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Fantasy Recs?
kaliyama
Left to find less-moderated foraRegistered User regular
Left to find less-moderated foraRegistered User regular
Can anyone recommend more authors for me?
I tend to shy away from mary sues or power fantasies, or books that amount to summaries of someone's D&D campaign.
Some data points:
Likes:
Dislikes:
Meh:
Never Read:
I tend to shy away from mary sues or power fantasies, or books that amount to summaries of someone's D&D campaign.
Some data points:
Likes:
-
Charles Stross
Kage Baker
Lovecraft
Bruce Sterling
Neil Gaiman
China Mieville
Mercedes Lackey's urban fantasy books
Ellen Bujold
Michael Moorcock
Dislikes:
-
Patrick Rothfuss
Steven Erickson
David Eddings
R.A. Salvatore
Meh:
-
Anne McCaffrey
Martin
laurell hamilton
Never Read:
-
Jim Butcher
Brandon Sanderson
kaliyama on
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Posts
That "never read" pile is probably a good place to start. I just muddled through the first 3 sorta good Butcher novels to the Very Decent 4 & 5 Butcher novels and just cleared the Extremely excellent 6-8 Butcher novels. Dresden files has proven to be pretty rad (if you can make it to book 3 or so). So far book 8 of the Dresden files jumped so high in quality that it is now in my top ten list of favorite reads (which hadn't been updated since Lies of Locke Lamora many years back).
George RR Martin is also extremely good, though he can be wordy in some books (and will likely die before ending his series). (Meh works in some ways and is uncharitable in others. So far book 4 and 5 have been pretty Meh, while 2 and 3 were some of my favorite reads. The show makes it mercurial though).
You should look into Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice series. It takes a very different take on the traditional fantasy in an amazingly solid way. With the amount of "boy assassin" books that have flooded the market, it can be hard to look at her series but it really is the best (and probably the one that spawned the others).
Scott Lynch's "Lies of Locke Lamora" is a must read for any fan of fantasy, as are the two follow-up books to date (though the first is good enough to be stand alone).
Con men/thieves in a fantasy renaissance Venice.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
Lies of Locke Lamora is amazing as well, the series does get weaker as it goes on though.
- Jeff Vandermeer. Specifically check out "City of Saints and Madmen"
- Michael Swanwick's "Dragon's of Babel" (its a stand alone 'sequel' to a previous book of his, "Iron Dragon's Daughter" that is hard to find but you don't have to have read it)
- Felix Gilman's "Thunderer"
On the Stross/Sterling side of things, I would check out:
- Peter Watt's "Blindsight"
- Hannu Rajaniemi's "The Quantum Thief"
- Ann Leckie's "Ancillary Justice"
- George Alex Effinger's "When Gravity Fails"
On a broad stroke recommendation I would go for
- The above recommended Lies of Locke Lamora
- Joe Abercrombie
Also, the Landover series by Terry Brooks makes for some fun reading.
You might enjoy the Blood Oath series by Christopher Farnsworth.
Also, The Vampire Earth series by E.E. Knight.
And finally, I can't find the rest of the books, and I haven't read them in many years, but the Battledragon series by Christopher Rowley seems like it was quite enjoyable. Though it might be a little bit young adult ish.
Think of it as James Bond but telepathically linked to a little smart ass dragon that hangs out on his shoulder sometimes.
Origin: KafkaAU B-Net: Kafka#1778
The Laundry files are close in style to Neal Stephenson's works.
Snow Crash is a cyberpunk parody that is itself viable cyberpunk. Diamond Age is nano based steampunk. Both are more Sci Fi than Fantasy.
Anathem is Sci Fi but in a way that resembles something like Melville's fantasy. It's another world where you're learning about it as the story progresses.
The Baroque Cycle (Quicksilver, Confusion, System of the World) is sorta historical fiction that is massive and indescribable. Be warned it starts off in an absolutely horrible style, there is a reason for it but it makes getting started a challenge.
Oh man, you just reminded me that I never read past the first book in this series. And it is really good book, I just ended up reading some other stuff after wars.
If you enjoy Urban Fantasy, I would recommend Simon R. Green's NightSide series or his Secret Histories books. Nightside is Urban Fiction mixed with P.I (so you have a detective of sorts that has an actual physical third eye he uses to find stuff) and his Secret Histories books are UF mixed with James Bond.
Both are light affairs, and the only issue with them is that they can start to run together if you read a bunch of them one after the other.
A darker Urban Fantasy book is Charlie Huston's Already Dead series.
My opinion (for what it's worth):
I read Quicksilver and while it was vivid in its explanations, it was boring. The time period is fascinating and the subject matter is interesting, but it seemed like Gaiman was writing just to write. It made me mad that he also wrote American Gods which was thoroughly enjoyable. Perhaps the style is explained as you progress through the series, but I put Quicksilver down and had no desire to continue on with any of the character (save the girl, whose name escapes me).
Steam Me
Err...Gaiman didn't write Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson did. So why it's not like American Gods should be kind obvious...
If you don't like Stephenson's prose you probably won't like most of his books. I think he does a great job of setting up dramatic scenes but the real joy is the way he phrases things rather than plotting or characterization.
If you got up to Jack's parts in Quicksilver and weren't enjoying it I would definitely recommend bailing at that point.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
Dresden Files is exactly what Heartlash says and I love it for that.
Whaaaaaat.
/Goes to buy these.
Replace Gaiman with Stephenson and American Gods with Snow Crash.
Steam Me
Uh...
If you like Moorcock, you'll love Roger Zelazny, especially his Chronicles of Amber series. It's about the centuries long conflict of the various members of a royal family as the vie for control of Amber, the only real world in all the multiverse, from which all other worlds are just shadows,
There's also the incredibly dark but excellent Black Company series by Glenn Cook, which is about the eponymous company of mercanaries who find themselves hired by an evil overlord known as the Lady.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
I'm fond of the City Watch books (starting with Guards, Guards!) about the challenges of running a police force/solving crimes in a city inhabited by trolls, dwarves, etc.
Some people say jump right into The Book of the New Sun, I'd say start with Wizard/Knight. Either is good.
Seconding/Thirding Robin Hobb....The Farseer trilogey, Liveship Trader Trilogy and the Tawny Man trilogy respectively. All of them are great.
Seconding Gene Wolfe as well.
Saxon Tales by Bernard Cornwell is downright terrific.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Cook
Instrumentalities of the Night
Epic fantasy in a reinterpreted version of 13th century Europe and Western Asia.
Starfishers
Starfishers is a science fiction series drawing on elements of Norse mythology, and in the case of Passage at Arms, World War II submarine warfare.
Darkwar
Marika, a meth pup, loses her mother and nearly all of her pack in an attack by rogue males. She is taken in by the silth, meth females who rule the world with their mental powers, because they have detected in her the talent to become a powerful silth herself. As she grows and develops, she proceeds to shake meth society to its very roots.
That all sounds incredibly awesome to me. I have them, just haven't gotten around to reading them yet. The Black Company supplanted A Song of Ice and Fire as my favorite book series, as I read it later. I still love aSoIaF, I just find it hard to still care this far into the waiting game. The first 3 books of The Black Company are basically the perfect fantasy trilogy in my mind. They stand fine on their own, and complete their arc, but they leave you wanting to know what will happen next.
One of the things on my to-read list which I don't see here yet is Elizabeth Bear's Eternal Sky trilogy, which sounds like it meshes pretty well with the specs suggested.
Jeff Vandermeer is basically my favorite right now and the Southern Reach trilogy pieces which have been released so far have been... borderline virally good, so I would third/fourth that recommendation. City of Saints and Madmen is also brilliant.
Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence is worth a look, if you like the Stross Laundry books, though I'd hesitate to call them "similar" I think they speak to similar audiences.
But as a starting point for what to read next, the Black Company will keep you busy for a while!
Glen Cook is so badass in all the ways. Even his standalone stuff is great-- Passage at Arms is an old favorite of mine.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Gene Wolfe is so horribly underrated.
That's what I came in here to say.
Don't start with The Colour of Magic, as it's not a well crafted as his later books. A good introduction to the main areas of the world and its underlying magical nature is Equal Rites. If you like the urban stuff, go for Guards! Guards! next, but if you preferred the witches go for Wyrd Sisters.
I'd suggest starting with Small Gods. It's a good standalone and doesn't have any direct connections with other novels in the setting, while most of the other novels are part of longer story arcs, sharing characters and settings between books.