Tales of Nevèrÿon / Samuel R. Delany
This one was not an easy read. And I don't say that to indicate any sort of quality judgement, especially a negative one, about the book. In fact, I quite liked it. The book is the first in a four-part series, Return to Nevèrÿon, that is, more than anything else, an experiment. If you know anything at all about Delany, you know two things: first, he's very intellectual, and second, nothing is ever just what it appears to be on the surface. So though this series may seem to be a sword-and-sorcery epic about slavery, it is also a meta-textual look at story-telling and literature and writing itself -- letters and alphabets, not the art of creating characters and plot and setting.
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