hello,
my current obsession is fantasy books and i'm looking for more good fantasy books. i do not exactly worship harry potter, but i do like the series. i also like eragon, wormwood by g. p. taylor, wise child, juniper, colman by monica furlong, his dark materials trilogy by philip pullman, and any books like any of the above would be appreciated.
and just as a side note, unfortunately i wouldn't like books that sounded like the lord of the rings trilogy just because they would be a mouthful.
You may be into Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time", then. It's a series of 10 books, if I am not mistaken. Each is over 1000 pages long, so be prepared to read hard. I don't find it very Tolkien-like, although it surely has something Middle-Earthish about it. But if you like Fantasy with a strong human motive you may very well like it.
If you haven't gotten into Wheel of Time Yet, I cannot recommend it. In the last couple books he progresses the stories a week with about 2000 pages. Its gotten ridiculously slow and ponderous. I also find his world completely unoriginal, he just borrows and mishmashes real Earth people and cultures together. Don't get me wrong, it was entertaining for the first few thousand pages, but now its like watching a glacier move. The only interesting and good thing is the magic system.
I'm a big fan of Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman, the Dragonlance books are excellent, also their Death Gate Cycle is great (though I wasn't fond of the ending). Anyways, there are probably 50 or 60 dragonlance books now, and while Weis & Hickman didn't write all of them, they wrote the main ones. The overall arching story in the main ones is one of the best I've read. Characters you really fall in love with.
David Duncan's Seventh Sword trilogy is one of the most ingenious and interesting fantasy worlds I've seen. I cannot recommend it enough (its a little adult though, sex and violence and all that). Its somewhat hard to find though due to a legal tiff between the publisher & author. Look for it used on ebay or amazon. Don't be put off by the description, I didn't think I'd like it based on that, (not really a fan of Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court type books) but I was pleasantly suprised. His world is pretty unique in that it lacks a certain something we all take for granted and its interesting to think of what exactly would be different about history had that something never been invented.
I also recommend George R R Martin's A Song of Ice & Fire. Its a refreshing new series, very well written, fast moving, and despite the fact that so many main characters are children its definitely for adults. There is hardly any magic in it, its mostly swords & feudalism.
Yes, I have heard that The Wheel of Time ends up lagging out after a few books. I really did enjoy The Eye of the World, the first book, because it had the potencial of developing the characters into maturity, assisting their different processes of evolution. A good premise, but I do admit that 10 books is a bit too much.
I just remembered a not all that known but entertaining author, Stephen Donaldson. He has these two books about wizards who deal with mirrors that is worth while. I can't quite bring to mind the title, though.
Perhaps the best in that sub-genre is The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany.
If you like Eragon, do you know that there's already a second volume, Elder? I'll be reading both sometime in the near future.
I have a plan: attack!
Terry Pratchett is worth reading. But it's all not serious.
Might want to break it down into which types of fantasy you want to start with. For the epic fantasy, such as Wheel of Time, etc. I would start with something that is completed. Martin's song of Ice and Fire is, I think, the best out there, but he is starting to go Jordan on us, taking four years between books. I started Jordan in the early 90's, hope to finish by 2020 at the rate it is going. I fear martin may go that way as well. Still, his work is amazing. Some options I would look at as far as series' are:
Memmory, Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams
The Celtic Knot by Stephen Lawhead
Fionovar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay
Winter of the World by Michael Scott Rohan
Chronicals of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Doanldson (I still like it).
A couple of decent introductions to this genre would be David Eddings and Raymond Feist. Nothing fancy, but fun reads.
And Mark, I agree, Pratchett is a riot. Espceially the night watch for me.....
For a lighter
ok then.
Many fantasy fans often enjoy Robert Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land (which one might also consider science fiction). It has some interesting things to say, in an oddly philosophical manner, and I understand how many can enjoy the novel.
Good luck in your search, underground.
Gag. I just finished it and honestly I thought it was one of the worst trilogies I've read. The first 2/3rds of the 2nd book in particular were punishment. Donaldson is unnecessarily verbose and his characters are mostly one dimensional. Way too archetypical for me. Even the main character who is supposed to be this deep individual is one sided. A momentary lack of restraint that you whine over for the rest of the series does not make you a bad person. In short the book tries way too hard to make some kind of statement on the human condition and it ends up tripping over it's own feet.Chronicals of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Doanldson (I still like it).
For good characters, including good flawed characters, try George R R Martin.
If you prefer a book where the good guys all where white, and the bad guys all where black, and there is no middle ground other than one whiny loser who mopes around the whole time, then read donaldson.
mm
i'm a huge fantasy fan myself, while you may not want to read the lord of the rings itself you may want to try THE SILMARILLION, great stuff.
as for others i would highly recommen some books from the DRAGONLANCE series as mentioned above; terry pratchett is also very good, i dont know if you'd categorize him as fantasy but anything by neil gaiman is very good. especially the SANDMAN series. the EARTHSEA trilogy by ursula le guin is a killer, very well written. PAWN OF PROPHECY by david eddings is the only book from the BELGARIAD series that i came across, but it is very very good stuff, characters are very lovable. katherine kerr's DEVERRY series are recomendable, very original. Some of lloyd alexander's books like the HIGH KING might interest you, his writing style is very enjoyable. there are still othes that are enjoyable, but i dont have them in mind right now..
in the note of fantasy novels, i would like to ask if anybody here ever read any of the books written by chris claremont and george lucas titled shadow moon, shadow dawn, and shadow star, if so please comment and say if tis worth reading or not. thx in advance
Last edited by kren; 09-15-2005 at 01:35 PM.
I tried Shadow Moon, I couldn't get very far into it. It just started out so boring.
Loved Willow the movie though.
Admin, I see where you are coming from, and to be clear, Martin is far, FAR better than Donaldson. I love the way he creates his characters, changes them, kills them, etc. The story is plain realistic. It reads like a history, the politics of Rome with the backdrop of Britain. My point with Donaldson was that, while it's time has passed, it was pivotal in the genre and still merits reading. Since underground asked for some starting points, Donaldson has it's place there.
But.......
Weis and Hickman? Dragonlance? LMAO. Talk about a lack of character development and stereotypical characters. Don't get me wrong, I can recommend the first six books alongside Covenant as a series that opened the door for fantasy into the mainstream. But Tanis, Raistlin and the gang are hardly fleshed out characters. Kept waiting for them to roll their dragon dice to determine their next move.
Anyway, love this thread, get's us talking and all. The great thing about fantasy is there is such a wide range of style, most everyone can find something.
ok then.
Are weis & hickman's characters stereotypes or have they become stereotypes since their inception?
Also, they too have killed off major characters, and I don't really see how you can call a character not fully fleshed out when you can read basically their entire life from birth to death in the case of someone like Raistlin. One thing you can say about them atleast is that they change, that they have multi-faceted personalities. Sturm from reject knight to hero. Laurana from stupid girl to leader. Raistlin has his moments with Bupu early which show a different side, and eventually his ambition is set aside so as to not punish the world. Caramon learns to live without his brother.
With donaldson everyone is basically the same at the beginning as they are at the end, except like Trell, a very minor character, and Hile Troy, whom IMO is the only good character in the series.
If you come across something called "The Dark Elf Trilogy", by R.A Salvatore, steer clear from it. It's a perfect example of character clichés. In fact, although I grant the Dark Elves (I am not too sure how the author would choose to pluratize the term) are somewhat original in that they live in a great complex of underground caves called "The Underdark" under the aegis of a strangely satanic-like cult that is the pillar of a highly hierarchical society, that is not enough to save it from being over-explanatory. The reader is not left to discern anything, he will be told, word by word, exactly what to think, and which characters are "mean" and which ones are not.
I would only recommend it to those with a serious interest in fighting sequences, as they pretty much over-run the whole plot in a very cumbersome way.
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