Fantasy book recommendations?

I've never made it through the first Amber book. I've even tried twice. Does it get better as I find the first very predictable and just boring.
 
Dragonlance Chronicles and Dragonlance Legends. I'd avoid any of the other books in the series as the quality goes way down quickly and they go way off canon as well, but Chronicles is my favorite series of all time by far. (Some of the Heroes series are ok too, I always loved The Legend of Huma)
 
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"The Druid Of Shannarah" by Terry Brooks is the only book of which I can really say that it heavily influenced me in my own development of my own fantasy world/setting : Terry Brooks heavily influenced my look on Elementals. From him I have the idea of an Elemental Of Life.

The story, however, isn't something that interested me much, mainly because I read only this book - and it is isolated from the rest of this series. From nowadays I'd see it as if I had just taken a book from the "middle" of the Discworld books, or the middle book from LOTR, and that alone.

Which means that I can't say if i can recommnd it or not.


Right now I'm reading the (A)D&D novel "Wrath of the Blue Lady,", which entertains me quite a bit. I think I can recommend it, but please don't expect anything extraordinary : This is a good book. but not something special. I think it is worth its money nevertheless.

It is kind of isolated in my bookshelf as well since the only other (A)D&D-based book I currently own is the official "Pools Of Radiance 2 : Ruins Of Myth Drannor" novel.
 
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Eddings, Glen Cook, and Modesitt have already been mentioned.

David Gemmell - Drenai tales (many books, but all of them can be read stand-alone)
Simon Green - Nightside series (many books, but they're short)

The best book I've read in the past couple years (by a large margin) is "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss. I haven't ready book 2 in the series yet (stubbornly waiting for paperback), so I don't know if the quality is maintained, but book 1 was just wonderful. Probably not going to get much love from English Literature majors looking for books that can be read on 7 levels of symbolism, but a completely enjoyable read from start to finish.
 
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There seem to be some publisher-agent problems with the most recent books in the series, but the Thraxas books are pretty good. They're about a failed wizard turned swordsman detective in a fairly stereotypical fantasy city, his half-orc barmaid friend who wears a chainmail bikini only to get extra tips, and the strange fantasy-noir adventures they have.

It's not high literature, but it's fun and written by someone who clearly enjoyed it.
 
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I think an important thing when recommending books (and movies, and games) is to state WHEN you read/watched/played it. As an example I loved Eddings in my early 20's, now 20 years later, well, let's just say my taste has changed a bit. Books usually holds up pretty well compared to movies and games though, but there are exceptions..

Started reading Amber series.. My first impression is typical pulp fiction, just like Eddings when i read it again a year ago. So instead i started reading Complete Tales of Conan, and there's a completely different quality to it. It might not be up there with Tolkien, but it doesnt feel like cheap pulp fiction and it feels like something i might actually finish.
 
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Right. My taste has changed over the years as well.

But Thera Awakening and Momo like The Hobbit and LOTR are books I'll read at any age.

Imho - because they are timeless. And that's imho as well a sign of good survivability among genres.

They don't follow any trend or fashion. Not like games do.

Other books ... well, I've recently read a TDE novel which can easily be summarized as a mixture between "Sex & Crime" + "The Good, The Bad, And the Ugly". I won't read it again. I prefer timeless tales.

Over the last few years my wish to read simple Reiseroman (difficult to translate it, because there doesn't seem to be a special English-language term expressing the same; it's a novel, but its contents solely consists of a person's experiences and discoveries during a Journey. English- language Wikipedia doesn't even have an own section for this specific genre after all; instead, they place it under the umbrella term of "travel literature" : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travel_literature#Fiction ).
Because in my opinion, such a novel would be timeless as well, of carried out well. Perhps I'll write such a thing one day (when I've found out how to enure writing longer pieces, longer than Short stories).
 
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My big favorites (read: fondest memories) are still:

- The Riftwar Cycle, particularly the Riftwar Saga and the Empire Trilogy, and also the Serpentwar Saga. The first book, Magician, I loved so much I read it twice — and I never read books twice.
- The Wheel of Time. Here, I didn't like the first book too much, but most of the others.

Reading through this thread I realize that I'm going to have to check out the Earthsea novels and The Name of the Wind. Thanks for making my list ever larger. ;)
 
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The Earthsea Trilogy is wonderful! I'm not a big fan of Robin Cook, but the books are okay. I can't remember is Guy Gavrial Kay was mentioned, but the Summer Tree series is a good read. Going older, The Book of Swords series by Fred Saberhagen is a very nice read with interesting mythology. There is a prequel of sorts, if you can find it called, Empire of the East iirc. Gary Gygax wrote a series of books following Gord the Rogue, which is cool for D&D enthusiasts. Terry Brooks has a series called Shanara, that is a direct rip off of Tolkien, but has a nice mythos of its own. Saberhagen wrote a wonderful series about a guy from high tech who lands on a world of magic. The books are all titled The Warlock...., I think the first is called The Warlock in Spite of himself, but you will want to read Escape Velocity first, as it sets the tone for the series.

For romance/fantasy I'll suggest The Blendings by Sharon Stone and The novels of the 12th House by Sharon Shinn.

Adventurous folks can find my thread about ebooks if you want a bunch of free e-novels to try. Smashwords is a great resource for free reading.
 
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The Warlock series is by Christopher Stasheff, not Saberhagen. I read most of them years ago, but at that time they were hard to locate. Don't know if I ever finished the series or not. Towards the end, he stopped using the "The Warlock ... " title structure, too. Pleasant reads, as I remember.
 
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He follows eldest son, Magnus later and goes to The Wizard….He also had a one off with Cordelia and Geoffrey. Stasheff, thanks for the correction, DTE.
 
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I think an important thing when recommending books (and movies, and games) is to state WHEN you read/watched/played it. As an example I loved Eddings in my early 20's, now 20 years later, well, let's just say my taste has changed a bit. Books usually holds up pretty well compared to movies and games though, but there are exceptions..

Agree, time does temper our memories. I reread Drangonlance Chronicles and Legends a few years back (I'm late 30's now), and loved it as much as I did back in the mid 80's as a kid. But I read the Legend of Huma and didn't enjoy it near as much. In games, I've noticed the same thing. Just replayed Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire. I loved that as a kid, but while I enjoyed it for a bit, I realize now how shallow and hollow it was compared to the actual Ultimas.
 
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He follows eldest son, Magnus later and goes to The Wizard….He also had a one off with Cordelia and Geoffrey. Stasheff, thanks for the correction, DTE.
Ain't no thang. ;) I think it's been nearly 20 years since I read that series and probably about the same for you, so a little bit of memory fuzz is understandable. You're right about the "The Wizard ... " thing, now that I think about it. I think the first or second Wizard book is where I started having real trouble finding the books and just kinda bailed on the series. Still a solid recommendation, though.
 
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I probably have nearly every book and you're close enough that we could just ship them back and forth if you want a re-read. Of course, I'd have to find all of them....I have a hard time keeping 1200 books organized!
 
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If you're German, I can recommend "Die Reise nach Yndalamor" by Nina Blazon - this book is a relatively short, but very well entertaining fast rollercoaster ride which you'll especially enjoy if you are a fan of fantasy settings and know a thing or two about real world Mythologies … ;) - The author has won several smaller fantasy literature prizes.
The book is so small, however, that I don't believe that it will ever get translated.
 
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I always like to recommend Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart.

"Bridge of Birds is a lyrical fantasy novel. Set in 'an Ancient China that never was', it stands with The Princess Bride and The Last Unicorn as a fairy tale for all ages, by turns incredibly funny and deeply touching." — Nona Vero on Amazon.com
 
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Started reading Amber series.. My first impression is typical pulp fiction, just like Eddings when i read it again a year ago. So instead i started reading Complete Tales of Conan, and there's a completely different quality to it. It might not be up there with Tolkien, but it doesnt feel like cheap pulp fiction and it feels like something i might actually finish.

If you are dropping Amber because it feels like pulp fiction, I'm thinking you might not have got past around 30 pages in. One of the series' features is how it flips about from one genre to the next while maintaining a cohesive and interesting narrative.
 
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I'd also recommend Bridge of Birds, very memorable characters.

Another series work reading is Simon Green's - Hawk and Fisher which later ties into some of his other series. (Nightside, Blue Moon Rising & Shadows Fall)

Although I'm not a fan of Glen cook's Black Company series I do enjoy his other Fantasy/PI series tha always has metal in the title such as "Cold Copper Tears".
 
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