Hello again, it’s been a while I know.
There seem to have been a flood of decent debut novels recently. Well ok, flood is probably an exaggeration. I seem to have noticed some very good debuts, that are much better than you’d expect. Try some of these on for size. Something they all have in common is something of the Gormenghast, I think - occupying the more fabulous end of fantasy (no heroes here) but with a kind of mix of compassion and cynicism that I suspect is very hard to pull off as an author.
Scar Night, by Alan Cambell is a case in point. This is an excellently dark and rather trippy novel with some appropriate perverse and scary characters, beautifully rendered on a grotesque city.
The sequel I found initially disappointing, but I think I was expecting too much from it in some ways. It continues the weirdness of the original world, and is in much the same vein.
Anyway, highly enjoyable.
This one, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susannah Clarke, is even better. It has a unique tone to it - Lewis Caroll does Gormenghast, perhaps. It’s very English, and very very well written.
This novel is going to be classified as ‘fantasy’, which seems to be the end of a novel for some critics, which is unfortunate. Some of the finest writing in the language is in this genre, and the best (as with the best of all genres) transcends it’s genre.
I’d recommend this book to anyone.
I’ve not read this one yet (is this cheating?). It’s sat there waiting for me to finish the Dark Tower novels by Steven King. Those are great too, but hardly Debuts.
Anyway, The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch, looks like a real winner.
I’m cheating a bit here - this isn’t exactly a debut, it’s China Mieville’s second novel. However, Perdido Street Station is superb, as is pretty much everything else China Mieville has written.
If anything I think the sequel, The Scar is even better.
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