Now Reading...

[Akumu]

Piers Anthony?

Currently halfway through Naamah's Blessing by Jacqueline Carey, then hopping onto re-reading A Clash of Kings.

 

[OrbWeaver]

Yes, that's the one. Thanks Val!

 

[Justin G]

Hey now, I like Eddings!

Though I haven't read anything beyond the Belgariad and the Mallorean. Which are essentially the same series of novels. XD


As far as fantasy goes, I REALLY enjoy Sanderson, Butcher (seriously, if you've never red the Codex Alera series, you're missing out), GRRM (when he's actually writing his Song of Ice and Fire novels) etc... But sometimes it's nice to have brain popcorn, like Eddings, or the author who writes the Xanth novels. His name escapes me at the moment.

Eddings made a career of writing the same story over and over. As soon as I read Game of Thrones I knew I was done with him, Terry Goodkind and their ilk. If you want popcorn fantasy that's actually good, try David Gemmell.

 

[OrbWeaver]

If you want popcorn fantasy that's actually good

"good" is a subjective adjective. I enjoyed the Eddings I read, and I thought it was good. I even read The Belgariad twice. Do I plan on reading anything beyond the Belgariad and the Mallorean series? Nope. But I still enjoy those two series, and will probably read them again some time down the road.

 

[Pellaz]

Cussler is the David Eddings of Adventure.

Now, now, Eddings isn't THAT bad......

Hey now, I like Eddings!
Though I haven't read anything beyond the Belgariad and the Mallorean. Which are essentially the same series of novels.

Errrm, okay. He IS that bad.

Currently halfway through Naamah's Blessing by Jacqueline Carey,

Oh, awesome. I really need to get that.
Good books and she's really nice, too.

Eddings made a career of writing the same story over and over. As soon as I read Game of Thrones I knew I was done with him, Terry Goodkind and their ilk. If you want popcorn fantasy that's actually good, try David Gemmell.

+1

 

[Pellaz]

Having jumped on my high-fantasy horse, my currently-reading might be a bit ironic:

I liked it so I continued with

...which I'm about halfway through.

A friends' kid recently finished reading the series and they gave me the set to read. I'm enjoying them, and of course they're fast reads.
Next in the queue afterwards will be Weber's By Heresies Distressed.

 

[booB]

Eddings made a career of writing the same story over and over. As soon as I read Game of Thrones I knew I was done with him, Terry Goodkind and their ilk.

This is true for me as well. Run-of-the-mill fantasy doesn't cut it for me anymore. Only five days until Dance!!!!!!

I'm currently reading The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong with America, by Matt Welch (mostly) and Nick Gillespie of Reason.com. They're my favorite libertarian writers, and pretty much everything I've read from this book so far, minus the occasional awkward metaphor, mirrors my own views of politics (or, more appropriately, anti-politics). Even if I don't necessarily gain a whole lot of new perspective from this book, at least I know I have something to recommend to my friends when they ask me about my political beliefs. If I can get them to read A Song of Ice and Fire, maybe I can get them to read this, too.

 

[Akumu]

Having jumped on my high-fantasy horse, my currently-reading might be a bit ironic:

I liked it so I continued with

...which I'm about halfway through.

This is such a fun series. I bought a boxed set of the first three a few years ago and loved how witty they were, and totally wished they had been around when I was younger.

 

[TheLongshot]

Eddings made a career of writing the same story over and over. As soon as I read Game of Thrones I knew I was done with him, Terry Goodkind and their ilk. If you want popcorn fantasy that's actually good, try David Gemmell.

I remember losing my place when trying to read the Mallorean and not being able to figure out which books I had read and giving up.

Speaking of Eddings, I actually had a conversation before with a friend of mine talking about the death of high fantasy. With authors starting to die off, there really isn't too much up-and-coming as far as the genre goes. It seems like everything nowadays is urban fantasy, which only has a limited appeal to me.

Course, I'm currently reading an urban fantasy (Ellen Guon's "Bedlam Boyz").

 

[Justin G]

I remember losing my place when trying to read the Mallorean and not being able to figure out which books I had read and giving up.

Speaking of Eddings, I actually had a conversation before with a friend of mine talking about the death of high fantasy. With authors starting to die off, there really isn't too much up-and-coming as far as the genre goes. It seems like everything nowadays is urban fantasy, which only has a limited appeal to me.

Course, I'm currently reading an urban fantasy (Ellen Guon's "Bedlam Boyz").

That's true. I can't think of any newer voices in fantasy fiction that I follow. I'm pretty much down to George R.R. Martin and Guy Gavriel Kay.

No wait, Kenneth Scholes has a very good fantasy series called the Psalms of Isaak that was very impressive. The rest I can take or leave. I tried Brent Weeks and Brandon Sanderson, but neither really impressed me.

I really dig the urban fantasy stuff that Jim Butcher, Mike Kadrey and Harry Connely serve up, but it's not the same as getting into a well put-together epic fantasy tale.

 

[Entrerie]

Finished the Farseer Trilogy recently. The writing is very well done and will suck you into the world, the first book felt very much like reading Harry Potter as it was a coming of age of sorts of the royal bastard Fitz-Chivalry. I've heard it mentioned that this was somewhat of a basis for Song of Ice & Fire and I can definately see obvious similarties but other than that SOIAF is in a different galaxy from this. There is a caveat to reading this though, the journey is wonderful, but the ending is somewhat of a letdown. While I don't regret reading it, if I had known beforehand what awaits after 3 long books, and these books are long..3rd book was over 1300-1400 pages or so; I would probably skip it. This was in the Good Reads website's top 5 for SF/Assasin books and thats why I chose it in the first place.

The Way of Shadows, I stoped at around 5-6 chapters in. This was a top 5 recommende SF/Assasin book and I don't know how that could be. The writing was horrible. The story jumped around like crazy between paragraphs, after reading The Farseer Trilogy, this is like ugh. The story itself is pretty generic and the whole mish mash fusion of cultures to create this fantasy world just felt silly, characters named "Tofusin" don't really help much either.

This book series was kind of like reading an summer action film, it was never boring. The book somewhat rips off SOIAF, you've got towns named "Riverrun" and the so called faceless assasins. I laughed a bit at that only for it to be confirmed in the arthur's comments at the end of the book. This book isn't about the girl on the cover btw, she is one of the faceless assasins, it's more or less about the son of the leader of thief guild that is legendary among thieves. It's a bit like an R.A. Salvatore novel, a decent read.

Gauntlgrymm, The first book in the Neverwinter trilogy and also a sort of end and a begining. This is a book in a long line of books before it so I wouldn't start with it but definately a must read if you are a fan and already reading Drizzt books.

Currently reading book 1 of the Erevis Cale Trilogy.

 

[booB]

Speaking of Eddings, I actually had a conversation before with a friend of mine talking about the death of high fantasy. With authors starting to die off, there really isn't too much up-and-coming as far as the genre goes. It seems like everything nowadays is urban fantasy, which only has a limited appeal to me.

Not a fan of Erikson? Lynch? Abecrombie? Rothfuss? Even Jacqueline Carey, to me, should be considered part of the newer crowd; she has a lot of books out, but she hasn't been writing fantasy that long. I do think it's true that most of the Tolkien plagiarists are from the old-school crowd, and we'll be seeing a shortage of them soon enough. In terms of the state of the genre, that's a good thing, IMO.

 

[booB]

I really dig the urban fantasy stuff that Jim Butcher, Mike Kadrey and Harry Connely serve up, but it's not the same as getting into a well put-together epic fantasy tale.

Tried Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series? Epic urban fantasy. Excellent.

 

[TheLongshot]

That's true. I can't think of any newer voices in fantasy fiction that I follow. I'm pretty much down to George R.R. Martin and Guy Gavriel Kay.

I need to read Kay at some point. I know my wife has some of his books lying around...

No wait, Kenneth Scholes has a very good fantasy series called the Psalms of Isaak that was very impressive. The rest I can take or leave. I tried Brent Weeks and Brandon Sanderson, but neither really impressed me.

Mentioning "post-apocalyptic" is also not very attractive to me, tho I don't know if it will affect me in a conventional way.

I've read Mistborn from Sanderson and liked it well enough. Haven't tried Weeks yet.

Finished the Farseer Trilogy recently. The writing is very well done and will suck you into the world, the first book felt very much like reading Harry Potter as it was a coming of age of sorts of the royal bastard Fitz-Chivalry. I've heard it mentioned that this was somewhat of a basis for Song of Ice & Fire and I can definately see obvious similarties but other than that SOIAF is in a different galaxy from this. There is a caveat to reading this though, the journey is wonderful, but the ending is somewhat of a letdown. While I don't regret reading it, if I had known beforehand what awaits after 3 long books, and these books are long..3rd book was over 1300-1400 pages or so; I would probably skip it. This was in the Good Reads website's top 5 for SF/Assasin books and thats why I chose it in the first place.

Yeah, the last book just seemed to drag on forever. I got some serious fatigue trying to get through that one. But, considering everything that happened before, you want to get through it to find out what happens.

 

[TheLongshot]

Not a fan of Erikson? Lynch? Abecrombie? Rothfuss? Even Jacqueline Carey, to me, should be considered part of the newer crowd; she has a lot of books out, but she hasn't been writing fantasy that long. I do think it's true that most of the Tolkien plagiarists are from the old-school crowd, and we'll be seeing a shortage of them soon enough. In terms of the state of the genre, that's a good thing, IMO.

My wife's been reading Carey, probably one of the few fiction authors she's read in recent years, but it doesn't really sound like my sort of thing.

The rest I haven't checked out yet, with Erikson and Rothfuss mentioned in this thread being on my radar. Mostly, tho, it has been because I just have too many books in my collection I haven't read. There hasn't been a big push to try to explore any of these guys.

While I agree with you about Tolkien retreds, the problem is that it has been replaced by vampires and werewolves, which isn't my thing.

 

[Justin G]

Tried Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series? Epic urban fantasy. Excellent.

I haven't, but I'll look into it. I like my urban fantasy as dark and free of romantic subtext as possible, which means I have to ignore a huge chunk of the genre.

 

[Justin G]

I need to read Kay at some point. I know my wife has some of his books lying around...



Mentioning "post-apocalyptic" is also not very attractive to me, tho I don't know if it will affect me in a conventional way.

I've read Mistborn from Sanderson and liked it well enough. Haven't tried Weeks yet.



Yeah, the last book just seemed to drag on forever. I got some serious fatigue trying to get through that one. But, considering everything that happened before, you want to get through it to find out what happens.

Kay is brilliant. Every bit as intelligent and thought-provoking as Martin, but with an almost poetic style. The Lions of Al-Rassan is one of my all-time favorite books, and is a great single-volume introduction to Kay.

 

[Corsair]

I haven't, but I'll look into it. I like my urban fantasy as dark and free of romantic subtext as possible, which means I have to ignore a huge chunk of the genre.

You won't be disappointed,then. The way such things are handled in the series is generally very...realistic? A person seeking fulfillment of romantic fantasies would be very hard pressed to get enjoyment out of what is there, since it never becomes the central focus, and plays more with duty and frustration than anything.

 

[Harvester]

I refuse to allow this thread to turn into a fantasy discussion!


Allow me to recommend on of my favorite adventure/thriller books:

 

[jaimek]

Hobb - yes, the end of the Assassins books is pretty tough. I hated it the first time through and still wasn't too thrilled on the reread. But the thing about Hobb is that she writes nothing that is easy or comfortable; people face consequences for their choices and actions, and there aren't always the happy endings people expect.

GG Kay is hit or miss with me. I love Lions of al-Rassan, A Song For Arbonne, Tiganna, and Sailing to Sarantium, but the rest are just meh. I couldn't even finish Last Light of the Sun, it was so boring.

Hated Weeks. The first half of Way of Shadows wasn't bad, but then turned into a great big WTF in a bad way.

I read Eddings in high school and had no desire to ever revisit the Malloreon.

Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy was good. Haven't gotten to the new one yet, as I'm still rereading GRRM, and I don't imagine I'll be on anything else til I'm done with DWD.