Rec me some SF & F?

[luzula]

I'm ordering a big batch of science fiction and fantasy books from Sweden's SF & F bookstore, and I need a few more books to get over the free freight limit. I'm getting the rest of Karen Traviss' "Wess'Har" series (annoyingly, part 2 is out of print and I had to order it second hand from the US). And I'm also probably getting Jo Walton's "Among Others". But I'd love some recs as to what else I should get!

I'm in the mood for:
- interesting female characters
- interesting world-building
- not sure how to phrase this, but: books that deal with political issues, or environmental issues. Or characters who want to do the right thing, or struggle with various allegiances.

I'm not in the mood for:
- books where the main plot is a romance
- epic high fantasy

but if you have something so good that it will transcend my mood, just rec it anyway!

Have not read Robin McKinley's various fairy tale rewritings and am curious about them. If you have opinions about them, please share!

Comments

[medrin]

Trying to figure out what of the things I read recently that are rec-worthy. Hmm...

Tender Morsels by Margo Langan, or as my friend called it, 'the incestuous bear story'. (I told my sister to read it and it starts with an incestuous rape scene, she asked me what kind of book I was trying to get her to read and gleefully told everyone that I recommended weird books. It also has a bear on the cover but he has nothing to do with the incest.) It's a fairytale-ish escape from reality about a girl that has been dealing whit a lot and creates her own escape world. It's also about her two daughters and their story is a retelling of Snow-white and Rose-red.

Cirkeln by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren. The next big thing in Swedish youth literature apparently. It's actually a pretty good book.

I recently listened to Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale. Very good but a bit disturbing and hard to deal with. She has really gone all out in creating the most misogynistic society possible. But it felt like a book one is supposed to have read.

[luzula]

Oof, not sure I am up to incestous rape. The fairytale elements sound interesting, though.

I read "A Handmaid's Tale" years ago, and it's not something I feel like rereading. There was a great Yuletide story for it this year, though: Hymn.

[luzula]

To clarify: I didn't dislike "A Handmaid's Tale"! It was just heavy reading (but good).

[medrin]

The incestuous rape and other Bad Things happen in the beginning of the book, and it's not written in such a way that it drags you down as a reader. But it's still, you know, incestuous rape. What I like most about the book is the language and the way it's told. Very fairytale-ish. (There is.. something with the language. At first I though that it was a translation or something. But it's not. But just now when I was looking through it I realised what it was. There is no contractions in the book (I feel very smart for realising this *after* I read the whole thing))

As for the handmaid's tale, yeah, I get you. Once is enough for that book, I don't think I would read it again. But its a good thing to have read it.