M John Harrison IIRC said fantasy genre stories like his The Pastel City and The Book of the New Sun could never be more than Sword novels. Actually that’s half true. No one claimed Pastel City (which is quite good) had broken out of its genre. Readers say this of New Sun all the time.
I've read Book of the New Sun twice through and am a big fan but I get stuff from the Viriconium novels/stories that I don't get from BotNS. But i think it's really fun to read those books as in conversation with each other and how different they feel for sounding so similar in theory.
Like why did these two contemporaries both sort of instinctually start with Dying Earth pastiches to pick apart the funny little genre of specifically Sword and Sorcery? Why did they both go to similar places - recursive circular narratives, stories about stories - while still reading so different?
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