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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8226405" data-attributes="member: 18">This isn't the thread for a detailed discussion but that's rather unfair to Tolkien, no? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Tolkien spent decades analyzing and synthesising myth and folklore with a specific goal in mind. Terry Brooks did a pretty basic Tolkien-derivative which was partly inspired by a common-in-the-1960s misunderstanding of LotR (that being that it was distantly post-apocalyptic and set on Earth). I have no objection to Brooks (who seems terribly nice indeed!) or his presence of this list, though he does have the dubious distinction of being the very first fantasy author whose writing made me give up on a book (one of the Shannara sequels). I remember intentionally leaving it behind in an airport when I was 14 or 15. Of course another Terry, that being Goodkind was the even more dubious distinction of being the first author I read whose book was so awful I literally tried to throw it out the window in disgust (I missed).I support your Tad Williams recommendation. He's also very, very Tolkien-derivative, but I feel like he modernizes and broadens things a lot more, and it's more like a mash-up of Tolkien, TH White and anthropology stuff.My top recommendation would have been Gideon the Ninth. It's a crime that I'm the first person to upvote it, as it's an absolutely amazing book and a wonderful combination of fantasy, SF, murder mystery, and so on, and extremely funny but also grounded enough to be taken seriously. As that's taken though:Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo:[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23437156-six-of-crows[/URL]It's basically a heist novel set in a fantasy Amsterdam/London in a sort of 1800s-ish but very much not "Victorian" or "Steampunk" setting. It's almost like a cyberpunk novel in a lot of ways, but the main this is it's really good. If you read a blurb about or heard it summarized you might go "Oh god sounds generic...". I know I did. But a friend said it was actually extremely good, and it is. It has a single sequel so you're not committing to a huge multi-book narrative or something too. I'd highly recommend it to anyone who liked say The Lies of Locke Lamora (this actually, I daresay, a bit better than that).</blockquote>

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