Comments on A Light Inside: Top Ten Tuesday: Science Fiction and Fantasy for T...

Grand! Thanks, Jenna! Yes, it helps immensely.

2012-01-22T22:13:30.307-08:00

Grand! Thanks, Jenna! Yes, it helps immensely.

Maria, I'm going to go backwards to the rest o...

2012-01-22T19:31:03.144-08:00

Maria, I'm going to go backwards to the rest of the world and say yes, That Hideous Strength is fantastic and totally worth starting with. You might be confused by a couple of things, but just know that by the time the story begins, the 'Director', Ransom, has already been to Mars (in Out of the Silent Planet) and Venus (Perelandra).

Nearly everyone will tell you that Perelandra is the best; it's very theological and colorful, and shorter too. :) You have a few holdouts for Out of the Silent Planet, where the Oyarsa (angel-guardians of each planet) are more clearly explained. Some people have trouble making it through That Hideous Strength, but I was engrossed from word one, and it's conceivable that OotSP could block you on the series. I've only read that one once, but Perelandra twice and THS many times. :)

Consecutive reading would be more important for the first two; you have more of a continuity of characters with Ransom as the protagonist and Weston and friends as antagonist. In THS, you have Jane and Mark as the primary protagonists and Ransom more in a mystic wise old mentor role, and the antagonists are new. It's a very different story from the other two in a lot of ways. Of course, there's no way to guarantee which will work best for you until you try--but don't not read THS just because you're not an SFF fan! It's much more--shall we say, down to earth--than the first two. Literally. :D

Hope that long-winded response helps! And hope I don't lead you astray. If you start reading get too confused by something I've forgotten, email me and I'll brief you on the back story. :)

This is off-topic, but when you wrote that "T...

2012-01-22T19:18:14.947-08:00

This is off-topic, but when you wrote that "That Hideous Strength" stands well alone, do you mean that one could skip the previous two and not have any problem understanding it? Mostly I want to read it because I've heard so many good things about it and because the title has captured my imagination. Of course if I loved it then I would regret not having read the first and second in order before it. But I'm not usually much for science fiction or fantasy and I wouldn't want to get discouraged if I couldn't make it through the first or second book.

Dune. It's amazing..I don't usually go for...

2012-01-19T10:50:08.353-08:00

Dune. It's amazing..I don't usually go for science fiction, but Dune is killer. I'd read it over and over if it wasn't one of my new year's resolutions not to read books over and over.

The Martian Chronicles. There's a bit of something for everyone. The style chances, the time changes, the story changes, each chapter is it's own little story. And they're all good.

The Hounds of the Morrigan. Because it's so cute and so fun, and so very full of Irish myths.

..I know there's more, I just can't think of them.