Need fantasy recommendation please

Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora, which I'd probably recommend even if she didn't like fantasy.

It's basically a caper novel set in a fantasy world Venice starring a professional con-man and his sidekicks. It's funny, it's gritty without being eye-rolling, and is written beautifully.

Love it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaurenOrtega 

Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora, which I'd probably recommend even if she didn't like fantasy.

 

It's basically a caper novel set in a fantasy world Venice starring a professional con-man and his sidekicks. It's funny, it's gritty without being eye-rolling, and is written beautifully.

 

Love it.

Damn you you magnificent woman, you got there first!

Definitely Lynchs Lamora books (new one soon!). If she hasn't read them she simply must devour Phillip Pullmans His Dark Materials trilogy, it's essential.

Leane Hearns Tales Of The Otori gives fantasy a medieval Japanese spin, they're a great read. The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert Redick is definitely worth a try - kind of a fantasy Master & Commander. Other than that I'd recommend Joe Abercombies trilogy The First Law, which I've only read the first book of so far but loved. 

...and even though I know it isn't technically fantasy, she needs to read Justin Cronins The Passage... because everyone needs to read Justin Cronins The Passage frankly.

Tales of the Otori is classy.

Joe Abercrombie's also fun, but he's muy macho. I've got no problem with this for the most part* but even his female characters tend to feel like they could be written as guys with minimal changes. I still likes him a lot, but I don't know if everybody is as easily won over on the blood and thunder aspect of his series.

*

If she hasn't read it, I can't recommend Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell highly enough. It's a slow build at the start, but it really takes off once you get into it. It's really well written, and a really unique take on the genre.

Oh it's AMAZING like one of the best works in the genre in years.

Mitchell Smith's Snowfall trilogy.

Stephen Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen.  10 volumes actually finished and ended so there's no wait for the next book.  Supplemental stories in that Universe by Ian C Esslemont which aren't shabby.

Ton of likeable characters, suitably epic in scope.  Really enjoyed them.  I was lucky enough to start them last year so only had to wait a month for the last book (as opposed to waiting each year for the next one).

I'd suggest she gets the first one out of the library, it's one of those series that if you like it you love it, but if it doesn't click with you, you hate it.

I REALLY like Malazan, like a lot. I started reading them this year along with A Song of Ice and Fire, and dropped Martin's books rather quickly*. I not only find Erikson a better writer with a cast of characters a lot more diverse** and a world a lot more strange and fantastic, but he just comes across as a better more literary writer as well.

That being said, these books are dense motherfuckers, and Erikson loves to just drop you into this world and let you sort out it's history and story timeline yourself. And for that and other reasons it's got as many fans as detractors.

*Incidently reading the books again confirmed that I love Game of Thrones as a television show way more. Characters like Cersei actually work for me in a way they never could on the page.

** I'll admit, Tavore being such an important character in the series is possibly one of my main bias towards it.

Ice Song by Kirsten Imani Kasai

Kinda hard to get into for the 1/5 but by the end, I was surprised by how much I dug it. Kinda Gaiman-ish, it's about a heroine in the far future who switches genders against her will & goes on a long, kind of Apocalypse Now-ish journey to rescue her kids while warring with her male self & the drug-addicted creatures she faces along the way. There's a sequel called Tattoo but I haven't read it yet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaurenOrtega 

That being said, these books are dense motherfuckers, and Erikson loves to just drop you into this world and let you sort out it's history and story timeline yourself. And for that and other reasons it's got as many fans as detractors.

Speaking of dense books that don't hold your hand, I've been working my way through Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun" series whenever I've had time. What I've read so far is absolutely fantastic, but be prepared to work at it, cause he does not belief in spelling things out for you. Dense, but totally worth it.

From the super-obvious file: I love Neil Gaiman to death. Neverwhere and American Gods are both among my favorite fantasy novels. If you haven't read Gaiman, you should definitely do so. Again, obvious, but just covering the bases here :)

Also kind of obvious, but a little outside the box: Bone is my favorite fantasy epic I've read recently. It's a comic, and it looks kind of goofy (which is why it took me so long to pick it up), but it's great.

Oh man this whole series is amazing. Gene Wolfe is one of the greatest writers who's ever been involved in fantasy, and I'd dare say the Book of the New Sun is one of the greatest works in the genre.

I guess this is more science fiction but it's not hard science fiction, and definitely infused with fantasy:  Dan Simmons' Hyperion books.  Truly beautiful, expansive storytelling with Dan Simmons' heartbreaking human empathy thrown in.  Great books, especially the first one. 

I don't really read a lot of fantasy myself but I hear the Elric books are great. 

I love them, but they're that older generation of Sword And Sorcery-style storytelling that's quick, a little flurid, and written under the influence of drugs/deadlines. But it's from that special era when Fantasy really was kinda rock an' roll, and has an attitude and tone that later fantasy has never quite returned too. I'm also a fan of M. John Harrison's work for the same reason.

I will say though that an author who I've been fairly smitten with recently is James Enge. He's got three novels out right now(Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way, The Wolf Age) featuring his main character Morlock Ambrosius that takes place in a wonderfully strange fantasy world that owes a little to Arthurian myths, a little to Roger Zelazny, and a lot to classic sword and sorcery. Wolf Age is probably my favorite at the moment, if only because I get a kick out of an entire society of werewolves.

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Originally Posted by grubstreeter 

ty much all. Several of these have already found their way to her Kindle. Please keep them coming as you think of them - this is all very helpful.

 

Rain Dog - I'm supposed to tell you that she has The Passage, and loved it.

If you're jonesing for both Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series and Joss Whedon's Firefly universe, do yourself a favor and pick up Chris Wooding's fantasy/sci-fi pirate series. In order, they are Retribution Falls, The Black Lung Captain, and The Iron Jackal. Very funny, lots of imagination, and good heisty action. Highly recommended. There's a scene with a demon in The Black Lung Captain that is genuinely freaky.

If you want to go way back, check out The Once and Future King. Arthurian legend filtered through T.H. White's humanism turns into a crushingly tragic tale of trying to change the world for the better against all odds and basic human nature.

And that's basically all I've got, because I'm definitely taking way more from this list than I could possibly add to it.

I've only read Retribution Falls but is was tons of fun. Steampunk/fantasy Firefly is just at about a perfect discription.

It also moves very well which is something I tend to highly support in fantasy fiction. Authors who can come up with a complex plot, juggle a crew of characters, and make it smaller than a phone book* are people I like.

Speaking of short but good? Poul Anderson should be looked at stat, not only because he was extremely influential on the genre as a whole(Three Hearts and Three Lions inspired more than one Dungeons and Dragons bit) but because even at a shorter page number he displayed a remarkable maturity in terms of characterization than so many current fantasy writers do. The Broken Sword is probably his best fantasy novel, and it reads like a forgotten Norse Saga. It's dark, and sad, and tends to have that great air of Northern European fatalism that Anderson just was able to draft to the page naturally.

Oh The Once and Future King is amazing, but it's almost like Gormenghast for me. They so tower over everything else ever written in the "fantastic" genre that it's almost impossible to put them with other books.

*I gave up on Rothfuss with The Wise Man's Fear. Name of the Wind already felt a little too bloated for me, but by the time I waded through literally hundreds of pages to get to the army of super-ninjas who don't understand how they get pregnant? I blew a fuse and never looked back. Karl Edward Wagner provided better "deconstructed fantasy" at just 200 pages, a little awareness of that would be good every now and then.

Reading The Name Of The Wind right now. It's ok. Nothing special. I'm craving for another Locke Lamora book like none other. I'll trying out that Chris Wooding series. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by LaurenOrtega 

Scott Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora, which I'd probably recommend even if she didn't like fantasy.

 

It's basically a caper novel set in a fantasy world Venice starring a professional con-man and his sidekicks. It's funny, it's gritty without being eye-rolling, and is written beautifully.

 

Love it.

This a thousand times!  Any news on the new book? Last I heard was march 2012. 

The Dresden series is fun as well. Just imagine a Han Solo type wizard living in a modern day Chicago.

I'm rereading The Black Company right now.  The first time I read it, I found it a little dry and slow.  Now, absolutely loving it.

Quote:e

Originally Posted by MoonBaseNick 

 

This a thousand times!  Any news on the new book? Last I heard was march 2012. 

 

The Dresden series is fun as well. Just imagine a Han Solo type wizard living in a modern day Chicago.

The only real negative about The Dresden Files is that you really have to commit to it. It is a serislized series and doesn't mess around and there are no stand-alones and isn't friendly to new casual readers at all.  It has dozens of sub-plots that sometimes don't get paid off for several books and they can be such minor characters or incidents that Wikipedia will quickly become your friend.

That was the same way with me. The way Cook writes is SO different from most fantasy writers that it caught me off-guard the first time. Now I love his really hard-boiled minimalism.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whiteboy Jones 

If you want to go way back, check out The Once and Future King. Arthurian legend filtered through T.H. White's humanism turns into a crushingly tragic tale of trying to change the world for the better against all odds and basic human nature.

 

And that's basically all I've got, because I'm definitely taking way more from this list than I could possibly add to it.

If we're going there, then I'd definitely recommend Marion Zimmer Bradleys Mists Of Avalon. It's the story of King Arthur told from the perspective of the women of the story. It's a cracking read.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cameron Hughes 

The only real negative about The Dresden Files is that you really have to commit to it. It is a serislized series and doesn't mess around and there are no stand-alones and isn't friendly to new casual readers at all.  It has dozens of sub-plots that sometimes don't get paid off for several books and they can be such minor characters or incidents that Wikipedia will quickly become your friend.

Yep, but it's a fun series to get into. Good to see that I was not the only way to hit up Wikipedia in order to figure out what the hell happened.

Barry Hughart's Master Li and Number 10 Ox trilogy, only a trilogy because of publisher incompetance and not realizing what they had, takes place in China and mixes adventure, Asian philosophy and Terry Pratchett humor. Subterranean Press published a beautiful omnibus of all three books.

http://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Master-Li-Number-Ten/dp/1596064552/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320816500&sr=1-1

So here's a kind of related question:

Disworld

Do I just start with the first book or what?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whiteboy Jones 

So here's a kind of related question:

 

Disworld

 

Do I just start with the first book or what?

Here's a guide:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/terry-pratchett-novels,64917/

These are REALLY great, and a perfect example of how to tell a fantasy story with tons of character, beautiful writing, humor, and a sense of epicness without needing to create twenty doorstoppers.

John Meaney's Bone Song and the sequel Black Blood are basically episodes of Homicide written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro and Tim Burton set in the world of HalloweenLand. Really great books with an absolutely unique and alien setting,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whiteboy Jones 

So here's a kind of related question:

 

Disworld

 

Do I just start with the first book or what?

I like to imagine the "Disworld" series of novels chronicle the adventures of a series of young wannabe gangstas who always insult each other.

Start with Mort, for Discworld.

Also, Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series is really goddamn good.

I have only read one fantasy series and I believe I have mentioned it elsewhere on the boards but The Change series by S.M. Stirling is good stuff in my opinion. 

The original series, starting with Island in the Sea of Time, was set on the island of Nantucket and the series that begins with Dies the Fire is set in Oregon.

Man I wish I could enjoy these books, because lots of people love Sanderson, but I just can't like the guy's works at all.

Okay, another favorite I'm tossing off here that's also fairly obscure is The Gonji series by T.C. Rypel which saw a series of five books in the 80's. It's a sage involving a Japanese Samurai and his trips around reniassance Europe and the bizarre supernatural situations he finds himself dealing with. The first 3 books form a trilogy with Gonji attempting to defend the city of Vedun in the Carpathians from a group of nomadic warriors from an old Pulp-Inspired Hyperborian lost civilization. Werewolves somehow are featured in, there's an Italian mercenary cook who sounds like he comes out of a John Wayne Western, and the main plot itself has vibes of Yojimbo transposed onto the classic fantasy frame work.

The other two books in the series aren't quite as good, but they still showcase writing that's actually imaginative and witty, as opposed to the type of fantasy that wastes 60 pages setting up the economics of whatever city the characters are sitting around in.

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Originally Posted by mediumdave 

Start with Mort, for Discworld.

 

Also, Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series is really goddamn good.

I love Eric, Pratchett's take on the play Faust.