I like Sanderson, but I don’t think Mystborn is his best work.
He obviously puts a lot of thought and effort into building unusual magic systems; and naturally he wants the reader to learn about them. This made parts of the Mystborn trilogy read like a RPG players manual.
I’d suggest someone new to Sandersons work start with Warbreaker, or if they want something epic(ally long) The Way of Kings.
Huh.
40 something posts and I’m gonna get to be the guy who mentions Thieves’ World.
It doesn’t get any better than this. Short stories, novellas, novels, even a series of novels.
Robert Lynn Asprin created the mileau and then let dozens of authors set stories within it.
YMMV, but for me it’s very easy to get lost in these stories. Some of the best realized fantasy I’ve ever come across.
Also a nod for Richard K. Morgan’s A Land Fit For Heroes. The third book is due out this year, and I have no idea if that wraps up the story or not so if you want closure these may not be for you.
And last but not least, I always love a chance to recommend Brian Daley’s Coramonde books. There’s just two of them (Doomfarers of Coramonde and Starfollowers of Coramonde), but they totally fucking rock!
I’d love to recommend The Way of the Kings. It’s one of my absolute favorites. But as the first - and so far only published - entry in a ten-volume series, I don’t think it’s the way to go.
I totally agree with your recommendations. Warbreaker is also my favorite Sanderson work. But the OP specifically requested advice on a series.
Similarly with Julian May’s linked Saga of Pliocene Exile and Galactic Milieu series. It’s all science–but the former series has a faux-medievalist setting that many fantasy fans enjoy. Good stuff.
My top fantasy-series pick is Pullman’s His Dark Materials. It’s smart and enthralling. Also, I’ve loved everything by Diana Wynne Jones that I’ve read, but I discovered her only recently and haven’t finished reading any of her series, yet. (She’s the author of Howl’s Moving Castle, which as most here will know, was made into an animated film by Hayao Miyazaki.)
I’ve read only the first few books of many of the other series mentioned in this thread (Wheel of Time; Belgariad; Thomas Covenant; possibly others I’ve blanked on).
Going through your list
A Song of Ice and Fire: The first three books are amazing (and judging by the success of the TV show, one of the top books of our generation). The fourth and fifth books are noticeably more boring, and I’m worried if he’ll ever finish it. Still worth reading, though.
The Sword of Truth: I’ve only read the first three books, and that was enough for me. I’d skip it. It’s pretty cliche-ridden generic fantasy for the most part - the three heroes are the standard prince/adventurer, a princess, and a wizard; the villain’s name is “Darken Rahl” for crying out loud. The only non-generic part about it was the weird S&M porn warriors.
The First Law: I love these books, though the grittiness might turn some people off. I wouldn’t call it satire, but there’s some satirical elements (such as the ending of the second book). There’s actually 6 books in the series now, so Abercrombie’s able to churn 'em out. I actually liked Best Served Cold and The Heroes more than the original trilogy.
Other recommendations:
I recommend the books in the Dragonlance world, by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Its an entire world, with different authors contributing, but the main stories are written by those two. The good thing is that because its a whole separate universe, you can pretty much start and stop where you want to. My recommendation is that you read one or two of the collected Tales books, like Tales vol. 1: The Magic of Krynn, and then jump into the 3 book Chronicles Trilogy.
I recommend the Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks. I read the first few chapters online and immediately went out and bought the books. I had a lot of fun reading it.
The Deverry Cycle by Katharine Kerr - first book is Daggerspell. I think these books are unfairly overlooked.
Oh, yeah; the first The Chronicles of Amber series especially is great. I liked the second too, but lots of people don’t.
Can’t believe I forgot that, I’ve read it multiple times. Definitely excellent.
Oh yeah, Amber is great. If anyone hasn’t read that yet, you need to read it now.
I knew there was a reason I liked you, Tamerlane :). I pretty much agree with every word of what you wrote. In fact, there’s a fun game with Perdido Street Station called “Spot the Happy Ending”:
There’s a minor character who, about halfway through the book, says, “Fuck this noise,” and gets the hell out of town. That character might have a happy ending!
The idea that Rowling is a better writer than Pullman makes me twitch, but then, I have a lot of problems with Rowling, from her presentation of girls to her creepy fantasy take on British class society and noblesse oblige.
Lloyd Alexander is fantastic, though.
I’ll vouch with Battle Pope for the Books of the North and Of the South, though they were taking a sharp swerve in enjoyability towards the end of the latter—it’s what turned me off reading any further. (I’ll admit, one of the big reasons I got started on them in the first place was that they heavily inspired the setting and story for Bungie’s old Myth games. No molotov-hurling dwarves, alas.)
I read the trilogy and…I can’t really recommend it. There are likable elements and characters, to be sure, and tastes can be relative, but this one just smacked too much of “ooh, look at me! Look how clever and dark I am! And you’re the jerk for falling for it!”
It might be straying a bit from “epic” or “high” fantasy, but might you consider any of the old Conan stories by Howard? Some of them are decently long, but many others are short enough that you can test the waters to see if it’s your thing or not.
How about Steven Brust’s series? I don’t know what it’s officially called - Jhereg, I’m assuming.
This one’s a bit tricky to describe. The main character is a human living in a city dominated by elves. These aren’t nice Tolkein elves, but rather physically larger, much longer lived people who all have magical abilities. They’re divided up into 12 or 13 - I forget - races, each based on an animal, some of which exist in our world, and some of which don’t. Their attitude toward humans ranges from disgust and loathing to mostly forgetting that they exist. The main character is, at least at first, a criminal boss trying to carve out a living for himself in this city, surrounded by and working with these elves who he loathes.
The series suffers as it goes on from a few things. First is that the author’s private life apparently fell apart, and he reflected those changes in his writing, which in my opinion derailed what was a nice story. Then he also started doing another series set in the same world in the style of Dumas’s Three Musketeers - imitating the old language and everything. An interesting enough gimmick, but I tired of it quickly. THEN, he started mixing the two series together and it all just got to be more effort to keep up with than I was willing to put in. Plus, I often found it nearly impossible to find some of the books. But the first handful of books were enjoyable and worth reading. If you find that you really really like it, there’s lots of material out there to dig into. If you can find it.
I’ll pop back in to add…
If you can find Sherri S. Tepper’s novels set in the genre of The True Game, they are outstanding. They’re out of print and fairly expensive on Amazon, but perhaps a library might have them.
The Vlad Taltos series, after the main character.
Oh yeah, those were good.
I’m going to defend the quality of the latter books of The Black Company series, and say that Cook is very gifted (if a bit bizzare) writer for it.
The Black Company is a 400 year-old organization, that’s almost (but never quite completely) wiped out time-and-again throughout its history. It has drifted geographically over the years, sometimes staying in one place for a generation, and then moving several cultures away suddenly.
After the Battle of the Barrow (The White Rose, Third Book of the North), The Black Company is left with six members, and the now powerless Lady, when Croaker, the Annalist-Physician (and newly elected Captain), decides to take the Company back to its origins to legendary Khatovar.
This entails a seven-thousand mile haj into an Indian/Asian analog society (culturally), service to a new employer (a Raj), a protracted war with a powerful empire run by high-level sorcerers, and a plot that brushes up agaist “mythical time” in its scope.
All told through the eyes of ordinary, everyday, work-a-day mercenary soldiers.
Dreams of Steel (Second Book of the South) is told by Lady, a 400+ year-old (former) sorceress-supreme who ruled The Empire of the North (a European-analog, culturally) before being de-powered in The White Rose.
Bleak Seasons and She Is the Darkness is told by Murgen, the Company Standard-Bearer. Murgen is less-than-sane in his grip on reality after the horrors of the siege of Dejagore, and being touched in the mind by the crazy sorceress Soulcatcher (Lady’s estranged sister) and the Eternal Guardian of Glittering Stone, Shivetya.
Water Sleeps is told by Sleepy, former foot-soldier forced by circumstances to assume the role of Captain to resuce the trapped members of the Company from their sorcerous slumber beneath Glittering Stone, a huge plain that is a magical artifact that links sixteen different worlds (one of which might be ours).
The scale of the seires is epic, but told mostly through the eyes of ordinary foot-soldiers, ad the tone of the series changes as each new annalists takes up the pen.
Croaker returns as Annalist for ther series finale, Soldiers Live. And from some commentary in the book, I think Cook decided he needed to drop the Anvil of Exposition on some of the reader’s heads to get the idea across that The Company is an ever-evolving organization, with changes in personalities and cultures sufficient enough that even a Company veteran who’s been around it for two generations barely recognizes it anymore. This book speaks powerfully to combat veterans, and survivor’s guilt.
The Black Company series typically resonates with militay types, esp. combat veterans, due to it’s down-to-earth realism (the “grittiness” some mention) that comes from its POV of ordinary soldiers.
Soldiers live.
And wonder wy.
I will third Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber series. They are not just great, they are an order of magnitude better than any other fantasy series I have ever read, and that most definitely includes Lord of the Rings. They will put all other fantasy series in perspective.
If you ever meet a WoT fan, you tell him Robert Jordan died clean.
Well i sat down and reread the entire Wheel of Time series after giving it up on the tenth book a decade ago. I was surprised at how much i enjoyed it, the series picked back up with Jordan’s last book and the three by Brandon Sanderson and ended up being highly enjoyable. Yes, three out of fourteen books are pretty horrible, but that is a damn good record not even Martin can live up to at this point.
Why not try Michael Moorcocks Elric of Melnibone stories.
Imaginative, excellent reads and a lot better then much of todays output.
Also another one for Ice and Fire, and thinking about it Disc World books by Terry Pratchett.