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Fantasy books


steph

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I'm going to bang the drum for "Sword and Soul", which is S&S set in an African background (historical or imagined). Look for MIlton Davis' Chronicles pf Meiji and Charles R Saunders' Imaro and Dossouye stories, plus a host of others, including Balogun Ojetade's Once Upon a Time In Afrika. Davis and Saunders have also collaborated on Griotsi which is an anthology of these stories.

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Discworld. :)

 

Anything by any of the following. Not all of them wrote their books in a series though. No particular order or preference implied:

R E Howard.

L Sprague De Camp.

Lin Carter.

Fritz Leiber.

Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Poul Anderson.

Phillip Jose Farmer.

Roger Zelazny.

Michael Moorcock.

China Mieville.

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Low to high fantasy. Dont care really,

 

A friend suggest me Gardens of the moon (steven Erickson)

 

Part of The Malazan Book of the Fallen Series:

Gardens of the Moon

Deadhouse Gates

Memories of Ice              

House of Chains              

Midnight Tides

The Bonehunters

Reaper's Gale

Toll the Hounds

Dust of Dreams                

The Crippled God

 

Dark gritty fantasy.  Kinda like Cook's Black Company Chronicles.

 

I like a little lighter fare so you may like:

 

Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon

 

Amber by Zelazny and

 

David Eddings series:

 

The Belgariad series

    Pawn of Prophecy

    Queen of Sorcery

    Magician's Gambit

    Castle of Wizardry

    Enchanters' End Game

 

The Malloreon series

    Guardians of the West

    King of the Murgos

    Demon Lord of Karanda

    Sorceress of Darshiva

    The Seeress of Kell

 

The Elenium series

    The Diamond Throne

    The Ruby Knight

    The Sapphire Rose

 

The Tamuli series

    Domes of Fire

    The Shining Ones

    The Hidden City

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Discworld. :)

 

Anything by any of the following. Not all of them wrote their books in a series though. No particular order or preference implied:

R E Howard.

L Sprague De Camp.

Lin Carter.

Fritz Leiber.

Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Poul Anderson.

Phillip Jose Farmer.

Roger Zelazny.

Michael Moorcock.

China Mieville.

 

Reaching back we are :)

 

A lot of great Sword & Planet writers there.

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Single handed the best author out there now is Brandon Sanderson so grab Mistborn or Stormlight Archives and get started.

 

Otherwise here are some other great series.

 

Malazan Book of The Fallen: Gardens of the moon (amazing series)

The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard series)

The Black Company 

Night angle Trilogy (they are b-rate fantasy done perfectly I loved them)

Lightbringer series (also by Brent Weeks, but a drastically different voice IMHO)

 

 

A great new series I ran across but he is only to book two is called Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne by Brian Staveley 

 

Also pretty much every book Spence stated above is completely amazing even if I did not duplicate it here. (Except I never heard of  Elizabeth Moon)

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Anything not by Anthony, Eddings, Lackey or Goodkind and not containing vampires is a decent start in my opinion. ;)

 

I'm not good at ranking things, so I just pick some novels/series that stuck with me over the years:

 

- Master of Five Magics / Secret of the Sixth Magic, Lyndon Hardy

- Earthsea Cycle, Ursula K. Le Guin

- Song of the Lioness, Tamora Pierce

- Drenai Series, David Gemmell

- Black Company Series, Glen Cook

 

Mostly older stuff, I'll see if the more recent ones keep fresh that long. I've enjoyed Lynch, Abercrombie, Martin etc, and still can't quite get myself to like contemporary/urban/steampunk fantasy, even if it's written by great authors.

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  • Thieves World Anthologies - especially if you can find the first 2 or 3 in the series

 

 

When I was in Denver, I managed to find a replacement for the first book, which I had loaned to a friend and never got back.

 

The Sword of Truth series

 

  • The First Confessor
  • Debt of Bones
  • Wizard's First Rule
  • Stone of Tears
  • Blood of the Fold
  • Temple of the Winds
  • Soul of the Fire
  • Faith of the Fallen
  • The Pillars of Creation
  • Naked Empire
  • Chainfire
  • Phantom
  • Confessor
  • The Omen Machine
  • The Third Kingdom
  • Severed Souls

The Wheel of Time

  • The Eye of the World
  • The Great Hunt
  • The Dragon Reborn
  • The Shadow Rising
  • The Fires of Heaven
  • Lord of Chaos
  • A Crown of Swords
  • The Path of Daggers
  • Winter's Heart
  • Crossroads of Twilight
  • Knife of Dreams
  • The Gathering Storm
  • Towers of Midnight
  • A Memory of Light
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(Except I never heard of  Elizabeth Moon)

 

She has written some good scifi too.  Not the most prolific writer, but what is there is good.  Her Paksenarrion books pretty much set the standard of what a fantasy Paladin is.   

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Hey guys 

 

Summer arrive and I want to start reading a good fantasy series. Do you have recommendation ? 

What is your best fantasy novel and why?. Even if is LOTR or GOT ;)

 

Steph

Well, if you haven't yet read Lord of the Rings, go do so. In fact, even if you have, they can be a joy to read again, especially if it's been a while.

 

If one were to read only one fantasy novel ever, it should be Hogfather. Anything else by Pratchett is probably great if you want to laugh and even better if you want to laugh and think.

 

A personal favorite of mine is the author Andre Norton, especially Witch World and anything else in that setting.

 

The trilogy His Dark Materials has a reputation for being very dark and grim and there is something to that, but if you are willing to follow it to the end, it has some glorious rays of hope and I found the very end of it downright inspiring.

 

"Fantasy" is such a broad category though that it's hard to know what to recommend unless you narrow it down somehow...

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wants to suggest Circus of Words.

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Hard to go wrong with anything written by Brandon Sanderson.  Mistborn is a good non-standard fantasy.

 

Reread Glen Cook's Black Company series a little while ago.  It's aged pretty well.

 

If you don't mind Napoleonic fantasy, I can also recommend Naomi Novik's Temeraire series.  It's pretty lightweight.

 

Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire is the opposite of lightweight.  It's well written, but if you need happy endings you may want to look elsewhere.

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I'll toss out a few I haven't seen mentioned. I don't read a lot of fantasy anymore, being more of a science fiction fan, but here are a few that stand out for me.

 

The Dragon Prince series and the Dragon Star series (related) by Melanie Rawn

 

The War God series by David Weber (I find a usually enjoy fantasy written by authors who usually write SF)

 

The Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon

 

The Vlad Taltos books by Steven Brust

 

The Cleric Quintet by R.A. Salvatore (the only thing by him I ever enjoyed)

 

The Valdemar novels by Mercedes Lackey (I'll catch cr@p from the serious fantasy fans over this one, but while her plots tend to be predictable, her character development is great)

 

The Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling

 

The Keeper Chronicles by Tanya Huff

 

The Magic Goes Away (and relate short stories) by Larry Niven

 

Silverlock by John Myers Myers

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The Dragon Prince series and the Dragon Star series list me completely when the protagonist raped his captor. Overall the series rad more like a romance than traditional fantasy. But it was a deal breaker for me.

 

 

Dying Earth confuses me. Everyone says it is great (99% of people who have read it) but to me it rad more like a teenage boys fantasies. The over sexism was weird, and I am not a very liberal person. But it seemed the only point of women was to be naked or minimally dressed while waiting to be rescued from danger. I only rad the first book, but that was my impression. Overall I would say it is a two or three start book, not the five stars people often give it.

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