Hello. Veeky Forums is useless. Tell me good fantasy books. Also, I read LotR like a decade ago. I remember enjoying it...

whoops, meant to quote

>There's a few guys on here who've got some kind of hateboner for Sanderson, but he's pretty decent.

Only me in this thread - to say I hate him is to give him too much credit. Just really plain and a waste of time.

i don't know man, really seems like you think he's a bad or stupid person just because he wrote a book you didn't like.

Is is that time of the month again?

Skub a shit.

I've gotta say, from what you said about Way of Kings, it feels like we didn't even read the same book. The vitriol you're willing to espouse and the denouncement of character you make before presenting anything against him and his writing just make me dismiss your opinion out of hand. It also makes me not take the statement that you don't hate him with a grain of salt.

Paul Kearney's Macht trilogy - Ten Thousand, Corvus and Kings of Morning.

It's a gritty war series based on the military expeditions of the Greeks in Persia, but placed on an alien, John Carter of Mars style world. It mostly follows a bloke called Rictus of Isca, a mercenary from a fallen city-state.

the kingkiller chronicle :^)

>fat-fuck GRRM were both former soldiers
He got conscientious objector status. He never went to Vietnam.

GRRM never served in a war.

Robert Jordan was a two tour Vietnam veteran though.

I've read just about every big fantasy series out there, and lots of small lesser known ones. My top picks for fantasy novels/series are

Malazan: Book of the Fallen
Kingkiller Chronicles
Black Company
Song of Ice and Fire
The Wheel of Time
Coldfire Trilogy (This one isn't actually that good, sort of a guilty pleasure :3)

Depends on what you're into?

Ken Liu- the dandelion series. Longer books that focus on world building. Definitely not for everyone buy solid reads if you don't need nonstop action.

Mishell baker- borderline. Urban fantasy, but main character is mentally ill, which gives a different take on things.

V.e scwab- a darker shade of magic. Parallel dimensions, with differing levels of magic/tech.

Ilana meyer- last song before night. Basically a world where bards are all powerful.

Mark Lawrence- broken empire. Edgelord character done right. Most fun antihero.

Myke cole- shadow ops. Fun modern series. Us military and magic.

Brian staveley- chronicle of the unhewn throne. Just really fucking solid/good.

Daniel Abraham- the dagger and the coin. Fun sprawling series. Everyone compares it to GoT, because guy has a connection to the author, but doesn't really rival it.

Idk. There's tons of good books out there. What are you into/hate?

We should set some kind of base rules for these threads.

>If you recommend a book or series, give a short blurb why
>If you dislike a book or series someone else has recommended, shut your goddamn mouth and post about a book you do like.

I really don't care for The Kingkiller Chronicle but I'm not going to bash it.

Instead, I'll recommend The Black Company, which, to me, is some seriously well-done dark fantasy that isn't bogged down by shoddy writing.

>If you dislike a book or series someone else has recommended, shut your goddamn mouth and post about a book you do like.
No, see, I prefer to hear mixed opinions, since I don't have unlimited free time. I want to hear why someone disliked a book so I can give it proper consideration. Nothing but praise can give a false image and have me waste a couple hours reading trash.

I made that mistake picking up a Sam Syke's book based on a gushing user. Never again.

bashing is fine, as long as you don't overdo it and actually provide reasons for disliking it
it's the "X sucks. wow, you like X? you must be a retard with shit taste" stuff that makes the threads a pain in the ass to get actual advice from

Malazan gets much better from book 3 onwards, except for a minor rut in book 7, i'd strongly recommend it.

>shoddy writing
Writing style's dry as fuck though, so if you like more purple prose or more meat to the actual writing, then look somewhere else.

>Promise of Blood and the rest of the Powdermage trilogy by Brian MacClellan is decent. Setting's pretty decent, but the gunpowder magic and the characters are decent.
I keep seeing people fellate this series. I picked it up and regret putting money down on it. The writing style is dull and the plot has zero pull.

For a similar-ish kind of story, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel is better value, better quality.

the Clash of Eagles novels are pretty good if you're not overly autistic about historical accuracy

Col Buchanon is preachy but decent

It was middling for me. I meant to say the setting's kind of boring, but my brain was on the decent train for that line, as you can see.

That's fair but a good portion of the time you get Anons sperging about how some books are "objectively" bad or insulting people who like them.

I suppose something like:

>If you dislike a book or series someone else has recommended, calmly and concisely explain why.

I suppose for The Kingkiller Chronicle, the writing style is quite "dense" and makes it annoying to push through. The pacing has an odd tendency to just rub me the wrong way. Yes, he gets to a lot of the events that are alluded to but it's always in a oddly meandering way.

Also, everything about the Ademre strikes me as incredibly dumb.

I have a personal preference for dry writing, I suppose.

The Black Company by Glen Cook

That's cool. I've seen it get a lot of praise just based on the premise of 'zoh my god, fantasy with guns!'

But beyond that the whole thing felt super hollow as a setting and a story.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel struck me as an incredibly meandering and dull story. I couldn't get through the first few chapters and had to put it down.

Could you explain why you liked it so much?

The Bas-Lag Cycle by Herman Mieville is I guess mixed quality. Every book reads like a walking history book of the admittedly interesting setting with decent prose, so if you're into heavy worldbuilding then you'll love it, I know did.

The walking history book part bogs down the plot though. Plot of the first book doesn't even kick into gear until halfway through.

>Could you explain why you liked it so much?
I liked the scope and 'density' of it. The world felt very real to me, as well as the characters that existed in the world. I'm also a fan of 19th century literature like Thomas Hardy and stuff like that, and it felt like Susanna Clarke was consciously evoking that era of literature as well as the society of the day.

The characters and their world views felt very much of that era, rather than modern people dressed up in period outfits, like a lot of modern fantasy and historical writing.

I felt the gun magic was truly what pulled it along. That and the general character. It could have been better, but I didn't hate it. It wasn't unreadable for me, like The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks. But it wasn't mind-blowing and didn't cause me to do a bunch of soul searching, like "The Emperor's Soul" by Brandon Sanderson.

Cry of the Icemark was pretty neat. The Not!Roman Empire is a warmongering technological powerhouse poised to stomp all over Generic Viking Land, but rather than try and beat them head-on with sheer manliness they decide to go out diplomancing through every nation they can reach.

Net result: vikings and giant intelligent tigers with druid support do battle against Roman pike-and-shot formations while witches help hoards of vampires fly against ballista-armed airships.

And somehow all this shit manages to fit, without looking like the literary equivalent of a tossed salad.

Also good is Inkheart. Guy has the power to bring things into reality by reading their story aloud, accidentally yanks the BBEG out of a book. BBEG fucking loves it here, sets up a mafia, reads the loot out of Treasure Island.

If you haven't already, take a look at Thomas Covenant. You will either love the books or despise them, but it's a punch to the gut either way. It's one of the most compelling psychodramas I've ever read, but at the same time, the protaognist is disgusting, and watching him shamble on from wreckage to wreckage is either going to enthrall you, or cheer on his road to self destruction.

I read the first trilogy of those when I was 13. It was really depressing as a young teen. I've wanted to go back and read them as an adult to see if they hold up to my memory.

I greatly enjoyed Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom even if best husbando dies

I already really liked The Waking Fire. Part Uncharted, part Bond, and part Master and Commander the book was enjoyable for me from start to finish. I loved the setting of a world on the cusp of the modern era, about to hurdle head first into its first world war because of a shortage of fuel and the actions of a few people to try to stop it that blows up into something much more.

Lies of Locke Lamora is probably my favorite "pure fantasy" book. Books two and three are above-average, but a little lacking.

He's been pushing back the release date for his fourth book for over a year at this point, maybe he'll actually release it someday.

I really enjoyed Johannes Cabal the Necromancer. It's a black comedy about an evil scientist trying to win his soul back from the Devil. The audiobook is very well produced. There's a decline in quality as the series progresses but it works just fine standalone.

Instead of re-reading LotR read Children of Hurin, then decide if you want to re-read LotR with a better understanding of Tolkien's intent with his stuff on Middle-Earth. It's pretty short. It's good to read some of his other work to "clean your palate" of Tolkien's image on pop culture, which was distorted by adaptations and derivative works into unecognizability

If you want something funny, try some Terry Pratchett. I find the Death series pretty humerus.

I can never find a print version of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser

I'm not sure if it quite counts as fantasy, as it kind of blurs the line between fantasy and sci-fi, but really, read Lord of Light.

bump

lies of Locke Lamora, the Gentlemen Bastards series.

Kind of a mix of fantasy with Ocean's Eleven.

Very this.
It's a great mix of Sci-Fi and psychic powers with bits of Hindu mythology mixed in, along with a great main character.

This is the book that got Neil Gaiman started on his "modern gods" kick.

I'm gonna hijack this thread for my own request. What books might any of you recommend if I wanted something with the feel of, like, The Princess Bride, or Ladyhawk? Something that would resonate with your inner conception of a hypothetical "generic" fantasy?

These are shit.

>Herman Mieville
You just combined China Mieville (the author you mean, though yes, he's a dude) with Herman Melville, the Moby Dick guy.
That's actually quite impressive a fuck up.

I appreciate your pune, or play on words.
And yeah, Pratchetts good for funs and characters.

Also seconding Abercrombie, bretty good series, lots of nice action and assholish characters

>zelazny

One of the most amazing science fiction and fantasy authors. He's done so much for the genre that most people will only ever feel echoes of, and that's a bit of a shame.

>Hello. Veeky Forums is useless.

You know they have a thread dedicated to fantasy and sci-fi you useless retard.

The Traitor Batu Cormorant.

Fuck that was so good.

Baru* Cormorant.

Why was it good?

Chapter 2 alone is worth the price of the entire book.

The writing's extremely solid, and when you look past the prose (which is something I generally don't do, because plots are generally relatively uninteresting), there is actually some depth to the novel. It's both a book looking at imperialism from economical and ideological standpoints and a character study of the titular character, with small personal dramas and larger-than-life consequences to her choices.

And it's a complete story in one book (it's very sad I have to say this when it comes to fantasy lit).

Also, if you can read French, 'Gagner la guerre' by Jean-Philippe Jaworski is supremely rewarding to read.

I wouldn't know quality literature from a hole in the ground, so I'll just recommend you some stuff I enjoyed reading.

The True Game by Sheri S. Tepper
The Chronicles of Morgaine
The Rose of the Prophet trilogy
The Sovereign Stone trilogy
The Redemption of Althalus
Chronicles of the Kencyrath
The Spellsinger series (at least the first 6 books, I haven't read the other two)
The Barbed Coil
The Bartimaeus trilogy
Heroes of the Valley

I've been looking for more high seas piracy, any suggestions?

Alright, that *does* sound good. Thanks for the recommendation!

I have a friend who's enthusiastically been trying to get me to read the "Gentleman Bastards" books for years now. Never had the time, but this seems like the right thread to ask if I should bother actually making the time one of these days

Wheel of Time

gets lot of hate, but it is excellent if you have patience to understand longer plotlines and are capable of understanding that some characters evolve and grow over +10 books instead of instantly starting as likeable. Lots of politics and prophecies, you cannot have action non-stop. The first 6 are action filled, then comes a "winter break" of ~4 books with more plotting and talking, until the last 4 start rolling towards the big final encounter; and it's worth it

Why does the Discworld one fade out?

Yeah, they're worth a read, they're quite fun (the ocean's 11 comparison user made is good) but still fairly brutal and grounded, if that makes sense. Fairly low fantasy, and I thought the setting (psuedo-venetian merchant city) was interesting, we don't see that much.

If it helps, the first book doesn't end on a cliffhanger or anything (in fact most don't, instead being self-contained stories) so you needn't feel you're committing to having to read the full set like with some fantasy series. I'd say read the first one and see how you go.

WoT for me was funny. I thought they were fucking AMAZING when I was reading them. Now, looking back, I'm not so hot on them. Some of it was the author dying and the last books being by Sanderson whom I don't like nearly as much, but I think a lot of it is that one of the things I really liked about WoT was the cleverness, the wordplay, the mythological references. I remember calling to my friends back in high school that Rand was going to lose a hand somewhere down the line because RJ has spent too much time building the three of them up as Odin, Thor, and Tyr, and of course, Tyr has to lose a hand. I loved the puns about the "Fischer" king, and the parallels to Australian aboriginie myth and the wolf dream.

But it's hard to keep attached to that kind of cleverness, and it compensated for a lot of other weaknesses.

the worldbuilding, prophecies, "good people" opposing the heroes left and right, "bad people" often aiding/guiding/pushing them towards certain paths, "grey" characters everywhere who are pissed at the idea of Dragon coming to "save" them.
WoT is next level political bickering compared to the plotting people find alluring in ASOIAF.

for example, the worldbuilding; out of the starting continent, we have POVs from almost every nation and every important city or so. It's actually odd to have a large fantasy world, with most nations actually serving a purpose in the story that we can witness firsthand through POVs.

I too wish Jordan had lived long enough to finish the series, but Sanderson was definitely good enough, Jordan was getting too caught in the worldbuilding at times, not advancing fast enough and it showed. A lot worse authors could have been found to finish the series, I think Sanderson wrote it to end as well as possible for someone who was not Robert Jordan himself.

>I suppose for The Kingkiller Chronicle, the writing style is quite "dense" and makes it annoying to push through. The pacing has an odd tendency to just rub me the wrong way. Yes, he gets to a lot of the events that are alluded to but it's always in a oddly meandering way.

I had the opposite reaction. I found his writing style to be the best part. The plot was okay, basic but overall competent, but the writing style just grabbed me and refused to let go.

This is why Veeky Forums needs to lay off speaking about books in absolute terms, by the way. Sometimes the thing you hated a book for is the same thing that someone else recommends it on.

I tried to like WoT, but I couldn't get over how fucking stupid every single aes sedai character was. They were all written like shallow, idiotic high school girls, yet apparently we're meant to believe they're the paragons of wisdom in the setting.

Disagree about Sanderson being good enough. Again, he lacked that cleverness, the subtlety that made WoT work for me. I almost threw it down in disgust when he had Perrin forge a new hammer and name it "M'hallanir" or however you modified "Mjolnir". That, and well, he completely eliminated some rather key things that Jordan was building up, most especially that it would be the three of them and their ta'veren natures that would be the key to winning at the end, not Rand's dragon powers or Mat's battle luck.

>yet apparently we're meant to believe they're the paragons of wisdom in the setting.

I never got that vibe. Every source about how they're the paragons of wisdom come from the Aes Sedai themselves.

They're magical bullies, little more.

>yet apparently we're meant to believe they're the paragons of wisdom in the setting.

That is the official White Tower stance when promoting themselves to the general public. Don't trust the witches, listen to the Whitecloaks.

Jordan imagined how feminism would work in a wizard fantasy setting where women get to call the shots and have all the power and influence; the resulting infighting and internal plotting is just fantastic.

then again, it serves as a plot device, so that our heroes can "fix" things

also not sure how deep you got into the series; even Aes Sedai have been falling to Dark Side, and many of them are fucking things up on purpose from the inside. It's a conscious plan by the baddies to make the Aes Sedai hilariously incompetent.

Isn't that the whole point? They're spoken of as paragons of wisdom and power but they are in fact bickering idiots just like everyone else. Their wisdom is a myth perpetuated by themselves to keep them in power.

>.
pretty sure Sanderson was following Jordans quite gigantic amount of notes when writing the last 3 books.
Perrin forging "M'ahalleinir" or whatever it was, definitely Jordan trying to borrow from Nordic mythology. Also that chapter was pretty awesome as fantasy writing about forging magical weapons go.

Jordan might have tried to weasel in a dozen more minor subplots, which would not likely alter the actual outcome in any way.
then again, Jordan and his war experiences would have written an even more awesome Last Battle chapter.

>tfw we will never get to read the WoT the way it was meant to be

I got that there's an element of satire to it, but it made the books really annoying to read whenever there was an aes sedai on screen. They're THAT fucking stupid.

As for how far I got, the chaps across the ocean had turned up and slightly invaded. I think the last thing that happened in the last book I read was a wall fell on Matrim. Can't remember which book that was though.

end of book 7, Seanchan invade Ebou Dar, a building collapses on Mat

Aes Sedai are modelled a bit after Vatican. The original purpose of religious communes was to offer aid, help and religious healing to those who are needy, poor and suffer.
2000 years later they have gilded churches, abuse kids, participate in political corruption and who knows what.
Yeah, the original White Tower ideals have been altered over 3000 years, and now they are stupid as hell and barely a remnant of their former might and wisdom.
Which only makes for a more interesting plot, instead of having wise helpful women solve everything for our main heroes.
(Reds putting Rand in a box and torturing the Dragon who is supposed to save them... probably not what the ancient Aes Sedai would have expected to happen when the prophecies come finally true)

I had a completely different experience when reading Wheel of Time. The writing was very shallow, constantly using repeating mannerisms (tugging braids anyone?) and the characters started running into an indistinguishable blob after four, five book. I seriously could not have which one of them was talking without them being called by name, they were all so samey. The worst problem was that the books had tons of padding, just walls of text with nothing happening and people being vaguely annoyed at each other for no particular reason. And the world wasn't even original, the writer just shamelessly put in whatever tropes he could get in his hands and called it "foreshadowing". It's a long series but that's not a good thing when it's a tedious slog.

Getting through those three books was a fucking test of endurance, but the ending of the first trilogy was so good I actually cried. Does Thomas become a fuckup again somehow in the next two trilogies? Because I really, really don't want that. He was the most damaged protagonist I've ever seen, and yet he clearly didn't want to be a monster. I felt so bad for him.

The minor rut in book 7 is more than made up for in the latter half of book 8 though. Holy shit.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned The Deepgate Codex by Alan Campbell. Three books-- Scar Night, Iron Angel, and God of Clocks-- the series is an amazing read but it's some grimdark shit of the highest order.

Zimiamvian Trilogy & The Worm Ouroboros by ER Eddison.

Other than that, the usual stuff - Malazan book of the fallen, the black company (only the books of the north though, imo),

>dry
I'd argue that the setting is the reason why Glen Cook's writing seems dry. It's written like a soldier's log, about men and women who endure shit as a matter of course. It's supposed to be dry.

Yeah, you could art up the idea of war and conflict in a fantasy setting - God knows thousands of writers already have - but few series have made me consider what it must be like being in the shit of a brutal magic-fueled war like The Black Company did.

It's not perfect, but what series ever is?

>the books of the north
Same. I didn't mind the others, but the North series is the best, in my opinion.

The Chronicles of Amber, bur Roger Zelazny. Preferably just Corwin's cycle, but Merlin's Cycle is... alright, I guess.

>That Discworld
Whoever made this char is a fucking asshole.
Alzheimer's.

Anyone read The legend of Drizzt? Are they worth reading?

The Well of Echoes series by Ian Irvine was good back when I read it.
Interesting magic system, magic potential is stored in mineral deposits and crystals mined from veins underground, and they rely on fields of magic produced by Nodes deep below the earth. Casters suffer after effects dependant on the spells, even for simple spells.

The series that came after was serious bad tho. Nish was a fucking chode.

How about the Edge Chronicles? Fuckin' airshiiiiiips!

Yes and no. He has issues, but he's much more put together than he was in the first trilogy. He's not all happy McFunFace everything is going to work out great, and he does some more questionable things, but it's mostly about how the new protagonist is the wreck and Covenant tries to help her out.

The Wizard Knight
Book of the New Sun
Chronicles of Amber
The Fionavar Tapestry
The first three Earthsea books
Viriconium

Honestly, Tolkien's non middle earth writing doesn't get nearly the exposure it should. Of his other works, I would particularly recommend Farmer Giles of Ham.

>To be a good author you have to serve in the army.
t. Heinlein

Depends on the book. The first Mistborn trilogy was tolerable, Stormlight Archive is just too long to be worth reading, and the second Mistborn trilogy compensates for bad writing with cowboy wizards(it's worth a read, honest), but Elantris was actually a genuinely good book.

The first book was actually pretty based if you wanted a better thought out Harry Potter for older audiences, but then the second book happened.

A thousand times this.

Definitely this. Children of Hurin was serious, humourless and generally darker than LotR, and that really helped the whole 'Scandinavian tragedy' thing Tolkien was aiming for.

>Black company
>shit

Have you seen Veeky Forums? It's all hipsters who hate everything 'mainstream' and love YA 'novels'.