Fantasy Recommendations for the Unenlightened 2

[nj1]

Originally Posted by Goosey54

Ok So i've read a song of fire & ice, nearly everything of Salvatore, Dragonlance, Paul kaerney's Sea Beggers. some of David gemmell incl troy series. Oh and The Stormcaller is acutally my favourite book! by Tom Lloyd!

I've just ordered the 3 first books of Steven Erikson Malazan and the Farseer trilogy.

Any other recommendations what i should read?

I really enjoyed Stormcaller aswell, but preferred the Twilight Herald which is the second book in the series, very dark in parts and an excelant plot. Can't wait for the Grave Thief (Jan 09 I think).

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Goosey54

Ok So i've read a song of fire & ice, nearly everything of Salvatore, Dragonlance, Paul kaerney's Sea Beggers. some of David gemmell incl troy series. Oh and The Stormcaller is acutally my favourite book! by Tom Lloyd!

I've just ordered the 3 first books of Steven Erikson Malazan and the Farseer trilogy.

Any other recommendations what i should read?

Yep quite a few. You seem to read similar books to me so I'll happily suggest:

Crown Of Stars - Kate Eliott *7 book EPIC, excellent.
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn - Tad Williams *Magical trilogy
Prince of Nothing trilogy - R Scott Bakker *One of the best modern EPIC series.
Lankmahr - Fritz Leiber *Classic S&S
Kingdom Of Thorn & Bone quartet - Greg Keyes

All high quality series, so enjoy...

Plenty more but that should keep you busy for a while.

[Simian]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

Just spotted this list of the most signifacnt SFF books in the last 50 years. It's always subjective and I'm not clear as to why Shannara is there but they certainly have some good ones in this list.

So it may be helpful to some to peruse this...

Science Fiction Book Club

Interesting list that Gollum, probably worthy of a thread in itself. Although somewhat placated by the presence of The Demolished Man, I would argue until I was blue in the face that any list without The Stars My Destination in the top five (let alone the top fifty) is seriously missing a trick.

[GOLLUM]

I'm happy to have Demolished Man there, this is by no means a "list of the best", really just some additional works that are smilar in style, type (eg EPIC fantasy ) and quality to the ones gossey54 listed. If I had a fav list it would be quite a bit different to that.

EDIT: OOPS I thought you meant the short list for Goosey but i see now what you mean. YES, that list is quite good but by no means what I would have.

[Goosey54]

Originally Posted by GOLLUM

Yep quite a few. You seem to read similar books to me so I'll happily suggest:

Crown Of Stars - Kate Eliott *7 book EPIC, excellent.
Memory, Sorrow and Thorn - Tad Williams *Magical trilogy
Prince of Nothing trilogy - R Scott Bakker *One of the best modern EPIC series.
Lankmahr - Fritz Leiber *Classic S&S
Kingdom Of Thorn & Bone quartet - Greg Keyes

All high quality series, so enjoy...

Plenty more but that should keep you busy for a while.

Thanks alot ill keep an eye on those. However Prince of nothing was abit to hard for me to read as im not native english!.

And i would recommend the book The Lies of Locke Lamora, i finished it in 3 days, couldnt put it down!

Thanks everyone!

[Ice fyre]

Crown of Stars is an excellent series I remmeber reading the first one years back its like she took a long time to finish it.

If your looking for something darker I dont know if anyone has mentioned the Scar by China Mellville? Brilliant book, but extremley adult and dark.

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by Simian

Interesting list that Gollum, probably worthy of a thread in itself. Although somewhat placated by the presence of The Demolished Man, I would argue until I was blue in the face that any list without The Stars My Destination in the top five (let alone the top fifty) is seriously missing a trick.

Agree fully you dont have TSMD in even top 50, then its a list not to be taking seriously !

[Theo Hart]

Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures by Walter Moers (translated from German to English).

The book's a tome, but it's one of the few in my collection that I re-read. Incredibly entertaining. Hints of parody. Helmet-wearing, wussy, dino-poets.

Has a few minor, isolated, translation issues, but it's still an incredible book.

[Hilarious Joke]

Or The 13 and a half Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers, which might be easier to obtain, and I haven't read Rumo, but this one's fantastic.

[Theo Hart]

Originally Posted by Hilarious Joke

Or The 13 and a half Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers, which might be easier to obtain, and I haven't read Rumo, but this one's fantastic.

That one's right up at the top of my "WANT" list.

[Hilarious Joke]

It's so great. I'm hanging out for The other 13 and a half Lives of Captain Bluebear, for you see, a bluebear has twenty seven lives all up.

[GOLLUM]

Originally Posted by Hilarious Joke

It's so great. I'm hanging out for The other 13 and a half Lives of Captain Bluebear, for you see, a bluebear has twenty seven lives all up.

Got several of Moer's books. All highly entertaining romps. Rumo is very good.

[ushumgal]

If I wanted to introduce someone to fantasy, I'd direct them to my two favorites before anything else:

Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Series (how can you read fantasy and *not* read it?)

Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn (a neglected gem)

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by ushumgal

Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings Series (how can you read fantasy and *not* read it?)

Trust me despite popular belief Fantasy doesnt start and end with Tolkien.

I havent read him atleast not finished the first book of LOTR and have no problem enjoying many other fantasy authors and books.

There are as many people who love it as people who dont the see the fuss about LOTR.....

[j. d. worthington]

As much as I admire and enjoy Tolkien's work, I have to agree. Fantasy is much too broad a field for any single writer to be considered "essential" by this point. And Tolkien himself has plenty of formative influences behind him, no few of which are quite as worthy of reading as himself (and to some, no doubt, even more so).

There's also the fact that LotR (let alone the History of Middle-earth) is rather a large book to be throwing at someone who is just entering the field; I'd suggest something slimmer to begin with, to see if they like fantasy at all, before tackling some massive tome... let alone one of the enormous series out there.

My suggestion for newbies is to try several different writers with briefer books, or a few anthologies (preferably ones that include both short stories and reasonable-length excerpts from longer novels, to get a taste of what a variety of things are out there, and go from there....