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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 2907330" data-attributes="member: 13966">Keith Baker's "City of Towers" was good, in my opinion.Diaglo's kidding BTW in at least some regards......the books under the collaborative pen name "T.H. Lain" are the opposite of what he's said; entirely too much sexual innuendo and such.  The stories are okay, but not some parts of them.I'd recommend most of the Magic: The Gathering novels.  A bunch of different authors write books in the series.  Many of them are pretty good, and only a few of them are stinkers IMO.  The Ice Age Cycle (can't remember the three books' names, except that The Dark is first), the Artifacts Cycle (The Brothers' War, Urza's Legacy, Urza's Destiny, and one other that starts with Urza; I don't recall the order of the books, except that The Brothers' War is a prelude), the Invasion Cycle (The Thran, Invasion, Planeshift, Apocalypse), and especially the 2 (that's right, two) Legends Cycles are excellent.  The Anthologies are mostly neat, but skip Rath And Storm (I think that was the title; I'm not gonna bother digging through my books right now to check).  The Kamigawa Cycle is neat if you like oriental adventures/anime/manga-type stuff, and the end of that cycle is neat in how it seems to tie in with the second Legends Cycle (you probably wouldn't understand until you reach the end of the third Kamigawa book, after having read the second Legends Cycle).  The Ravnica Cycle is also kinda good.The first Legends Cycle is mostly swashbuckling stuff, so light on magic use and more of an emphasis on pirates, adventure, and warriors, though one protagonist and one antagonist are quite capable magic-users (they just don't get/need to employ magic very often, and they're far short of being archmages).  That's the only Cycle I can think of that's close enough to being swords and sorcery rather than high magic (though many of the other Cycles do have some important warrior and roguish characters, they tend to have some significant amounts and degrees of magic use by other characters in the same books).  Biggest magic trick I can remember from the first Legends Cycle was Hazezon spending a lot of mana and preparation time to temporarily animate an army of minor sand golems, to help fight Johan's army of real soldiers in one engagement.On a related note, the Legend of the Five Rings novels are good, though not produced by WotC (the ownership of L5R/Rokugan has passed between WotC and AEG at least a few times IIRC, but the novels were produced by AEG I think).  If I recall correctly, the first book is a separate prelude called The Iron Throne, which deals with part of the reign of Emperor Toturi the First, some years after he has restored relative peace to Rokugan and replaced the lost Hantei Emperors, when suddenly he finds one of the worst former Hantei Emperors emerge from the spirit realms and try to wrest control of Rokugan from Toturi, starting the Spirit Wars.  Set several years later, the actual series of L5R books begins with The Scorpion, a book that covers the events surrounding the Scorpion Clan Coup, such as how and why they assassinated the last true Hantei Emperor and tried to rule Rokugan, only to inadvertently set the stage for the dire prophecy they were trying to avert through ending the Hantei line.  Each book in the series is named after a major Clan in Rokugan, and is largely focused on that Clan's actions during the Clan Wars that ensue after the only-partially-successful Scorpion Coup.  This series also deals largely with the actions of Toturi's four children and successors; Akodo Kaneka, the Bastard, a great and clever samurai adopted into the Lion Clan, Toturi's illegitimate first son that he hadn't known of until shortly before Toturi's demise; Toturi Tsudao, the Sword, Toturi's second child but first legitimate heir, only daughter and possibly the greatest samurai of Rokugan, following in her father's footsteps; Toturi Sezaru, the Wolf, greatest shugenja in Rokugan and blessed by the Fortunes and Kami, though ruthless and cunning after a privelaged life of power; and Hantei Naseru, the Anvil, an expert politician and magistrate, renamed and raised by the returned spirit of a former Hantei Emperor as one of the concessions Toturi had to agree to for Hantei to end the Spirit Wars, for which Naseru resents his father as well as his sadistic surrogate 'father'.</blockquote>

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