Just read Book of New the Sun and I'm now looking for more 'literary' fantasy that still cares both about the adventure...

Just read Book of New the Sun and I'm now looking for more 'literary' fantasy that still cares both about the adventure and the characters. So much 'good' Fantasy/Sci-fi is either a sterile Borges-thought experiment or tries to reduce the strangeness of the world around them to barely being fantasy again. I just what a smart, rollicking good time. Like this or Grendel.

Haven't read this but I thought Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books were pretty good fantasy stuff. They're aimed at younger people though.

Kind of "Borges-like" but it's pre-Tolkien and more Gothic than fantasy but it's definitely literary and very smart

What exactly about this novel makes you like it so much compared to "sterile" fantasy

The Characterization. I like people and interpersonal interactions in addition crazy scenarios. Shit, if Robert Jordan could make people that behave remotely like people, he'd be a great example.
I have it, but its not pulling me in right now. I plan on reading it eventually.
I want to get something by her.

Well, Wolfe wrote Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun as well. Short Sun is up there with New Sun, in my opinion.

Lafferty, Vance, Peake are the best you'll going to find.

Book of the New Sun helped me realize why I don't read genre fiction. I read the first half and, I mean, it was alright. But very plot-focused. People praise it for the unreliable narrator who hides elements of the story. The plot and the world-building is all meant to be unclear. It's just a big puzzle with a lot of answers hidden in this or that description or contradiction.

Borges is the perfect counter-example. With Borges any puzzles offered by the narration are just extensions of the ideas they posit, ideas which are puzzles themselves. The answers in Book of the New Sun are answers about the world these characters live in and the events that take place. The answers (or, largely, questions) in Borges' fiction are about life. A good puzzle is always fun to solve, but when you devote the time to read a 500 page book and the puzzles are all limited to the scope of the narrative, the effort quickly outweighs the reward.

Anyway good luck finding what you're looking for.

>very plot-focused
So you are

sure you understood it man? I don't know how you can look at something as mythologically, metaphysically dense as Book of the New Sun and only get plot or "world building"

Because of the structure of the narrative it is no wonder you didn't get anything beyond the puzzle itself. It's written in a way that it needs to be seen as a whole to be understood and also the unreliable narration adds a lot of layers to Severian as a person such as the limited understanding of the events ruled by the social and ideological structure of his time and things he is ashamed or proud of.
As far as who is more about life I'd say it is Wolfe as it's essentially Catholic propaganda about redemption and rebirth through death, the death of the old self and subjugation to the sovereign power of God.

Le guin is terrible.
First Earthsea book is pretty comfy teenage fantasy, but all the rest are superficial and semi-femininst.
No character development, almost no magic/action in any of the later works, no interesting plot points at all, etc.

Dont read le guin, it's a waste of time.

Read Jack Vance. Especially Dying Earth, Lyonesse and Demon Princes. He's not a complex writer like Wolfe, but he is very imaginative. (D&D magic system is largely inspired by Vance)

good advice

I think the Catholic elements in Book of the New Sun are greatly overstated

That's because you don't recognise them as well as I do. You have parts where Severian is explaining Aquinas, almost to the point of outright quoting as well as the climax of everything and layers of symbols, such as every character being named after a saint.

Peake is shit.

> I'm now looking for more 'literary' fantasy that still cares both about the adventure and the characters.
Uh, Tolkien. (Sorry for assuming you're an uncultured pleb off the bat, but this is Veeky Forums we're talking about, after all.)

That out of the way, also Melville.

Not to mention a good chunk of the Sword of the Lictor basically being an allegory for Christ fasting in the desert and being tempted by satan.

That's a large part of Wolfe's identity, so it's unavoidable in his writing. I don't mind at all, and I'm pretty anti-Christian at this point. Every writer subconsciously or consciously pushes his worldview: atheist, jew, catholic, modernist, and so on.

I've got Tolkien under the belt (and Beowulf and Grendel), and I've put off Moby for so long.

Why do you dislike Peake?

Do you hate her because she's feminist or because you honestly think she's bad. You bringing up politics is suspect.
I plan on reading those, but I want to space Wolfe out a bit.

Not him, but her books are never that great. If you dislike her politics you'll hate her because her writing isn't good enough to carry the story. She's too long winded without having much to say. Dispossessed is 400 pages that could easily have been told in 200, or maybe it just felt like 400 pages.

>Why do you dislike Peake?
Modernist crap in paper-thin fantasy attire.

Well if I like modernism generally, do you think I'll like it?
That's fair, and what I was afraid of.

>Le guin is terrible.
No, she isn't. You're just easily triggered.

She's good. The Earthsea novels are meant for teenagers, but they're enjoyable if you read them with that in mind. Stuff like Left Hand of Darkness is great too and she also has several good short stories. I find her pretty good at creating and developing characters, which is not always the case with sci-fi/fantasy literature.