Recommend a Fantasy series to me, please.

Well, the Sword of Truth appears to have been rather poorly received. Hey, that’s why I asked you guys about it.

I’m looking for a Fantasy series to read. I guess a one-off book would be great, but I would love to read a series of good fantasy, especially one that is complete(or will be complete soon).

I’ve read:

Lord of the Rings
Dark Tower(finishing now)
Song of Ice and Fire(incomplete, still)
I am fine with high-fantasy and so forth. Basically, I like anything that is creative, with decent characters and plotlines. Like I said, I prefer things that are complete.

What series are good? What should I avoid?

Thanks!

Oh, I’m probably avoiding Wheel of Time. Too long and drawn out.

China Mieville’s three books (not really a trilogy), Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council are all wildly imaginative, if kind of icky in spots. They’re all in the same universe, and follow each other in the chronological order given, but they’re pretty independent of each other. I’d actually recommend starting with The Scar followed by Perdido and then Iron Council if you still want more; The Scar is the best of the lot by a fair measure IMO.

I’m a huge fan of The Wheel of Time. the series will be complete next November and it will probably take you that long to catch up. I like most of the characters most of the time and the world is very detailed with a coherent history and background.

The series gets a little too vast in the middle where is takes a thousand pages just to describe what all of the characters did in the space of a week. Also the descriptions get very detailed and I have a tendency to skip a paragraph description of a dress but due to all of the detail the characters seem very real for me and I can usually guess how they will respond to any give circumstances but the characters still grow and develop during the series.

If you liked Harry Potter I’d recommend the Belgariad it’s a bit juvenile but I love the characters and reread the series every couple of year just to get to hang out with them some more. Unfortunately, Eddings only had one story to tell and he told it 4 different times so just pick one of his series to read and you’ll be covered, I think the Belgariad is the best of them.

The other series I like to recommend is the original Shanarra trilogy. The Sword of Shanarra is the best it’s a basic tale of a you uncertain hero going to destroy a great evil but I think it’s worth reading.

God, the Sword of Shanarra. I threw the book across the room at the point when Frodo-analog, Sam-analog, Gandalf-analog, and the rest of the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-the-Fellowship were going through Moria-analog, and halfway through they confronted a Balrog-analog, and Gandalf-analog rescued the rest of the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-the-Fellowship by dragging the Balrog-analog down into a pit-analog with him.

Gandalf-analog gets better

I enjoyed The First Law trilogy, by Joe Abercrombie, which starts with The Blade Itself. It’s swords-and-horses, very gritty, not a lot of magic, with great characters and amazing battle scenes. Abercrombie is writing additional books in this universe, but the trilogy is a complete story.

I’m generally ok with a story I enjoy getting repeated and while I get the parallels I think the differences in the characters make it interesting for me. If nothing else I like Alanon much more the I like Gandolf who I don’t think ever shows much of a personality.

Any of Brandon Sanderson’s books, especially his Mistborn books. The first book is a pretty straightforward heist book, but the second two get into epic world-saving high fantasy. The magic system is really innovative and interesting, and that man’s approach to a book appears to be to fit as much plot per page as possible. All of the characters are believably and humanly flawed, and grow and react to the events in the story in realistic ways. Sanderson also writes some of the best women in Fantasy - his female characters (especially in Mistborn) are well-rounded, fully fleshed out characters who are distinctly female - a trait that I didn’t realize was so sorely lacking in most Fantasy until I read the first book.

The book rocked my world enough that my husband and I actually fought over the third book (He started reading them before me) - I snatched it off his nightstand and took it to work to read at lunch, but left it in my bag one day. He was not amused.

Try Alan Cole’s works. They range from the OK to the “pretty damn good.”

I don’t mind if the story repeats on the level of “young person from the hinterlands gets involved in the affairs of the world, discovers strength within himself, and overcomes the loss of his mentor to defeat a great evil”. Sword copied Lord of the Rings at a much finer grain than that.

A hearty second to this – next to Martin’s series, it’s my favorite.

Also, simple but with lots of charm – Robin Hobb’s Farseer and Liveships. I haven’t read Tawny Man but I’ve heard it’s also good. Nine books in all. The first is Assassin’s Apprentice.

I’d like to recommend Bakker’s Prince of Nothing, but I stopped reading in the middle of the third book – way too much angsty whining and philosophical diatribes.

My sister gave me The Name of the Wind for my Birthday last year. It’s the first of a series. I enjoyed it.

Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame series is pretty good. Apparently-innocuous college professor-secretly-wizard Dungeon Masters a role-playing game that sends his student players into the world of the game for his own nefarious purposes. There are more than five books…I haven’t been keeping up for reasons of time and money. It’s not one continuing story, though. I think after the first three, they’re pretty stand-alone as long as you’re familiar with the way the world works and how the characters ended up where they are.

The Drenai Saga by David Gemmell can be rather hit or miss. Legend, his first book, is great and has the protagonist as a greying, elderly old warrior who has to organize defenders for a pitched siege pretty much like Helm’s Deep. What I like is that there is none of the stock demi-humans; rather there are analogue of Earth’s human culture in his settings. In his later books there are shapeshifters and beast men, but no Elves or Dwarves or the like.

His later books, however, tend to recycle the same plot. There are some where magic cannot be distinguished from technology, so his stories went from grim and gritty to healing crystals and eternal life. The latter happened in The Swords of Nights and Days. My friend was deeply in love with the Waylander novels, and the stories revolving a younger Druss (the main protagonist from Legend).

You don’t have to read all his books in order; the ones I have read and found liking are Legend and Quest for Lost Heroes.

If you are into historical fantasy, try David Gemmell’s Lion of Macedon and Dark Prince, a re-telling of the rise of Philip and Alexander (with Parmenion as the main character). His Troy series I have briefly glanced through and I liked the style of his writing in both books. Unfortunately the author has passed away; but his books are completed.

Elizabeth Moon’s The Deed of Paksenarrion (originally a trilogy, now available in one volume) and Oath of Fealty (the first in what’s supposed to be a second trilogy, it just came out earlier this year).

I would give a tentative thumbs up to Fred Saberhagen’s Books of the Swords series. The first few are fairly well written although they do degenerate somewhat.

Speaking of, I personally very much enjoyed Dennis McKiernan’s Iron Tower trilogy & Silver Call duology although your personal opinion may vary depending on your tolerance for obvious LoTR callbacks. It’s either a loving homage or bad fanfic depending on your point of view. He’s since cranked out other books set in the same milieu although I’ve never read them.

Is the new one any good? I liked the trilogy (got weak in places but still kept me going), liked Surrender None and didn’t care for Liar’s Oath at all.

Let me second Robin Hobb. The Farseer and Liveships trilogies both stand on their own, so I suggest grabbing the three Farseer books and diving in. If you like it grab the other two trilogies (Tawney Man has to be read last).

Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy, though already mentioned, was my first reaction when I saw the OP. It’s a lot of fun, and so much stuff is always happening that it’s really easy to plow through. But then you have to go back and read it again to catch the stuff you missed…

I also might recommend Steven Erikson’s Malazan books. They’re very dark and there’s a style there that some people don’t like, but if it clicks, it’s a ridiculously epic series that’s only one book from completion (which should be released this coming Feb). This series is almost as long as the Wheel of Time, though, and might even take longer to read because of the way Erikson does his plot threads. I really love the series, but YMMV a little bit.

I’m a big fan of Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen series. It’s not for everyone, though. It’s a huge series(the tenth and final book will be published in the new year) with a lot of characters and plot threads to try and keep track of. I know of one doper who was keeping notes will reading the series to help her keep everything straight, and eventually gave up. I love the series for its complexity but a lot of people get overwhelmed.