A bibliography of orientalist fantasies published in the genre fantasy market c. 1970s–1990s.
Category: Genre Fantasies
Reading “Out There” by Adrien Stoutenburg
Adrien Stoutenburg’s Out There (1971) is an interesting early environmentalist sf novel about the dangers of unchecked pollution and ecological devastation, wrapped up in young adult melodrama, and harshly critical of capitalist exploitation.
Ballantine Adult Fantasy: Reading “Mistress of Mistresses” by E.R. Eddison (Zimiamvia 1)
The third essay in my Ballantine Adult Fantasy reading series, which looks at E.R. Eddison’s Mistress of Mistresses (1935): an exquisitely written but ultimately dull novel about beauty, pleasure, and power.
Reading “The Tournament of Thorns” by Thomas Burnett Swann
Thomas Burnett Swann’s The Tournament of Thorns (1976) is a compelling medievalist fantasy that mixes in folk horror and offers a sharp critique of Christianity in the time of crusades.
Reading “Lady of the Bees” by Thomas Burnett Swann
Thomas Burnett Swann’s Lady of the Bees (1976) offers a direct political and ethical response to modernity by way of its inventive fantasy retelling of the mythological founding of Rome, casting that key moment in “Western civilization” as a tragedy.
Ballantine Adult Fantasy: Reading “The Worm Ouroboros” by E.R. Eddison
The second essay in Ballantine Adult Fantasy: A Reading Series, which looks at E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros (1922): a complex, challenging, rewarding, hero-obsessed novel.
Reading “Land of Precious Snow” by Thaddeus Tuleja
Thaddeus Tuleja's Land of Precious Snow (1977) is a fantasy-adjacent historical fiction novel about religious and spiritual experience, disaffection with modernity, and an American adventurer seeking new meaning in 1890s Tibet—a novel that captures counterculture's dissident feelings toward life in postwar America.
Reading “The Fairy of Ku-She” by M. Lucie Chin
M. Lucie Chin's The Fairy of Ku-She (1988) is an expert work of historical fantasy, a fascinating, achingly beautiful, and brilliantly conceived novel that intermixes Chinese history, mythology, and fairy tale in an impressive tapestry that offers a wide range of critiques of genre, gender, power, and social order.
Ballantine Adult Fantasy: Reading “The Last Unicorn” by Peter S. Beagle
The first essay in Ballantine Adult Fantasy: A Reading Series, which looks at Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (1968): a supremely beautiful, memorable, and critically energizing masterwork of fantasy.
Ballantine Adult Fantasy: A Reading Series
This is the landing page and index for my Ballantine Adult Fantasy (BAF) essay series, a lengthy quest to (re)read all of the novels published by Ballantine Books as part of their effort to court readers and create a market for fantasy in the wake of Tolkien’s mass market success in the mid-1960s.
Sean Guynes 