Lately, I feel like I keep trying to start fantasy series and just hate all of the characters. I don’t like “dark” fantasy at all. It always seems to mean “Fantasy where you won’t care if they all die horribly… and they will!”
What I do like:
Complex worlds, complex plots, characters who are likeable and who are not completely morally ambiguous (they don’t need to be Mary Sues/Gary Stus), I seem to prefer female authors but this is not a rule
What I don’t like:
Anti-heroes, tons of blood and gore, nihillism, having no one to care about
Long series are okay.
Examples of writers I like:
Robin Hobb, Lois McMaster Bujold, Kristin Cashore, NK Jemisin, Guy Gavriel Kay
Your help requested!
Have you read The Goblin Emperor? It’s apparently getting a lot of press lately; I didn’t know that when I picked it up. There’s a genuinely likable protagonist, a complex court setting, and a slightly steampunk world (airships, goblins, etc.) that doesn’t feel like a checklist so much as it feels like a wholly reasonable setting.
My main criticism of it is that the author is too much in love with her language’s grammar and her naming conventions, to the point that it can be difficult to keep track of different characters. I had to give them all insulting nicknames similar to their actual names in order to keep them straight. But there’s a cast of characters at the back (which I didn’t find until I was 2/3 of the way through the book), so that can help.
Not too long ago I went on a Talbot Mundy binge, and loved every minute of it. Sort of “Kiplingesque” but definitely fantasy. “Om, the Secret of Ahbor Valley” is good. If you like it, you’ll like everything he ever wrote.
Walter Jon Williams does some nice “Arcadian” fantasy (although his best is the science-fantasy “Drake Maijstral” series, which is brilliant and hilarious and fun.)
Have you read any Thomas Burnett Swann? Arcadian fantasies – dryads and minotaurs – with a sweet, loving, slightly erotic tone. Not porn by any means, but very sensual. Perhaps too sentimental…but I adore them.
Have you had the joy of reading Fritz Leiber’s “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” stories? These are tricky, as the first stories and books are brilliant…but they go very slowly downhill. Follow them to Stardock, and then quietly leave them behind. Leiber was a genius, through and through…but he did not age well, and his last work was… Hm. 'Nuff said.
CS Friedman. Her best work was the Coldfire Trilogy and it’s great. She mixes sci-fi and fantasy sometimes. Everything I’ve read from her was worth reading. I don’t think she’s still writing.
Anything by Dave Duncan would be very likely to hit your spot. Dave Duncan is a mushy romantic of the highest order, and an excellent deviser of intriguing magic systems that make sense, and plotter of tight corners for his heroes and heroines to escape from. The boy and the girl always get each other at the end, but it’s often a long road. “A Man of His Word” is great high medieval fantasy; the King’s Blades series is good for swashbuckling. The Seventh Sword series, set in a rather eastern/hinduesque cultural context is the reason why I stopped a personal veto on fantasy books with the word ‘sword’ in the title.
Also from the wayback machine - Katherine Kerr’s Deverry books (Daggerspell et. al) - Druidic religion, medieval politics and reincarnation. The hero did a bad and stupid thing, and now he has to put it right if it takes him centuries. Which it does.
I know I’ve mentioned this in threads you’ve participated in, jsgoddess, but I don’t know if you’ve ever picked up on it. My standing fantasy recommendation is P. C. Hodgell’s *Kencyrath *series. It’s rather dark at times, but even the darkest parts tend to be leavened with humor. The characters are extremely engaging (and mostly survive). The world and plot(s) are quite complex and full of odd little quirks. The protagonist is sometimes described as an anti-heroine, but I don’t really see it; she has a major dark side, but she’s actually remarkably benevolent, given who and what she is.
There are 6 novels so far, and the series isn’t done yet. The early novels are available combined editions (Dark of the Gods, for instance, includes Godstalk and Dark of the Moon).
I recently read Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, and liked it (except for a few grammatical peeves, such as that neither Rothfuss nor his copy editor, if he has one, knows the difference between parents’ and parent’s). It’s pretty long itself (about 700 pages IIRC) and is the first of a series. It seems to be pretty well-regarded both by ordinary readers and by writers & critics. It has likeable characters and not much on-screen violence.
The vast majority of the book is a first-person “How I became a great hero” life story told by the main character, a magician (and musician and some other things), but that part doesn’t get going until at least 50 pages in, so you may have to persevere a while before you get a feel for what the book is really like. I think the book it most reminded me of was Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, though the resemblance isn’t real close.
Thanks for the suggestions! I’ve read LeGuin, Katherine Kerr, and Rothfuss.
Balance, I never read Hodgell because I’m lazy and want ebooks. It looks like the first two books are combined and available through Kindle now, so I’m in! Thanks for the reminder!
Son of a Rich, I’ve been warned away from Mieville. I tried to read one of his books and found it nauseatingly grotesque.
Thanks for reminders about Duncan and Friedman. They and Hodgell will be next!
Even if I’ve read the book you suggest or can’t read it, I appreciate the suggestions. You are champs.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, of course. Adventure and derring-do in a richly-detailed world. Deserved classics. If you like them, try The Silmarillion, too.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, about the return of magic to Regency England. Best described as “if Jane Austen had written a Harry Potter novel.”
L. Sprague de Camp’s fantasy is always humorous. The protagonists are never really heroic – he seems to enjoy puncturing that kind of thing – but they’re not antiheroes either, they’re just likable, flawed human beings (or whatever). Try the Harold Shea stories, the Novarian series, and the Incorporated Knight.
And, of course, the late Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
I also highly, highly recommend the fantasy of Avram Davidson. Particularly [url=]The Adventures of Dr. Eszterhazy, set in the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania in an AH 19th-Century Europe. (Eszterhazy is remarkably intellectual for a fantasy hero.) And the Vergil Magus series and the (sadly unfinished) Peregrine series.
Ticking off the “interesting worlds” and the “good guys are good” and the “powerful women” boxes, I’d suggest **Three Parts Dead **and Two Serpents Rise by Max Gladstone. There are some creepy moments in each, but the world is really nifty, and the characters are interesting and likeable. There’s a third, Full Fathom Five, but my husband has it, so I haven’t read it yet.
You might also enjoy a weird little collection of ghost stories: Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire. ALSO gets a little bit icky in places, but never too bad or horrible, and again, good people are good, bad people are bad, and everyone is interesting. I like the mythology of her ghosts, very compelling.
ETA- I totally forgot: A Natural History of Dragons, by Marie Brennan. There’s three in the series out now, and they are AMAZEBALLS. Victorian lady-naturalist goes around the world on safaris researching dragons. So good.
Ditto on L. Sprague de Camp and Avram Davidson. Both are excellent.
That being said…
GORMENGHAST GORMENGHAST GORMENGHAST.
HATE * most fantasy fiction, but Mervyn Peake rules. Only two books worth reading, unfortunately…TITUS GROAN and GORMENGHAST. If you really love them you can try TITUS ALONE, but Peake’s brain was fried with Parkinson’s by the time he got to it.
And there’s a lot of Peake shorter stuff to try. And everything he illustrated. His first book was actually a children’s picture book, Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (1939). And it is as brilliant as his novels.
