His Black Company series is also amazing.
Even if you normally don’t read comic books/graphic novels, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series is absolutely amazing. I wasn’t thrilled with the first volume, which put a lot of the characters and backstory in place, but that first volume did need to be read. And the series is finished.
I agree. I’m not a “Fantasy” reader, generally. Just not my usual cup of tea. However, I loved Butcher’s Dredan Files. I devoured them and was hungry for more. I gave *Codex Alera *a try, and damned if I wasn’t just as hooked on it as I was on Dresdan!
/agreed. I’m reading the third Alera book now, and I stayed up two hours later than I wanted to last night. Lies we tell ourselves: “Just one more page, the I’ll go to bed.”
Seconded. And if you like those, you might also enjoy Wurts’ Mistwraith series, which is complete. Really high fantasy, about two half-brothers that can summon light and shadow, respectively, cursed by an evil spirit to try and murder each other at any opportunity. Explores a lot themes of racism and cults/religion and such. Quite good, though she does have a tendency to be overly verbose.
I might also suggest the Apropos of Nothing series by Peter David. A satire of fantasy tropes along the lines of Pratchett, with the protagonist a bitter and cynical anti-hero, but sympathetic. If you like House, you’ll like Apropos. That’s his name. Get it? Oh, the laughs abound. The second book, Woad to Wuin, even features a brief appearance of a Fafrd and the Gray Mouser-analog as a gay couple.
And in a similar vein of comic fantasy, you might also try Robert Asprin’s Myth-Adventures series (RIP Bob) and just about anything by Tom Holt. My faves by him were The Flying Dutchman, about the legend of the Flying Dutchman, a standalone. The twist is, the crew of the boat have drunk the Elixir of Life and are immortal but a side effect of the elixir is they smell so godawful they have to stay at sea. Every 7 years the smell mysteriously vanishes for a few days where they can go ashore and stock up on books, booze, toys and anything else to help pass the time stuck on a tiny boat with the same group of people you’ve known for centuries.
The other one I liked was the J.W. Wells&Co trilogy, about office politics with a magical twist.
I don’t recall a whole lot of Discworld books with quite so much torture and institutionalized cruelty. Plus, we’ve got a main character who is a slightly retarded guy who is continually mistreated horribly. If you can remind me about one I’d be interested.
Were you to try these, see if you can get the editions published by Starblaze. Phil Foglio’s art adds a lot to the books.
-Joe
Phil’s Myth-Adventures completely-comicized version is online now. He’s currently running them, so it’s only up to when Skeeve meets Tananda, but he’s apparently going to run the whole thing.
Great artist, fun guy, and truly appreciative of his fans.
-Joe
I guess we’re talking at angles to each other. True, SG has really nasty people and societal conventions (as do Interesting Times, Pyramids, and for that matter, Night Watch), but the tone isn’t so very grim. It’s got plenty of dark, it’s got plenty of funny, it’s got lots of philosophy. And it has a happy ending.
For books that really are written darkly, the later Watch books will do. I mean, Night Watch may have an over-all lower body count than the Exquisition, but it’s got torturers, repression, stupid people doing stupid things for noble but stupid purposes, stupid people doing nasty things because they can get away with it, Carcer (who is in a category of his own), and Vimes being cynical.
And Brutha isn’t so much retarded as… different. After all, he stops the war, reforms his country and religion, and is Cenobiarch for a hundred years.
Just saw my brother for Thanksgiving. In his library, he had Tad Williams “Otherworld” series, which he raved about as being excellent.
Anyone read it? I know it is science fiction, but is it very good? My brother said it pulled him in and never let him go. He adored it.
Thoughts? I’ll consider it, even if it isn’t the next thing I read.
It was good, not great. Definitely overlong. It borrows heavily from Snow Crash, and many of the settings in the latter books will be familiar to most readers. I can’t really say more than that without spoiling things. The protagonist is female, and I don’t really think Williams writes the female perspective consistently well.
You mean the Sword of Sha-na-na? About 30 pages into the book I threw it into the woodstove. That is one of the very few books I actually destroyed.
Elric can be depressing, but is overall a good read =)
I adore Pratchett. I would actually skip the Color of Magic unless you read the Grey Mouser and Fafhrd novels first. Color of Magic is actually a pretty decent parody of it. The second novel as well. I normally get people to read the Guardsmen novels as the intorduction, to be honest.
Dragonsbane is quite excellent. I have the sequels and I agree that they are dark.
Fun fun sword and sorcery stories. I class them as contemporary with the original Conan and Tarzan novels - very pulpy, light popcorn reads.
Lloyd Alexander is quite a good writer. The Black Cauldron is excellent, my favorite of the three - it was made into an animated movie 20 or so years ago that was tolerable.
A second for the Chalion series, and Lois also has a second fantasy series The Sharing Knife, it is 4 books. Very character driven, like her Chalion series and her SF Vorkosigan series.
I have a fond spot for the Wrinkle series, I spent a summer in the early 70s sitting up my favorite willow tree with my cat, a bag of snacks and the Wrinkle series, Dune, Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, and Bullfinches Mythology. One of the best summers in my memory - I hope it is the last memory I lose before I die =)
I love the Monty Python description for Pratchett’s books. If you start with Color of Magic please read the Grey Mouser and Fafhrd book first.
One odd suggestion I might make, Neal Gaimans Neverwhen. It is set in modern London, but sort of skewed. You could definitely call it an alternate universe book. There was an excellent TV adaptation of it by the BBC I think is available at Netflix, or even youtube.
If you head over to Baen Webscritpions.net, in the free library are some good fantasy - I think you may find some good stuff, even if all you do is sample a few pages of the books you can find them in used bookstores much of the time=)
Patricia Briggs has two fantasy two book series that are both worth reading. The first is Dragon’s Blood and Dragon’s Bone which are my favorites. Then in a totally different world *Raven’s Shadow * and Raven’s Strike. Both series are well plotted and have interesting characters.
I enjoyed the Daniel Abraham’s The Long Price quartet, starting with A Shadow in Summer. I don’t think it’s very well known.
I haven’t read either of those series, but I’m a great fan of the Mercy Thompson series. In fact, I’m hoping the latest book will come in the mail this weekend.
Be warned- the first one seems to be utterly banal. One giant cliche. Almost everything is something you’ve seen a thousand times before.
Then it all gets turned upside down in the second book. Just warning you to stick through it.
Her site is hurog.com because hurog means dragon - from Dragon’s Bones.
I love the Mercy Thomspson, as well as the Alpha and Omega series, but I would not call either of them straight fantasy, more urban fantasy with a little romance shifted in. Both Raven and Dragon are straight fantasy not urban fantasy. Both have Ms. Brigg’s wonderful characters and well plotted action. However you can see how she has grown as an author between *Dragon’s Bone *and Silver Borne.
Enjoy *Silver Borne * this weekend - go Samuel!
“Neverwhere”, not “Neverwhen”
-Joe, nitpicker
Alanon? Were the dwarves drinking too much?
Fionavar is my least favorite of Guy Gavriel Kay’s works. His books Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, a fantastic retelling of Byzantium’s heights, is my favorite (a couple of his other books are right up there, but I’m thinking of series).
I’ll second Daniel Abraham’s books. They’re a very original take on fantasy, in which poets who are sufficiently good can cause a poem to gain unwanted corporeality and sentience and work tremendous magic by enslaving the poem. Dark, but excellent. I didn’t know the last one had been written–I need to track it down.
Also add my voice to Jim Butcher. Codex Alera is pretty good, a little similar in fact to Abraham’s works. Dresden Files is totally ridiculous and a lot of fun.
Hearty seconds to Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors.
I’ve read the first of Abraham’s books (and spoke to him on his blog. Very nice guy) and highly recommend it. I’ll need to reread it before launching into the rest of the series.
Also seconding Bujold’s Chalion books, which are masterful, Keyes Kingdom of Thorn and Bone, Rothfuss, and Lloyd Alexander.
Oh, and Tanya Huff and Robin Hobb’s Farseer books. I’ve read the Liveship books and really wasn’t particularly impressed. The Soldier Son books are odd and while I enjoyed them, I don’t think I’d recommend them to a newcomer to Hobb.
Can’t say as I’d recommend Shannara. I rather hated it. I liked Thomas Covenant I and II when I first read them but have a nasty taste in my mouth about them now. I prefer the Mirror books by Donaldson, but have no real desire ever to read anything he’s written again. No idea why.
Gene Wolfe is the unfortunate victim of a stomach virus I contracted while reading the first book of the New Sun. I was so nauseated that it seems to have stuck, mentally, to the book. I doubt I’ll ever pick up the series again.
In the urban fantasy realm, four authors stand head and shoulders above the rest for me: Butcher, Carey, Andrews (not the Edge books), and Briggs (not the Alpha and Omega books). I like Briggs’s non-urban fantasies, too.
I know I’m forgetting most of the things I intended to add to this thread. Bah.