Asssorted Questions

[ornon.livejournal.com]

So, I addition to this being an official de-lurk, I have a couple of questions for the combined mental prowess of Sounis.

1) While I was home as Thanksgiving, my dad asked me what the sort of books the Queen's Theif books are. How would you describe them to someone who has never heard of the series before?

2) In a different post, Keestone had asked what kind of disease would be named Tethys' Lesions (after the wife and sister of Oceanus). Since I had also been pondering this for awhile, I wanted to put it somewhere where people had a better chance of answering it. What we know about Tethys' Lesions is that it is slow killing and genetic. Any ideas?

Comments

[keestone.livejournal.com]

I'd probably call it Historical Fantasy or pseudo-Historical Fantasy, but I think generally the sub-genre of Historical Fantasy includes books set in real-world history with fantastic elements, books set in mythic "historical" settings (Arthur, etc.), and created worlds that can have close cognates with real world history. (So, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, George R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series, and Guy Gavriel Kay's Lions of Al-Rassan as well as Brust and Bull's Freedom and Necessity.

I also tend to call it Theological Fantasy sometimes, because I love well-built universes that take religions into account seriously and books that explore serious philosophical, ethical, and theological questions in a non "real-world" perspective.