I love the fantasy genre, lots, and I want it to stop sucking (OR: recommend me fantasy stuff that does not suck)

"A GAME OF THRONES" BY GEORGE R.R. MARTIN. THUS BEGINS THE BEST FANTASY SERIES OF THE PAST TEN YEARS.

Guy Gavriel Kay to thread.

x-posts I play a bunch of rpgs! Recommend some! Darklands was amazing and what I wanted, good point.
x-posts Ian I'll check it out!

Favorite fantasy novel: The Man in the Tree, Damon Knight.

That Gardens of the Moon book was ridiculous. Same for all ten Robert Jordan novels where nothing happens.

Also search: Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy ASSASIN'S APPRENTICE / ROYAL ASSASIN / ASSASIN'S QUEST. I remember when the first book came out it was the most exciting new genre work I'd seen in ages. It's substantially less metaphysical than the McKillip, more straightforward action fantasy.

My favorite one-off novel of the past couple years is WAR FOR THE OAKS by Emma Bull, which is actually a re-release of the book which originally pubbed in the 80s, I think. It's got new recommendations by Neil Gaiman and Charles deLint (and is in fact similar to most deLint in using an urban setting + fantasy) and new author's notes which are great and enlightening. Please give it a chance -- although this is heavy on elves it's also heavy on dry humor and on music, too -- it's set in the '80s and the narrator's rock'n'roll band is central. Plus the new trade edition has a fantastic cover. Love this one especially for the narrative voice, which is very female without using any of the shortcuts of stereotyped "femininity".

Also, second the Guy Gavriel Kay. I have a bind-up of the Fionavar Tapestry trilogy and these are wonderful, wonderful.

On the young adult side, you can't call yourself a fantasy reader until you've done Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles, which runs to about 7 books and is set in a mythologized ancient Britain (sort of). Borrows heavily from Welsh/Celtic mythology but is ultimately very human and true. These are widely famous and you may already have read them, I only include them here on the off chance.

Good modern YA fantasy author is Garth Nix, do his Abhorsen trilogy SABRIEL / LIRAEL / ABHORSEN. He's an Australian author, did a couple of adult sci-fi novels years ago but I think he's really found his voice in the YA fantasy genre. Great for having female main characters without depending on any gendered behaviors, just magic (again with a central musical component, in this case, the ringing of a scale of handbells each of which performs a different function of necromancy), and rollicking good adventure.

Sorry these are mostly trilogies, I don't really take to huge series. And I most love female sci-fi/fantasy authors who don't let the D&D tropes take over, I must say. Enough damsels in distress, already, and equally enough of the damsel's supposed "opposite": the woman warrior wearing naught but leather straps and a fur bikini. Feh.

The last two books especially blew my mind as a kid.

NB: Not that S/F SHOULDN'T explore issues of gender & privilege, in fact I think that's one of the things these genres are BEST for, it's just that it so easily slides into some kind of, oh...second-wave feminist screed, and then it's really ruined for me as a serious work. If I wanted that kind of new agey womyn-friendly fix I would totally, totally read Sheri S. Tepper or Barbara Hambly or Marion Zimmer Bradley or Andre Norton or GAH at the very end of the spectrum, maybe Mercedes Lackey (which is basically trash).

Seriously. They're great. Not much in the way of the supernatural, which is refreshing. Plenty of intrigue, suspense, humor and moral gray area. Incredible well written; the characters are very full and three-dimensional. I have a love/hate relationship with many of them.

Prydain = roxor. McKillip = must reread. Powers = so genius, but I've not read Declare.

Martin does do an excellent job of fleshing out his characters, Ian. Often a weak point in much fantasy. Something I find unique about his writing is that he is unafraid to kill off characters, no matter who it is. With many other authors, you get the feeling that certain characters are untouchable..

I just googled the Martin and recognised as the series my dad's really into, score, I will read it as soon I get home.

I love Nine Princes and I try to read the rest of Amber occasionally but can never quite make it through book two for some reason that's probably pretty close to the one L said. There's a bit in Lord of Light when the big battle is about to happen and he's listing all these previously unmentioned (& completely irrelevant!) races and legendary creatures and heroes and gods who will fight on either side and you just feel the possibility mushroom inside you, all of that strange history converging, I seriously have to stop reading and just breathe - I dunno, coffee, but I really really love this stuff.

I am totally excited about these riddle books! They sound perfect, I love riddles.

Mieville fans, tell me more! I googled him and found this in an interview:

Of course I'm not saying that any fan of Tolkien is no friend of mine - that would cut my social circle considerably. Nor would I claim that it's impossible to write a good fantasy book with elves and dwarfs in it - Michael Swanwick's superb Iron Dragon's Daughter gives the lie to that. But given that the pleasure of fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity, why not try to come up with some different themes, as well as unconventional monsters? Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies?

Thankfully, the alternative tradition of fantasy has never died. And it's getting stronger. Chris Wooding, Michael Swanwick, Mary Gentle, Paul di Filippo, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others, are all producing works based on fantasy's radicalism. Where traditional fantasy has been rural and bucolic, this is often urban, and frequently brutal. Characters are more than cardboard cutouts, and they're not defined by race or sex. Things are gritty and tricky, just as in real life. This is fantasy not as comfort-food, but as challenge.

- who are these people?

i) That bit in Planescape, where you speak to an alley, and the alley tells you that she's pregnant, but that she can't give birth. And if you sort things out just right, she can, and she thanks you, and says she has a child, now. And there's a new alley, suddenly there, and you can walk down it to somewhere new.

ii) This moment when I was playing Baldur's Gate I with my dad, the first time, we had Minsc and Edwin both, two shades of crazy, one good one evil, both telling us to find the kidnapped girl. So we went in, the way you do, burnt through the gnoll fortress, laid waste to everything in the way, got to the still quiet centre. And couldn't find her. And realized suddenly - that we'd killed all those hundreds on the words of two madmen, that we'd done it because of rules of genre stuck and rigid and suddenly horrible.

(she was actually there of course - we were just being idiots - but it is still the best moment in videogaming for both of us)

a) Fantasy without magic in.
b) Fantasy in the style of genuine ancient myth - ie, with lots of weird motifs that don't actually make much sense because the storyteller has forgotten what they originally meant. My main reference point here is Culhwch and Olwen et al.

The reason I want to try to write this is because I'd love to read some, but I've never really come across any. However, I are a crap writer.

with lots of weird motifs that don't actually make much sense because the storyteller has forgotten what they originally meant.

This is a great sentence.

I remember Zelazny had lots of other cool concept fantasy that I liked ages ago when I was young, but maybe it doesn't hold up. Also, L. Sprague De Camp -- the Compleat Enchanter stands out in my memory. His stuff is all supposed to be funny, I think. I always liked the goofy stuff more than the "serious" stuff. Obv. the Pullmans should also count as great great fantasy work. Brin can be a pompus boring dude but I also remember liking "The Practice Effect."

I also liked v. convoluted systems of magic and the idea that there really was a well-worked-out logic to it all which is partially why I like that Full Metal Alchemist anime series. There was one series I faintly remember reading that was particularly spectacular at hinging on a very finely tuned system of different magics (Jim Dodge's "Stone Junction" tho hardly a fantasy in most senses, does a great job with this stuff in its own way -- i should get around to rereading that. the poker section is particularly magnificent)

Eventually I'll try to check out some of the stuff on this thread.

re: Steven Erikson; Gardens of the Moon is not his best work. I'd advise reading the next one, Deadhouse Gates: which doesn't end well for the best part of 40000 people, including a fair number of the main characters, to get a true idea of what he's up to. Erikson's world is convoluted in the extreme and his writing style is not the best, but I think that the feverish fecundity of his imagination makes up for this.

I second the Chona Mieville recommendation; all three books are very worth reading. Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter is outstanding in it's utterly vicious and weird way. I can see why Mieville would respect it; it does reminds me a little of his own work, actually.

Speaking of fantasies that involve poker, Last Call by Tim Powers is outstanding stuff.

Possibly one answer to the issue of fantasy sucking is to extend your definition of fantasy. At the mo this seems to only include the Tolkienesque subgenre. It sounds like you're missing out on a world of other stuff. John Crowley's work, for instance; Aegypt is one of my favourite books in any genre

A very good fantasy stand-alone is Ash by Mary Gentle (which imo, and don't tell anyone, is actually an SF novel in disguise), it's visceral and meaty stuff.

Apparently the guy to watch is R. Scott Bakker. His series that starts with The Darkness That Comes Before is interestingly different...Although I'm not as impressed with them as some people I've spoken to (who think it's the best thing since sliced bread)

unless you love politics in Fantasy, in which case, it's right up your alley.

I really loved Stephen R Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenent - two trilogies, long and involved, all sorts of spells, no elves.

Gene Wolfe thirded - Forest Pines you might like him too. His Book of the New Sun novels are a far-future fantasy which can be very cryptic because it's written first-person and the perspective shift is often quite unforgiving (this is also how it gets round the "magic" thing). Beautifully done, though, easily my favourite fantasy novels.

His Soldier of the Myst, set in ancient Greece, plays with the mythic stuff, there's more 'magic' in that but there's also the real possibility that it's mostly delusional.

I'd like to read the McKillip again, maybe - I remember those from when I was small.

FP, I'm not familiar with Culhwch and Olwen but you might -- might -- like McKillip's more recent THE BOOK OF ATRIX WOLF or ALPHABET OF THORN. I've read a smattering of her back catalog but not nearly enough, and I'm not even sure that many of 'em are still in print. Sometimes she just makes the ineffable seem effortless and I love, love her for it. (Actually I am somewhat named after a character in THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD because my mother is a crazy romantic like that).

Also try Mike Jeffries, I thought he had a similar out-of-place-and-time feeling that doesn't have any antecedents in my experience of the genre, it really seems to hang out by itself in a lot of ways even though the basic events are the same as any young man's quest novel. Think the series is called The Loremasters of Elundium and there are 3 or 4 of 'em and then some associated books not directly in that plot line, one of which is THE ROAD TO UNDERFALL, which is the only one I've read. Narrative style is very formal and stylized, like a Grimms' fairy tale or a classical myth. It took me a while to catch the rhythm but what comes through the most strongly for me are examples of flinty courage and nobility and valiant sacrifice offered for the defeat of evil. Really very affecting.

Will is, unfortunately, utterly right about the third book of the Farseer tril -- I found it hugely disappointing not in the quality but in the results for the characters, that not all ends rosily and fairly as you might expect from action fantasy. Still, I spoke to one of our sci-fi eds yesterday and she said that last book made the whole series for her, so I guess YMMV.

Dude needs to go back to the University where he actually has a support network that can help squash his inner fucktard

the third book is gonna be a total clusterfuck. unless he pulls off some awesome eriksonian shit like the end of gardens of the moon where it turns out everything is meaningless and all the important shit happened in some other, imaginary, novel. which was great. otherwise there's too much to pull together in any sort of satisfying manner.

i know that the whole thing w/ rothfuss is the power of story and the speed with which it travels and mutates and this whole hall of mirrors thing BUT i don't really buy the ridiculous speed with which stories travel and mutate in these books, like how kvothe is interacting with his own legend at age 16. it's dumb. i try and pretend that the world in which it all takes place is one where stories travel and mutate really fast so it's more believable, like how seasons last a really long time in GRRM and braids need tugging and skirts bunch up and need smoothing all the time in jordan's world.

the rapid & exponential growth of kvothe's myth didnt really bother me, i mean i thought it was sorta lol that he was 'famous' by the 2nd half of book 2 when he hadnt really done much yet but w/e its p integral to what rothfluss is trying to do, & i guess i liked that enough to cut him some slack

also the world outside the university is just loose & uncertain that theres a lot of room for inconsistencies or 'unbelievable' things to happen

ive been assuming there will be more than 3 books because why wouldnt there be

I haven't read most of the authors mentioned recently on this thread, but am following along and making note of them - I started Rothfuss and had mixed feelings, couldn't get into Abercrombie but will give him another shot.

Is anyone else into James Enge? I stumbled onto one of his Morlock Ambrosius short stories, read a couple more online, and then picked up the first two novels (which were less like the short stories than I was expecting). Definitely liked what I've read.

ive been assuming there will be more than 3 books because why wouldnt there be

― S C R æ M (Lamp), Tuesday, 19 April 2011 17:47 (Yesterday) Bookmark

oh fuck i hadn't even thought of that i'm terrible at this fantasy thing

my copy of the new redick just arrived, probably when i actually start it i will start the rolling-fantasy-and-sf thread

i think a dedicated rolling sf/fantasy thread is a good idea.

omg the mute fighters

this book is so smackable right now

i think a dedicated rolling sf/fantasy thread is a good idea.

cosign

Me too.

I can't say I've ever been so delighted to see the main character of a book get beaten up than I was yesterday

I enjoyed the first Rothfuss to some extent, don't think I'll bother with the second now.

Innkeeper Kvothe is still kind of likable, if that means anything.

By the time it comes out in paperback (which is when I'll be able to afford it), I'll probably have forgotten this flurry of derision and read it.

Pretty good piece from E.D. Kain in the Atlantic yesterday:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/08/fantasys-spell-on-pop-culture-when-will-it-wear-off/242936/

Whether or not you agree with the bubble argument, pretty telling who he identifies as standouts, a very Dan-friendly list: Erikson, Bakker, Alexander, Jordan and Wynne Jones as well. (And Martin by default as the hook.)

they're the big sellers to atm tbf, maybe dan should be offering his services to marketing depts

He would be more than happy with that (if it paid enough).

i'll do it for less, if youse guys are reading this

hmmmmmmmmmm

uh, did anybody read george r r martin's A DANCE WITH DRAGONS? it only took him like 7 years to finish it lol.

does anyone else think he is going to abandon the novels and finish the story via the hbo series? or possibly just die fat and bloated and we'll never know what happens to aria, bran, etc?

btw GAME OF THRONES SPOILERS IN THIS POST

the real question, for those who have read a dance with dragons, is: is jon snow fucking DEAD?!

SPOILER usually when a character dies in the story, it's confirmed in the appendix. iirc jon snow's death wasnt mentioned in the appendix so i'd say 'probably not' SPOILER

SPOILER I assume he's going to be zombified by the Red Queen SPOILER

Really enjoying Lev Grossman's stuff lately

SPOILER i kind of assumed his soul would move into ghost, since they had mentioned that skinchangers could do that...also is it possible that coldhands is uncle benjen? i think so SPOILER END

oh also the dresden files are super fun, only up to the 4th book but am ready for more

SPOILER I totally forgot the skin changer thing! duh SPOILER

Please stop talking about this on this thread.

While this thread is on New Answers: I read the few pages of Lord Valentine's Castle and, is that supposed to be good? Clute or somebody said something about Silverberg become a master prose stylist at some point but I don't see it.

I made a similar stab at Lord Valentine's about 10 years ago after reading about it and Silverberg's own assessment of its place in his writerly progress. I crapped out after 50 or so pages. I've been meaning to try again-- one more time. Mainly because it is very obv that what Silverberg is trying to do here is ape Jack Vance, and Vance is my fucking favorite.

cannot get into elantris at all, finding it v teeny, or maybe i'm just up to the gills of this type of fantasy? either way i'm bugged, cos i was psyched to enjoy it based on recs

the p good wheel of time books aside i think sanderson is a very bad writer. his prose is too breezy--there's none of the pompous faux-gravitas that makes epic fantasy epic. there's just "awesome" setpiece after "awesome" setpiece like it's gears of war and he (deliberately i think) writes them like michael bay treatments. (in the way of kings at least.)

even mistborn, which i have yet to finish, is lower-key at the beginning but there's still video game stuff happening and all the magic is (clumsily) explained to another character like a video game tutorial with Stupid Capitalized Words and systems that only make fantasy sense.

lol, only in fantasy can someone not being pompous ENOUGH be a dealbreaker

i think the magic system works really well within the book, im not sure whether it 'makes sense' i mean all magic systems seem objectively retarded but i think he does a good job keeping it coherent and interesting even if at times some of the abilities seem like theyre lifted from the MISTBORN TABLETOP RPG PLAYERS HANDBOOK or w/e

i guess that's what i meant, like it was a licensed novel from a nonexistent ip.

in the magic the gathering novels that wotc put out right when magic hit the mainstream there's all this completely insane worldbuilding stuff explaining how the summoning and mana systems work and it's all a little too on the nose, i got the same feeling from the mistborn metal-eating exposition walk.

also mormons should not be allowed to write about drinking and whoring

haha i remember reading the explanation of how the different metalborn powers worked and it was like the guide to 'building a balanced party' for a mid 90s psx rpg but i find that kinda stuff p charming, i think, idk maybe years of playing that stuff has warped my brain into believing thats a decent way of organizing and presenting a fictional world

i mean i have the new MISTBORN NOVEL but have yet to read because the cover is too embarrassing for me to bring into an office where ppl have xkcd cartoons taped up but i think the ~~propulsive action~~ and schematic world-building is pretty well done? like i think most of the action sequences arise naturally w/in the story and provide some opportunity for character building and development like its not just breathless and then they CAST MAGIC or w/e idk

Is Tad William's Shadowmarch Quartet any good?

I finally dug out War For the Oaks this afternoon, and maaaaaaaaaaaaaan oh man am I hooked on this thing

idk if anyone else has mentioned this, but some enterprising person actually put together a pretty good youtube playlist of a lot of the songs featured in the book, which I am enjoying as background music :D

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrFSihWYr33NUaIsdOcmtRhNFR20IVyM9

actually maybe nvm that link - there's some terrible substitutions in here that I wouldn't wish on anyone

okay I finished War of the Oaks and my dormant fantasy-genre leanings are suddenly reawakened. yay!
I pulled Marin Millar's Good Fairies of New York but it's a bit too Pratchetty/Tom Robbinsy silly fun. Not that that that's bad but I'm not really in the mood for silly fun, I need IMMERSION.

have ordered used copy of Black Company Chronicles :D

I used to be sort of friends with Emma Bull and Will Shetterly when I was an annoying 19 yo in Minneapolis St. Paul. They were much nicer to me than they needed to be. Very cool ppl. I have good memories of War for the Oaks but it's been ages.

wow your cool points just went up x 1000

Ugh. They're going to try to make a tv show from Rothfuss' Kingkiller books:

http://www.deadline.com/2013/07/new-regency-20th-century-fox-tv-to-adapt-kingkiller-chronicle-for-tv/

anyone read much naomi novik? i just finished 'uprooted' and quite liked it but the description of her main series leaves me feeling a little wary

"The Napoleonic wars fought with dragons". i don't think i could bring myself.

idk man did you read 'the wars of the roses with dragons--AND ZOMBIES' because if you did that i feel like you have no high ground

thread highlights, a personal synopsis:

lamp

me, mentioning ten times over several years i hadnt started the black company yet (i have now but had overdosed on malazan and abercrombie so didnt get far)

me, mentioning that i couldnt get beyond malazan book 5 _thirteen years ago_ because i started those books again during covid and got that far again but it was genuinely as if id never read any of the last three and now im quite worried about my ability to consume even pulp fantasy plots :(

and some good stuff (incl. darraghmac) on this ILB thread: fantasy novels.

anyone read much naomi novik? i just finished 'uprooted' and quite liked it but the description of her main series leaves me feeling a little wary.
--Lamp