OT: Any reccomendations for good fanatasy books

[thejeff]

Del Rey put out a 3 volume series of the original Howard Conan stories a few years ago.
Most of the other reprints are mixed in with other writer's Conan stories.

I'll second (or third or whatever) the Amber recommendation. Or pretty much anything by Zelazny. Lord of Light is probably my favorite. Science fiction take on Hindu/Buddhist mythology.

[Aristander]

A good recent choice is Lamentation by Ken Scholes.

Over two thousand years has passed from the end of the Old World and the Age of Laughing Madness.

Rising from that devastation, the Androfrancines build a Great Library in the city of Windwir. Within this library the Androfrancines store what lost knowledge of science and magic they can recover from past ages, only releasing to the world such wonders they deem save for humanity.

A horrifying column of darkness rises on the horizon. Rudolfo, Lord of the Nine Forest Houses can see the smoke from many miles away, and knows that all the Kingdoms of the Named Lands will soon be at war. The city of Windwir and its Great Library has been destroyed by an ancient weapon.

Closer to the catastrophe, a young apprentice is the sole survivor. Neb has seen everyone he has ever known die in an instant.

Lamentation has a great mix of steampunk and fantasy. The plot moves swiftly with plenty of schemes, shifting alliances and the obligatory coming of age story. Scholes has a style similar to Greg Keys and is a fun and easy read.

Full disclosure, I am a librarian by trade and spend some of each day reading reviews of Science Fiction and Fantasy books and purchasing them for my library.

[Edi]

There should be a compilation of Howard's Conan stories without any mixing with other authors. And yes, they are very good. There are actually several editions of them by various publishers.

An excellent new series is Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series, (Empire in Black and Gold, Dragonfly Falling and Blood of the Mantis), which I would rank right up there with Steven Erikson, Glen Cook, Gail Z. Martin (Chronicles of the Necromancer series) and J.V.Jones (Book of Words trilogy and its sequel, the Sword of Shadows trilogy as well as the standalone novel The Barbed Coil)

The less said of Terry Goodkind, the better, and I don't particularly care for G.R.R. Martin's work either.

[Endoperez]

Gene Wolfe: The Knight-Wizard duology. Might be available as a compilation, or as separate books The Knight and The Wizard. I also mentioned this in the previous thread, but it's so great that it's scary. For one thing, it has monsters that are really scary, while still being almost familiar. Giants that are much worse than just big humans, but that still need to eat. The one thing you have to understand about it is that it's not written as a horror book, but as a more realistic take on what it would feel to be the hero, the guy who never lies and always does what is right. I almost had to put the book down because what was right at the time was very far from good.
I've been trying to find Wolfe's other books for a while. There's Books of the New Sun, at least, and probably more.

[Meglobob]

A name I have not seen mentioned here, David Gemmell, his books are very good and a very easy read. Legend is one of my favourite books. I like how he completes the entire story in one book, rare nowadays with trilogys, ten book + series that never reach a conclusion.

His Jon Shannow, Druss the Legend and Waylander books are all very good. He has a huge number of books now and if you have never read any and like them, well they will keep you occupied for a long time.

Love Terry Pratchett, enjoy his books well you can, there may not be many more.

Sci-Fi, Peter F. Hamilton is really good.

[ghoul31]

The Elric series, by Michael Moorcock is my favorite series of all time.
The guy has a sword that eats peoples souls. It doesn't get any better than that.


The Book of Swords series by Fred Saberhagen is also good. The gods creates 12 swords with different magical powers, and then place them in the world to see what kind of chaos it creates.

[Mojo the Avenger]

The Lies of Locke Lamora is pretty good and it has the benefit of being a single book.

[ghoul31]

If you like magic, a good series is Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy. It goes very in depth into all the different schools of magic.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

Gene Wolfe: The Knight-Wizard duology. Might be available as a compilation, or as separate books The Knight and The Wizard. I also mentioned this in the previous thread, but it's so great that it's scary. For one thing, it has monsters that are really scary, while still being almost familiar. Giants that are much worse than just big humans, but that still need to eat. The one thing you have to understand about it is that it's not written as a horror book, but as a more realistic take on what it would feel to be the hero, the guy who never lies and always does what is right. I almost had to put the book down because what was right at the time was very far from good.
I've been trying to find Wolfe's other books for a while. There's Books of the New Sun, at least, and probably more.

Yeah I mentioned the Knight - I really really loved it
Tried to get into the 2nd/ third book - stylistically too difficult.

Really made me notice Wolfe - but I think its up to three books now.

[vfb]

I thought Clive Barker's Weaveworld was great.

Absolutely hated Imajica though. Well, the first half (or third maybe) of it anyway, since it's one of the few books I've read that I didn't bother to finish.