Looking for books with powerful mages

My recent fantasy selections have been less than satisfactory. I love books with powerful mages. If you have a high-powered mage series that you can suggest I'd love to read it. I'd prefer it if the whole series has been released. Mages like Belgarion, Pug, Janelle Angelline, Vin the Mistborn, etc. Books that just have tons of magic are pretty good too, even if the main character isn't a mage. Some of the Recluce novels fit in here. I've read thousands of fantasy novels but maybe somebody will mention one I've missed. I really don't like vampires or anti-heroes, but you could list them for others to read.

I want MAGIC

And here is the book for the rest of us.

The Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends trilogies have Raistlin, who is main character and a bad ass mage.

Here are two (ongoing) series featuring magic, though they vary from each other in flavor and frequency of magic use:

Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles Day 1) by Patrick Rothfuss
Furies of Calderon, Academ's Fury etc (Codex Alera) by Jim Butcher

The first has very alchemical/discipline-based magic and while there are suggestions that darker and more epic powers exist, they are mostly hinted at in this initial book. The main character is recounting the story of how he became… well, a story himself, a legend? So most of his magic use in this the first part of his history stays in precocious learner territory.

The second series involves a world where magic is inherent and elemental, but tiered by class. I think the author has written some books with vampires, but I promise that they don't make an appearance here (I can only vouch for the first three, though!).

It has been too long since I've read any of the Eddings books to compare (I should remedy that), but I'm roughly 150 pages into Mistborn and enjoying it greatly. With that as rough barometer, the Rothfuss book in particular seems like it might be up your alley. Plus, I never get tired of recommending it- best book (especially for a debut novel) that I've read in years.

A definitively weird boom is "Skullduggery Pleasant", the name of well, the second protagonist.

He's a mage, too, but that comes out only later in the book.

And he's an Undead one.

The whole scenery reminded me of Harry Potter, and the author definitively needs to "flesh out" the plot and the locations much more. He describes just too little.

But it is good in terms of dry humour.

@blatantninja- I read the first dragonlance series and enjoyed it. I really didn't like what they did after that though. It's a good one to mention though.
Thanks!

@warweasel1-thanks for the heads up on these. I think I might have been turned off of Butler earlier in his career because one of his main characters was gay. That's a no-no for me, so I took the books back and kinda tuned him out. I could be mistaken though. I'll give him another shot. The Rothfuss books sound very interesting. I'll jot the name down and wait until he finishes the series. I've been burned by too many authors who start a series and never finish it, so I rarely buy books until the whole chain is out.

@Alrik- I'm definitely not normally into undead characters, but maybe I'll read a few chapters at the store and then decide. If the story grabs me, I'll wait and see if it becomes a series. Thanks! The Black Jewels Trilogy had undead characters but they all acted completely human, so it didn't bother me.

Riftwar or Earthsea perhaps?

When I read "powerful mages" I immediately thought of Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master, but I see you already got that covered.

I loved magic in The Wheel of Time, it was really well-developed and.. tangible. Although, given that WoT is fairly popular, you probably know the series already, too…

Lots of magic..hmm then i must recommand Darksword series writen by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Those books were really magic heavy. Basicly its a story of a young man who was born without magic unlike everyone else, and yet he has been prophesied to destroy the world in which he lives etc. Its more or less lightweigh reading, but i enjoyed it when I read it many years ago.

Check out Mercedes Lackey and Janny Wurts as a start. JV Jones is ok as well.

@woges, those are both good series. I think Riftwar is the Feist books, right?

@Arhu, I liked the magic in WoT too. Unfortunately, I got disgusted with Jordan trying to milk a 5 book series into 12 books. He paid for his hubris.

@Dez, I haven't read Darksword. I really disliked Raistlin Majere and was afraid that the Darksword books would be more of the same. Anti-heroes bore me

@Corwin- I wouldn't know which series had powerful mages and no homosexuals in Lackey's stuff. I can't remember if I've read any Janny Wurts, I'll definitely look her up. I enjoyed JV Jones first series, the followup books not so much. Call me an old fogey but I really can't stand any type of gay males in my fantasy reading. I always demand my money back if I find such crap in a book I've bought.

I almost took back the Black Jewels trilogy because of one scene in those books. I'm not sure why female authors are so in love with gay male characters. Male authors don't seem to need to write about lesbians….

Originally Posted by crpgnut
@blatantninja- I read the first dragonlance series and enjoyed it. I really didn't like what they did after that though. It's a good one to mention though.
Thanks!

I enjoyed Legends, though not as much as Chronicles. The Legend of Huma is also one of my favorites, but yeah, the rest of the series is a downhill slide REAL quick!

Well, Leiber has lesbians in The Two Best Thieves In Lankhmar, so that's not totally true. I'd never put a book down because a character is gay though.

How about the Black Company series from Glen Cook? It's the bad guys that have the epic-level magic, but powerful nonetheless.

Barbara Hambly's early stuff(if you can find it) has a husband and wife team of mages, and some of her other series' have good witches and arch mages as well. Titles like Dragonshadow and Mother of Winter are still out there, but you may have to scour the used bookstores for the others. She alternates between having a great sense of humor and being really fatalistic, but she's an excellent writer.

More good suggestions keep rolling in, thanks everyone. I know I've read some Barbara Hambly in the past. I've not read the Black Company books, so I'll grab the first in the series and read a few chapters.

Magerette, you're gonna have me digging through my unorganized book collection trying to find out which Hambly's I have 1200 books that are "ordered" by the last time I picked them up….

Just started a series by David Coe mage heavy and no gays or lesbians. First book is Children of Amarid.

@crpgnut: I feel your pain. I've bought 3 new bookcases in the last year and still have books in boxes from when we moved two years ago. I like them divided by subject, alphabetized by author, but atm that's just a crazy dream…

Originally Posted by Dez
Lots of magic..hmm then i must recommand Darksword series writen by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Those books were really magic heavy. Basicly its a story of a young man who was born without magic unlike everyone else, and yet he has been prophesied to destroy the world in which he lives etc. Its more or less lightweigh reading, but i enjoyed it when I read it many years ago.

The Death Gate Cycle is another one of those 2. I'm reading the series now, but I still don't know if I like what I read. (I'm in the third book of seven)

Another kind of magic is the one of writer James Clemens : Godslayer. It's a view upon magic that I've never seen before.

I tried to read Death Gate too, Bartacus. It started out okay, but it was another series that should have been 3 books long and was stretched to 7. I'll have to check out Godslayer. I like decent magic systems. Here's one that was fun but may be real tough to find:

Master of the Five Magics and Secret of the Sixth Magic by Lyndon Hardy. This book went into deep detail of the magic system and explained magic in a totally logical way. It was a pretty good read too.