Some good fantasy books?

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

The Inheritance series.

The Lone Wolf game-books by the late Joe Dever. The author has graciously allowed fans to freely host his work at projectaon.org/

Yeah Abercrombie's books are good and keep getting better generally. A bit loledgy at times but I enjoy them.

a thread like this is never a bad place to recommend going back to basics: Appendix N
Its a lot of solid choices

wanderinginn.wordpress.com/2016/07/27/1-00/

This is a very different (and wonderfully written) take on a fantasy world. It’s just all around very well written, do not under any circumstance mistake the existence of level up mechanics as a crutch, this is a full on fantasy setting. Trends get bucked the instant a giant ant and dragon man are the first locals to show up.Also the main character is distinctly unique from pretty much anything else in fantasy ever for her brand pacifistic and general niceness.

>The Kingkiller chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss.

The Dark Elf Trilogy. It's actually pretty good.

>Raymond Feist
My man

The waterborn

What's wrong with the Kingkiller chronicles? I was about to pick it up.

>Some good fantasy books?
Outside of the few obvious rare authors: Tolkien, Lewis, Rigney (e.g. Jordan), Howard, arguably Miéville, they are mostly garbage. If you want to make good fantasy, DON'T READ FANTASY.
Read something more substantial.

To stimulate your imagination, read something like Borges (any short stories), Calvino (Invisible Cities), Cortazar (Famas i Cronopos), Schulz (Crocodile Street, Senatorium under the Sign of Hourglass), Kafka (I recommend shorter stories like those in Country Doctor the most), Bulghakov (Master and Margarita) or Pavić (Chazarian Dictionary).

To get inspired for good plots and characters, read Dostojevsky, Eco or Fowles.

To get inspired for mythologies, open Thousand and One Nights, or grab yourself books of folklore, old Fairytales, ancient Saga's: something actually at least a little genuine and coming from era where fantastic motifs were still lived in.

For more theoretical approach to narrativity, especially heroic and mythological, go and grab yourself Campbell's Hero of Thousand Masks, Eliade's Myth of Eternal Return.
For inspiration on magic, browse Frazer's Golden Bought.

You'll see that
A) they are much more fun and interesting than you'd expect them to be, and find yourself also just more enriched by reading any of these authors, and
B) you'll find yourself actually inspired to create meaningful concepts, rather than emulating dull, over-repeated tropes over and over again.

Fantasy is a beautiful thing if it's not inspired by other fantasy.

>extreme marysue protagonist who's good at everything except when he fails so he can succeed
>fedora levels of m'ladyism
>uninteresting story about paying student loans
>purple prose out the ass
>its all good tho because its kvothe who's telling the story unreliable narrator hue hue

>Sanderson — The Stormlight Archive

It's got a weaker plot than Mistborn, but much better world-building. Very idea-minable in that it'll expose you to modern fantasy that is a bit to the side of generic.

>Aldiss — Helliconia

It's technically a sci-fi book, but narrative texture-wise it's very much a conceptual fantasy thing. Pretty good if you wanna read source material for something like social/setting exploration campaign.

>Cromwell — The Last Kingdom

If you wanna run a low fantasy game about mortal men doing heroic things using their brains, bravery and cunning, not overpowered shit from the equipment table, read this.

>Kay — The Last Light of the Sun

Very poetic. Plot and characters aside, it gives a feeling of fantasy post-apocalypse. It's a subtle portrayal of times lost between other, better times. As a reader you certainly know this state of historical limbo will not last forever, but if you try immerse yourself in the time period, you kinda understand that the beginning is in the myths, and there's no future, and centuries will pass in silent sameness. But it's not depressing at all, because the characters just live their lives in the present, while only every now and then feeling the passage of centuries.

This kind of subtlety is practically absent from modern perception of fantasy, and it'll probably take a very introspective game to pull it off.

>Valente — In the Night Garden

It reads much like some ultra-indie conceptual story game. I've long wondering if I can hack PbtA to run this setting. The fluid and irrational flow of the narrative is actually pretty close to what narrative games tend to produce if everyone's careful enough to avoid turning their game into a clown fiesta.

>Hurley — The Mirror Empire

The setting is picturesque as hell.

What does Veeky Forums think about Dragonlance?

The works of David Eddings.

Garion series:
The Belgariad
The Mallorean
Belgarath the Sorceror
Polgara the Sorceress

Sparhawk series:
The Elenium
The Tamuli

The Redemption of Althalus

Dude, its true he is a mary sue. But he is a mary sue done right.

Try The Dragon Lords: Fools Gold by Jon Hollins. since all the other choices I was about to suggest have been said by previous Anons.

> literally about a group of shitheads that are trying to steal gold from a conglomerate of greedy merchant dragons.

Kinda lolrandom at times but it's pretty perfect for a D&D short campaign.

>mary sue done right
Elaborate. And, no, "this power fantasy appeals to me" is not a good excuse.

Think about it.

Dude knows he is a mary sue. He thinks he is invincible and unbeatable.

Because of this: he nearly kills himself in the first book by trying something too advanced for him, in the second one, he gets his ass cursed by a magical tree because he decides to wander around in the magical woods, gets his ass kicked by two bandits while trying to not get robbed, manages to fall from grace from one of the most powerful nobles in the world, gets his ass kicked by his lethani teacher for being a wimp, manages to anger the son of a very powerful noble who almost kills him.

He has his flaws, sure, its overcompensated by him being absurdly intelligent and having a ridiculously good memory, but in the end, he mostly just fucks about in the world nearly getting killed for being a cocky little shit.

Honestly the character himself is not perfect, its not really a good character.
But he manages not to fuck up the entire setting, since rothfuss gives him about as many flaws as he gives him qualities thus making him as least mary sue as possible

I'm not sure what some of the differences are between all of these. What's the difference between comic fantasy, weird, and mythic? Also isn't alternate world redunant as most fantasies are in a different world?

>Kvothe is great at everything
>but it doesn't matter because sometimes bad things happen to him
So? All his failures have no bearing on him. Notice how many times you said he was 'almost killed'? But he never was, was he? Through the framing story it's being hinted that eventually Kvothe fucks up so bad that he fucks up the world. Yeah, eventually, maybe, perhaps if the third book is released, and everything isn't a dream or he just realizes the can fix everything or it's all 'just as planned'....
Something that really stood out to me was the scene in the Eolian tavern in the first book, where that other guy sabotaged Kvothe's performance by rigging his strings to break. This should be something bad, but not only his performance didn't suffer - he played even better, and in the end everyone clapped.

>Elenium trilogy by David Eddings

Nigga you cant complain about plot armour litterally every protagonist ever has some degree of plot armour.

Lets run trough some of them shall we?

Frodo and Sam
Luke skywalker
Beren and Luthien
Beowulf
Jon Snow
Arya Stark
Ciaphas Cain
Everyone from any action movie in the 80s EVER

discworld and redwall novels

The point is that those people, however strong, are impacted by the things that happen to them.

Also, they have a personality. Kvothe's so insufferably good at everything that his only defining characteristic is that he sometimes fails.

The Dwarves series is really good if you enjoy dwarves. While it focuses on them, it's got some interesting world building and plot. It's definitely more low magic, which is what makes it interesting in my opinion. Lastly, I enjoy the authors take on dwarves that all of the dwarf realms aren't the exact same in culture, perhaps only in "religion". Each realm has a specialty: gems, stone, smithing etc.

>The Dwarves series is really good if you enjoy dwarves.
I wouldn't have guessed.

What is it about?

Here we go:

>Robert E. Howard
Conan, King Kull, Bran Mak Morn

>Fritz Leiber
The Fafhrd and Grey Mouser (mis)adventures.

>Elizabeth Moon
The Paksenarrion books. The "This is how you paladin" series.

>Elizabeth Bear
The Eternal Sky trilogy. Featuring Not-Mongols.

>Guy Gavriel Gay
"Historical fantasy", featuring the not-Byzantine Empire (The Sarantine Mosaic duology), not-China in two flavours of dynasties (Under Heaven and River of Stars), not-England/Wales/Norsemen (The Last Light of the Sun), not-Reconquista (The Lions of Al Rassan). These are absolutely fantastic.

If you haven't read it, and want some ideas for some light hearted, or at least humorous scenarios and adventures, you can't go wrong with anything by Terry Pratchett.

Avoid Terry Goodkind. He is one of the worst authors I've ever read, and he's a big Ayn Rand fanboy, so his main character is basically a super villain that we're actually supposed to like.
Also, he shamelessly rips off Tolkien and Jordan (and why would you steal from Jordan, of all people?).

I liked the first two Black Company books by Glen Cook, though the third lost me half way through.

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson is a lot of fun, but by the time I got to it I stopped reading sequels since I've been burned by them too often, so I can't say anything about the rest of the series.

Raymond Feist's Magician is a guilty pleasure of mine.

Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series is pure brain candy. I haven't liked any of his other works, though.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch is excellent. The main character, Locke Lamora, is the best-selling written too-smart-for-his-own-good character I've ever seen.

Graham McNeil's Ambassador and Ursun's Teeth may well be the best novels Black Library have ever published. They're Warhammer novels, but I feel comfortable listing them in with any other good fantasy fiction. They're not just good Warmammer books, they're good books in general.

If you like science fantasy / space opera then might I recommend the following:
Dune by Frank Herbert
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

>Veeky Forums
>even touching genre fiction with a 10 foot pole
>Salvatore recommended as entry level
I don't think it's by Veeky Forums.

Majipur chronicles

It gave me a fetish for orgies where every party is keeping to themselves and they're just fucking in a room that is absolutely filled with sex to the brim, and also gave the world the greatest epic fantasy villain name ever, Roddy McfuckingGristle

See for more of that.
Also check out the Naked Blades website.

Some Young Adult fantasy:
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
Old Kingdom by Garth Nix

something more obscure:

City of the Dreaming Books by Walther moers.
Dont be turned off by the sillyness, its a different kind of fantasy.

Harharharharharhar... Dwarves.

Actually finished this today, and got on Veeky Forums to tall about it. Despite being a bit of a Mary sue, I like Drizzt quite a bit.

Douluo Dalu by Tang Jia San Shao
Battle Through the Heavens by Tian Can Tu Dou
Against the Gods by Mars Gravity
Zhanxian by Ren Yuan
Martial World by Cocooned Cow
Genius Doctor: Black Belly Miss by North Night
Insanely Pampered Wife: Divine Doctor Fifth Young Miss by 扇骨木
Honourable mention goes to Tales of Demons and Gods by Mad Snail, but keep in mind that Mad Snail is a flaky asshat.

Sometimes? He fails fucking often

> Old Kingdom by Garth Nix
Is Sabriel part of that series? I thought that was called the Necromancer series/trilogy?

>old kingdom
My man

Old Kingdom series:
1. Sabriel
2. Lirael
3. Abhorsen
4. Clariel
5. Goldenhand

I'd recommend picking Black Company back up. After the plot moves back south it gets really interesting, lot of hindi mythology becomes prevelant.

>The black tower series by Stephen King
You've clearly never read it so how would you know?

>He uses synonyms!
>He doesn't have the entire series memoriezed verbatim, including the minor typo in the 1993 print version on page 87 in The Drawing of Three!
>laughingISHIGGYDIGGY

I've never seen anybody on Veeky Forums call it "the black tower" when the title of the fucking series is "The Dark Tower", which logically led me to assume you never read it because who the fuck forgets the name of an 8 book series they read?

Eyes of the Dragon by Steven King.

Good straight-up swords and sorcery from an unlikely source.

>What does Veeky Forums think about Dragonlance?

I don't.

...

...

Gentleman Bastard Sequence is pretty entertaining.

It's Young Adult fiction for roleplayers, low-tier and takes a nose-dive in quality after the first arc.

>>Guy Gavriel Gay
He's not gay, he's Kay, m'alright?.

B-but user, I finished it yesterday.

Don't post your nipponese fanfics here, imperial.

All of his books are great. Sanderson would make a great DM, or campaign writer at least. His world building is top tier and magic systems second to none. His new Stormlight Archive is 10/10 so far.

Joe Abercrombie The first law trilogy and stand alone books - for bleak low magic setting heavy on northmen, barbarians and asshole mages.

Brian McClellan, the powder mage trilogy and novellas - Military heavy Guns and magic setting with some interesting power sets thrown in

Brandon Sanderson, the mistborn trilogy and the stormlight archives - unique and inventive powers uses, interesting world.

Scott Lynch, the Gentleman Bastard series - Rogue heavy tales of thievery deceit and politics.

David Eddingings, The Belgariad - When you want some of that old school epic fantasy shit.

Patrick Rothfuss, The Kingkiller Chronicle - gets a bit mary sue and wankey with the main character being the goddam best at every thing you can imagine but not terrible.

Terry Pratchet, discworld - weird comedic fantasy but cheap and lots of them, mixture of shit and genuinely amusing so pick carefully, the guard focused ones are usually good.

Brent Weeks, the first book of the night angel trilogy the rest get very mary sue very quickly.

Brent weeks the lightbringer series - fairly interesting use of magic as a form of light you can build shit with.

Mark Lawrence the broken empire series- if you like your grimdark with an extra helping of edge.

Robert Jordan the wheel of time - if you want a fairly interesting world that goes on for fucking ever and eventually starts to repeat itself over a dozen books till the author dies and they have to get someone else to finish it.

Raymond E Feist the riftwar saga - he's written so many sagas they all start to repeat themselves with each one getting worse and worse but this one is pretty nifty.

Terry Goodkind wizard's first rule - Avoid like the fucking plague.

>Elizabeth Moon
The Paksenarrion books. The "This is how you write long winded boring novels" series

Second this
Also read Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-burglar, by Maurice LeBlanc. Or pretty much any Maurice LeBlanc book except The Crystal Stopper, leave that one for your second or third book.

Sorry for the lewd question, but I need to know.

Has that girl in OP's pic tasted his dragon cock?

Has she tasted Orc cock as well?

>unironically recommending Hero of a Thousand Face
I think that every copy should be sold with a disclaimer, “only read if you’ve got at least a basic understanding of why all of the psychology proposed in this book is wrong.” From a comparative-mythology/literary standpoint, it’s good enough if you go into it with that disclaimer in mind, but most people don’t.

I've been reading The Crown Tower by Michael Sullivan, and I've been digging it so far.

Read Brandon Sanderson
David Eddings
& some of the others recommended by other anons.

Avoid Terry Fucking Goodkind like the fucking plague. He basically makes an "adult" edgy fetish fueled spoof of Wheel of Time full of Ayn Rand ideology where he plays fast & loose with his own rules of magic. I finished it out of hateful spite only. The ending is fucking terrible.

The Mary Sue protagonist fucks around for ten books or more before the evil Dream Rapist of the Commies finally conquers all the nice capitalists. The Mary Sue then uses the Macguffin box to banish the filthy commies to out world along with his magic nullifying half siblings.

& yeah I didn't use a spoiler because it's trash & people need to know. It should have a fucking Surgeon General's warning on every fucking copy

the chronicles of Prydain are some of my favorites a great read if you would like something reminiscent of a mythological epic.

I mean I tried to read some of Christopher G. Nuttal's books, but I can't bring myself to like them. The latest one I read by him, Storm Front which is in an alternate 1985 in which the cold war was between the Nazi Reich and America, and South Africa is the Reich's Afghanistan, which is kind of interesting. I just have problems believing the Nazi's society could work for 50 years before any cracks began to show.

>Outside of the few obvious rare authors: Tolkien, Lewis, Rigney (e.g. Jordan), Howard, arguably Miéville
what?

Yeah I really enjoyed The Angry Grapes by Steinbeck. It was powerful. Men and Mice was also very good but a little overrated.

The Dying Earth series by Jack Vance
It was one of the major works that inspired DND.

As a rough guide, Discworld books written in the 20th century are good, 21st century books markedly less so. Those featuring Rincewind the Wizzard have more traditional fantasy elements.

This is, surprisingly, pretty good. It's like a western take on generic isekai trash that manages to avoid falling into a cliche merry-go-round.

Care to illuminate us? I know it sweeps a hell of a lot of stuff under the rug, but I wouldn't say I have a basic understanding of the psychology in it.

>riftwar saga by raymond e feist
I don’t get it. I was expecting something interesting to happen eventually but it really is just a generic fantasy story. There’s literally nothing new or interesting in the series. It’s a typical peasant rises to greatness. The elves are elves and the dwarves are dwarves. I don’t get he appeal. I fell asleep halfway through the second book and never tried again.

I liked Chronicles of the Kencyrath, The Barbed Coil, the Sovereign Stone trilogy, Chronicles of Morgaine, Grunts!, and the Rose of the Prophet trilogy.

>The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch is excellent. The main character, Locke Lamora, is the best-selling written too-smart-for-his-own-good character I've ever seen.

I couldn't like him, or his friends. All his problems are self created. He's smart enough and talented enough to make himself deliriously rich just by picking a legal outlet for himself.

But no, he's gotta keep putting himself and his friends in danger because taking money from rich people is fun. Most of the people he rips off are better people than he is.

I kept hoping he'd die and make the world a better place.

Oh, sure. It works well enough as a broad guide to set up a good, compelling classic mythological tale: it's not a good academic source should never be taken too seriously. Campbell was never really considered either an anthropologist, nor a religionist. And DEFINITELY not a psychologist. I think he is on to a lot of clever things, but you should never take him too seriously or literally.

Just the very idea that you can essentially describe all stories in history under one archetype alone is terrible. The psychological explanations are pretty lacking too.

people tell me to read Malazan every now and then, thoughts?

>/sffg/ doesn't exist

there's a containment thread for genre fiction plebs and the chart posted is one of their abominations

this guy is onto something but there are some pleb tier garbage authors mixed in there for no real reason

like eco for instance, right next to fucking dosto

borges, cortazar, marquez and bolano and other latin americans are great for learning how to create a great character and magical realism is something that can actually make you a better dm if you just read it carefully and think about what youve read, reading dosto alone and just straight up copying his characters allows your roleplayed characters to be straight up interesting and worthwhile and with some actual depth to them, which makes the experience very enjoyable not only to you but to everyone around you.

play a dosto paladin or cleric or merchant and you'll have the time of your life if you do it right. crime and punishment alone has so many insanely interesting character ideas and personalities to use in a campaign that it's ridiculous.

problem is most fantasy fags just go for low effort trash where you just have to turn your brain off and follow the plot, like sanderson and rothfuss and this locke lamora garbage or whatever. only value these have is ridiculously low level pop entertainment, nothing to learn from them. and then they expect their roleplaying experience to be similar.

i'm not throwing stones here, i myself occasionally enjoy turning off my brain and picking up some jim butcher and just going with it without a single thought to it, just following the plot and smirking at the jokes and popculture references. but there's nothing more to it and there's no reason to pretend there's more.

it's ok as far as fantasy goes, there's some thought-provoking dialogue and passages especially in the later part of the series and the prose gets good eventually, in the kharkanas books especially, but you don't get spoonfed and there are no information dumps there so people quit pretty often

>Sanderson — The Stormlight Archive

>It's got a weaker plot than Mistborn, but much better world-building. Very idea-minable in that it'll expose you to modern fantasy that is a bit to the side of generic.

Bullshit. Stormlight actually has stuff happening after the first book and real characters, unlike the nonsensical mess that was Mistborn book one.

Fuck, I almost missed on Stormlight Archive because I made the mistake of reading Mistborn first - Sanderson really improved and he is good with deadlines.

Read the first, pretend it was a stand alone book.

Book 2 is retarded sailing with STRONK WYMYN THAT NEED NO MEN PIRATES and third book's plot only has no stakes, but has everyone's IQ suddenly go into negatives in the last fourth of the book.

The flashbacks in RoT were good, tho.

past book one*

>its all good tho because its kvothe who's telling the story unreliable narrator hue hue
That one bugs the crap it’s of me.
Jerking yourself off and then saying you we’re only pretending is not how unreliable narrator works.
You’re supposed to add in little inconsistencies for a canny reader to pick up, not just have the author say some of it was bullshit and it’s up to you to figure it out.
Something like Dresden Files does it far better despite it even being an incredibly minor part of the series

Most recs are garbage for plebs. Here's a list of some more interesting and thoughtful fantasy
Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
Fafhrd and Grey Mouser by Fritz Leiber
Dying Earth by Jack Vance
Fictions by Borges
Children of Hurin by Tolkien
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

>All his problems are self created
I droppes the series for the reverse reason. It all seemed to be going
>Locke’s crew has a heist planned
>it gets derailed by random bullshit out of nowhere that they had no way of predicting
>plot then goes in a far less interesting direction
It worked well for getting revenge on the grey king, but got tiresome quickly in book 2 when the more interesting gambling scams got built up and promptly dropped. When the magi turned up in book 3, I’d had enough