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

[buzz]

Lankhmar

I am amazed, nay, shocked that people are praising the likes of David Eddings, yet only one person (bless you, Sulimo) mentioned Fritz Leiber.

If you have not read the original Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, you must run, not walk, to your nearest bookseller (or Amazon.com), buy them, and read them. There are often debates about how much of an influence Tolkien was on D&D (Gygax: "Not much," Others: "Tons!"), but there can be no debate about how much of an inspiration Leiber was. Fafhrd and Grey Mouser are the molds from which countless D&D characters have been cast. And to top it off, Leiber is even a brilliant writer!

Anyway, I have little iterest in the Eddings, Brooks, Jordans, and Salvatores of the genre when there's still so much Tolkien, Dunsany, Vance, Peake, and Howard that I still haven't read. Martin I want to check out; I have loved the Wild Cards collections sor far.

My faves:

The Hobbit
LOTR
Jack Vance's Dying Earth
Leiber's Lankhmar stories
LeGuin's Earthsea
Moocock's Elric and some of the other Eternal Champion series
Howard's Conan (most of which are out of print, which boggles me)
Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker books (someone needs to make an RPG out of them, but pronto)
Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber
MZB's Mists of Avalon

...and, I must admit, the orignal Magician books by Raymond Feist. They're darned good (though not great) and are associated with some fond rememberances.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Re: Lankhmar

I am amazed, nay, shocked that people are praising the likes of David Eddings, yet only one person (bless you, Sulimo) mentioned Fritz Leiber.

Sorry, buzz. Leiber is at the top of my list (ahead of Tolkien). I prefer his pulpy style and best of all, his sense of humor. I just didn't mention him earlier because I didn't want dilute the swill.


Wulf

 

[arwink]

Another vote for Gaiman.

I tend to favor modern fantasy and magic realism a lot if I'm looking for a mix of literary and fantasy: Peter Carey, Angela Carter, etc.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

I like many of the books mentioned (including the Deryni series and Leiber's true classics) but I'd like to put in a nod to ER Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros. It's got little going for it except style, but my god, what a style. It's like reading wine.

 

[Agback]

G'day

Insofar as threads like these are any use to anyone, it is not for settling on a single greatest book or single greatest writer. It is for drawing people's attention to books that they will enjoy but might not otherwise have heard of. So I'll list a few that qualify as great in my opinion, and that are perhaps a little obscure, reminding everyone before I start that tastes in literature vary, and that your favourite might be something I don't even like.

I have to put in a good word for Jack Vance. I'm not thrilled by The Dying Earth, Rhialto the Marvellous, Eyes of the Overworld, and Cugel's Saga, though they have been tremendously influential and that they suit other people's taste down to the ground. But I do think that the Lyonnesse series is top-shelf. And his SF is generally great.

My favourite of all novels is Mary Renault's The Last of the Wine. It's only just fantasy, but I'm going to plug it anyway. And The Bull from the Sea and The King Must Die are a whisker more fantastical.

I'll second the preceding recommendations for Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy.

Roberta MacAvoy wrote a stunningly good triology called A Trio for Lute. The books are Damiano, Damiano's Lute and Raphael. She also wrote some other very good stuff, including The Grey Horse, Tea with the Black Dragon, and Twisting the Rope.

Tim Powers has written some of the most original fantasy, including The Anubis Gates, The Stress of Her Regard, and On Stranger Tides.

I'm never sure whether I understand Gene Wolfe's books, but I love reading them and never fail to be astounded at their intricacy and depth. Try The Soldier of the Mist and Soldier of Arete.

Not everyone likes James Branch Cabell, because he can be pretty arch. But I guess that everyone ought to read Jurgen, just to find out what all the fuss is (or was) about.

E.R. Eddison's books are flawed, but magnificent, and were exteremly influential in the development of Fantasy before Tolkien. I guess it's worth recommending The Worm Ouroborus, Mistress of Mistresses, The Mezentian Gate and A Fish Dinner in Memison.

No discussion of the contrast between good and influential among great fantasy books ought to overlook Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, which in my opinion is far better than his much better-known Three Hearts and Three Lions. I have fond memories, too, of The Merman's Children.

IMHO JK Rowlings is comparable with Madonna, not the Beatles. I've only read one Guy Gavriel Kay book (The Lions of Al-Rassa): perhaps it was not up to his usual standard, but I found the story so derivative and the writing so clumsy that I will not read another. YMMV. YRWYDWP.

Regards,


Agback

[edit] P.S. I didn't mention tht I love Neil Gaiman's stuff, or that I split my sides at Terry Prachett, or that I have read The Lord of the Rings more than a dozen times. That's because I hardly think they need my plugs to help them out of an undeserved obscurity.

 

[Forged Goo]

Brust is awesome.

 

[jgbrowning]

Karl Edward Wagner

http://www.nightshadebooks.com/kane.html


He's dead now. He was mostly a horror writer, but he wrote a series of 3 novels and several short stories about a guy named Kane. If you like dark fantasy, this should be for you.

He's been out of print for a long long time, the above company just bought the rights to reprint his Kane work. the book above the a collection of the 3 novels. they plan on releasing another book of the collected short stories.

here's a link that explains it much more thourorghly than i'm willing to spend the time on. I really really reccomend this one to yall....

http://www.dodgenet.com/~moonblossom/kane.htm

joe b.

 

[Kastil]

I recommend David Gemmell. He's got several books out, most of which I have read. I also enjoyed Jennifer Robertson's Tiger and Del series. so many books, so little time!

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Some of the writers I consider the "greats" of fantasy include:

Tolkien
Lord Dunsany - probably the single most talented writer I've read.
Robert E. Howard
H.P. Lovecraft
Moorcock - his Elric stuff is great, but I really like the Corum books
Poul Anderson
E.R. Eddison - man, am I glad he appeared on the thread before my post
Peter Beagle
John Bellairs
Ursula LeGuin - for her Earthsea work
Fritz Leiber
T.H. White
William Morris - The Well at the World's End is probably the most important early work of modern fantasy (though a book published in 1895 may not seem modern to some)

Who among these would be considered writers of literature? I don't know. History will probably remember Tolkien and White, maybe Dunsany, but few others. That's just a guess. C.S. Lewis also, but I didn't include him on the list because he's just not a favorite of mine.

 

[mattcolville]

It bugged Tolkien that people thought of the Lord of the Rings as a novel. These days, 'novel' means 'a work of fiction of a given length.' But he, being a professor of literature (ok, a specific era of literature) and language, he remembered when 'novel' meant a kind of story.

There have always been fictional tales. Novels were different and new back in 11th century Japan, because they followed the events surrounding normal people. Fictional normal people, but normal people. Not Heroes.

Tolkien was writing an Epic Romance. Not romance as in 'love story' but as in 'heightened drama.' Nowadays, we only have drama and melodrama, but twas not always thus.

I know a lot of people who read pretty regularly and can't stand the Lord of the Rings. Usually, I find this is because they don't realize they're not reading a novel. There's very little 'realistic' dialog, things-landscapes, events-are not described as they relate to the individual, but in Epic terms. Most people these days want realistic fiction, characters who speak and act in a modern way, a way they can relate to.

But, similarly, there's something about the Epic Romance that resonates with the human condition, myth, stuff like that, and lots of people who've never been exposed to anything like that love the Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, best fantasy authors.

1) Tolkien. This was a guy who hated (maybe too strong a term) everything that happened in England after 1066 and lamented the loss of the anglo-saxon culture. He thought that, once upon a time, there was a common myth of Britian. Before it got infected with Arthur and Persival and Tristan and all that crap. He thought he could reconstruct what that common myth might have been, and the Lord of the Rings is it. It's an astonishing accomplishment, though most people judge it on modern novel-writing merits, which is like juding Pink Floyd's The Wall based on how good a book it makes.

2) Donaldson. The Covenant books are a deliberate attack on the presumptions, mostly the ethical presumptions, of the typical secondary world. It's profoundly challenging, morally, and to my mind as significant an accomplishment for what it does using fantasy and morality as Tolkien is for myth.

3) Cook. The Black Company books are more obscure than they should be. These are military fantasy, something there isn't a lot of, and probably will never be any as good as these. A lot of people criticize the sparse writing, while failing to note the contrivance that these books are writen as the annals of a military company, first person, from the annalist's perspective. Anything more substantive would be a betrayal of that basic premise. Furthermore, the manner in which main characters are treated is a truly bold follow-through with the premise. Soldiers don't die a death based on how interesting they were in life. They just die random senseless deaths, every one.

4) Eddings. Again, we've got an author who studied Chaucer and other medeival romantic literature, and deliberately set out to see if he could follow a 500 year old formula that was tremendously popular once, hasn't been done in 400 years, and see if it resonated with people. And it does, absolutely. Though, again, people who judge it by modern novel-writing standards find it lacking. Which, of course, it is in that regard.

5) Pratchett. That's some funny shahit, man.