OT: good fantasy books

[Edi]

Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series was tolerable for the first two books. Three and four were just tedious and everything after that is just thinly veiled preaching of his (neoconservative libertarian) political views interspersed with liberal sprinklings of masturbatory rape fantasies that should turn the stomach of most decent people.

It had good ideas to begin with and up to and including the end of the fourth book and even the Chimes in the fifth, but those good ideas are not nearly enough to counter all the screwed up ****e in his works.

[Endoperez]

Naomi Novik has written a very interesting series about alternative history. Starting from His Majesty's Dragon, or Temeraire on the other side of the Atlantean empire. Napoleonic wars, with infantry, navy and dragons acting as huge air-ships. Dragons wearing harnesses from which the gunmen and the bellmen and the bombers and the cargo hang, dragon-to-dragon boardings, etc.

Here's an excerpt.

Johanna Sinisalo has written some unbelievably good books. Her novel 'Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi' (translated as 'Not Before Sundown', or 'Troll - a love story' in US) won several Finnish and international prizes.

W. Somerset Haugham's book "The Magician" isn't strictly fantasy, but in parts it's very close. I read it from Project Gutenberg website expecting something very different, but found myself enjoying it immensely. The book has a christian theme, but at least for me it was more about one man's faith than the God he believed in.