Fantasy Novels

Bearadox_42

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The Jim Butcher books are definitely worth a read. He easily one of my favorite authors..

The Mistborn trilogy is pretty good too...though I felt it got a little weird toward the last book...
 

Whytewulf

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Awesome ideas, thank you for the numerous suggestions. I will order many.. I have to take all this information in. I had heard of the Dresdin Files, that sounds like an initial winner. And I need to relook at Pratchett and Riftwars Sagas..

Polarni said:
Pratchett, definetley start reading Terry Pratchett.
Also, the Shannara series (by Terry Brooks) is (in my humble opinion) pretty awesome; an interesting fantasy setting with just right amount of magic and mystery to make it seamlessly blend in one good story.
Forgot to add that I read a of brooks, like Shannara)
 

Whytewulf

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Ahri said:
I'm reading through the first book in the Wheel of Time series right now.

I'm actually really enjoying it - it's not ridiculously verbose, which is a rather irritating trend in fantasy novels, or so I've found.

I'd also suggest the Chronicles of the Dark Ages series by Michelle Paver. I read them a while ago, they're based around a boy named Torak and his wolf companion.
I got through the First 5 books of Wheel of Time, this was about 10 years ago and I just burnt out. Where as his characters didn't really change much except for one.. no spoilers though. In my opinion, the opposite of Game of Thrones, where it seems every character I like dies. I am interested in how you like it around book 3 or 4.
 

Whytewulf

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Pohaturon said:
Second for Terry Pratchett.

Also, read the novel titled "IMMORTALS". It's stupidly long, and rather interesting. Pretty heavy fantasy.
Which "Immortals, I found several?"
 

ensouls

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If you're taking all the Guy Kay recommendations, stay the hell away from the Fionavar Tapestry series. It's the first ones of his I tried to read and they're awful.

I suggest Gormenghast (not technically fantasy, but reads just like it) and that's... pretty much all I got that isn't Pratchett. I haven't read much fantasy in awhile.
 

likalaruku

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Anyone know any good D&D-like fantasy books with no sex & no romance? That stuff cheapens the adventure for me. I also prefer it to focus on a group rather than an individual. (Kinda like LotR).
 
Aug 19, 2010
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Whytewulf said:
Pohaturon said:
Second for Terry Pratchett.

Also, read the novel titled "IMMORTALS". It's stupidly long, and rather interesting. Pretty heavy fantasy.
Which "Immortals, I found several?"
standalone book in the "edge chronicles". The trilogies leave a lot to be desired, but the two standalones are rather good.
 

Vladimir Stamenov

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Nov 8, 2011
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Sooo, what to reccommend...
Read The Braided Path trilogy - a lot of female characters and a female protagonist, brilliant villains, original magic system, a lot of twists, and not a fake European medieval setting, more Japan oriented actually. Has an omnibus.

Chronicles of the Black Company - one of the very few fantasies that protrays armies and characters with actually grey moral viewpoints fight (also know as Grey vs. Grey Morality), The Company is a likeable bunch and the rebels they're hired to fight aren't inherently good - they're actually right bastards, like the "bad" guys. Has a three in one omnibus.

If you want a deeper, philosphical fantasy where magic and its ideologies are implemented into the metaphysics of the world, with well-built, introspective, if not immediately likeable characters, a lot of epicness and a complex plot - try The Second Apocalypse series which consists of two trilogies so far - The Prince of Nothing and The Aspect-Emperor, with the second trilogy's last book coming out probablt late this year or early next year. You should know if you start that the protagonist is basically invincible and is more of a plot device than a character, so you don't end up whining like some people that he's a Mary Sue.

Read the classic Chronicles of Amber if you haven't! It has a badass protagonist, great worldbuilding, gorillas armed with machine-guns invading a fantasy kingdom and a lot more!

Read the Long Price Quartet, though I think someone mentioned it.

Shadows of the Apt is good popcornwise, it had some beginnings of deeper character development in book two, but it's still good as it is.

Read the newer editions of The Sandman comic series by Neil Gaiman, they're recoloured and they're amazing.

Read the Watch urban fantasy series by Sergey Lukyanenko, they have cool soc-realism, well-put moral dillemas, good fight scenes, they play on your heartstrings from time to time, but most of all they, like all the books I mentioned, just suck you in!
And if there are other Goodreads users here, here's my profile - http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/4688987-vladimir-stamenov

KingsGambit said:
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth is pretty good, but can get a bit preachy. The first few books are great, the middle bunch not so much, then it picks up again at the end. The villains don't make much sense (think Mass Effect's "Reapers" nonsense), and fans debate that they and the heroes represent Goodkind's personal political views.
:D The whole series is based on a skewed version of Ayn Rand's objectivism, which is a clusterfuck in itself. He was her friend.

My personal opinion, but if you read Eragon, Shannara and the Drizzt stuff (haven't read Eddings, but heard some similiar things about him too) after a certain age, you realise how dull and repetetive they are.
 

Whytewulf

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likalaruku said:
Anyone know any good D&D-like fantasy books with no sex & no romance? That stuff cheapens the adventure for me. I also prefer it to focus on a group rather than an individual. (Kinda like LotR).
Have you read the Ice Wind Dale Trilogy? Very little romance. I liked the Belgarion Series by Eddings, but there is some romance in the 10 book series.
 

Zac Jovanovic

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Jan 5, 2012
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My top recommendation is the Mistborn series, or anything by Sanderson really, but Mistborn is on the top of my list, in front of "The First Law", ASOIAF and "The Kingkiller Chronicle".
He is right now, the best fantasy writer in my opinion.

wolf thing said:
Durgiun said:
The Painted Man, also The Witcher: The Last Wish.
i second the last wish, i would also recommended blood of elves, the sequel which not only has more from geralt and yennefer but also some of the best writter dialog i have read in a book.
I have two Witcher books before the actual 5-book saga that begins with "Blood of Elves",they're called "The Sword of Destiny" and "The Last Wish. The prequels are pretty good, they're collections of short Witcher stories, giving a good background for the series and especially the games.

I'm going through the series now, reading it in my native language since I don't think the last 3 or 4 books are released in English yet sadly. Loving it so far, though I sometimes struggle since I'm used to reading fantasy in English.

The "Painted Man" is also pretty good, or "Warded Man" depending on the publisher, there is a sequel now too "The Desert Spear". I should be getting my hands on it soon-ish.
 

Gennaroc

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Jul 30, 2011
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Personally I love the Sword of Truth series. Objectivist preaching gets insane Pillars of Creation (book 7) onwards, but aside from Pillars and Naked Empire, the books are really quite engaging regardless. There is sooo much hate directed at it, but it mostly falls under the 'bashing you over the head with ideology' and 'morally ambiguous protagonist' departments, and if you think you are the type of person that can deal with that then go ahead.

The world building is excellent (try reading anything taking place in the People's Palace of D'hara and not want to live there), the characters are archetypical yet bizarrely well fleshed out and multilayered, the major villain Jagang is really cool -exceedingly similar to what Nolan did with Bane, but more coherent and genuinely terrifying ('ripped, bestial, wool vest wearing brute but with a super-keen intellect'. Jagang however is also a dream walker, and possesses the ability to remotely possess people, taking control of magic users abilities for his army, torturing people psychologically as well as through physical nerve abuse. He's creepy, abusive, despicable and just really quite an effective villain), cool approach to magic that is quite evocative of computer coding towards the later books, and generally challenging approaches to war crimes and the necessity of good people doing horrific things to stop much worse.

One of the most frequently used scenes to rain hate down with is a moment from Naked Empire in which the protagonist Richard and a small force of his followers are being pursued by an army of the antagonist forces through a town. They reach the entrance to the town square (which from memory will either provide them escape from the town or be a place to stand and fight, I forget, but either way they need to reach it) to find a human shield in the form of a mob of unarmed peace protesters supporting the antagonists side. In the brief moments before reaching them, Richard is forced to make a decision. Either he stops to spare the protestors who stand for the side that would murder and destroy everything and everyone he holds to heart (also quite literally all of reality) and be killed himself, or he murders them, and is able to save the lives of the immediate people who follow him, and continue fighting for life itself.
Being a pragmatic fuck, he decides to plough through and murder unarmed men and women. It's not treated as a particularly huge deal, and the plot moves on.
I think this is the distilling point of the whole series. This is where people either get up and leave or are like 'well ok, thats new'. For me, I fall into the latter category. I think there are a thousand other books out there that have more clear cut heroes who wouldn't be faced with that kind of situation, and if they did it would be a really big plot point, and they certainly wouldn't self-rationalise it to be necessary and acceptable. Wheres, the Sword of Truth gives a protagonist who does horrible, horrible things that the text demonises the bad guys for, but will paint the heros as moral paragons for doing. And... thats kind of cool to be honest. You don't often get to read textually positioned 'heroic' characters doing this kind of stuff, because as per the objectivist ideals rampant in the series, the truth is the truth. If the opposition wants to literally erase reality, then the protagonist must view himself as someone unable to do wrong, because anything he does cannot be worse than what will happen if he doesn't stop the antagonists. By freeing himself of moral ambiguity in situations, he becomes the one person in a position of power to be able to stop Jagang. Its the sort of thing that wouldn't work for every hero ever obviously, but for this its just kind of refreshing.

Anways, TL;DR: Not for everyone but certainly different, and if you can get past the preaching its amazingly well constructed and you'l be rewarded with awesome moral relativism and heros that challenge your ability to like them, rather than being a default basic protagonist-coded character.

-

Otherwise two other really good fantasy series are the Myst and Monster Blood Tattoo trilogies. I found Raymond E. Feist's Magician to be a little tedious and super cliche to be honest, but apparently his collected works are really good in general, and I've only read the first of the first trilogy, so I can't really judge...
 

Whytewulf

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Daniel Ferguson said:
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss if you haven't yet, there's only one to go, though I don't know when it'll be released... the author says 2025, and people have given book 3 a 4-star review on goodreads, so obviously time travellers are fairly happy with it :p

It's one of those fantasy books that you simply must read. It's that rare breed that's really, really good, if you can 'grok' the character of Kvothe. The prologue and blurb (on the UK version, the one that's actually a sample from the book, not the one that just talks about the book) alone deserve awards.

If you want fantasy-style steam/diesel punk with high adventure, freelancing privateers, demons, a psychotic golem made of a diving suit, airships - the titular one I choose to believe looks like Serenity from Firefly - and lots of shooting, I'd also recommend Tales of the Ketty Jay, by Chris Wooding, which is a bit like Pirates of the Caribbean on airships with a palpable layer of engine grease all over it.
Hey Thanks for the Patrick Rothfuss recommendation. Just finished the second book. Not as good as the first, seemed Patrick needed to get some, but good none the less. Ready for book 3!