Your fantasy classics of the last 25 years

[Azul]

Hmm.. I'd have to go with:

Thieves' World - One of the biggest fantasy series of the 80s. Still one of my favourite fantasy anthology series. Great setting although the feel seems a little retro now (kind of like reading Conan I suppose)

The Belgariad by Eddings - Pretty much a classic now. The Mallereon was fun but felt like a repeat.

The Wheel of Time by R. Jordan - Yeah, he can't seem to finish the bloody thing but the richness of the setting is superb. The first five or so books are very good.

The Jackal of Nar (and its two sequals) by John Marco - Very cool series with a gritty, Machiavellian flavour that stands out from most of the fantasy genre - lesser known but very much worth reading

A Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart (sp?) - the first novel of Master Li and Number Ten Ox - awesome novel in a fantasy Tang dynasty China - the two sequals are ok but not worthy of being called classics

Not a lot else to report. Fantasy has become increasingly formulaic over the past 25 years so most recent fantasy novels seem pretty much like cookie-cutter work. It seems like the Tolkien/D&D axioms have come to dominate the genre some completely that it just isn't very fantastical anymore. Some of the writers are quite competant at producing prose (e.g. Feist, Moon) but few present a vision that really seems very original. It's gotten so that I cringe when I see the tired old tropes - elves, dwarves, angsting princes/princesses/sorcerers/sorcereresses, quasi-Medieval Tolkienian worlds, dragons, unicorns, King Arthur returned from Avalon, quasi-Celtic pretentious tripe, yadda yadda yadda... yawn.

It's gotten so that reading most fantasy novels feels like reading about a narcissist's D&D campaign. I'd like to see something original and thought provoking... I suppose that's why I slowly migrated to sci-fi and non-fiction.

 

[Hijinks]

Stephen Lawhead's Song of Albion trilogy

I agree, very good series

I have adored David Eddings since I was a preteen. Unfortunately, I'm no longer reading his new stuff. I tried this latest Elder Gods series book 1, and got very frustrated with this same occurrence over and over:

Character 1: Hi everyone, I'm a new character!
Character 2: Hi there, let me introduce you. This is Character 3 here.
Character 1: Wow, he's really cool and stuff.
Character 2: Yes, he is quite uber. He did X, Y, and Z earlier in this book, and it was very impressive. (takes 3 pages to explain how Char 3 did X, Y and Z)

5 pages later, a new character enters the plot:

Character 4: Hi everyone, I'm a new character!
Character 2: Hi there, let me introduce you. This is Character 3 here.
Character 4: Wow, he's really cool and stuff.
Character 2: Yes, he is quite uber. He did X, Y, and Z earlier in this book, and it was very impressive. (takes 3 pages to explain how Char 3 did X, Y and Z)

It's filler and I hate it. I refuse to read it. The older series had it to a lesser extent and I could ignore it, but the new work does it over and over again.

I still reread the Belgariad and the Mallorean, and both knight series also. They are still well written. I think he's just going downhill; he's quite elderly.

 

[dutorn]

Weis & Hickman, The Death Gate Cycle

Most of my other favorites have already been mentioned.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I have to put my first choice as
Dennis McKiernan's Mithgar cycle. When I picked it up I was sort of cold on fantasy in general, except Tolkien which I still read often, but with the Iron Tower trilogy I was fired back up. Some would say it is too much like Tolkien

They say that because McKiernan wanted to write a sequel to The Lord of the Rings and was denied permission by the estate, so he had to file the serial numbers off it and publish his own version first.

 

[FnordBear]

So Iguess no one liked Terry Brook's various Shannara books?

 

[Zander]

So Iguess no one liked Terry Brook's various Shannara books?

Not much. Although I liked Tolkien, I found the Shannara books too derivative and the pace was a bit dragging in places. Mind you, I haven't read them in a very long time, so maybe I'd change my mind if I read them again.

 

[Rackhir]

So Iguess no one liked Terry Brook's various Shannara books?

I read his first book when it came out and it was terrific. However that wasn't due to any efforts on his part. The Sword of Shannara was as close as you can come to a plagurisim of LotR without getting sued for it. It has essentially all the same characters and pretty much all the same events. The text is just written for a mass market audience and condensed to a single large volume. My friends and I really got a lot of laughs out of the cover blurbs comparing it to LotR and how it was the next great thing after LotR, because it was such a thinly veiled rippoff.

His second book wasn't a direct rippoff of anything, but wasn't very good either. It did seem to borrow large chunks of the plot from an old Brian Daley fantasy series called "Doomfarers of Coramonde".

I've refused to read anything by him since then.

 

[Turhan]

I forgot to mention an odd duck. It was actually first printed in 1949, so kind of old, but it goes out of print and gets reporinted from time to time. My copy is from 1996.

Silverlock.

by John Myers Myers.

It has so many classical lit references and characters and events merged across who knows how many genres and stories and places. Litterally, Silverlock the character goes through just about every tale ever told at some point. Though he only visits birefly so teh book is but a single volume and can be held easily in one hand.

I visitied a website dedicated to it, and the folks over there still haven't found all the bits of literary borrowings and visitings.

It really is a fun book to read, even withouth knowing all the "serious" stuff.

 

[Look_a_Unicorn]

Noone's mentioned Guy Gavriel Kay's "Fionavar Tapestry" yet?
Ok maybe it's just me then

The Vlad Taltos books were great.

Vorkosigan books by Luis McMaster Bujold (although technically sci-fi) should stand the test of time pretty well- universally appealing)

I think Harry Potter will be around for a while too!

It was great to read all the lists of memories *ahem* series I've read in the past

 

[Phaedrus]

Was Lloyd Alexander's Book of Three (and the other books, culminating in The High King) written within the time limit? If so, add them to the list. Even though they were written for younger audiences, I still re-read them every few years. One of those "childhood defining" series for me.

David Gemmell. Epic, gritty, action, with wisdom (insight on human nature, profound sayings)
David Eddings. Characters, dialogue, humor
L.E. Modesitt. I really like his style (often written in present tense), the tension within the heroes, the way he doesn't feel the need to explain EVERYTHING--some things are referred to and you're left to wonder (or figure it out)

While I like Goodkind, I think he's getting overly Ayn Rand preachy as time goes on (I like it, but I know others do not).