I haven’t done this in a long time, but recently I plowed through a couple of novels that were quite good. If I can increase their PageRank a little, then I’ve done a good deed.
The Broken Sword
My sister loaned me The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson. It was written in around the same literary era as the Lord of the Rings, but it’s much less fluffy. It reads more like a Norse tale.
My favorite part of the book was how Anderson mashes together all sorts of religions into an angsty, cohesive mass. Norse, Greek, and Irish “pagan” spirits are all at play here, along with the Christian “White God”. It’s funny, because as a kid, fantasy that read “too close to the source” (i.e. the characters didn’t seem like they’d wandered onto the set from a modern American city) would immediately turn me off. Now the opposite is true.
If you had to read Norse Myths or any classical mythology in school and you liked it, The Broken Sword is definitely worth sitting down with.
The Broken Sword
Perfume
The other book I wanted to mention here is Perfume, by Patrick Süskind. It’s about an emotionless, nigh-invincible sociopath who has the world’s most refined sense of smell, but who emits no discernible odor himself. I found a tattered copy of this book on my bookshelf, and I have absolutely no clue how it got there.
When I first picked it up, the ‘feel’ of it made me think it was going to be one of those mind-altering classics that you mention in oddball conversations for the next five years. By the time I reached the end, I thought to myself, “that was an extremely well-told story, but that’s about it.”
The plot and the prose are incredibly creative and well-crafted, especially considering that this was translated from the original German. There are a few parts where things start to meander a little, but the advantage of opposable thumbs is that you can completely skip past those sections.
Perfume
If you’re looking for something new and weird to read, I’d definitely recommend either of these books.
