Sorting through the fantasy jungle

Remove all ads!

Great choice!
I'm reading the third book again now. Totaly awsome. Another thing i like about it is a very detailed world. I usually read books very fast(too fast) and some descriptions more like in a skipping way. As there are plenty of these in the book, i'm discovering lots of new stuff again

Other than that i found the Cormyr saga very good as well.
Dragonlance is another good read... as well as long.

 

Raymond E. Feist's earlier Riftwar books - Magician, Silverthorn and (particularly) A Darkness at Sethanon - are great examples of quality fantasy. His books have gotten progressively worse over the years but to begin with he was really something special.

Another writer I'd recommend - and one who's only written a few books so far so he's not turned into a Jordan/Goodkind clone - is China Melville. Both Perdido Street Station and The Scar are amazing fantasy books and have enough believability about them to set them apart from most of the run-of-the-mill fantasy fare of today.

 

the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is a must read series IMO,it's very funny, and a thouroughly entertaining series to read that doesnt drag on like a lot of other fantasy series. Another recommendation is Sara Douglass and her Battle Axe Trilogy, i just finished reading it and was definetly pleased of the quality of her writing.

 

Patricia McKillip's Riddlemaster trilogy is amazing, just like all her other work. Sort of Celti.Welsh as much as it's anything, and not quite like anything else out there.

 

George R.R. Martin is a must!

I also like to recommend the "Earthsea"-Cycle by Ursula K. LeGuin.

EDIT: Damn! Another resurrected thread.

 

Just to add Tad Williams' "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" and "Otherland". The first is straight fantasy but one that pays a great deal more attention to the psychology of the characters than is usual. The latter is more SF, but with a multitude of fantasy elements. And even though the scope of the books is huge it is obvious that unlike some other fantasy series (Wheel of time comes to mind) these were planned in detail well in advance. Offhand comments in the first pages of the first book might shed light on events that take place a good 4000 pages later and cryptic remarks from the first chapter are only explained at the very end of the last book in the series. Very good!

 

Otherland is worthwhile but I found it a bit too slow going. It could easily have been half as long and much better. It is really the only series I have finished but where I still skipped quite large stretches of text.

 

I too felt that Otherland could have done with some trimming. At least half of the 4000 odd pages is filler and the entire second book (all 800+ pages of it) could have condensed into a 100 pages for all the actual storyline there was in it.

I still like reading it though.

 

I recommend either the entire Drizzt series (13 or 14 odd books now), which IMHO is definitely a superb read...
But if it seems a little daunting to start with such a large chunk of Forgotten Realms, then I'd say either the Azure Bonds trilogy (which is the series that got me hooked on FR) or the excellent Sembia series.

If you're not up for FR, then might I suggest the Dragonlance series, the Companions Sextet? It's a good read (though I admittedly haven't read it in a long, long time) and could trigger your interest for more Dragonlance books.

 

another good series you could read is the Bitterbynde Trilogy by Cecilia-Dart-Thornton

 

I'd recommend the Riftwar trilogy by Raymond.E.Feist. They are engrossing and really well written. They are, in order: The Magician, Silverthorn, and A Darkness at Sethanon. Whatever you do though, stay away from his other works.