2024 Canon Promo Post

[keita52]

Use the comments of this post to promote your favorite canon(s). Please use one comment per canon. You can use the template provided here or whatever format you wish.

If it is freely available online, consider adding it to the Freely Available Canons spreadsheet.



Name:
Author:
Length (pages or words, whichever is more relevant): 
Sub-genre:
Why it's awesome:
Any other important information to know about:

Comments

[senmut]

Name: The Barsoom Series
Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
Length: 11 slim novels, original published in pulp magazine
Sub-genre: Science Fiction, Pulp (would likely be classified as fantasy by modern standards, but the science internally has rules and are followed)
Why it's awesome: An alien world, multiple alien species, psycho-kinetic teleportation, telepathy, harnessing light as a means of flight, feudal societies, rules about violence between men and women
Any other important information to know about: The first eight novels appear to be in public domain and on Project Gutenberg. Fair Warning - It is a product of its time, with the casual racism of the period it was written in. However, that is what Transformative Works are for - strip the bones, and build it better, right?

[embraidery]

Name: Skybreaker (#2 in the Matt Cruse series)

Author: Kenneth Oppel

Length: 453 pages

Sub-genre: lightly steampunk, Victorian setting, adventure

Why it's awesome: It's a rip-roaring airship adventure!! Matt discovers the airship Hyperion, which went missing 40 years ago and was assumed lost. He gathers a crew to go salvage treasure -- the owner of the Hyperion was fabulously wealthy -- and they board the ship. But danger lurks around every corner in the form of lethally electrified air jellyfish, exposure to high altitudes, and other people seeking the same treasure.

Any other important information to know about: I don't think you need to read the first book -- I didn't, and I didn't even realise it was a sequel until I'd read most of it. Warnings for some anti-Romani sentiment and use of the g-slur: some is probably typical for the time period, but some stereotyping seems to come from the author, as Nadira always smells like ~ sandalwood ~ or whatever. There's a love triangle subplot.

[(Anonymous)]

Name: Arc of a Scythe

Author: Neal Shusterman

Length: first book is 435 pages, the sequels are probably similar

Sub-genre: YA utopian sci-fi

Why it's awesome: Scythe takes place in our world, centuries into the future. People are essentially immortal -- any disease can be prevented or cured, and people can be brought back from a lethal accident (unless acid or fire destroys their body). Scythes are trained to "glean" people who will stay dead. Two teenagers are chosen to train to become Scythes. At first reluctant, they soon come to appreciate the importance of what they do -- but there are those in the Scythedom who delight in violence, and they are growing in power.

Any other important information to know about: There is quite a bit of death in this one; the corrupt scythes' kills are violent and they take delight in it. Highlight for book 2 spoilers:

A character is killed in order to graft someone else's head onto his body.

[(Anonymous)]

oops, sorry! I put in the HTML to make the text white, but it didn't work!

[embraidery]

Name: Greenglass House Series

Author: Kate Milford

Length: 384 pages

Sub-genre: middle-grade, fantasy, mystery

Why it's awesome: I recently picked this up again after reading it when I was much younger, curious to see what I thought. It was a lot of fun! Milo Pine lives with his parents in their inn, where they often harbour smugglers. One winter, they have several guests all come on the same night, before all of them are snowed into the inn. The guests all seem to have their own reason for being there and they all seem to be keeping secrets, even more so when some of their things are stolen! Milo's new friend helps him investigate while framing the investigation as acting out a TTRPG. There's also a sweet subplot of Milo (who is a Chinese kid adopted by a white family) coming to terms with his adoption, where he fits into his family, & the fact that he can daydream about what could have been without it meaning he wished his parents didn't adopt him.

I nominated Clem Candler/Georgie Moselle, two of the guests at the inn -- without giving too much away, they have a fun dynamic and a great history.

[embraidery]

Name: A Closed and Common Orbit

Author: Becky Chambers

Length: 365 pages

Sub-genre: sci-fi

Why it's awesome: The second in the Wayfarers Series, but you don't have to read the first book! The first of its dual storylines follows Pepper, a woman who grew up one of many clones sorting through garbage in a factory, and her eventual escape from the factory and acclimation to the outside world. The second follows Sidra, an AI who allowed herself to be transferred to an illegal "body kit" and has to pretend to be human in order not to be caught. It's a beautiful exploration of creating identity and finding community; Sidra's story also resonated with my experience of finding ways to work with my neurodivergence, as she finds accommodations that make it easier to exist in an entirely different way of being.

Any other important information to know about: While Sidra has people around her to consider her a person as much as any other sapient being, society at large considers AI to be objects rather than beings, and she bumps up against that prejudice. Pepper started out in an abusive environment (the factory) and while living on her own, needs to kill wild dogs for food.

[embraidery]

Name: Mink River

Author: Brian Doyle

Length: 319

Sub-genre: lit fic, magical realism?

Why it's awesome: This is a hard book to describe, but I'll do my best. It's a lyrical book weaving together multiple storylines of people living in a small town on the Oregon coast. Some of the main characters include Maple Head and Worried Man, a Salish couple; their daughter, No Horses, and her husband Owen Cooney, an Irishman; and their son, Daniel. Worried Man and his best friend Cedar form the Department of Public Works with the motto "Brains Against Pains" and try to look after the town. Worried Man tells Daniel stories about his Salish ancestors while Owen tells stories about his Irish ancestors. Worried Man eventually goes on a journey to discover the true nature of Time and find where it's stored.

Any other important information to know about: This might sound like a lot, but the author usually has a light (and very human) touch. Some characters die; some experience physical and verbal abuse at the hands of their fathers; some struggle with depression.

[zabbers]

Name: The Philosophers Series (2018/2019)
Author: Tom Miller
Length: two novels
Sub-genre: science fiction/magic alternative history
Why I like about it/what it’s about: Women do magic, which in this universe must never be called “magic”, but sigilry (after the way it’s done, with powders released to timed hand gestures) or empirical philosophy (which is what the academics call it); it’s WWI-era America, and Robert Weekes is the only son of a war veteran county philosopher in rural Montana. He can fly (“hover”). His big sisters taught him. He wants more than anything to fly Rescue and Evacuation with the Women’s Sigilry Corps, but he’s a boy. Boys don’t have the quanta (power) to do much sigilry. It’s all he can do to just about keep up with any of the women in his family. He supports his mother in her work, but when the war starts, he goes to Radcliffe College on a government scholarship meant to address the wartime philosophical shortage—many of the trained women have deployed to Europe. He’s one of three men in the program. The Philosopher’s Flight is a school story; it’s about his experiences at Radcliffe, where he encounters skeptical (sometimes highly opposed) classmates both philosophical and non, Trenchers (mostly men violently opposed to women doing sigilry), and a high-profile intercollegiate flying competition. The Philosopher’s War is about philosophy on the front line, especially the day to day of Rescue and Evacuation flyers, the technology of Smokecarvers (sigilrists who shape smoke into useful forms), and the wider impact of philosophy on war and war on philosophy. Robert’s a helpful, polite, pro-social young man whose greatest ambition is to do good as a philosopher in the tradition of his foremothers and sisters. I really love the flavor of the worldbuilding in these books. It’s systematic and vivid, and it blends my love of women’s colleges/communities, military-style protocols and traditions and roles (but in a mostly noncombatant force), science-y magical systems, and in-universe epigraphs hinting at lots of other parts of this world. I think the pacing and momentum are pretty great too.
Any other important information to know about: It’s about a women’s world, but from the perspective of a man, albeit one who is very much culturally part of that world. As the protagonist of a coming of age story, he does end up achieving a lot of the crucial things. There are a lot of interesting characters around him, but the more unlike him and what he’s familiar with, the less we see of them. These things could be disappointing or (and) it could be an opportunity to expand on the world, your mileage may vary. There’s some graphic violence, mostly on the front or involving the Trenchers. One scene I found especially difficult happens early in the first book.

[zabbers]

Name: Saturn’s Children (2008)
Author: Charles Stross
Length: a long novel (there’s a sequel and a bridging short story, but they’re very different)
Sub-genre: science fiction space opera
Why I like about it/what it’s about: Freya Nakamichi-47 is a robot whose line was created to love and please humans, but she wasn’t instantiated until long after all humans had gone extinct. Meanwhile, the artificial lifeforms created by humans, mostly to help them colonize space, have developed a thriving society, full of technology and social structures extrapolated from the initial conditions that the humans set them. They’ve got much more robust bodies of any shapes and sizes that are useful to them as spacefaring robots, but personalities templated on human psychology. They’re able to share programming, personality, and memories, especially with “sibs” from the same line. Lots of interesting questions of personhood, agency, purpose, personal identity, and memory. Detailed, thoughtful technological worldbuilding (for instance, they don’t have FTL travel, but they are very long-lived, more radiation resistant than we are, and able to alter their perception of time so, unlike their “pink goo” creators, they can at least get through slow interplanetary/interstellar travel).
Any other important information to know about: It’s not an equal society—there are “aristos”, robot lines who were in position to take over early in the time after the extinction of humans; “arbeiters”, indentured individuals with limited/no free will under control of other robots or their original programming; Freya comes up against her own programming and design as a “courtesan”/sexbot (for instance, she’s made so that if anyone is attracted to her, she’s automatically attracted back), and her line suffers from depression that might stem from obsolescence and the impossibility of fulfilling their purpose or possibly from some developmental trauma during training/conditioning.

The Silm

[skyeventide]

Name: The Silmarillion

Author: JRR Tolkien

Length (pages or words, whichever is more relevant): 460 give or take

Sub-genre: high fantasy, pretty much the og

Why it's awesome: Have you ever thought, damn, I wish these elves were not so lofty and perfect? Have you ever wished Tolkien didn't write such clear divisions between good and evil all the time? Ever wanted to know where every single trope of modern high fantasy cones from? YOU'RE IN LUCK. (I could also ask "ever wanted to read the Bible but it's elves", but that might put you off, so...) Misbehaving elves, Faustian geniuses, red-headed anti-heroes, war crimes, the sinking of a continent, fate and doom from unfair gods, homoerotic friendships, a few known faces (Sauron, Elrond, Galadriel), everybody dies, and you'll go insane about a character mentioned one (1) time in one line real soon. The tumblr fandom is also very very active.

Any other important information to know about: Either push through the first two chapters or ignore them and go back to them later. Also keep the genealogy chart at hand. Trust me.

[zabbers]

Name: Forgotten Suns (2015)
Author: Judith Tarr
Length: standalone novel (but somewhat related to Tarr's Avaryan trilogy)
Sub-genre: space opera with fantasy-ish backstory in the worldbuilding
Why I like about it/what it’s about: An archeologists' daughter trying to save her family's dig and its planet's protected status, the powerfully psionic ancient sun king she accidentally releases from stasis with a lot of explosives, and her war-traumatized almost-ex-military aunt journey to solve the mystery of the planet and the king's missing people. There are two characters I really love: Rama (the ancient king) and Aunt Khalida, who are really two sides of the same coin--tragic commanding leader types with an overwrought sense of responsibility and duty and also something terrible that went wrong with all that and now they're tormented and looking for redemption or at least healing. Except that Rama is this old old archetype conquerer-leader-noble who was too powerful and ragey for his own/his people's good, and Khalida exists in a spacefaring military structure that pushed her into what she did (and that enables her prickly, self-sufficient-but-not-really, can't connect with her girlfriend personality). But they're needed and they're resilient and they have to learn to continue and to find their way in a world that's changed or changing around them.

But also there's so much good (tropey and/or classic) stuff: there's Aisha's research-y academic family (and their horses), a complicated power situation with the Spaceforce and the Military Intelligence and the Psycorps, morally gray scientists and psi masters, worldbuilding from the research world to the spaceships to the telepathic internet to outpost/rebel worlds and interesting alien species (and their relationships with humans), a sentient spaceship, stargates, an ancient mystery, parallel worlds, technology and/as magic that are indistinguishably wondrous from each other, sci-fi and fantasy at once.
Any other important information to know about: I think what makes it all work together is the fact that this novel is the beloved story behind the story: the world the author has had in her heart her whole career, full of all the things she'd loved in everything she read and watched. (She essays about finally getting to write what she wants and just have a good time here.)