Reddit reviews War for the Oaks: A Novel

Methinks you need to read a bit more widely.

From a random perusal of my paperback shelves (somewhere over 600 books...):

• "What if..." colonists on a planet were abandoned, cannot use technology for fear of reprisal from aliens... and what would that society evolve into?
  
  
• "What if..." an invasion of parasitic creatures causes unusually good behavior in their hosts?
  
  
• There's a faerie war in Minneapolis, and a rock-and-roll musician is caught up in it?
  
  Or if that requires too much original thought... there's always dragons.

Emma Bull - War for the Oaks

This is the book that some say originated Urban Fantasy: War Of The Oaks.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Oaks-Novel-Emma-Bull/dp/0765300346

Whether it did or not, it is a great read; particularly if you like rock.


Of Urban Fantasy series, I like the first four True Blood, the first five Anita Blake, the first few books of the Rachael Morgan series, the first two books in the Mercy Thompson series.

If you notice a pattern above, it is: these series almost always decline in quality. In the end they sink into formula and incoherence, where everyone has slept with everyone and gone evil and returned to good and found their inner power and has been facing bigger and bigger opponents till now they are only easily matched by Olympian-level super bad guys.

I except the Harry Dresden series. They improve as they go. I have no idea how he is doing that.

Emma Bull did it first and better.

She's one of those authors who's always 10 years ahead of the curve and likes to skip between subgenres. She wrote a mythic urban fantasy that's now considered one of the seminal works of the genre (War for the Oaks), a weird western way before that got popular (Territory), a gender-neutral/androgynous protagonist decades before Ann Leckie (Bone Dance), etc. Not to mention a straight SF novel (Falcon), the aforementioned historical fantasy novel with Steven Brust, and she's one of the creators/writers of Shadow Unit, a group author project that's told in episodes like a TV show. Plus a bunch of other stuff, and absolutely all of it is excellent.

Oh man... that's such a hard question. While it's not one I've read in a while, and I'm not sure if I'd still like it, I really love War for the Oaks by Emma Bull. I read that book so many times it fell apart!


Edit: Yeeaah I just read the description and I'm not sure if I'd still like it, but it has a lot of sentimental value!