got into fantasy backwards because i thought the hobbit was corny and therefore never read LOTR until after i'd read several things that shamelessly ripped it off
utterly shameless LOTR ripoffs: shanarra (brooks), the iron tower (mckiernan)
let's get celtic: deryni (kurtz), prydain* (alexander), the dark is rising *(cooper), merlin* (stewart)
oh no: i thought the first three apprentice adept (anthony) books were fine
technically science fiction: pern (mccaffrey), pliocene exile* (may), new sun/long sun* (wolfe)
madeleine l'engle: meant a lot to me but never went past 'a ring of endless light'
fritz leiber: literally only ever heard of this because fafhrd and grey mouser were in a D&D book. also leiber is for some reason pronounced 'lie-ber'
moorcock: don't understand why people stan him, what a letdown
leguin (earthsea): obvs
mckillip (riddlemaster*): rules; haven't read much of her others tho
donaldson (thomas covenant): i will ride for the first two series*; the third is garbage
eddings: belgariad (good), mallorean (awful), cannot speak to the rest
king (the dark tower): v. enjoyable if you can get past the racism
foster (spellsinger): music nerds need fantasy too
pratchett (discworld): fine, whatever
cook (the black company): military porn
kay (fionavar*): great; other standalones probably are as well
card (alvin maker): only read the first two; recall liking them
wells (raksura*): good stuff from the 2010s; see also murderbot, etc.
dunno: kirstein (the steerswoman), park (stonebridge), crowley (aegypt), kerr (devery)
(* means recommended)
― mookieproof, Saturday, 31 August 2024 06:30 (three months ago) link
started malazon once but it seemed like military porn? not interested in having to know the numbers assigned to army units
― mookieproof, Saturday, 31 August 2024 06:54 (three months ago) link
it is, and worse besides, you realise about eight books in its just a long form narrative about a card game they made up in college
― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Saturday, 31 August 2024 07:23 (three months ago) link
we have segued into more current stuff this is not a complaint
ive not stuck with them but joe abercrombie is a better writer than most in the genre and the angle is a good one
― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Saturday, 31 August 2024 07:24 (three months ago) link
duncton moles books absolute magic, and heavier than anything mentioned
― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Saturday, 31 August 2024 07:25 (three months ago) link
r scott bakker stuff is truly original, utterly depraved, guy has significant talent but id imagine is quite insane.
― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Saturday, 31 August 2024 07:28 (three months ago) link
in lighter vein rothfuss builds a great world and characters but quite clearly has no idea how to finish the books so i cant recommend
Yeah, enjoyed the Rothfuss and Lynch series but have zero expectations of ever getting the final book from either of them. Where would you start with Tad Williams? As it was implied in the other thread he was a precursor to GRRM rather than just another Tolkien clone
― groovypanda, Saturday, 31 August 2024 14:36 (three months ago) link
I tried reading Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower recently, but unfortunately found it completely undreadable
If Duncton Wood counts, I'd probably add REDWALL and THE DARK PORTAL to the list
Also curious about Tad Williams
― Chuck_Tatum, Saturday, 31 August 2024 16:43 (three months ago) link
ive only read Memory, Sorrow & Thorn and not sure I'd recommend that ahead of starting robin hobb's farseer trilogy for a series of that type tbph
― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Saturday, 31 August 2024 17:35 (three months ago) link
melenkurion abatha lads
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 3 September 2024 05:48 (three months ago) link
A decent standalone Tad Williams is The War of the Flowers if you just want to get a sense of the writing style. It's not high fantasy, more of a portal. It's not as good as Memory, Sorrow and Thorn but also it's nowhere as near slow to get going
― treefell, Tuesday, 3 September 2024 09:17 (three months ago) link
More good standalones: Patricia A. McKillip's Winter Rose, Naomi Novik's Uprooted, both have teen heroines, managing in deep woods-farm-village-outpost-ov-empire, then disturbing male traveler appears. There must be journeys, changes, challenges, rich imagery and energy.
― dow, Tuesday, 3 September 2024 22:38 (three months ago) link
Yeah The Dragonbone Chair (first Tad Williams MST book) really does take forever to get going, with an absolutely astonishing amount of mopey internal monologues - though then it becomes quite zippy and action-packed. It’s like Robert Jordan in reverse order.
― Tim F, Tuesday, 3 September 2024 22:55 (three months ago) link
i thought there was a Broken Earth Series thread. there should be. i loved those books. some day i'm gonna read them again. i feel like everything else she does is going to suffer by comparison. i tried to read the Inheritance Trilogy and only got through one book. it was okay but i missed the Broken Earth. i could have lived in that world for ten books.
every time you guys mention Robert Jordan i think back to when i used to read that thread for fun knowing i would never read the books. it was very entertaining. this feeling that people liked something so much that also kinda drove them crazy.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 4 September 2024 01:20 (three months ago) link
wait, did people here read the Jemisin books? i would start a thread but its been so long since i read them.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 4 September 2024 17:51 (three months ago) link
started the war of the flowers last night. it's fine but a) not sure i need sad-sack post-breakup unemployed vaguely alcoholic dudes with dead parents in my fantasy right now, and b) not sure i can take 700 pages of tinkerbell's brogue
yeah the broken earth series was great. didn't like jemisin's new york city one that much but damn she really hates staten island
― mookieproof, Wednesday, 4 September 2024 21:04 (three months ago) link
yeah i didn't want to read the city one. that seemed like a mieville kinda thing.
― scott seward, Wednesday, 4 September 2024 22:05 (three months ago) link
this guy says brandon sanderson is the top of the gloomy mountain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z95GJbromsI
― scott seward, Wednesday, 18 September 2024 14:31 (two months ago) link
oohhhh mookieproof you are reading the absolute best of the genre imo, what an utterly amazing list. If you run out of things to do, I recommend going with the GGKay "Tigana" next, that one will never leave me.
Second all the Naomi Novik recs but espesh Uprooted and Spinning Silver.
McKillip: The next move here is The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. All the other fairy tale one-offs are varying degrees of fine to good but they are not TFBoE.
oh no: i thought the first three apprentice adept (anthony) books were finelooooooool
L'Engle: Do the traditional A Wrinkle in Time / A Wind in the Door / A Swiftly Tilting Planet. They won't take long and they'll reward you with truths that will form kernels inside you and stay there forever. I know it sounds painful and it's not entirely comfortable tbh but MLE gave me the cosmos.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Wednesday, 18 September 2024 14:40 (two months ago) link
Broken Earth really left me confused and cold, Idk. I loved everything Jemisin up until then. Maybe I've gotten too unfamiliar with weirdness. I should spend this winter getting much, much weirder.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Wednesday, 18 September 2024 14:44 (two months ago) link
I'll second Tigana. It's one of my all-time favourite fantasy novels
― treefell, Wednesday, 18 September 2024 15:05 (two months ago) link
Patricia McKillip is a pretty astounding writer, she just has this effortless, poetic style, and Winter Rose is a great one for sure. I just bought a book which compiled her Riddle Master trilogy too.
https://icollectible.thriftbooks.com/cimage/1235929318/1.jpg
― omar little, Wednesday, 18 September 2024 16:47 (two months ago) link
kirstein (the steerswoman) (trilogy, I think?)
I read these. They're good. Really great in parts about their analysis of the world and of people, and having a certain kind of perspective on both. I don't want to give things away but there's a particular plot arc that these kind of take which isn't my favorite but it's common in works of a certain era. I was actually in the middle of re-reading the whole trilogy(?) but they had just gotten mentioned somewhere and the hold wait time was insane.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Wednesday, 18 September 2024 16:57 (two months ago) link
i read tigana last year! and yes it was great -- the curse was a simple but exquisite touch
oh i've read all the early l'engles -- first three time ('trilogy') books, the austins, the ones that are kind of in-between like 'the young unicorns' and 'arm of the starfish'. also saw her speak when i was in college and it was very moving even though i am not religious
― mookieproof, Thursday, 19 September 2024 22:06 (two months ago) link
the local auction house here sold l'engle's library at auction a while back and you could buy a shelf full of her book collection for peanuts. they sold everything in lots. also tons of different editions of her own books obviously.
― scott seward, Thursday, 19 September 2024 23:10 (two months ago) link
so wait i meant to ask on here on that video i posted the number one series was by brandon sanderson and he is not mentioned on this thread at all. is that series all that or what?
― scott seward, Saturday, 21 September 2024 13:04 (two months ago) link
I watched that video, Scott, and I hadn't heard of half of those books? I took a recommendation from the list and am reading a certain trilogy and it's just another A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES analog where people have sex with non-human beings and save the world with/from magic.
Sanderson is fine, I think? I've read a bunch but I honestly forget what a lot of it was about. My bigger problem with him is that he's a Mormon tbh.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Saturday, 21 September 2024 14:17 (two months ago) link
MORMON FANTASY. hmmmmm...okay.
― scott seward, Saturday, 21 September 2024 14:21 (two months ago) link
i'm still gonna seek out those mole books.
― scott seward, Saturday, 21 September 2024 14:22 (two months ago) link
Sean Russell swans’ war series is excellent. River-centric high fantasy. I think he may have stopped writing but these deserved to be a big hit.
― realistic pillow (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 21 September 2024 15:17 (two months ago) link
If you want an early 80s gem with the usual trappings elves wizards etc, but taking inspiration from wind and the willows and dickens rather than Tolkien, The Elfin Ship by James P Blaylock. There’s two sequels that aren’t quite as good (he quickly moved on to writing several masterpieces of Southern California magic realism through the 80s and early 90s but is today pigeonholed as the “godfather of steampunk” based on the admittedly wonderful Homunculus and its sequels)
― realistic pillow (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 21 September 2024 15:22 (two months ago) link
I’ve been too depressed to list for several months now but somehow this thread has coaxed words out of me
― realistic pillow (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 21 September 2024 15:23 (two months ago) link
*post, not list
nice to see you here!
― scott seward, Saturday, 21 September 2024 15:25 (two months ago) link
like the olden tymes of yore.
Hi Scott <3
― realistic pillow (Jon not Jon), Saturday, 21 September 2024 15:27 (two months ago) link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncton_Wood
imagine tryin to convince someone how much these books will wreck you
― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Saturday, 21 September 2024 21:56 (two months ago) link
they out of print? trying to find new copies don't see any...
― scott seward, Saturday, 21 September 2024 22:34 (two months ago) link
Following ilx discussion of Alan Garner a while back, I just now finished reading The Owl Service for the second time in the past week, which never happens---second time was much quicker, though mainly because the whole thing was still lodged, incl. what I couldn't quite remember or forget, to near-quote one character on another, sympathetically and not: that's just how it is these days, in the book and out, to some extent---but mainly, I knew and kinda knew, with a squint sometimes, what had happened, was happening still, is happening still, anywhere and anytime I open the book, the real and modern and fantasy and ancient, recurring and mixing---I found that I did understand it/take it in (incl. class and English and Welsh and gender and generational and generative and other identity markers, clashes, proximities) a bit better for having read it the first time, also recognizing again and moreso the questions that will never be answered: my struggles somewhat mirroring/aping those of the characters, although they have it worse, or most of them do. Enjoyed the author's afterword as well (btw, he mentions the TV adaptation, filmed in the valley of his inspiration---any of you watched it?), reminding me of enjoying Lethem's afterword to We Have Always Lived In The Castle, another rec if you want to take it as fantasy, personal mythology.
― dow, Friday, 4 October 2024 01:52 (two months ago) link
TV version seemed underwhelming to me, they didn't capture the atmosphere of the book very well and the casting was odd.
There's also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elidor#Television_adaptationAnd this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Shift_(novel)#Television_adaptation_and_popular_culture
neither of which I've seen. Elidor quite infamous in the UK for scaring the shit out of any kids that did see it though, in true British style.
Plus these, although The Moon of Gomrath doesn't seem to have been adapted at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weirdstone_of_Brisingamen#Adaptations
― RIO Speedwagon (Matt #2), Friday, 4 October 2024 12:12 (two months ago) link
is the owl service the one that takes a lot from the Mabinogion? that keeps cropping up here and there to the point where i feel i should read it.
― koogs, Friday, 4 October 2024 12:19 (two months ago) link
(yes - The Owl Service interprets a story from the Welsh Mabinogion, namely, portions of the story of "Math Son of Mathonwy.")
― koogs, Friday, 4 October 2024 12:20 (two months ago) link
strangely, published in the US as "Maths son of Mathsonwy"
― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Friday, 4 October 2024 14:29 (two months ago) link
Blurb for this edition:
In his earlier novels, The Weirdstone of Brisingstone, The Moon of Gomroth and Elidor, Garner used the sucesssful formula of the spilling of the twilight world of ancient legend into the present day. Here he uses the formula again, with an added depth, and even more compulsive terror-haunted beauty.
― dow, Saturday, 5 October 2024 20:46 (two months ago) link
i pulled the trigger on the first three mole books. etsy was the only place i could find a good deal for the first three books! someone should really reissue them.
― scott seward, Saturday, 5 October 2024 23:03 (two months ago) link
enjoy
they are pretty dense, iirc, you wont blitz through them too quickly
― tuah dé danann (darraghmac), Saturday, 5 October 2024 23:12 (two months ago) link
What other Garner should I read? All of it?
Yes, there's only nine novels (ten if you include The Stone Book Quartet which is four interlinked stories) and none of them are long. Plus what I've read of the short fiction is equally good. Haven't read anything from the 'Other Books' section from the link below, I'm guessing they're mostly for younger readers? Plus Where Shall We Run To? is a memoir.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner#Works
― RIO Speedwagon (Matt #2), Sunday, 6 October 2024 02:13 (two months ago) link
Thanks! Am I ready for Red Shift---?
Emma Donoghue recalls reading Red Shift as a teenager: "It looked like other Garners I had read: a children's fantasy. But Red Shift, with its passionately bickering adolescent lovers and vertiginous plunges through the wormhole of time, shook me to my core every time I read it, and still does... Garner makes the past numinous, terrifyingly real: anything but passed."[42]
― dow, Sunday, 6 October 2024 04:20 (two months ago) link
Finished Red Shift six months ago and still have it on my desk because I'm convinced I'm going to solve the cipher.
― default damager (lukas), Sunday, 6 October 2024 04:57 (two months ago) link