Tuesday, October 06, 2020

Eight SFF books featuring deities

New York Times–bestselling author Megan Whalen Turner is the award-winning author of six novels set in the world of the Queen’s Thief. These epic novels of intrigue and adventure can be read in any order, but were published as follows: The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings, Thick as Thieves, and Return of the Thief. She has been awarded a Newbery Honor and a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature.

At Tor.com, Turner tagged eight sci-fi & fantasy books featuring deities, icluding:
The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang

You have the four cardinal gods—the Dragon, the Tiger, the Tortoise, and the Phoenix. Then you have local household gods, village guardian gods, animal gods, gods of rivers, gods of mountains…

Rin is an orphan, “fortunate” enough to have a marriage arranged with a local inspector who will accept her as a wife in exchange for looking other way while her adoptive parents run their opium business. Rejecting that future, Rin sits for the Keju, the Empire wide test that selects candidates for Sinegard, an elite military school.

In the scene quoted above she is arguing for the common viewpoint of the gods in her experience—they are cultural references, metaphors, personifications of emotions or significant events. As in the world of The Thief, people give lip service to the gods. They never expect them to appear.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Poppy War is among Jennifer Giesbrecht's top five fantasy books steeped in history and Ross Johnson's twenty-five epic fantasies for fans of Game of Thrones.

The Page 69 Test: The Poppy War.

--Marshal Zeringue