Fantasy Author Recommendations

[Gnosticangel]

Re., "My local library was selling off a complete set of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series."

Out of simple interest in the fate of the characters I read the first seven of these books as they were printed, but then gave up on the series. The first book seemed the best, beginning the "cadre of young villagers swept up in a grand sweeping epic" theme. They are simplistic, at best reminding one of "The Sword of Shannara" and other juvenile category fantasies.

The storylines did grow darker over time, but the writing is very uneven at best. Generally people who enjoy George R. Martin's, David Eddings' and Steven Erikson's doorstopper series will probably enjoy Robert Jordan.

Nothing like either the classic heroic fantasies of earlier generations, or the great works of the weird, in my opinion.

[Stu]

There's a good chance that I'm going to regret buying the books, if only for the sheer size of them. But at that price I couldn't resist.

[Knygathin]

Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy: Suldrun's Garden, The Green Pearl, and Madouc.

Deeper explorations into J. R. R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Book of Lost Tales 1 & 2, The Lays of Beleriand, etc.

[Shadenuat]

George MacDonald can be relevant to weird fiction readers, IMO, as long as they are not offended by the christian background of his fiction. "Lilith" is great stuff, eerie dreamlike (at time nightmarish) fantasy with an abundance of occult/alchemical references.

[Frater_Tsalal]

I myself actually have a love/hate relationship with the fantasy genre. I can think of many fantasy video or computer games that I've enjoyed playing (such as the old Legend of Zelda games, the Final Fantasy games released on the Super Nintendo, the Dragon Age series, and Skyrim, to name but a few), or fantasy TV shows and movies that I've enjoyed watching, and I certainly enjoy writing fantasy. But reading it...

I actually haven't read a huge deal of fantasy novels. When I was in middle school I did read The Chronicles of Narnia, and later on during my high school years I read Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles (in my senior year I also read Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane, but I never read the rest of his first two Covenant trilogies until 2016-2017: for the longest time I mainly just read his very underrated Gap Cycle sci-fi series). In more recent years I've read stuff like the Harry Potter books, and George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, though to be honest in some ways I actually prefer the TV show to the source material: it does a better job of streamlining the story and drops a lot of the superfluous/pointless characters (and believe me, there are a ton of those).

I would like to read Erickson's Malazan books because a lot of my friends have recommended them to me, but I'm daunted by the size of the series, along with the huge cast: I find with many of these fantasy book series with giant casts (see again Martin's series), when you have that many characters after awhile they start to lose their individuality.

My dad's a huge fantasy fan. When I was a teen he was always trying to get me to read The Lord of the Rings, but I could never get more than 100 pages in (I've still yet to finish that book, though I like the movies). My dad has read The Wheel of Time series the whole way through. Funny story: many years ago, in the early 2000's, back when he was a manager for Barnes & Noble, his store managed to get Robert Jordan to do a book signing. He told me that Jordan was a nice guy but easily one of the most pompous blowhards he'd ever met. I guess Jordan's wife was there with him and whenever he wanted to get her attention he would loudly call out "Love of my loins! Love of my loins!" He did sign all of my dad's books for him, though.

[Kevin]

"Funny story: many years ago, in the early 2000's, back when he was a manager for Barnes & Noble, his store managed to get Robert Jordan to do a book signing. He told me that Jordan was a nice guy but easily one of the most pompous blowhards he'd ever met. I guess Jordan's wife was there with him and whenever he wanted to get her attention he would loudly call out "Love of my loins! Love of my loins!" He did sign all of my dad's books for him, though."

I went to a Jordan signing as well, over 20 years ago now (!?!?!). I had exactly the same kind of experience as your dad, complete with Jordan's wife. He did sign my 1st edition of the first book of the WOT, so that was ample compensation.

[Druidic]

"In Yana, A Touch of Undying" is probably Shea's best novel. I prefer his early horror stories by far but that's a fine book.

Quote Originally Posted by Frater_Tsalal

George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, though to be honest in some ways I actually prefer the TV show to the source material: it does a better job of streamlining the story and drops a lot of the superfluous/pointless characters (and believe me, there are a ton of those).

I prefer the books, but I won't deny that the last two of them severely derailed the story and sent the pacing off-kilter. I'm hoping the final few, if they ever arrive, are of the exceptional quality of the first three.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

The show certainly doesn't do as well without the books to work from, one of the recent episodes was the poorest ever.

[Evans]

EDIT: see here

I won't go into another rant about this. I loath the TV show as twisting and defiling everything that is good about the books. The recent season went from atrocious to parodic (anyone who can read ought to know that Cersei is controlled opposition to be swept off the board at a moment's notice should her actions go against the intentions of the major players - having said that series Cersei is perphaps an ironic example of what one get's when one replaces Littlefinger with an idiot and Varys with a proletarian virtue signaler).

My fondest wish is for the series to be one epic troll piece and end with Griff and the Golden Company having installed placed their candidate on the Iron Throne whilst everyone else was busy virtue signalling. the