Fantasy book suggestions please

[Lunan]

for whatever reason i'm on a fantasy book kick lately and i'm asking for suggestions of books or series to pick up

i have read: LoTR, Wheel of Time, Sword of Truth, Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, Heinlein(glory road and some of his later books boarder on fantasy), The Once and Future King, The Deed of Paksarion(misspelled), Inheritance, harry potter, Oath of Swords trilogy(quite good) and others i have forgotten
if you would be kind enough to help me with suggestions please(i think i would prefer series but stand alones are good too

[Jan]

Have you read Mercedes Lackey? I highly recommend her 'Arrows of the Queen' and 'Last Herald-Mage' series.

Jan

[Lunan]

Have you read Mercedes Lackey? I highly recommend her 'Arrows of the Queen' and 'Last Herald-Mage' series.

Jan

i seem to keep picking them up in stores reading 2 or 3 pages and putting them down.
aren't most of her books set in 1 world just over the course of several thousand years?

[Jan]

Yes, she's got several trilogies set in Valdemar and the two I mentioned were (I believe) the first. She's got a couple of other sets of 'urban fantasies', too, most of which seem to be written with colaborators.

Jan

[OmahaStar]

I'm reading the "Southern Vampire" series now. It's by Charlaine Harris, and starts out with "Dead Until Dark", followed by "Dead in Dallas" and the third one (which I'm reading now) is "Club Dead" ... There are seven books so far, with more on the way.

Short version of the beginning ... The main character, Sookie, is a bartender in a small town in Louisiana, about an hour away from New Orleans.

The Japanese have recently introduced a product called "True Blood" to the world. TB is, well, synthetic blood. Because of its release, the vampires of the world have "come out of the closet" living in the open. They tell the world they have a virus that makes them appear to be dead for three days, and they have allergies to the sun, causing the pigments in their skin to whiten.

Living in this small town, Sookie is fascinated by the idea of meeting a vampire. Unfortunately for her, they always hang out in bigger cities like New Orleans, Kansas City, and the like.

Oh, and Sookie is called "crazy sookie" by the townspeople. She can read peoples' thoughts. She also has a bad habit of saying it, so the people in the town think she's looney. But since her parents died when she was seven, and she's been raised by her grandmother, they just go with it. No one ever believes her.

And then a vampire shows up in her bar, followed by a string of murders.

It is a light-hearted "romantic comedy" with supernatural beings. Vampires, Weres, maenads, and a host of other "fantasy" beings are real ... but they keep quiet about it. The others see the vampires as being lower-level creatures, not worthy of them, because of the whole going public thing.

It's a real page-turner series, and a mixture of genres.

If you get a chance, pick up the first book and see what you think.

[babylonlurker]

for whatever reason i'm on a fantasy book kick lately and i'm asking for suggestions of books or series to pick up

I have enjoyed Raymond Feist's Riftwar saga :
Magician (sometimes a single vol. sometimes : Apprentice/Master vol's)
Silverthorn
A Darkness at Sethanon

and the corresponding Empire saga :
Daughter of the Empire
Servant of the Empire
Mistress of the Empire

Love the McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern , I found the Acorna series a little less interesting.

[Lunan]

Love the McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern , I found the Acorna series a little less interesting.

that could be because acorna is light fluff(fun light fluff with very little "hard" sf) of course the third children's book is due soon

[WorkerCaste]

Terry Brookes has some entertaining series.

Shannara starts off rather derivative of LotR in my opinion, but develops its own voice over time. For light reading, I really enjoy the Landover series (Starting with "Magic Kingdom for Sale") And his "Running with the Demon" series is interesting.

[SmileOfTheShadow]

George R.R. Martin's recent series is reallllllyyy good. I think the first book is A Clash of Kings. Forget the series title though. That's the series I'd recommend to you most. It's really in depth. If Wheel of Time is to Star trek, then this series is to B5, is how I'd compare it.

I also enjoyed the first Shannara books, but couldn't get into the subsiquent ones.

[NotSoWize]

George R. R. Martin's series (I believe the series is called Fire and Ice?) is really dark, but really good. The downside is that it is not complete and might not be finished for several years.

I highly recommend the first three trilogies by Robin Hobb. The first is the Farseer Trilogy and is made up of Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin's Quest

That is followed by the Liveship Traders series which is set in the same world but features new characters in a new setting and then the Tawny Man trilogy which revisits the main characters from the first trilogy. I think Hobb got better with each series, but even the first is much better than average fantasy IMO.

They are all excellent if you are into well developed characters and stories that involve as much plotting and politicking as swords and sorcery. I would say that Robin Hobb writes in a fairly similar style as JMS does, character comes first and a nice mix of drama, comedy, and action.

[Radhil]

I'll second the Terry Brooks nomination, but only as far as the two series mentioned - the Landover series and the *original* Word and the Void trilogy. The Shannara series of series starts out great if derivative, moves into somewhat original and moving, from there dives into mostly mediocrity with bursts or chapters of decent moments.

If you'd like modern fantasy, I've been burning through Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. Wizard PI in downtown Chicago, with all the sarcastic charm. There's some holes here and there but it manages really well. He also has a purer fantasy series called Codex of Alera, but it's only up to two paperbacks yet. They follow the only fellow in a world of magical forces to not have any. Pretty decent so far.

I'm also a fan of Jacqueline Carey, so I'll plug her. If you want pure fantasy she has a two-book set called the Sundering, it's a kind of Lord of the Rings piece set from the view of the dark side, and it turned out really really well in my opinion. She's more known for her Kushiel's trilogies, one completed, one in progress. These are lighter on fantasy and heavier on sex, set in a kind of altered-history ancient Europe, and the heroine is a young woman touched by a god to find pleasure in pain, trained in spycraft and thrust into politics and worse. As a concept it sounded like rubbish when I first picked it up, but it' damn damn good.

That's all I've got for now.

[babylonlurker]

Terry Brookes has some entertaining series.

Shannara starts off rather derivative of LotR in my opinion, but develops its own voice over time.

Could be why I never got "caught" by the Shannara series , gave up after the first book.

[Shr'eshhhhhh]

My recommendations are :

Kim Newman's wonderful Anno Dracula series starting with "Anno Dracula" then
"The Bloody Red Baron" and "Dracula Cha Cha Cha" . His "Back In The USSA" is equally good if you want a taste of his writing style without commiting yourself to a multi book series.

"The Anubis Gates" by Tim Powers is also a cracking good read, it has a Peter Hinchcliffe era Doctor Who thing going for it and going by that seal of Rassilon (I have one tattooed to my left shoulder) avatar of yours Lunan you may enjoy that sort of thing .

[B5sweepsfan]

[QUOTE=OmahaStar;40247]I'm reading the "Southern Vampire" series now.

I've read several of that series. They are excellent! Very well written and funny. Especially if you are a red-neck, like me!

[B5sweepsfan]

I would like to recommend the Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony.

I would also like to second Jan's recommendation of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books. The Last Herald Mage Trilogy is my personal favorite of that series.