Can anyone recommend a decent book series?

Bravo Company

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I'll have to recommend the predictable candidates of "A Song of Fire and Ice" as well as the "Inheritance" series. I've really enjoyed reading both of them. They fit into the fantasy section.
 

chaser5000

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The Blood Skies series by Steven Montano is really good. It's really dark and grisly, there are some parts that word hard to read because of how graphic the scenes were, but that's also a testament to how well written it is.

You might want to check out the Prince of Thorns trilogy too, it's the story of a young psychopathic prince as he rapes, murders, and back stabs his way to becoming Emperor.
Drummodino said:
The Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson is a great fantasy series. It also has a spinoff novel called Alloy of Law that will be getting a sequel either this year or next.

Sanderson also just released Words of Radiance the sequel to one of my favourite books, The Way of Kings. That series is planned to be ten books as of now.
Cool, I didn't know Words of Radiance was out, I'll have to get it. I found The Way of Kings kinda of slow but I didn't know it was the set up for a ten book series.
 

option1soul

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HBMK said:
I have gone through all the books in my shelf and have run out, but I have no idea what to read next. Preferred genres: sci-fi, fantasy, horror, crime, cyberpunk, steampunk.

Thanks
You've got my genre's at heart :) I recently read "John Dies At The End" by David Wong and it was some of the best sci-fi writing I've read in the last decade not to mention completely hilarious. DONT WATCH THE MOVIE though, it will completely ruin it for you. It is a series and I've acquired the second volume ("This book is covered in Spiders") but I haven't read it yet.
 

Malty Milk Whistle

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0takuMetalhead said:
The Hyperion cantos by Dann Simmons (Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion w/ Endymion and The Rise of Endymion set in the same universe).
Second this, they're fab and super worth reading

Also the Hitchhiker's Guide series are always entertaining and a breath of fresh air after so much doom and gloom.
 

Jodah

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Warhammer 40k - Horus Heresy
Star Wars - Darth Bane trilogy
Anything by R.A. Salvatore
Orcs by Stan Nicholls
Gotrek and Felix series
 

Cerebrawl

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For those of you who like pulpy sci-fi and 40k...

Go read the Legacy of Aldenata(aka Posleen War) series by John Ringo, at least the first 4 books or so(the main series, it kinda derails after that with sidestories and guest writers). I think my favorite book is the 3rd, where we're introduced to a giant nuclear armed tank nicknamed Bun Bun, a direct reference to Sluggy Freelance.
 

busterkeatonrules

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GamerMage said:
busterkeatonrules said:
Given the stuff you're into, you have almost certainly read the Discworld series already. (But if not: Get to it! Chop chop!)

Also, if you like your crime on the wacky side, you could try the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. Protagonist Stephanie, struggling to find work after being fired from her job at a bargain lingerie store, has taken up bounty hunting in order to make ends meet. Each book sees her haul in another choice selection of grade A New Jersey lowlifes - usually while trying desperately to figure out what kind of psychotic mastermind is trying to kill her THIS month!

Carl Hiaasen's main body of work is somewhat similar, but his stories are a bit too loosely connected to call a series. That said, there are several recurring characters.

In terms of horror, I can't recommend Peter Straub highly enough. All right, not really a series either, but if you see the name Straub on a book, you can't go far wrong. My personal favourite (so far) is 'Shadowland' - though I'll admit that I haven't got around to reading his most famous work, 'Ghost Story' yet!

Fantasy-wise: Well, I haven't cared for fantasy in a dog's age, but I remember greatly enjoying the Dragonlance series by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman - as well as the Paksenarrion trilogy by Elizabeth Moon, who incidentally drew on her own experiences in the US Marines to make the depiction of the protagonist's military career as convincing as possible!
Think you could recommend any good comics, manga, or anime with an Urban Fantasy (Takes place somewhere in the present and Magic returns, or Fuctional Magic is common) Or something involving Sci-Fi Magic, Ninjas, Mecha, Superheroes or Vikings?
Well, you could certainly do worse than 'The Boys', a recent series by 'Preacher' - author Garth Ennis. Set in an alternate version of the present day, the comic chronicles the exploits of the titular Boys; a small, top-secret group of field agents whose job is to keep the unruly superhero population in check by any means necessary. From blackmail to ripping their arms and legs off.

Yeah. Superheroes abound, and have found that with great power comes the ability to do whatever the hell you want without having to deal with the consequences. Each superhero is basically a natural disaster with good PR, as their destructive, murderous and arrogant behavior gets systematically covered up by the government and the comics industry(!)

'The Boys' is violent, gory, sleazy, shocking, poignant and very, very funny. If you're familiar with 'Preacher', you might have some idea of what you're getting.

---

Sci-Fi wise: One of my favourite comics of all time is 'Transmetropolitan'. This is the story of gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem, whose task is to hunt down the Truth in a dystopic hellhole known only as 'The City'. Every aspect of human corruption and perversion has bloated to titanic proportions, and Spider himself is no exception. He is addicted to the very CONCEPT of drug abuse and sees it as his personal mission to be as obnoxious as humanly possible at all times. He is still very much the good guy, though. You will like him, you will root for him, and you will laugh along with him as he repeatedly kicks an old woman who sells flowers.

Oh, and he has a gun that makes people crap themselves.

---

I should also mention those two stalwarts: 'Hellboy' and 'Atomic Robo'. You know, just in case you're one of the six people who haven't checked them out yet. They do belong on any comics recommendation-list of mine, in any case!

Both concern a secret struggle to keep mankind safe from ninjas, pirates, zombies, robots, ninja-pirate-zombie-robots, semi-immortal Nazi scientists and the occasional Lovecraftian abomination. The key difference is that 'Atomic Robo' takes a more lighthearted approach to the concept, and is as memorable for its over-the-top fight scenes as for the titular Robo's habit of uttering a cheesy but brilliantly funny one-liner no matter the situation!

Yeah, bit of a short presentation on those. Don't want to go wall-o'-text on comics you've almost certainly heard about already. That said, if you WANT me to elaborate on either of them, just let me know, and I'll be happy to oblige!
 

ForumSafari

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TheDarklite said:
I really enjoy all of Joe Abercrombie's work - In particular his First Law Trilogy series.
The other bonus of Abercrombie versus Martin is that he doesn't go too grimderp. Reading a MArtin book feels like it's going to end every section with "and then they got raped and died the end."
 

Candidus

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Malus Darkblade. Fantasy novel series. The first three books can be had in an omnibus. There are five books in all.
 

SidheKnight

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I'm going to be super cliche and vanilla and recommend my two favorite book series, which are also everyone else's favorite series:

Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling.
A Song Of Ice And Fire, by George R.R. Martin.
 

rcs619

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HBMK said:
I have gone through all the books in my shelf and have run out, but I have no idea what to read next. Preferred genres: sci-fi, fantasy, horror, crime, cyberpunk, steampunk.

Thanks
Well, let's see... there's a few series I read that fall into those categories. I'm sure *someone* has recommended A Song of Ice and Fire by now, so I'll try not to add too much to that besides saying "They really are good. Heavy reading, but good reading."

One of the longest sci-fi series I've gotten into (like, 13 main entries, 4 side-story spinoffs and 6 short-story anthologies) is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. The series starts off following Honor Harrington, a newly-appointed Captain in the star navy of the Kingdom of Manticore, a small, trade-focused star system whose claim to fame is a network of wormholes that makes their system a crucial center-point in interstellar trade. Things don't quite go according to plan for her, and her Kingdom has also been staring down a war with one of their larger, expansionist neighbors for decades.

Overall, it's a pretty fun series. Lots of politics, drama, and space-battles, and a lot of very memorable characters that keep popping up throughout the rest of the series. Unlike other sci-fi (star trek and star wars, come to mind) it takes a more realistic view of both military structure and space battles. Ships are lobbing missile barrages at each other at ranges of 4 million kilometers, and lasers are considered point-blank, last-ditch weapons because they're only effective at ranges of a couple light-seconds. It's more akin to modern naval combat (missile cruisers shooting at eachother from beyond the horizon) than the usual "WWIII in space" that other sci-fi has popularized. Point-defense weapons and electronic warfare are also hugely important.

The first book in the series (and I believe the second, too) are actually up in full, for free, on the publisher's site. You can read them right on your browser, or save them to some other format. Here's the link for the first book: http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0743435710/0743435710.htm?blurb


Another series I'm quite fond of, also by David Weber is the Safehold series. It's... kind of weird to explain. The gist is, humanity is dead. Systematically exterminated by an alien race known as the Gbaba. Only a single colony ship managed to escape the war without being hunted down and destroyed, and it went on to settle an Earth-like world they named Safehold. A faction within the people in charge of the colony ship seized control, and in an attempt to never be spotted by the Gbaba or any space faring race ever again, they instituted a system to keep humanity permanently at a pre-industrial level. They did this by altering the memories of all of the colonists while in stasis, to make them believe their first memories are literally waking up on Safehold after being created by God, and that the colony staff were God's angels. They then manufactured a religion, the main purpose of which was to label high-technology heretical and to preach against bucking the norm that the angels had established. Needless to say, the rest of the colony staff did not approve, and it all basically went Lord of the Flies, with them killing each other and leaving the colonists alone in the world, completely unaware of the truth about the Church and why they're all there. Cut to about 800 years later when the main story begins, and the Church of Humanity Unchained is a global superpower, able to raise and remove rulers on a whim, and more bloated and corrupt than the Catholic Church ever was prior to the reformation.

And then an android with the digitally-recorded memories of one of the original colony staff wakes up from her 800 year sleep, and sets out to bring down the church and help push humanity back up to the stars.

If I had to describe it, it's... kind of like Game of Thrones, but with less sex, sci-fi elements hovering in the background, and set in the 1700-1800's. There's a lot of politics as Nimue (the digitally-recorded memories of a woman 800 years dead, downloaded into a robotic body) tries to unite various people, rulers and kingdoms, and set her plans to destroy the church into motion. Some very fun characters, and lots of naval and land battles as well. I'm just a big sucker for that time period. Muskets, cannons, galleons and such.

The first few chapters of the first book are up online for free if you want to take a look. http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0765315009/0765315009.htm?blurb
 

busterkeatonrules

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GamerMage said:
Transmetropolitian: Sounds interesting. I might check it out. So, basically he's a bald, super powered
version of Hunter S. Thompson mixed with Deadpool? 0_0 ...Ok, you've got my interest. Does he have
any powers himself, or is he more like Deathstroke? So, he's a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold, eh?
Mind elaborating? (Give an example,perhaps?)
Sure thing!

Well, Spider has no outright superpowers - he's simply had a tough life and a tough career in a dog-eat-dog dystopia, and has adapted accordingly. At one point, he gets ambushed by several police officers, beaten to a pulp and left for dead in the gutter - and feels genuinely encouraged by this because it means that his latest column has made someone really uncomfortable.

The really interesting part of Transmetropolitan itself, is the setting. Technology has run rampant, allowing bizarre bodily enhancements ranging from cyborg parts to a TV screen implanted across half the face, switching to a different tattoo every so often. Cloning is perfectly commonplace, and genetically altered humans - perfectly normal, but missing the sentient parts of the brain - are routinely grown in vats and openly sold as fast food.

Sex changes are passè. There exists an entire subculture of people who are in the process of changing species, from human to some kind of alien from across the universe. The process is done biochemically, and takes ages. Nobody has ever actually completed it yet, and those who are partially converted get treated as second-rate citizens. Damn near every panel in the 10-volume (plus bonus 'zero'-volume) series is a veritable freak show. You can read through the whole thing ten times and still miss stuff.

Every household is equipped with a 'maker' - a sentient machine that rearranges molecules, and is therefore capable of turning absolutely anything into absolutely anything else. The idea is to feed it garbage and have it make a classy suit, a gun, food, a new plague virus or whatever. These devices are manufactured and marketed by the mafia ("Buy one today, or we break your legs!") At one point, Spider discovers that the digital mind that runs his Maker has become addicted to a digital drug, hence the bizarre sunglasses Spider got from it. (Those are the glasses he wears throughout the series.)

If you don't mind me breaking out the trope-talk, Spider Jerusalem is a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold if ever there was one - though he's probably best described as a prime Magnificent Bastard with a hefty chunk of CloudCuckoolander mixed in for good measure. One particularly memorable quote from his boss, expressing dismay that Spider wants phone privileges: "You're dangerous with a phone. Remember what you did when you were alone with a phone in Prague? Remember how many people died?"

Bottom line: Transmetropolitan is a one-of-a-kind masterpiece, and if you like comics at all, you owe it to yourself to check it out! Incidentally, ALL of the above spoilers apply to the first volume only, so you have nothing but surprises awaiting you once you get through the introduction.

As for Hellboy, I had the same concern you did: Where to start? I decided to simply start with Hellboy # 1, then see where I feel like going once I'm done with the main series. (I'm currently on # 6, and the series never seizes to amaze me.)
 

WolfThomas

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Oh yeah another great series is the Wildcards Anthology.

It's a series that has about 20 books now. It's about an alternate version of earth where an alien virus was introduced the late 40's. Most people who catch it die, others are deformed in all sorts of strange ways and a rare few lucky enough remain intact but with amazing superpowers. The Freaks are called Jokers, the superheroes Aces. It's about the way society shuns one group and idolizes the other.

Over the years it's been editied by GRRM (yes that GRRM), whose also contributed some amazing stories and characters. The great thing is unlike superhero comics when characters die they stay dead, others have aged in real time and therefore slowly exited the stories.

As every book is made of short stories by different authors, the writing quality varies, but for the most they're pretty solid. Usually every third book is a "mosaic novel" drawing on the characters, themes and settings the previous books have setablished in one full length story that alternates between major characters.
 

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Also the Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson for Sci-Fi. Very detailed, which can make it a drag. But well worth the wait for what happens to the spacelift. Totally insane
 

DirgeNovak

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I quite like the Dexter novels. They're a bit darker weirder than the TV series, but just as good. The first novel, Darkly Dreaming Dexter has the same basic plot as the first season of the show, albeit with a different (and much better) ending, and the other ones have nothing to do with the show. The second one (Dearly Devoted Dexter) is my personal favorite. It's really incredible.
 

busterkeatonrules

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GamerMage said:
I have never read The Goon, and am only vaguely familiar with the concept. I get the impression that he's basically the closest thing to Hellboy that humanity could conceivably produce unassisted. Which is pretty neat, I suppose.

As for Transmetropolitan, I think the best advice I can give you is to get out there and buy volume one at your earliest convenience. If this comic were absolutely anything other than the very best thing that anybody could possibly recommend to you, you would long ago have run out of questions! [small]Not to say that I'm unwilling to type out a complete transcript of volumes zero through 10 for you here, but I fear that the resulting text-wall would make premium banhammer bait.[/small]

Seriously. You want a Crazy Awesome protagonist. You are amused by the idea of human junk food. Trust me on this one:

Try Transmetropolitan. You are going to love it. Phone-rampages and all. (Yes, he does it again!)