Dear readers, In elementary school, an equally imaginative pal and I tried to turn recess into a game of Calvinball. That, err, sport, from Bill Watterson’s ever-delightful Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, has only one rule: “You can’t play it the same way twice.” I bet you can guess how that went down on the ball field. Perhaps the anarchic mess that ensued predisposed middle-school me to falling in with the local “cool librarian,” who introduced my poindexterish gang to the most sacred of nerd texts: Dungeons & Dragons rule books. Both those experiences helped shape my teenage reading tastes, which skewed speculative, toward books that abided by the precise rules of their worlds. Flights of fancy were all well and good as long as they were hemmed in by some logic, however whimsical or wondrous. In novels that heavily employ world-building, I’ve found that a few regulations go a long way. Not that all readers will find answers to the questions raised by the two very different books below. But with each, you feel that if their authors could answer those queries, they’d have well-conceived explanations at the ready. —John “Titus Groan,” by Mervyn PeakeFiction, 1946
Peake was perhaps the most stylish English fantasist of the first half of the 20th century — in his prose, his clothes and his pose. He’s mentioned far less often than he deserves, though when he is, it’s often in the same breath as his contemporaries J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Those aren’t perfect comparisons. The first two books (let’s not get into the rest) in Peake’s incomplete masterwork, his Gormenghast series, are as grand an epic as “The Lord of the Rings” or the Narnia novels. But instead of sweeping allegory, they trade in a sort of gothic, absurdist class satire. Also, there’s no magic. Gormenghast is an impossibly large, improbably labyrinthine castle moldering in a way only things that appear eternal can. It is inhabited by what a Washington Post critic once called “conniving Dickensian grotesques,” with delicious names like Alfred Prunesquallor and Abiatha Swelter. (Guess which one is the cook.) Then there is Titus Groan, the future 77th Earl of Gormenghast. In the first book of the series, he is born and inherits his title near the end of his infancy. Around him, peculiar adults lead lives governed by arcane rites as timeless and decayed as the stronghold that keeps them. Even breakfast adheres to ceremony: Throughout it, the master of rituals reads aloud the rest of that day’s rituals. Peake’s own language is as tortuous as his mythos. And yet it sings. “Drear ritual turned its wheel,” he writes. “The ferment of the heart, within these walls, was mocked by every length of sleeping shadow. The passions, no greater than candle flames, flickered in Time’s yawn, for Gormenghast, huge and adumbrate, out-crumbles all.” If you like listening to your lore, Simon Vance’s audiobook rendition is more than worth your time. And do try your luck at ferreting out the rather bonkers but unfairly maligned BBC mini-series with Christopher Lee, Stephen Fry, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers. Read if you like: “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,” by Susanna Clarke; “Rebecca,” by Daphne du Maurier; the witch scenes in “Macbeth,” specifically; serpentine sentences; candles scented with tobacco, heather and/or bog myrtle. “Dragonflight,” by Anne McCaffreyFiction, 1968
Stop me if you’ve read this one before: A young woman forms a psychic bond with a dragon, rises to prominence within a patriarchal institution and gets entangled in a romance with a powerful dragon-rider. But “Fourth Wing,” Rebecca Yarros’s blockbuster fantasy, this is not. If McCaffrey were alive today, she’d be 100 — and if you called her a romantasy writer, she might breathe more fire at you than all her and Yarros’s dragons combined ever could. “Dragonflight” comprises two novellas, each of which won one of the highest honors in speculative fiction, the Hugo and the Nebula. It kicks off the first trilogy in the influential and expansive Dragonriders of Pern series, which, despite its quasi-medieval environment and fire-breathing beasties, McCaffrey considered science fiction. (No magic in here, either.) Pern is a planet once settled by space-faring humans from Earth, whose origins and technology have been largely lost to time. Its dragons were genetically engineered. An insentient, threadlike alien spore unspools from the sky at intervals determined by the eccentric orbit of its native rogue planet. Plus there’s some time travel. Most have forgotten why many of Pern’s laws and customs are in place. It’s been well over a century since the last alien threat. Why should the Pernese worry about clearing up little patches of grass growing in the grooves of their stonework feudal holds? What do you mean, that extraterrestrial material is irresistibly drawn to, and excruciatingly consumes, all organic matter in its path? It’s the vengeful orphan Lessa’s task to bond with a golden dragon queen and work with an aloof veteran dragon-rider, F’lar, before their planetary neighbors learn the answers to those questions the deadly way. Though the stakes are high, this isn’t a traditional page-turner. Pernese history and politics are simply too complex for white-knuckle narrative to rule the day. But the richness of Pern’s world makes it harder to leave after every visit — even if you’d never want to live there. Read if you like: Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series; Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance Cycle; the frisson of adopting a pet and instantly becoming its favorite thing on Earth; endless debates over whether George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is secretly science fiction. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Friendly reminder: Check your local library for books! Many libraries allow you to reserve copies online. Like this email? Sign-up here or forward it to your friends. Have a suggestion or two on how we can improve it? Let us know at books@nytimes.com. Plunge further into books at The New York Times or our reading recommendations.
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