaken for children's lit, but it's got some gruesome descriptions. The canon lends itself to world-building, either of the city, the catacombs, or the fantastical people that inhabit the world. There are two characters nominated this year: the protagonist, Yarnspinner, and a famous Bookhunter, Colophonius Regenschein.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. It's the perfect antidote for anyone who's getting a little (or a lot!) tired of the grimdark/crapsack trend in modern fantasy. The main character's a half-goblin/half-elf who becomes emperor unexpectedly when his father and several other male relatives die in an airship accident. He hasn't been educated to rule, since he was so far down the line of succession, and now he has to really scramble to do his best despite being unprepared for the whole situation.

The worldbuilding is excellent, the characters are engaging, and the plot managed to surprise me at times due simply to its lack of (melo-)dramatic irony. The main draw, though, as I said above, is that it's a generally kind book; it's not all sweetness and light, but most of the characters--including the main character--try to be good people, and the characters who don't try to be good are nonetheless bad for very human and explicable reasons.