Fantasy novel lovers thread

[Whisper-Kitten]

So if you love fantasy novels ( raises hand ), then this is the thread for you. A place for you to discuss your favorite series/authors, post theories, gripe about delays -"Yes George Martin that is about you."- , or simply to discuss the pizza that you eat while you read. Now I am a huge fan of the Wheel of Time series. It‘s not perfect, but It has a lot of cool stuff that I enjoy. It‘s also the first non YA fanntasy novel that I read in middle school, which might lead to some bias. I am also a huge grimdark fan. If the story has characters doing terrible things and non happy endings, then chances are I will like it. Gotta mention Cradle as well. Might not be traditional fantasy, but it‘s a cool world nonetheless.

 

[Desdichado]

Full on grimdark is usually too much for me. I don't like Martin, I don't like Abercrombie. I do, however, like Glen Cook's Black Company, which is either one of the first grimdarks, or not quite grimdark but foreshadowing it, depending on where you think the line actually is. I find that with Martin and Abercrombie, the grimdark is either gratuitous and therefore seriously off-putting, or reflecting an overly nihilistic theme that I can't abide. Cook's books are dark, but they are neither nihilistic nor gratuitous; the darkness actually feels like it belongs and works.

 

[Whisper-Kitten]

Full on grimdark is usually too much for me. I don't like Martin, I don't like Abercrombie. I do, however, like Glen Cook's Black Company, which is either one of the first grimdarks, or not quite grimdark but foreshadowing it, depending on where you think the line actually is. I find that with Martin and Abercrombie, the grimdark is either gratuitous and therefore seriously off-putting, or reflecting an overly nihilistic theme that I can't abide. Cook's books are dark, but they are neither nihilistic nor gratuitous; the darkness actually feels like it belongs and works.

It would probably be the first that caught attention. I am sure there are others out there that came out before, or around the same time, but Cook was really the first author to be noticed. I like his books, but his narrative style took a bit for me to get used to though. It was a little too choppy for me when I first read it. It grew on me over time though. Grimdark is definitely a genre that is not for everyone, but I am a real pessimist, so I think that is a key reason that it resonates with me =X. I do like other stuff though. I really enjoyed Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes stories. Pretty easy read and light with just enough action to satisfy me. And if you can get past the romantasy aspects, T Kingfisher does some pretty cool stuff.

 

[Desdichado]

It would probably be the first that caught attention. I am sure there are others out there that came out before, or around the same time, but Cook was really the first author to be noticed. I like his books, but his narrative style took a bit for me to get used to though. It was a little too choppy for me when I first read it. It grew on me over time though.

Same here. Croaker's narrative voice is unique, and it wasn't to my taste at first.

Grimdark is definitely a genre that is not for everyone, but I am a real pessimist, so I think that is a key reason that it resonates with me =X. I do like other stuff though. I really enjoyed Travis Baldree's Legends and Lattes stories. Pretty easy read and light with just enough action to satisfy me. And if you can get past the romantasy aspects, T Kingfisher does some pretty cool stuff.

Grimdark is actually what I would like on paper, but I find that in practice it's a bridge too far. Cozy and romantasy are not my things at all. It's not the trappings of grimdark that I don't like. Grimdark without the pointless nihilistic themes and gratuitous shock scenes would be exactly up my alley. But then again, it wouldn't really be grimdark then, it would just be some kind of dark fantasy.

 

[jian]

My favourite fantasy author of all time still continues to be Kage Baker, who sadly died in 2010. She’s probably best known for her Company sci-fi novels, but I personally think her best (and less self-indulgent) work is her fantasy novels, such as The Anvil of the World, The House of the Stag (OK, that one is pretty self-indulgent) and The Bird of the River (just amazing).

They’re all set in a single world with a simple set of cultural tropes and differences between the various peoples. The most numerous are the Fireborn or Children of the Sun, who are industrious and quarrelsome and mostly Ancient Greek in culture. The Earthborn or Yendri are nomadic, hygienic, and a bit elvish. The Airborn or Demons are intangible invisible spirits who occasionally inhabit bodies (and can be forced to do so by wizards), more like Ariel from The Tempest than anything else.

 

[Minion X]

The novel format kind of killed the original spirit of fantasy that thrived in short form fiction. Some of them are okay, but it's just not the same.

 

[Desdichado]

The novel format kind of killed the original spirit of fantasy that thrived in short form fiction. Some of them are okay, but it's just not the same.

The first fantasy that fits the definition of the genre are all novels; Phantastes and The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald and The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World's End by William Morris. The Worm Ouroboros is also a lengthy novel and predates the short fiction, as is Vathek.

 

[Corinnguard]

I am more of an Urban Fantasy fan. I was introduced to this subgenre of fantasy back in my college days when I started collecting and reading novels based off of the Shadowrun RPG. Most of the Urban Fantasy books I have read over the years were done from a first-person point of view, a point of view that IMO works well in this subgenre because you then get an immersive experience of the setting via the main character.

Two favorite Urban Fantasy series of mine that come to my mind atm would have to be the Xuan Wu series by Kylie Chan and the Allison Beckstrom series by Devon Monk.

 

[Minion X]

The first fantasy that fits the definition of the genre are all novels; Phantastes and The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald and The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World's End by William Morris. The Worm Ouroboros is also a lengthy novel and predates the short fiction, as is Vathek.

By today's standards they barely qualify as novellas, though. And the true modern fantasy genre, as distinguished from prototypical works like the ones you cited that bridge it to Romanticism, started with Conan and The Hobbit (and you can tell which was the better because Tolkien hated cats).

 

[Dioltach]

When I was a kid, there was a whole genre that nowadays would be categorised as YA fantasy but back then were just "children's books". Not just Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain". I loved Susan Cooper's "The Dark Is Rising", Alan Garner's "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" and "The Moon of Gomrath", and "The Power of Three" by Diana Wynne Jones. Probably loads of others too. They still hold up now.