Jan. 15th, 2013

skygiants: Princess Tutu, facing darkness with a green light in the distance (land beyond dreams)
Next up in Books I Read for Yuletide And Therefore Technically Could Not Talk About Until January: Diane Duane's super eighties fantasy series The Door Into Fire, The Door Into Shadow, and The Door Into Sunset, which I read in order to beta [personal profile] genarti's excellent fic Outdwelling.

I think I should mention that all I knew about these books going in was that they are dearly beloved by many of my friends, and that the series as it currently stands spoiler! )

I did not know in advance about the undead dragon mpreg, but that is also a thing that happens. SO NOW YOU KNOW.

Anyway, the first book follows Herewiss, a dude who is on a quest to tap into his latent magical powers and also rescue his prince-in-exile boyfriend from the various consequences of his own stupidity. Along the way he bumps into an amoral fire elemental who eventually falls in love with him and love triangle ensues, but not really, because polyamory; also he overcomes his backstory angst.

Then in the second book it turns out that this is actually an EPIC about how the prince-in-exile boyfriend really needs to retake the throne to stop the LONE POWER -- er, sorry, I mean THE DARK -- from destroying the world, in a vague and amorphously entropic fashion. I do not care much about this. But I do like the protagonist of this one, a lady sorceress who abruptly finds herself the unwilling mental host of a whole bunch of UNDEAD DRAGONS, after which culture clash ensues. (Warnings, though, for an unexpectedly graphic and disturbing sequence in Segnbora's backstory angst, and also for spoilers )

The third book is mostly epic battles and discussions of the responsibility of ruling. At the end of it I remain slightly confused about several things )

But MOSTLY I am just full of fond nostalgia for super eighties fantasy epics set in sexually Utopian fantasy worlds where no one had homophobic hangups and all the plots featured some kind of cheerful pansexual polyamory. I kind of want to compile a master list, but for this I need assistance!

The ones that spring initially to mind:
- these books
- Tanya Huff's Quarter series

Which doesn't seem like much, but I know there are more! I know there are more that I've read! BRAIN.

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