[OT] Which do you think are the best fantasy novels/authors?

[drnuncheon]

Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders series and her Assassin series are both excellent.

You do know she's started on a third trilogy, right? I think the first one is called Fool's Errand and it takes the character you'd expect from the title back up to the Farseer realms.

I will mention one book which I do think is worthy of the title that hasn't been mentioned: Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart.

One of my all-time favorites, right up there with The Princess Bride. The sequels are good but not like the original.

Moon's Paksennarrion books ought to be required reading for any paladin.

Brust has been mentioned for the Dragaera books, but I didn't see his To Reign in Hell earlier - the story of the revolt in Heaven, and whose fault it really was.

One I haven't seen at all are Randall Garrett's "Lord Darcy" stories (Glen Cook's Garret is named in his honor). I had to get them through the Science Fiction Book Club, but they're definitely worth it for advice on how to handle mysteries when your protagonists can do magic. Set in an alternate history rather than a typical fantasy setting.

J

 

[Melan]

Nobody has mentioned Leigh Brackett - she is a lot like Clark Ashton Smith in that she is brilliant but almost totally forgotten. Which is really strange, since she wrote, among other things, the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back.
My favourite, however, is Rhiannon's Sword, one of the (if not the) best sword&sorcery tale in the known world. I also like her Ginger Star novel, but don't possess the sequels - they seem to be extremely rare and out of print.

 

[KenM]

OK, I know i'm going to get flamed for this, but I think that JRR Tolkien was a great writer for backround/ setup. But his plot resulostion is so SLOW. He did not know how to pace. I had to force myself though FELLOWSHIP. He describes almost EVERY hill and road the hobbits walk along. The only other Tolkien book I read was the hobbit.
I just started the first song of ice and fire, very good. I don't want to try Wheel of time, I heard the last couple of books did not move the plot along at all. RA Salvatore's books are fun reads. I read wizards first rule, want to read the others.

 

[Allanon]

Well since nobody mentions them, The Deathgate Cycle from Weis & Hickman.
I agree they aren't the most awe inspiring works of fantasy ever produced but they are certainly a very good read.
For the rest I have to agree with most of the opinions posted here... G.R.R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien being the best of the bunch IMHO.

 

[takyris]

I think it's important to judge the novels for what they were trying to do.

Tolkien was, if I remember correctly, trying to take the epic heroic quest and tell it from the point of view of not-heroic folks. He gets the tropes of the heroic quest right, and you have to admit tha the defined the genre. For all that and my Masters in English, I've still never gotten through the Similililialilrlrialailion. Not my bag. And I've read Chaucer...

Brooks was trying to rip off Tolkien. Go him. Laughing all the way to the bank. Personally, I think he sucks hard enough to strip the brass off a doorknob, but that's just me.

Eddings was trying to write a heroic quest fantasy with a human face again, using something closer to normal speech and bantering between the heroes. While I wouldn't like it if I read it for the first time today, I liked it when I read it at fourteen. I'd classify Eddings as good if he's the first thing you read in this genre, but pretty derivative otherwise. It's not as though he's breaking a lot of new ground with his characters (open to debate on this, of course).

Feist was trying, from what I can tell, to make a story out of some of his gaming sessions. I didn't like the early stuff, when he was pretty much just telling you about his D&D campaign, but when he moved into the later books, and cleaned up his style, I thought he was decent. Not trying to redefine the genre or anything, but definitely an entertainer.

Goodkind was trying to fool a whole bunch of gullible suckers into buying his books under the guise of fantasy novels, when in reality they're a) tripe and b) bad romance novels inelegantly disguised as bad fantasy novels. I mean, for crying out loud. The man's sucking is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of verifiable established objective fact. Out of respect for Eric's grandmother, I will simply note that Goodkind's profound level of sucking is strikingly analogous, on a number of levels, to a tornado touching down in the middle of a mule farm.

Jordan -- I dunno what he was trying to do. Presumably, write the great fantasy epic, and make it longer than anyone else's. I agree with the folks who think he's lost his way, and I stopped reading after book seven or so. It just wasn't doing it for me anymore. I'm only barely a pro writer, but I'm pretty sure there's a rule somewhere about not introducing new major villains in book seven of your "trilogy".

Martin is, I think, trying to shake up the genre by doing to fantasy what cyberpunk did for science fiction. It's fantasy with expletives and on-screen sex and morally righteous people who don't automatically win. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. And I love the body count -- although, in my mind, no protagonists have died as of yet. There are a ton of important dead people, but none who I considered protagonists. (Being somewhat vague to avoid spoilers...)

-Tacky

 

[CCamfield]

PS does anyone know when the next book in the history of the Malazan Empire is scheduled?

The fansite for Erikson's works, www.malazanempire.com, says that House of Chains should be out in the U.K. now.
amazon.co.uk says it's out... simultaneously in hardcover and paperback!?!?

I'm not going to get into the quotation/spelling argument. I assume that if he had a US publisher they might change words to fit US spellings, but he doesn't. We use a mix of British and American spelling here in Canada... (e.g. armour not armor, but tire not tyre!)

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Michael Ende's "The Neverending Story".

Forget the lousy movie version. Ende proved decades before Rowling that "children's literature" isn't an oxmoron. Th book was much darker and deeper than the movie (in the book, Bastian tries to declare himself Emperor, marches with an army against the Ivory Tower, and comes close to slaying Atreju with his own hand...).

Michael Ende is pretty much the only German post-war author I can wholeheartedly recommend reading. And that's a fact.

 

[Elf Witch]

Honestly, am I the only person who has read and liked the Deryni books? I mention them here and on RPG.net when the topic comes up, and no one has ever seconded the suggestion...

The Deryni are my favorite books of all time. I tend to reread them everytime a new one comes out. I also read the deryni magazine that her website puts out. I own the complete deryni archives that Katherine Kurtz published way back in the seventies.

I love the whole feel of the books. The powerful church pitted against the mage like deryni. The court and poltical intrigues. The characters are so well drawn. I really hated the bad guys so much in one set of her novels that I used to think up ways that I would like to see them suffer.

 

[drakhe]

Agreeing with a bunch of names already mentioned (my fav's being Eddings, Jordan, Williams)

Some names I didn't see mentioned yet:

Ellis Peters - The Cadfael stories

James Clavel - Shogun

Eiji Yoshikawa - Musashi

various - The L5R novels (I liked the idea of a series of novels telling the same events from each of the seven clan's view point. Having different authors gave each clan a different voice. At least a great idea. Reading these stories, my favourite L5R clan changed every book, and not necesary to the clan the book was written about...)

 

[Enforcer]

James Clavel - Shogun

various - The L5R novels (I liked the idea of a series of novels telling the same events from each of the seven clan's view point. Having different authors gave each clan a different voice. At least a great idea. Reading these stories, my favourite L5R clan changed every book, and not necesary to the clan the book was written about...)

I loved Shogun, but I'd say it's historical fiction, not fantasy. There's no magic in it.

As for the L5R books, my favorite one of them was Scorpion, and they remained my favorite clan throughout the whole series. Tastes vary I suppose.

Something else I find interesting is how many people have mentioned that "a lot of people don't like Tolkien" but we haven't seen many (any?) of them. So, I thought I'd raise my hand and say that the Lord of the Rings is ultra-boring as far as I'm concerned. Give me Martin or Jordan any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Though, I did like the Hobbit when I was young.