I’ll go along with the Tim Powers suggestions. He’s great. My favorite is “Last Call”.
If you don’t mind the “kids’ book” angle, I would recommend The Dark is Rising. Loosely based on the Arthurian myth, set in Cornwall, and has similar themes (young hero discovers he is something more than meets the eye). It also has magic, mystery, and as an added bonus, it’s being currently made into a movie with Ian McShane of Deadwood fame and also Christopher Eccleston. Fantastic!
Johnathan Carroll writes his own kind of weird fantasy. I have loved all his books and I truly do not like Fantasy, any authors mentioned so far that I have tried to read I gave up. I note though that Neil Gaiman wrote the intro to Carroll’s website so I may try him.
From the site:
The Land of Laughs
“The Land of Laughs was lit by eyes that saw the lights that no one’s seen.” To Thomas Abbey, lonely child of a famous movie actor, grown into a restive prep school teacher, this is one of the most memorable lines ever written. It is by Marshall France, the legendary author of children’s books who wrote The Land of Laughs, Pool of Stars, Green Dog’s Sorrow, and other haunting classics, hid himself away in tiny Galen, Missouri, and died of a heart attack at age 44.
This brilliantly imaginative and frightening novel is set in motion when Tom Abbey and his spirited girlfriend, Saxony Gardner, determine to write France’s biography. They arrive in Galen on a slow, cloud-still summer day, both of them expectant and delighted and also a little scared of what they will find. France’s enigmatic and reclusive shadow lingers on, and his lovely and mysterious daughter Anna is known to act as a fiercely protective keeper of the flame.
But to their deep surprise, Anna and Galen had been waiting for them–almost too eagerly. Slowly they begin to apprehend not only that this idyllic small Midwestern town and its inhabitants, human and animal, are not what they seem, but that the magic of Marshall France had extended far beyond the printed page.
Chilling possibilities begin to dawn on Tom and Saxony, and on the reader, who will at once revel in the grand tradition of horror stories and in the discovery of a wholly new talent.
Bones of the Moon
Cullen James’ first dream was to find the perfect man–and it happened. Then she dreamed of being able to live with her man in Europe, while they were both still young and full of wonder: and that happened too. First in Greece, and then in Italy, she had hold of the kind of life of which we all dream. Better yet, she became pregnant and looked forward to the day when the child would come and she could love it: make it part of her idyllic life. But then the dreams began.
The dreams of a fantastical land named Rondua where the sea is full of fish with mysterious names–Mudrake, Cornsweat, Yasmuda. Where enormous animals, the size of hot air balloons, escort Cullen and an enigmatical child companion across places like the Plain of Forgotten Machines. And with the dreams of Rondua came powers that cross over into her everyday world–changing everything.
Suddenly Cullen’s worlds are filled with a hallucinatory array of characters and situations that prove dreams are as real as the cup of coffee she drinks in the morning, or the moment when it is impossible to tell whether life or death will win.
There’s a book named The Fairy Godmother, which I think is by Mercedes Lackey but I can’t remember, which I’d suggest. It’s far more light-hearted than LotR (I’m a huge fantasy fan and I couldn’t get through that) and it makes light of a lot of the fairy tales you probably heard as a kid.
Yes; she wrote it, and two sequels so far.
Christopher Moore’s off-beat and veery weird books come to mind. They’re as far from the regimented, scholarly Tolkien as you can get. At least one quotable weird sentence per two pages.
**Practical Demonkeeping
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
The Stupidest Angel
Bloodsucking Fiends**
and others.
T.H. White’s The Once and Future King is superb King Arthur. Read The Sword in the Stone, if you can – the independent publication is VERY different from the chapter that appears in TOaFK, and worlds away from the Disney version supposed o be based on it. Also read The Book of Merlin, the last book in the series that was excised from TOaFK.
A lot of Fredric Brown’s short stories. And Robert Sheckley’s
And J. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s Tales from Gavagan’s Bar
I believe de Camp’s Compleat Enchanter has been mentioned. Christopher Stashieff has added to the saga, and Stashieff’s own stuff is worth reading, too.
Esther Friesner’s many fantasies.
Gah! The OP says he didn’t like the “dense, long-winded arcana” of JRRT, and people are recommending Eddings, GRR Martin, Mieville, Gene Wolfe, and Suzanna Clarke? They’re all good, but they’re all chock full of dense, long-winded arcana. (part of the reason they’re good)
Neil Gaiman is a good recommendation. I’d also add Roger Zelazny, who’s books are very accessible and well-written.
That sounds excellent, Khadaji. From what I read of the plot, it reminded me of the Keys of the Kingdom series by Garth Nix, which I can also recommend. Hey, what can I say, I like Arthurian references…
I may have to try it. I have enjoyed some of Nix’s stuff. (I didn’t like the Rag Witch, but some of his other stuff was very good.)
I don’t really like fantasy either… besides the one-dimensional characters, I get bored of the same mythologies repeated ad nauseum from book to book. I like it when people invent something new. I already know what elves, halflings, goblins, dragons, trolls, and sorcerors do; I like worlds in which these things don’t exist or are markedly different from the kind I’ve been exposed to.
I recently started the His Dark Materials trilogy (beginning with The Golden Compass) by Philip Pullman, and I adore it. Its protagonist is a 10 or 11-year-old girl, grown up as a bit of a heathen, whose life begins to change drastically when she hears of something called Dust and children start disappearing. She slowly begins to find out that she’s going to play a significant part in a world-changing series of events, with the help of a golden compass, but she doesn’t know what exactly that part is. The fantasy elements are unfamiliar and fascinating, but not overwhelming; the book is just full of the wonderment and uncertainty of a child on the brink of something enormous… and I think it’s technically for “young adults”, but to me it really doesn’t seem watered down. My only regret is that I don’t have more time to read it.
I heartily recommend Stewart and Riddell’s Edge Chronicles. It’s YA stuff, but very inventive,with cool B&W illustrations and a dark tone. They’re quick reads, too.
I am not a big Fantasy reader - but I enjoyed Faerie Tale by Raymond Feist
You should also try “The Talisman” by Stephen King and Peter Straub - not fantasy per se, but a good book and somewhat along the lines of a “boy with a powerful secret and abilities”.
I’m with you on LotR, and I’m an avid fantasy fiction reader. I third the A Song of Ice and Fire recommendation - the books are long and somewhat dense, but the plot moves pretty quickly and it seems closer to historical fiction than it does to fantasy.
Neil Gaiman is also a good recommendation.
I also liked Diane Wynne Jones - her stories are short and fanciful, without the intricate details that drag a lot of fantasy novels down. Howl’s Moving Castle is my favorite.
Robert Asprin’s Myth series is fun, light fantasy set in an anachronistic universe, with quirky characters and situations that often kept me grinning for chapters at a time. I read these while I was in high school, but I think I would still find them enjoyable today (I still favorable opinions on most of the books I liked in high school).
Ah, well, I don’t know of any other fantasy that does this like Harry Potter does, and I think that’s one big reason for its enormous popularity. I’d like to know where I can get more of that sort of thing myself: fantasy with the clever plotting and the keep-you-guessing mysteries that HP has. (Perhaps the biggest Harry Potter fan I know personally is a person who “doesn’t read fantasy” and whose favorite genre of recreational reading is mysteries.)
I’m thinking there might be some of this sort of thing in Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber, but it’s been too long since I’ve read them for me to say for sure. And maybe some of Diana Wynne Jones’s books.
And Dan Brown’s books, which I find easier to swallow if I think of it as a fantasy, set in an alternate world in which some of the ludicrous liberties he takes are actually reality. 
And Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday has mystery aspects, but it does not have the reality or depth of characterization you’re looking for.
I’d say there’s plenty of fantasy that does this (though also plenty that doesn’t).
Yeah, there is an awful lot of derivative fantasy out there (Sturgeon’s Law, I guess). In a genre where the imagination is free to run wild, too many authors are content to write third-rate copies of Tolkien.
I also highly recommend this, but the third book in the trilogy is a major letdown—in my opinion, which is shared by many but far from all other readers. If the ending had lived up to the promise of the first two books, this would be one of the great fantasy series. As it is, it’s still original and well worth reading.
I’d call it fantasy! (Except that you’re more likely to find it with the rest of the Stephen King books than in the fantasy section of the bookstore.) (I wouldn’t call Black House, the sequel of sorts, a fantasy though; it’s more purely horror.) King’s The Eyes of the Dragon is also fantasy.
It’s not exactly what you’re looking for, but I’ll second George R. R. Martin’s Song of Fire & Ice series as a good one if you’re looking for compelling multi-faceted characters. The author does strive to create a fully-realized world, which means world lore will be thrust upon you from time to time, but I find Martin’s prose much more readable (and less rambling) than Tolkein’s. It’s not a mystery filled with puzzles, but the political maneuverings satisfy my itch for cleverness and analysis, and characters do often find themselves in difficult situations that could be solved with a (often political) puzzle-like solution (they often don’t hit upon the correct one, though!).
But there are major puzzles in the series. It’s just that they’re *historical * puzzles.
For instance, some 15-20 years before the story begins, a complex, gruesome series of events occured that began with a tournament and ended with a woman’s death (not to mention thousands more who died along the way, including a king). Learning the exact nature of these events is crucial to understanding the various characters and their motivations. However, the book never explicitly tells us what happens - the reader has to piece the story together from snippets of conversation, throwaway remarks, random musings and in one case, a bedtime story, all tainted by the various characters’ perspectives and preconceptions. Martin never gives an inch, never delivers any exposition he doesn’t absolutely have to, but rather makes the reader work. It’s exhilerating.
And there’s more than one such mystery.
As to other writers: I strongly reccomend Guy Gavriel Kay, but you should start with Tigana ** or A Song for Arbonne. Do not - I repeat, do not - start with the Fionavar Tapestry **series. It’s very well written, but it’s so insanely derivative that it reads like an explosion at the fantasy factory. Definitely not for those who “don’t like” the genre.
Zelazny’s Amber books are good - and short - but they’re cursed with an overabundance of 70’s slang. Non-groovy readers beware.