High Level Literary Sources

[Taraxia]

I must have blinked and missed any of the books where any of the characters, in either the Tortall novels, or in the Circle novels, wield super powerful weapons, move continents, or teleport.

Very few monsters get "blown to bits", at least in the Alanna novels, and even the later novels, featuring Daine and Numair, or the ones with Alanna's daughter certainly don't have gratuitous explosions.

You don't recall the glee with which Numair, Jonathan and Alanna singlehandedly blasted away the Kraken -- an ancient and horrible monster of legend -- in the first Daine book? That's the moment that sticks most in my mind.

 

[Vanye]

You don't recall the glee with which Numair, Jonathan and Alanna singlehandedly blasted away the Kraken -- an ancient and horrible monster of legend -- in the first Daine book? That's the moment that sticks most in my mind.

I don't count one instance, where it took three characters to hurt the thing, as very representative. (edit) I will say that most of the characters outside of the main characters (and even Alanna et al when they are older) are mid level characters...

I still don't recall teleportation, or epic weapons, or casual conversations with gods (well, for the most part...but Veraladaine is the Tortallan equivalent of a Hercules, being of divine heritage). Are you sure you're not getting them confused with the Vlad Taltos novels? That series features plenty of teleportation, Great Weapons, and casual conversations with gods (Verra, Barlen)...

 

[reanjr]

I think one of the best places to look is mythology. Some of the things that people like Achilles and Sigmund do would definitely be construed as high level.

 

[Wystan]

The Eadric Storyhour....

Paladin, Succubus, Mostin the Metagnostic. Heck I would pay for this as a book if it was released that way.

 

[BadMojo]

That series features plenty of teleportation, Great Weapons, and casual conversations with gods (Verra, Barlen)...

Verra's pretty cheeky, too!

I can also second Glen Cook's "Black Company" series. It's an interesting mix of "high level" characters and low-level military stuff. The actual members of the Black Company are fairly "low level", but the Taken and Friends unleash some magical butt-kicking pretty often. For me, the writing itself didn't quite cut it but the first few books were a fun read.

 

[Joshua Randall]

On the off chance that someone reading this thread does not know of Sepulchrave II's amazing story hour. This is high-level D&D at its awe-inspiring best.

 

[starwed]

As well as the Amber series, a lot of Zelazny's novels deal with extremely powerful forces. (Lord of Light and Creatures of Light and Darkness come to mind.) While there's a lot of sci-fi flavor, it's definately along the lines of fantasy.

And he's definately one of Brust's defining influences. (As an aside, I got into the Taltos series after an interview in Dragon; they also had Vlad statted out in one issue.)

 

[Qwillion]

jbrowning said
I can't think of many books that have the save or die effects common in high level play. Having the protaganists die and then be raised isn't a common trope at all.

Wheel of Time has Balefire which kills you before you it strikes you (this undoes time, talk about epic) so if you kill the villian who killed your friends then they are not dead.

This happens a # of times in the books

 

[Tsillanabor]

While not strictly fantasy, I'd go with Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned.

 

[painandgreed]

While not strictly fantasy, I'd go with Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned.

Wrong game system.


First ones to my mind as high level D&D games were the Jereg series (seemed like it was made off of some D&D campaign), Black Company, and Elric.