Clean Books for Picky Readers: Part 7

    Hi! Yup, three blog entries in one day. Don't be too surprised; I tend to write in bursts when it comes to my blog. In this post, I bring you more of my favorite books! However, because I seem to have lost the file in which I kept my big list of books, my life has gotten significantly more difficult, so we'll see how this goes...

1. The Blue Sword, by Robin McKinley

    This book, like Chalice from an earlier post in this series, has thoroughly won my heart. It is such a good book, with a lovely bit of romance, a lot of swordfighting, and horses! Also, the magic system routinely makes the main characters do things they wouldn't otherwise do, and the results are highly entertaining. I will admit, though, that I didn't like The Kingdom and the Crown (this book's prequel) nearly as much as I like this one. It's still good... just not as good.

2. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, by Patricia C. Wrede

    Patricia Wrede doesn't just write a fantastic blog, she also writes some fantastic books! This series is middle-grade fantasy, with a princess who refuses to live up to the tropes expected of her, a lot of quirky magic items that don't work as expected, and a whole lot of dragons. The antagonists are both ridiculous and threatening, which is a balance that few authors can pull off, and I loved these books so much as a kid!

3. A Matter of Magic, by Patricia C. Wrede

    This book is really just a combination of two books whose titles I do not remember, so it's got two self-contained plot-lines, but both books are quite good. The protagonist is a London street thief who, at the beginning of the first book, has been paid to lift a valuable item from a traveling magician--only this magician isn't just a guy who knows some magic tricks! Naturally, shenanigans ensue.

4. Tress of the Emerald Sea, by Brandon Sanderson

    This is the start of what could become an avalanche of books by Sanderson. However, I will spare you that and simply spend my last two entries on this list with what are, in my opinion, the most natural entry points for Sanderson's Cosmere (which is a set of related worlds, all governed by the same basic magical laws, whose characters interconnect a little from one series to another). The first of these is Tress of the Emerald Sea.

    Sanderson himself has described this book as "The Princess Bride, if Buttercup went looking for Westley after he disappeared", and that description is very accurate, indeed. This is part fairy tale, part pirate story, and the crazy killer oceans and talking rat sure don't hurt!

    My favorite part of this book, though, is the protagonist's sheer practicality and common sense. Perhaps it's because I'm an author, but I get really frustrated with protagonists who overlook the simplest solutions to their problems until the proper dramatic moment, or who make dumb decisions for the sake of the plot (this was one of my issues with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series--the girls would always spend a chapter discussing a dumb idea they thought the boys were going to do and why it was so dumb, and then proceed to follow that dumb idea themselves--and as a result would receive all their actions' terrible consequences, just as one would expect). Tress is probably one of my favorite characters in any book I've read, and is rivaled only by Leo and Rosamund in Jill Bearup's Just Stab Me Now (referenced in an earlier post in this series).

5. Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson

    Though the Mistborn series is not my favorite series in the Cosmere, I can't deny the fact that it is one of the best starting points for anyone new to the cult. In the first trilogy, there are no characters intruding from other worlds whatsoever, and by the time you're ready to read the second trilogy, the idea is that you'll have gone and read some of the books in the rest of the Cosmere first.

    The first Mistborn book is what you get when you cross a heist story with an epic fantasy in a dystopian society. The main character spends the first few chapters in the book as a member of a thieving crew, and the magic system reflects this background in a lot of ways, because all its facets and manifestations in the first book are things that would seriously benefit any thieving crew in real life--things such as being able to manipulate the emotions of others, enhance one's senses or strength, or Push and Pull on any type of metal to send it (or oneself) flying through the air. The other two books in the first trilogy simply build on the aftermath of all that occurs in the first.

    The other wonderful thing about Mistborn is that it is, I would say, Sanderson's darkest series in the Cosmere. Therefore, if you start here and can handle it, you'll almost certainly be able to handle everything else--and conversely, if you start here and can't handle it, there's still a chance that you could get into the Cosmere through a different series that you can handle.

    There you are! 5 more books/series to try out. Hopefully you've found something new to read on this list; if you've got any books you'd like to recommend to me, put them in the comments! I'm always looking for more reading material. :)