Fantasy Books Thread

[Kerrah]

This is a thread for the recommendation and discussion of Fantasy Literature.

I recommend everyone (for like the millionth time) to read The Sword of Truth books by Terry Goodkind. Nothing says awesome like a magical sword that makes you angry!

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i212/Kerrah_photos/SwordofTruth.jpg

I am currently reading the series, and after I'm done, I'll probably move to The Song of Fire and Ice or Wheel of Time, both of which have been recommended to me by a lot of people.

edit: If you want to be spared spoilers, DO NOT check the series in Wikipedia. There are a lot of spoilers there that aren't even under a spoiler warning tag.

[Omacron]

Anything by Terry Pratchett is instantly gold, I suggest the City Watch books. Feet of Clay and the Fifth Elephant are my favorites.

[Skyfire]

Kerrah: They removed the spoiler tags from wikipedia, the assumption being that if the section is titled "Plot" or some such, there's going to be spoilers. :P

I'd say Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, but that usually gets mixed reviews by most people (I enjoyed it though).

Instead, try the Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies (first book is Dragon Prince), written by Melanie Rawn. She's also written a few others, try the Exiles trilogy also!

There's the Deverry saga, written by Katherine Kerr, which begins with Daggerspell.

The Silmarillion, LotR's lost brother. The Golden Compass and its subsequent trilogy is also good.

Last but not least, a jump into the SciFi realm with The Pride of Chanur by Cherryh, as well as Ringworld and The Draco Tavern by Larry Niven.

One more saga with the colloquial name of "Darkness". beggining book for that is Into the Darkness by Harry Turtledove. Basically, it parallels WW2 in a fantasy setting.

[Omacron]

I never really considered His Dark Materials fantasy, then again, I never really considered it anyway.


I liked Amber Spyglass' take on radically alternate lifeforms, though.

[Kerrah]

Kerrah: They removed the spoiler tags from wikipedia, the assumption being that if the section is titled "Plot" or some such, there's going to be spoilers. :P

The freaking name of an article there is a spoiler.

[Aldrius]

Remove the spoiler tags from Wikipedia?

That's ridiculous.

You put the non-spoiler plot stuff outside spoiler tags... and the spoiler stuff in them.

[Flamestrider]

Pratchett is consistently clever, and I'm also a big fan of His Dark Materials.

I was a Wheel of Time fan until book 6, where it became clear that Jordan was just stalling. After that, more threads kept being introduced and none of them were resolved.

[Remnant]

It's sorta fantasy-

Space Wolf Omnibus. Yeah, it's Warhammer 40k, but the Spacewolves are sort of... what's the word? Anachronisms or something like that.

[Skyfire]

Pratchett is consistently clever, and I'm also a big fan of His Dark Materials.

I was a Wheel of Time fan until book 6, where it became clear that Jordan was just stalling. After that, more threads kept being introduced and none of them were resolved.

Yeah. Yeah...

He starts finishing them up in 10 and 11. 7, 8, 9 are basically fillers. 12 is his last, apparently.

[Warlock]

Remove the spoiler tags from Wikipedia?

That's ridiculous.

You put the non-spoiler plot stuff outside spoiler tags... and the spoiler stuff in them.

Yeah, that is odd. I've seen other wikis that have spoiler tags like that. In fact, I believe the Prestigue wiki article did (which I had to go to in order to figure out what the hell that movie was about :D)

[Flamestrider]

Lord of Chaos wasn't exactly filler, but it didn't really contribute anything that the series needed. It told us that most of the Forsaken who already died weren't actually dead (which really cheapened, for instance, Ishamael's death). There were some new developments which were cool, but could have just as easily been left out if Jordan decided to focus on the plot threads that he already had open.

7 and 8 were absolute shit, but Winter's Heart restored some of my faith in the series. Mainly because Matt finally found his woman, and the Cleansing was fucking awesome. But then CoT rolled around, and Rand's in it for basically one chapter, in which he's sitting around doing nothing. Egwene was ready to attack Tar Valon at the end of book eight, she wasn't in book nine at all, and nothing conclusive happened in ten. Perrin STILL didn't get his wife back (after what, three books?), and the only new development with Matt was relationship drama with some girl that I couldn't really care less about. That's when I decided it was really time for me to read something more worthwhile. I never picked up 11.