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Another fantasy novel thread (What to read next)
JeffH
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
OK, firstly, I'm mainly into fantasy/sci-fi/horror reading. I just finished Ender's Game and have a stack of unread books that I've purchased at one point or another for future reading.
I was originally planning on starting up the Malazan: Book of the Fallen series - I own Gardens of the Moon and it's waiting to be read. However after reading favorable things about A Song of Ice and Fire all over these forums, I'm wondering if I should opt to read that series instead, as I've heard they're similar. Is one markedly better than the other?
Also, I have a stack just waiting to be read: Perdido Street Station, Shadow & Claw, Good Omens(gf is reading it), House of Leaves(brother is reading it), a bunch of R.A. Salvatore stuff, etc.. While it's obviously opinion, should I start with any of those first, or perhaps recommend me another better book based on my taste? Thanks in advance.
I was originally planning on starting up the Malazan: Book of the Fallen series - I own Gardens of the Moon and it's waiting to be read. However after reading favorable things about A Song of Ice and Fire all over these forums, I'm wondering if I should opt to read that series instead, as I've heard they're similar. Is one markedly better than the other?
Also, I have a stack just waiting to be read: Perdido Street Station, Shadow & Claw, Good Omens(gf is reading it), House of Leaves(brother is reading it), a bunch of R.A. Salvatore stuff, etc.. While it's obviously opinion, should I start with any of those first, or perhaps recommend me another better book based on my taste? Thanks in advance.
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I have not yet read Malazan BotF, but from what I have heard from a friend it is veeeeeeeeery different from Song of Ice and Fire.
Song of Ice and Fire is amazing, but has the same Problem as Malazan, the series is not finished so you will have to wait for upcoming books.
Gene Wolfe is a genius, you should absolutely read the whole Book of the New Sun, but it is not a light read.
It is also hard to recommend anything from the scifi/fantasy genre that is actually much better imho.
House of Leaves is very good, another book that is quite unique.
I liked Perdido Street Station, loved some parts of it and hated others, China Mieville is alright and you should give it a shot.
Good Omens is fun and entertaining.
Gormenghast by Mervin Peake is the only other thing that comes to mind, another very different approach to the fantasy genre.
Oh yeah and burn those RA Salvatore books please, kthx
Haha, I need light mindless reading every now and then
If you liked the Space Academy stuff pick up Ender's Shadow. It tells the story of Bean and there is a whole series of books that follow this one up too. Ender's Shadow is kind of a companion book to Ender's Game though, there is some overlap just told from a different perspective.
EDIT: For what it's worth though, IMO Ender's Game is Card's best novel.
As far as what you have I would recommend reading either Good Omens or House of Leaves first, but it looks like those books are busy in other peoples hands right now. ><
Run, do not walk but run away from Malazan and go straight towards A Song of Ice and Fire. Supposedly it gets better than the first book but halfway through after a huge amount of incredibly bad and cliched setup they kept switching venues, to even more incredibly bad and cliched setup.
While it's fair to say that the first book (and some of the second) is setup in ASoIaF it's well written and actually interesting. That and once things get rolling it moves into an unbelievable awesome place and just stays there.
Librarian, if you like Card at all I suggest you try and find Maps in a Mirror. I actually enjoy his short fiction much better than his novels.
Jrraghen will be along shortly to disagree with me, don't listen to him! He seduced me with his vile lies about Malazan!
That said, not everybody enjoys his writing style. My wife and I both have very similiar tastes in reading. I love his books, and my wife hates it.
Since it hasn't already been mentioned, the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind is spectacular. The first four especially are absolutely outstanding. Wizard's First Rule is first in the series, and could stand by itself as one of the best fantasy books ever written.
Edit:
Found the chicken thing:
"Hissing, hackles lifting, the chicken's head rose.
Kahlan pulled back.
Its claws digging into stiff dead flesh, the chicken slowly turned to face her. It cocked its head, making its comb flop, its wattles sway.
"Shoo," Kahlan heard herself whisper.
There wasn't enough light, and besides, the side of its beak was covered with gore, so she couldn't tell if it had the dark spot. But she didn't need to see it.
"Dear spirits, help me," she prayed under her breath.
The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken.
This was evil manifest."
But seriously, is this for real? did he (Brooks) actually write that? If so, I must purge the memory of having read his books from my mind. And as for recommendations, Philip Pullman has written a trilogy of young-adult books that I really enjoyed, even as an adult. Fantasy/alternative history I guess you coudl call them: "Northern lights/The golden compass, The subtle edge, The amber spyglass". I can highly recommend these books, they were written partly as an answer to the Narnia-books. Pullman did not like the christian undertones in those books and wrote something that he felt would give a better message to young people. But even without taking this into consideration, I found them to be really good and not at all childish.
I agree. I actually read his books up until book 7 I believe, the one where the main character spends the entire book in captivity. That in itself wouldn't have turned me off if the entire book hadn't been a heavy-handed condemnation of communism.
"Okay Terry, I fucking get it, you don't like communism!" was my reaction after the first 100 pages of that shit. When a fantasy author is more interested in converting you to his personal beliefs than telling a good story, that's where I start getting pissed off.
Also, Lois McMaster-Bujold. She's great. Her Vorkosigan books are so much fun.
It's not just communism he has a problem with. One of his books deals entirely with the concept of how a system without capital punishment fails, and he's spent more than a few pages on why abortion is bad.
I highly recommend reading Wizards first rule and then never reading another page of that series. Its not that 2-4 aren't worth it, its just that you'll be happier to let WFR stand alone and not get invested in the larger plot.
Also, I never liked SoIaF. I thought it was 1/3 interesting, 1/3 boring, and 1/3 downright annoying. Others enjoy it, so you probably will too. I won't say don't pick it up.... just know the support is not unanimous.
If you want some great short sci-fi reads, I highly recommend hitting a used book store and picking up anything out of print by Arthur C. Clark, particularly: Childhood's End & Hammer of God. Actually, Childhood's End Should still be in print.
I didn't find that at all, actually. He definately described communism's failings, but as we all know communism failed, so I fail to see the problem with that. As much as brings forward political ideas, he also brings out the antithesis, so you can reason for yourself which side you agree with. I thought the exposure to different political ideas was refreshing in the PC age, he could have taken the easy agreeable road and didn't.
That being said, I do agree that the book with the chicken, (book five) marked the downhill spiral of the series, everything up to and including the Temple fo the Winds was decent enough. And WFR rocked hard. Like Robert Jordan with a sense of pace.
I really love the Ender quartet, aside from there being a few weird parts, Xenocide (second book in the series) is where I took my name from.
If you want to look further into those, the Ender's series is: Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind.
Speaker for the Dead is just as good as Ender's Game, in my opinion. Completely different, tho.
edit: Oh yeah, and in Goodkinds defense about that chicken thing... that must have been a joke. That entire book, however, was AWFUL. The worst book of the series, by far. I could barely read it.
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
Also John Carter of Mars is an interesting if unfinished 11 book series by the guy who wrote Tarzan.
pleasepaypreacher.net
There is no emotion; there is peace. There is no ignorance; there is knowledge. There is no passion; there is serenity. There is no death there is the Force.
Some of these other recommendations sound appealing. I randomly grabbed "The Cup of the World" by John Dickinson today and I'm enjoying it so far. If anyone has any feedback on his works let me know.
Song of Ice & Fire, Sword of Truth, Wheel of Time... I've abandoned every series that doesn't look like it will ever end. There's always a novel (or two or three) that makes you wish you had never started reading the series. It just seems like all of these series were designed to be standard 3-4 book series and once they got popular the authors decided they were going to milk the setting/characters until they could buy a nice island in the south pacific to retire on. Not that I wouldn't do exactly the same thing in their situation of course
Characters die, there's toture, witchunts, political backstabbing, actual backstabbing, gangrene, and an interesting magic system. The character development is fantastic.
You've read Robert E. Howard's Conan series, right? And Michael Moorcock?
Someone already mentioned Terry Brooks, so I'll give another vote for the Shannara series. And another vote for Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series.
There's always Jack Vance's Dying Earth stuff, especially if you want to see where Gary Gygax got the idea for spell memorization, el oh el.
Best fantasy there is.
Perdido Street Station was alright. The guy is a good writer, but the plot itself was fairly generic to be honest. I was pretty disappointed after all the praise it received.
You should be reading Shadow and Claw because Gene Wolfe's New Sun series is FUCKING EXCELLENT. If you at all enjoy Tycho's unusual choice of words, you'll really like Wolfe's writing, because it's far better. He's got something of a penchant for archaic words, though not in the anglophilic manner of Lovecraft, or the needless excess of Tycho's posts. Wolfe's vocabulary is incredible, in that he selects words as if from a painter's palette. Though some words are rather unconventional, they are precisely the right word for whatever he's describing. I'd rate him up there with Mervyn Peake in that regard (whose Gormenghast trilogy everyone should also fucking read).
And I'll jump on the bandwagon and say toss the R.A. Salvatore shit. After reading much better literature, I doubt you'd want to slog through that garbage.
I'll go out on a limb and say keep the RA Salvatore books. You may need them for packing material someday. The guy is good at what he does, but what he does is churn out pulp fantasy novels that aren't very good.
As for the Sword of Truth, I'm sorry mister author but I don't enjoy being bludgeoned with "The Blunt Object of(your) Morality". I get the point. You don't like communism etc... Now, can you move the story along?
I also want to add Roger Zelazny. The first half of the Chronicles of Amber is stellar, the second half is good. I recently read a compilation of short stories and the variety of stories found within was captivating (the stories themselves were hit or miss).
His former editor and co-writer Jane Lindskold has started her own series, and I've been enjoying it as well.
.. and while they sometimes qualify as erotic fiction and may be deemed rather girly, Jacqueline Carey's "Kushiel" books are hands-down the most amazing reading experience I've had in the last five years of my life.
Oh, and Guy Gavriel Kay is also good, if you're a history/mythology buff.