Help me pick a new fantasy series

I read those when I was very young too, and even then recognized that they were pure shit. Avoid like you’d avoid Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, or David Eddings. Most professional sports teams issue press releases that are more compelling, have better character development, and are better-written than that dreck.

Like you I’m a big GRRM fan and have not been able to sustain my enthusiasm for Erikson’s books (read the first two). Neither has Bakker’s first one grabbed hold; still trying to finish it.

I do however heartily endorse Cook’s Black Company series (at least the first two arcs) and my new darling favorite author has to be Joe Abercrombie - The First Law series is utterly captivating.

From what I understand it’s pretty much a direct Tolkein rip (like even moreso than Sword of Shannara). I believe McKeirnan started it in the hopes that he would get a license to make it a sequel to LOTR.

Pfft, Ok, you lost me there. How anyone can suggest Eddings as material suited for more than a coarse replacement for bathroom tissue is beyond me.

When in doubt, you can always read something for free

I’ve got 3 suggestions jibing with previous suggestions, plus one more:

  1. Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun”. It really is excellent sci-fi, although perhaps a bit thick if you’re used to “easy reading”. Still some of the most memorable and vivid sci-fi I’ve read.

  2. I like the unorthodox cosmology and sense of history that Glen Cook works into the Black Company books. I picked one of the later ones after I saw them listed in the list of influences for Bungie’s “Myth” ( I started with “Bleak Seasons”, first of the “Glittering Stone” series), then read forward as far as was published, then went back to the (weaker) first books, then to the finale once it was published.

Looking back in hindsight, this was totally the way to go, as it greatly improves the older books to read them as a flashback, already having some idea of where things are going.

  1. Guy Gavriel Kay is perhaps my favorite pseudo-historical fantasy author. If you like authors like Tolkien and Martin, definitely try him out.

  2. Plus, one other suggestion, somewhat more off the beaten path, Robert Holdstock. He writes a brilliant mix of fantasy and horror. Start with “Mythago Wood”.

I liked the Scar. I just hated the main character. Which can be a problem at times, no dobut.

Great idea, but I’m latched to a computer screen 10+ hours a day and more than anything else, I enjoy reading (books) in bed before I sleep. It soothes me, what can I say. I know I couldn’t get the same feeling from reading from a digital device.

Wolfe’s New Sun series are my favorite books, so whenever I come across them in used book stores I buy them up to give them to friends. So far, no one else has liked them (or finished them).

My wife, who did finish, dislikes the books for being more about ideas than characters and relationships (and she hates the main character.) But since it’s a first person narrative, and Severian is something of an emotionally stunted bastard, that’s really just good writing.

David Gemmell is guilty fun fantasy.

Harry Potter!

Agreed there. I have yet to be dissapointed in a single Gemmell book. You kinda know what you get going in (well written heroic fantasy), but he never fails to deliver for me. Legend was terrific.

EDIT: Has it really already been 2 and 1/2 years since he died?!?!? Jeez.

Highly recommend Gemmel as well. Great pulp, gritty fantasy. Legend sets the tone and the rest of the Drenai series follows along. His Shannow series was pretty good too. I read him alot when I was studying overseas in my teens, so maybe my impressions have changed.

Funny thing about the Iron Tower books. I also read them when I was much younger (still reading Piers Anthony) and recognized them for the pure shit it was.

I’m going to put in another plug for Erickson. I understand. I really do. I could not get into the series at all. After a number of attempts and putting it down I decided to slug through it…and was unimpressed. So I read the second book and it got worse. Ok, Erickson is not for me. I get it. Done.

Then I picked it up again about a year later. Read the first book over, then the second and onto the third. I am now on Book 7 having read the entire series without pause. I can’t think about picking up any other book but Erickson until i’m done with every book that is out. That’s pretty high praise.

Yeah, I hate to join a pileon, but in my case my liking for Tolkien (while being the thing that led me to Eddings) is one of the things that made me dislike the Belgariad. Simply because it shows the difference between a thing done well and a thing done poorly.

  • Gene Wolfe, Shadow of the torturer

Wolfe is easily my favourite fantasy/sci-fi author; I’ve not managed to find anything else in the genre that comes close to the stunning writing of the Sun books for me. So that would be my recommendation, but I’ll have to echo the caveat that it’s not “easy” or light reading.

You must be in a similar situation as mine… what is there after having read A Feast for Crows? I tried getting into some series but they aren’t enough. I tried reading Streams of Silver (RA Salvatore) and couldn’t finish it. I stopped reading The Darkness That Comes Before, I don’t really know why, but that book gets weird sometimes.

Then I started reading Gardens of the Moon, by Steven Erikkson. You said you didn’t like it, but how far into it are you? The beggining might not be surprising, but I held on and it grabbed me. I’m really liking it, except the fact that Erikson sometimes thinks you know everything about the background of his world and fails to explain some important facts.

I was wondering about this. I loved The Black Company (and everything else I’ve read by Cook, actually), and was very strongly reminded of the Myth storyline while reading it. In a good way.

Also, for delicious popcorn, pick up anything Cook has written about Garrett – they’re self-contained novels set within a low-fantasy world about a ex-soldier private investigator. They’re silly and fun, but totally awesome.

Cannot fully comment on this without revealing massive spoilers, but suffice it to say, narrator’s seeming “flaws,” according to the series’ lore, may or may not necessarily be due to his own issues. He is also capable of lying or omitting the truth, and does so throughout the story, though again, whether he lies necessarily because of his own flaws is made unclear (though he may simply be obfuscating for his own benefit).

Excellent series regardless and well-worth reading, particularly for anyone interested in science-fiction/fantasy hybridization, religious deconstruction, Rudyard Kipling, or Jack Vance’s Dying Earth setting.

You might try Elizabeth Moons The Deed of Paksenarrion trilogy if you like the gritty kind of fantasy. Its somewhat like the black company, but i think better realized.

First two volumes of the anthology series are well worth reading, and a lot of fun. Some excellent writers in there. Later volumes (some novels instead of anthologies) are not so good. I really hated GRR’s entry though, not because it was a bad story but because his hero was sexist.