Any good fantasy book suggestion

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#41

Seconding Jacqueline Carey. And Neil Gaiman…Neverwhere is brilliant, as is American Gods. Sandman, if you are willing to venture into graphic novels.

I’m currently loving the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson…almost done with the third book. Elantris was also wonderful. I’d classify his books, if pressed, into high fantasy, simply because they are complex and thought provoking. The plot takes all kinds of twisty turns. It’s political, mythic, and all around a different type of fantasy than I’ve ever encountered. Heady stuff.

I heartily recommend The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss as well. I can’t wait for his second one to come out. I also loved Paula Volsky.

When I’m looking for new authors, I like to check out the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies. Short stories by numerous authors, plus best of lists and essays. Lets me get a feel for someone’s work before committing to a whole book or series. I’m the type who must finish a book, even if it blows. It’s a sickness.

#42

Looking over my bookshelf, I realized that my reading habits definitely skew more toward sci-fi than fantasy, and what fantasy stuff is there is mostly YA. Even so, I’ll throw in a few more…

Is Lois Lowry’s The Giver sci-fi or fantasy? Either way, excellent book. The sequel, Gathering Blue, is an interesting read but not nearly as good as the first novel, but I didn’t like the last book in the series, The Messenger, at all.

I’m also not sure where Madeleine L’Engle falls on the sci-fi/fantasy continuum, but I loved many of her books, too.

CS Lewis–the Narnia books aren’t to everyone’s liking, especially since the allegory can be a bit hit-you-over-the-head blatant at times, but Voyage of the Dawn Treader in particular is a beautiful book. I also love his non-Narnia novel Till We Have Faces but will be the first to admit it is a very, very strange book that makes absolutely no sense if you don’t know much about Greek mythology. Actually, the ending is still pretty weird even if you do.

Ditto to the recommendations for His Dark Materials, but it always strikes me as odd that they’re marketed as YA books. Yes, the protagonists are kids, but there’s so much political and religious intrigue, philosophy, mythology, literary references, etc., that I would think the nuances of the last book in particular would likely fly right over most twelve-year-olds’ heads.

Anybody else read Gregory Maguire? I liked Wicked (Elphaba lives!) but wasn’t a huge fan of Son of a Witch, mostly because it started out looking like it was going to answer some of the questions left hanging at the end of Wicked but didn’t. I haven’t read it yet, but the reviews of A Lion Among Men look promising.

I wish I could recommend Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels, because the premise is so great (alternate universe where ordinary people really, really love literature–and where there’s a machine that allows people to enter into books and interact with the characters), but the pacing of the first book, The Eyre Affair, was just so poor that I can’t bring myself to do it. What I’d really like is for somebody to take the same premise and write a better book about it…'Talos, are you listening? :wink:

Definitely the way to go. The info in the epilogue belonged in the HP compendium/encyclopedia JKR mentioned she might write, not at the end of the last book.

I love that book so much my copy is starting to fall apart.

Ooh, just thought of another YA book that probably leans more toward sci-fi than fantasy, but Nancy Farmer’s The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm is still one of my favorites. It’s strange; it seems like everyone in my very small middle school read this book, yet I haven’t run into anyone else outside of that group who has ever heard of it.

#43

Oh no, I forgot The Phantom Tollbooth! It’s like Alice in Wonderland, only with math. Sort of.

I love this thread; it’s like a walk down Memory Lane combined with a “Books I need to add to my Christmas break reading list” summary.

#44

Uuuuuuuuuuuuu the Phantom Tollbooth was awesome. Good memories!!

#45

I think The Eyre Affair is brilliant as is the entire series. I found nothing wrong with the pacing but I was more engrossed by the humor and Fforde’s play on words. It is slower than the rest of the series but I think it’s mostly because he’s setting up so much in the first book that comes into play in the later books. Every plotline in the first book has played out to varying degrees in the later books. Landen, her father, her brother, her uncle, the Chronoguard, Goliath, Spike and the bookworld all have to be set up in the first book because of how those plotlines play out in later books.

#46

Good to hear. I’ve been a fan of his blog for a couple years, but I never seem to have money when his book is at hand. :frowning:

#47

Get eeeeeeeet! Seriously. I’m a voracious fantasy reader. I work in a bookstore, and have access to crazy amounts of stuff. Point being, I have never been so engrossed in a novel. I finished the thing in 1 day!! 896 pages. A weekday, not a day off. I literally could not put it down. I think I was hallucinating the next day from sleep deprivation. Maybe the library, if you have one near you?

I just looked it up on BN.com to see if they had any used ones, and apparently the paperback is out, which I somehow missed.

:o Sorry for being a pusher, that book is just something special. Hopefully I’m not being too obnoxious.

And oooo thanks for the link to his blog! Looks good!

#48

Wrong thread, deleted.

#49

I am enjoying them too. Sadly, I can’t afford his latest book that came out. It was either that, or his prequel to the Dresden Files. I bought the prequel because I am seriously addicted to that series now. Wasn’t impressed at first, but Butcher grew as a writer throughout the series, and I like the concept of a Wizard PI that buys his spell ingredients from Wal-Mart.

I completely agree with you RMHPH. This was the first fantasy series I ever read (well, besides “The Hobbit” in third grade) and I read them when I was about 12 or 13. Now at 28, I went back and picked up the “Belgariad” for a read, and I just couldn’t get through it. Probably not a bad series for a younger reader though

#50

I haven’t read to many fantasy series since I was a teen, because as I got older, they began to seem more childish. However, I HIGHLY recommend “The First Law” trilogy. Great action, plot, and it has a twist ending you may or may not see coming. It’s also very dark—sort of like the fantasy version of “Watchmen,” so be warned if you are looking for a story with happy endings and pure heroes. I went into the bookstore and was just killing time, so I picked up the first book and sat down in a chair and started reading it. Next thing I knew, I was halfway through the first book, and leaving the store with all three.

#51

Most of what I would recommend has already been listed (if not all…you folks have greeeeeat taste!).

  1. George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire - Absolutely perfect.

  2. Patrick Rothfuss’ Name of the Wind - Just finishing this one up. It’s a fantastic read.

  3. Stephen R. Donaldson - The Covenant series or Mirror of her Dreams and A Man Rides Through.

  4. Stephen R. Lawhead - If you like Arthurian legend, I highly recommend his Pendragon Cycle. If you like historical fiction set at the dawn of Christianity, Byzantium and The Iron Lance are good books to read.

  5. Raymond E. Feist - The Riftwar Saga is a good fantasy read. Stop at A Darkness at Sethanon as recommended earlier.

  6. Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself - Haven’t read it yet, but I got it for Xmas and I’ve heard good things.

#52

I had entirely forgotten about The Phantom Tollbooth; how luckily that I read this thread! Definitely a book that needs reading.

I’m surprised no one has mentioned H.P. Lovecraft. Certainly a lot of his earlier stuff falls as “fantasy”, although I’ll admit there aren’t any “books” to be read since his works tended to be short stories or novellas at longest. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, though, one of his novellas, is one of my favorite fantasy stories, and overall if one is looking for the fantasy side of Lovecraft (whose writing is so poetic that it’s easy to read and re-read and re-re-read even the shortest of his stories), the rough definition of “The Dream Cycle” would probably be the area to investigate. Much of Lovecraft’s early work is public domain (and actually, depending on whether your country has insane Disney-lobbied laws or not, all of his works may be public domain for you), so for example the excellent sci-fi tinged Polaris is available at Wikisource, as are many many others. Undoubtedly there are collections of the stories in your nearby bookstores and libraries if you want a physical copy and/or don’t feel like printing anything off.

If you’re at all interested in fantasy and florid prose, you owe it to yourself to get into Lovecraft. Lines like “still the Pole Star leers down from the same place in the black vault, winking hideously like an insane watching eye which strives to convey some strange message, yet recalls nothing save that it once had a message to convey” just stick with you, yaknow?

On the opposite and far lighter side of things, Peter David’s Sir Apropos of Nothing books are excellent tongue-in-cheek fantasy; the first book, which can stand alone (unlike most series), has the ingenious twist of having the narrator be a side character in a typical fantasy epic unfolding around him, and his meta realization of this situation prompting him to interrupt the normal fantasy progression of events. The rest of the books are pretty good, too, but the first one stands up as a comedic classic. And I’ll digress for a second and mention that one of Peter David’s Star Trek books (Q-Squared) is unarguably the best Next Generation novel ever written!

#53

I’ve never even heard of that one, but it sounds like a lot of fun.

#54

I must agree. I was introduced to his most well known Graphic series “The Sandman” and I am rather surprised to have not heard it mentioned anywhere in these forums or any forums I might add. It seems to be largely forgotten. He also wrote the script for “Beowulf” with Angelina Jolie.

#55

I too was introduced to him through the Sandman series. I think we’ve briefly talked about Sandman around here. But I would love a deeper discussion. I’ve read nearly everything he’s written. (Haven’t gotten to the Graveyard Book yet, but I will!)

#56 
   One of the reasons I liked it so well is that it's full of tons of various literary references throughout the entire run. He made his characters seem so full and 3 dimensional and of course the graphics are fantastic. I think a discussion of the series would uncover a lot of threads. Between the graphics, characters and story lines it's like a big eye candy collage. A lot of things remain to be discovered!