Besides my Broadening Horizon reads and others that took my whims, I’ve dubbed this year my Chinese (Oriental) Fantasy year. In short, this year I am going to read up on all the key Chinese fantasy novels there are (those I’ve identified anyway). I might or might not branch into Japanese fantasy, hence the bracket around Oriental.
Why? Because I am sussing out competition in my chosen sub-genre of Chinese fantasy which is entirely self-named but that doesn’t mean there aren’t already books (mostly from the historical fiction genre) that are based on the same or similar general setting.
So far, I’ve put down the following novels to read for this year:
Chinese:
- Under Heaven and River of Stars by Guy Gabriel Kay
- Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu
- The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox ‘trilogy’ by Barry Hughart
- Cradle series by Will Wright
- Dragon Songs Saga by JC Kang
Japanese:
- Tales of the Otori trilogy by Liam Hearn
- Ascendant trilogy by K. Arsenault Rivera
- The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang
I doubt I will get through them all. But then I am going to not stick with each series till the end like I usually do (well, it’s not like I haven’t ditched series before but it’s a rarity since I almost exclusively pick books based on back cover blurbs).
Moonlake's Fiction Space 