Guessed authors

[j4]

It's my mum's birthday in August, and she usually has a book wish-list which she gives to my dad, my sister and me in case we can't think of anything else to buy her. Now while I don't really mind buying stuff off the list, a) it seems a bit daft given that she's quite happy to buy them for herself anyway, and b) there's always a lot of faff between the three of us as to who buys what, sometimes resulting in duplicate copies. I'd quite like to get her something that she wouldn't buy for herself, i.e. something she might not even know exists, but should like anyway.

So, knowing that there are a fair few SF/Fantasy geeks reading this, I'm turning to you guys for help. Things I know she has read and enjoyed recently:

[edited to include suggestions that I know she's already got/read]

• Pratchett (funny how it's always the obvious ones you forget to mention)
• Katherine Kerr (? I think she's got some of these)
• Terry Goodkind
• Ursula Le Guin
• Mercedes Lackey
• Raymond Feist
• Julia Gray, The Guardian Cycle series
• Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time series
• Guy Gavriel Kay, pretty much everything AFAICT
• Robin Hobb, "Assassin" / "Fool" series
• Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Sheri S. Tepper
• Barbara Hambly
• Elizabeth Moon
• Diana Wynne Jones
• "Bridget Jones" :-)

Can anybody recommend anything that someone who's liked all these might enjoy? (Apologies in advance if I end up saying "I think she's got/read that", I can't remember everything that's on her shelves...) Ideally I want to avoid authors she's already buying everything by, because it's just too easy to duplicate stuff.

NB it doesn't have to be Fantasy (you know I don't really do genre anyway!) but she doesn't read that much SF and I've not had that much success finding non-genre things that she likes... at least, I lent her a huge stack of books a while ago and she wasn't wildly enthusiastic about any of them. Open to suggestions, though.

Comments

[sparrowsion]

I think you're confusing that I liked Wizard of the Pigeons (not as much as I was hoping to, but) and completely and utterly bounced off whichever Robin Hobb it was I tried to read, and had my usual interesting-fantasy-being-overlooked-in-favour-of-bricks rant at you with particular reference to Lindholm selling out (in order to get published).

Which rant is probably why I'm not the best person to come up with recommendations. Although one name which I know people have thought well of which fits into this category and hasn't been mentioned so far is Juliet McKenna.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Ah, sorry, I probably am confusing things there! I completely bounced off Robin Hobb as well (Assassszzzzzzzz.... sorry, where was I?). I think my mum has more tolerance for fantasy bricks than you or I (she re-reads the Robert Jordans every time a new one comes out, FFS!), though, & while she does like interesting fantasy, she seems to be quite, um, forgiving when it comes to more mainstream stuff. OTOH there's a lot of stuff that passes the time but she wouldn't bother re-reading it.

Juliet McKenna ... just done a quick scan across titles on Amazon & some of them look familiar, which means she may already have them (unless you've got them and I'm confusing fantasy-shelves). I think I really will have to do a recce at home somehow. :-)

Oh, and, thinking of things you've recommended to me in the past, actually, I think my mum might like Swordspoint... (does that count as fantasy? ;-)