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Here is an interesting comment on io9.com’s piece on Britain’s Best 20 Under 40 Novelists:

I really, really enjoy China Miéville, but it seems sad to me that he is one of the UKs best writers under 40. He’s quite good, but I wouldn’t even put him on my top 10 sci-fi writers list. Additionally, the New Yorker did include people who write good genre fiction. Silly Telegraph…wait, it’s just the Telegraph? Wake me up when Granta puts out their new one.

link: Heads up, New Yorker! Here’s a “writers under 40″ list that includes SF authors

I’ve heard of 7 out of the 20 not too bad considering that i don’t pay attention to the lit fic side of the fence very often. But this comment amused me and confirmed some things I’ve been thinking about reading in general:

Who you read is generally more important than what you read if you want to have a conversation about it.

Don’t believe me? See how several blogs always mention the same books, which is odd really considering the thousands of novelists they could be talking about. Now that isn’t to say that you can’t find reviews of others books and you can if you hunt down and around but generally if a novel is being talked about you want in. And if you try something different then you have to be very persuasive. Everyone wants to be in rather than on the outside – that’s where the spotlight is after all.

Seemingly The Telegraph didn’t convince the above commentator that their list was on par with Granta’s. Not that Granta has ever got my pause raising from their list when I was more into lit fic than I am now.

I’ll honestly say that China isn’t the world’s best storyteller and might not give you a characters emotional journey but that isn’t the point of what he is writing. He’s folding and unfolding ideas in front of you so you can think about things differently.

And it seems that:

‘London-as-a-magical-undeworld setting has been done well, done often, has more or less run its course.

The quote is pulled from a ‘meh’ review of Kraken, as it happens, from the lastest SciFi Now.

So anyone who is half-way through writing an urban fantasy tale in London needs to stop now. Well not Mike Carey and Kate Griffin who both have series to finish. And it’s all Neil Gaiman’s fault anyway for writing Neverwhere and China really should have stopped with Un Lun Dun in that case.

The reviewer is assuming that everyone has read all those books, and if they have do you think might like the idea of London and want to read more about it as a magical place? I’ve read all but that Gaiman (shame on me) and each treats it differently and I’ve enjoyed all of them. But each of them are different in their way. As long as London is there we are going to get stories about it but it’s not going to be the same London.

But maybe Mark Charan Newton is right:

Enough of this Urban Fantasy malarkey, because I’m now interested in Rural Fantasy.

link: Rural Fantasy

There is even a list:

I’ve compiled a starter list of Rural Fantasies (both adult and children titles), for anyone interested in reading more – and it’s worth adding that this isn’t a comment on quality either. I’ll edit this post continually, adding more titles, so do pop further suggestions in the comments section

link: The Rural Fantasy Reading List

I wonder if any of the readers that have read any of the Urban Fantasy mentioned or the Rural Fantasy List have this complaint:

While browsing a few of my fellow authors’ critiques, I happened to notice a rather disturbing trend in the commentary. Namely, that a lot of the criticism boiled down to the following statement:

“He’s not George R.R. Martin/Joe Abercrombie/Gene Wolfe/China Mieville.”

link: Sam Sykes » Voices of the Dead

And it gets worse when you consider:

I mostly concur, Sam. It’s an especially unhelpful comparison when it’s “[debut author in their 20s] is no [experienced author who's been doing this for years or decades].” Christ, find some relevant comparisons or cut the poor bastards (or maybe that should be ‘us poor bastards’) some due slack.

link: Sam Sykes » Voices of the Dead – a comment by Scott Lynch

And:

Never reveal your age if you’re under thirty. I don’t get it, and in discussion with other youngish authors, this isn’t an uncommon trend – people rarely take you seriously when you’re an author in your twenties. It’s absurd that anyone under that age should have the right to be published. What were you thinking? Because it’s not as though you sacrificed years of your life to get where you are, youngster. Oh hang on.

link: A Year Later – a post by Mark Charan Newton again

I guess this all goes back to hype:

But sometimes a good book is just a book that works on its own terms. To use Nights of Villjamur as an example I was really worried that their would be a anti-hype backlash against it when I’d finished it and compared other reviews to mine. It’s a good but – it’s not going to change your life – you aren’t going to wanting your money back at the end either. At least I hope not. But if you expect it to be the next blockbuster we’ve given you the wrong impression.

link: Comment: When a good book is just a good book… – NextRead

And I even said it in my review:

So can’t say it’s perfect and I wouldn’t want to. He’s only two novels into his career (this is his debut with a mainstream publisher) and you can tell that Newton is going to stand out. He’s mindful that he needs to create texture and colour to his characters and give them a reason for moving on the page. He’s also put thought into the environment they inhabit. And he knows the journey he needs to take his characters. All qualities that can only grow with experience and further novels.

link: Review: Nights of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton (UK Tor) – NextRead

It’s odd really. We have to hype new writers. We have to push them out otherwise how else are they going to reach readers? But at the same time it seems that everyone is overly defensive of authors they like. I’ve been a bit protective of China in this post for example. And lots of people are protective of the positions of their favourite authors being ‘the best’.

I really don’t give a flying monkeys about who is the best of anything. I can give you a list of authors that are worth reading in my opinion and I can explain why. I can give you a list of what their strengths and weakness are. But I wouldn’t want them to get the noose of ‘best’.

When done right they are storytellers – they are idea explorers – they show us a different side to human nature – they are escapism – they are pleasure givers but it’s all a matter of taste really and people that think about what they are going to say about a book after it’s read are probably more open to the experience than people that just want one page to lead to the next and feel like they’ve had their monies worth?

Though sometimes I wish I wasn’t such an open reader. The amount of books that need to talk to me is getting quite loud now…

… though I do wonder if it’s a good idea to be cheerleader and critic – pushing goods out that you are yet to test? Maybe we all need to calm down a little and go for hand selling more the goods after inspection and pushing the unopened parcel less?

Though this won’t help raise awareness of those authors that don’t get mentioned a lot so maybe I and my fellow bloggers need to be casting that net out a little wider? Just a thought