Ellen Kushner -- Best Literature Picks of 2007

To readers interested in smart, literate mythic fantasy, I recommend:

Laurie J. Marks' continuing Elemental Logic series, whose 3rd volume, Water Logic , was published by Small Beer Press.

As I wrote the publisher:

This is a genuinely original and subversive work of fantasy literature. It's the Real thing: capable of changing the world, or at least the way you see it.

Grittier and ultimately more satisfying than Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels, but with some of the same delicious sense of a world with plenty of room for queerness . . . there's the depth and mythic sweep of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea novels, with a seasoned, mature sense of a world where adults make hard choices and live with them.

Marks' characters are real people who breathe and sleep and sweat and love; the food has flavor and the landscape can break your heart. You don't find this often in any contemporary fiction, much less in fantasy: a world you can plunge yourself into utterly and live in with great delight while the pages turn, and dream of after.

and

The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia

Exciting and original! Myth, history, and fairy tale meet and mingle with some compellingly real modern characters.

Good interview here.