Ive recently been reading A.Lee Martinez 's books and they are funny, Tad Williams always great, Patricia A. McKillip, some of her books are really good .
Robin mckinley I always enjoy....
Ive recently been reading A.Lee Martinez 's books and they are funny, Tad Williams always great, Patricia A. McKillip, some of her books are really good .
Robin mckinley I always enjoy....
My mission in life is to make YOU smile
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"The time has come," the Walrus said,"To talk of many things:
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"Come away O human child!To the waters of the wild, With a faery hand in hand, For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand."
W.B.Yeats
"If it looks like a Dwarf and smells like a Dwarf, then it's probably a Dwarf (or a latrine wearing dungarees)"
Artemins Fowl and the Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
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I was getting into Raymond E. Feist for a while back in middle and high school - I haven't read an enormous amount of fantasy, but from what I have his works stand out the most favorably. I would recommend the three Riftwar Legacy books: Krondor: The Betrayal; The Assassins; and Tear of the Gods. Most of his books take place in the same world, and so one might do well to start with the first - Magician - but it's pretty long and I never had time to finish it. His most recent that I've read is Talon of the Silver Hawk, and I did not find it as interesting; I thus do not endorse anything he's written since then.
EDIT: Sorry - didn't see the previous Feist mentions.
Just because you don't like them doesn't give you the right to degrade others' opinions (especially without justification). However though, I would have to agree that Calvino trumps them all IN MY OPINION - he pretty much trumps anyone for me.....and yet, I wouldn't reccomend him to someone specifically looking for fantasy.....yes, he can be called a fantasy writer but he is fare to separate from what most people term "fantasy"
I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...
Plainview: Drainage! Drainage, Eli! Drained dry, you boy! If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and I have a straw and my straw reaches across the room and starts to drink your milkshake. I drink your milkshake! I drink it up!
Now, if you were to state the obvious reason for not recommending Calvino to, as you put it, "someone specifically looking for fantasy", then you would show your agreement with my speculation into the lack of depth in the majority of fantasy literature (especially those named at the beginning of the thread). He is only separate because he isn't cliché, and isn't mediocre. As I see it, the difference between Magical Realism, and fantasy, is that that the Magical Realist author knows how to write.
Well I agree that these are superb:
The Lord of the Rings
Chronicles of Narnia
The Dark Tower
I've read each several times, sure some might say that LOTR or CON are not original in todays literary environment but I think they were quite original in their time.
I've also read 90% of the discworld novels, the humour is great and some of the characters are very memorable. If you do read them I recommend you start with the earlier works and move through in roughly chronological order, you couldn't say they're a series but the world does move on through the books and some of the characters and the main city (ankh-morpork) develops over several books. If you didn't want to read them all i'd be happy to recommend specific books.
As mentioned, also worth a look is the riftwar saga by Raymond E. Feist, personally I don't rate all the books that highly but the magician (first book) is excellent, also the merchant prince is quite good. I didn't like the darkness at sethanon though but everyone else i've spoken too about the series always mentions this book first as being good - I find the plot which is made up of superlative stacked on superlative stacked on superlative quite hard to swallow. I like highs and lows in my stories.
I've read some dragonlance but i can't really recommend it wholeheartedly, there are some good books but I think you have to pick them out of the dozens of poor ones.
Finally Gene Wolfe, two books the Knight and the Wizard - Worth reading. A sort of mix of fairy tale, Norse myth, and Arthurian chivalry.
"Memory believes before knowing remembers."
--Faulkner
How about Faust 2?
Čłowjek je dwójny, te sam sebi. Tysacy słowow sym ka paćerki stykał na swoje lĕta a na kóncu spóznał, zo ani jednoho słowa njeje, kotre by jeho w ćĕle a dui we wej wĕrnosći wĕrnje pomjenowało.
Back when I used to read genre fiction I was very fond of Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber, and the entire Amber series in fact. I'd also recommend Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series.
I enjoyed many pieces of the Amber series, but it was infected with the same disease that is typical of most of the fantasy sub-genre: inadequate endings. Zelazny did manage to complete the Nine Princes part, but the later novellas greatly lacked resolution. He switched from writing novels to writing a serial.
Apart from the already mentioned, I would propose the Ender's series by Orson Scott Card, although I could describe it more more as science fiction and not exactly fantasy.
Clive Barker's and Pulman's works, as well. Pulman resembles more some of the authors you mentioned as for the worlds he describes and his style of writing.