I thought about recommending The Black Company series yesterday when I read the thread, but didn’t think it would fit the criteria; but I love the series so I’m always glad to see someone “plugging it.” 
Besides, I think most of the Main Cast in The Black Company at least rates higher than Mauve Shirts
This would be my recommendation as well. Swordspoint actually contains NO magic, although there is magic in the sequel The Fall of the Kings.* While I wouldn’t put it on the same level as The Princess Bride, if you can imagine a version of The Princess Bride that was mostly about Prince Humperdinck and Count Rugen’s political machinations, and what happens when the world’s greatest swordfighter gets caught in the middle, you’ll have some idea of what it’s like. Unusually for a swashbuckling adventure, nearly Everyone is Bisexual and the central romance is between two men. The book isn’t primarily a love story though, the romantic elements are largely fuel for the intrigue.
*There are three books in this series, Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword, and The Fall of the Kings. The Fall of the Kings was published second but takes place chronologically after The Privilege of the Sword. I read them in publication order, but I’d recommend chronological order instead with The Privilege of the Sword before The Fall of the Kings. Or since you’re not much interested in magic, you could skip The Fall of the Kings, which I felt was the weakest in the series and is also the only one where magic played a significant role.
Hmm…to each their own I guess.
May I ask what you did not like about the Fury series?
And what is your opinion of Ursula Le Guin? Or Robin Hobb?
Despite appearances, China is, in fact, softly-spoken, super-articulate and not a punk. More drum-and-bass, actually.
I’m sure he’s a very nice human being, but to me, he still comes across as a self-righteous ass in writing. His prose is very good and his worldbuilding is excellent, but his authorial voice makes him hard to enjoy.
Different strokes. To me, he’s talking perfect sense - righteous, not self-righteous. A healthy contrast to the many Right/Libertarian/Randist voices in genre fiction.
It’s not so much his politics so much as his tunnelvision and didacticism, not to mention his lack of humor and compassion. In his world, there are groups of people who can do no wrong (basically just outcasts, artists and disgraced academics); groups of people who can do no right (the rich, the middle class, establishment academics and especially anyone connected to government), and innocents with no moral agency of their own (the poor). No exceptions are allowed.
It’s exhausting after a while, which is a shame, because I *want *to enjoy his books. He really has some amazing ideas.
I’m gonna reverse order.
Robin Hobb’s editor needs to give her something like a dozen pages per novel in which characters can internal-monologue a pity party. She can spread those dozen pages throughout her book however she wants, but that’s it, because she’s got a damn fine story to tell, and nobody (well, not me, anyway) wants half the book to be taken up by all the woe-is-me thoughts of the protagonist.
Look again at my username if you want to know how I feel about Le Guin :).
I read the Fury series as it came out, so my memory is not great. There were two big problems I had with it:
[spoiler]First, the magic system, based on the elements, was a total cliche. I am so over four-element magic.
Second, the young man who doesn’t start off with magic but is clever enough to make his own way in the world? That’s a super original ideal that I’ve never seen before. WAIT HE’S ACTUALLY THE MOST POWERFUL WIZARD OF ALL WHO COULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING
Like I said, the books passed the time, and there were some genuinely clever bits, because Butcher writes clever bits very well. But the bone-deep cliches made me roll my eyes.
[/spoiler]
Wait–lack of humor? Are you serious? And I find him a deeply compassionate author.
To be fair, I’ve only read Perdido Street Station and The Scar. For all I know his other books may be funnier.
That’s a radically different reading of his work from mine - people like Isaac (one protagonist of Perdido Street Station) and Bellis (one protagonist of The Scar) fall into your first group, but they definitely can (and do) do wrong. In fact, their wrongdoings are huge plot drivers.
Yes, the rich and government are mostly portrayed negatively (at least in the Bas Lag books) - that’s not “lack of humour and compassion” from where I stand, that’s realism.
And personally, I find his stuff very humourous. It’s black humour, though - how do you feel about Brazil or Black Mirror?
If you want to let go of fantasy altogether and go straight to medieval political scheming, what about Dorothy Dunnet’s **House of Niccolo **and Lymond Chronicles series? My own preference is for her light-hearted Johnson Johnson spy series, as I don’t like political scheming, but her series are very highly rated.
I hate Dorothy Dunnett because unless you speak French, half of her works are incomprehensible.
It’s been years since i last read them, but two examples of his humor, which may not be funny to you:
[spoiler]In PSS, there’s a group of loathsome mercenaries who show up; they’re murderers for hire and graverobbers, decked out in the gear they’ve stolen from their murder victims and from the tombs they’ve desecrated. He never says as much, but they’re clearly a D&D adventuring party, and I giggled.
In The Scar, there’s the anophelians or whatever, the mosquito people, the females of whom are vicious killers and the males of whom have a face like an asshole. It’s so weird that I laughed a lot at it.
[/spoiler]
I mean, I get that his humor won’t tickle every funnybone, but it’s definitely there.
I’m going to back up the recommendation of the Codex Alera (Furies) series by Jim Butcher. I love them dearly, and re-read them with some regularity.
If you’re looking for intrigue and willing to forgo fantasy, try the Vorkosigan Saga by Bujold. Also, The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey. Both are science fiction. The Vorkosigan books are lighter in tone than the Expanse books.
Thank you, everyone. This in addition to my current library backlog is going to keep me busy for a while.
Regarding my personal tastes on authors I already know, in case that influences any additional recommendations that trickle in:
Eddings: The other series were YA lit that I enjoyed as a young’un. Not so much now. But I’ll check out the Sparhawk ones.
I feel similarly about Feist. Midkemia was a platform for his roleplaying group. Although the already noted Empire side trilogy was enjoyable when I revisited him in college.
Cook: I picked up The Black Company years ago but put it down due to the writing style not being to my liking. Call it a mismatch with my expectations re: prose and character development. I put down the first Kay Tapestry book for similar reasons. But some of you say the other books are different so I’ll give them a try.
Mieville has for the most part been to my liking.
Hobb: It’s been a while. I recall enjoying her first two* Assassin* books immensely and everything going downhill from there. But I don’t remember why.
I’d second Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome books - lightly fictionalized history of the death of the Republic and birth of the Roman Empire, and ripping good reads. You get to watch the towering giants of Rome like Sulla, Caesar, Pompey, Marc Antony, Augustus, and more at their peaks of political machinations and power.
Best of all, those political machinations and outcomes are based in what actually happened, so you get to enjoy the extremes and absurdities of the storytelling without thinking “yeah, that’s good reading but couldn’t happen in the real world” - because in this case, they largely did happen, and they worked!
And if you like those and have or acquire a taste for fictionalized Roman history, Robert Graves’ **I, Claudius **and Claudius the God are great too, although not quite as interesting as McCullough’s in my opinion.