Your Favorite "Light" Fantasy Books

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) The Diskworld books rock

2) Green's Hawk & Fisher books are a good, fast read, and his Nightside novels are good as well, if you like urban fantasy.

3) Glen Cook's Garrett, PI stories are a comedic fantasy take on the Nero Wolfe detective stories.

4) You're a Gaiman fan- check out his book with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens if you haven't already.

5) Alan Dean Foster's Spellsinger books are a good read.

6) If you haven't found them already, the Thieves World story collections are awesome!

 

[Zaukrie]

Brust's Vlad Taltos - great "light" reading fantasy.

I'm re-reading Feist's books right now. While they aren't mature, they are more desnse with information than I recalled. They are actually better than I remember them being (and I now see why my oldest son has read them about 4 -6 times the last two years).

 

[Graybeard]

Try Peter David's Apropos series. There are three books (I think only 3 anyway). Each one is very light fantasy.

 

[Glyfair]

3) Glen Cook's Garrett, PI stories are a comedic fantasy take on the Nero Wolfe detective stories.

A small nit-pick:

It's a fantasy take on Sherlock Holmes. The second book has a Nero Wolfe pastiche as a side character, but the main character is Sherlock Holmes.

 

[garyh]

I also enjoyed Eddings' Belgariad, though I preferred the Elenium (his first trilogy about the knight Sparhawk) myself.

Another vote here for Eddings' Sparhawk books, the Elenium and Tamuli. Fun, quick, easy.

On the more youth-targeted side, I recommend Brandon Sanderson's Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians. Good fun in the Harry Potter vein. I also recommend Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, but those are not light.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

A small nit-pick:

It's a fantasy take on Sherlock Holmes. The second book has a Nero Wolfe pastiche as a side character, but the main character is Sherlock Holmes.

With respect, you're incorrect. I've read both series.

In the Nero Wolfe books, there is a character, Archie, who is the main narrator and "adventurer":

Nero Wolfe Wiki
Archie Goodwin is the narrator of all the Nero Wolfe stories and a central character in them. He is occasionally referred to by the New York newspapers as "Nero Wolfe's legman". Like Wolfe, Archie is a licensed private detective and handles all investigation that takes place outside the brownstone. He also takes care of routine tasks such as sorting the mail, taking dictation and answering the phone.

This is the character Garret is modeled after.

Nero Wolfe himself is a reclusive genius with a great understanding of culture and epicurean delights...and as a result, has become quite fat. He is quite irascible by nature. He almost never leaves his house, doing so only when necessity forces him to do so and always with great loathing. Most of his interactions with the world outside his house are through Archie.

He, then, is the character after which The Dead Man is modeled.

In addition:

Nero Wolfe Wiki
* The characters from this series parallel characters from the Nero Wolfe series:
o Garrett parallels Archie Goodwin
o The Dead Man parallels Nero Wolfe
<snip>

 

[CCamfield]

Sherlock Holmes is a lot smarter than Garrett.

I seem to recall that Feist wrote one book which was a sort of fantasy pastiche of Holmes, or one of the characters in one of his books was. But, that's by the by.

Lighter fantasy...

stuff by Patricia McKillip tends to be not DARK and EVIL.

Pratchett, of course, as was mentioned.

I wouldn't have suggested Locke Lamora, honestly. Yeah, it's not grim grim dark dark, but it's all criminal gang fights and so on. Some humour but it's not as light as Pratchett.

 

[Thanee]

Well, depends on what you think 'light' means, I guess. 'light' does not have to mean 'light-hearted' or 'humorous', or the opposite of 'grim and dark'.

I see it as more 'trivial' read as compared to something that requires a lot of concentration to 'get' everything.

Locke Lamora might not be the lightest, but I would still consider it more on the light side.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Sure- those awesome pulp-era sci-fant novels like Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter novels or Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark novels are so fast paced that they really don't require a lot of mental effort to read. No intricate sub-plots, no cast of thousands to keep track of.