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Hello TeamLiquid! I'm Praetorial, and I need to ask a question.
Give me a book!
I've just finished all of Jim Butcher's novels-the Dresden Files and the Codex Alera. I swept through all of George R. R. Martin's books-A Song of Ice and Fire-and found it to be rather boring.
This took me two weeks.
Unfortunately, now I am very bored, with no fantasy fiction books lying around. I would like a few recommendations, if you would be so kind.
Rules:
1)No classics-Yes, I've read Lord of the Rings, no I don't want to read Glen Cook.
2)Must be baller-Please don't give me a Game of Thrones-esque novel that is six hundred pages of nothing.
3)Must be(somewhat) SFW-If someone glances over my shoulder, I don't want to cause a riot(I'm a freshman, what do you expect)
4)Must be a series-I can read ~1000 pages a day. It's just my thing, and I don't want to be satisfied with my reading for only a day.
5)Fantasy fiction.
6)Explain your choice, please.
Thank you for your time, and I apologize for having wasted it on this sorry blog if you came here looking for a decent blog.
 
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Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis.Best example of the realism movement in Brazil.It is really dark and embracing,altho short.
Nvm.It isn't a series.I've never read "O tempo e o vento " by Érico Verissimo,Its a very long series but a friend did and she said she loves it.Memórias Postumas de Brás Cubras & Quincas Borba by Machado de Assis are indeed related to each other so they "kinda" qualify as a series.
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On January 13 2012 12:50 mrafaeldie12 wrote:
Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis.Best example of the realism movement in Brazil.It is really dark and embracing,altho short.
Fantasy fiction only, people.
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Easy 2 choices for you. Both are excellent although one is more highly regarded imo and slightly better. Check out goodreads.com ... I actually somewhat trust their rating system. Anything above 4 should be very good (I have not checked Twilight ratings so don't hold me on it =P).
1) The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle ... yeah lame series name I know) - Patrick Rothfuss - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/186074.The_Name_of_the_Wind
This one is Harry Potter, in a good way for older ppl. It is very well written in terms of quality and has a very interesting main character. Note that it is not as serious as Game of Thrones, but definitely moreso than Harry Potter. I believe the second book in this series recently came out and was maybe ? voted the best for fantasy or something on goodreads.
2) The Lies of Locke Lamora (The Gentlemen Bastards) - Scott Lynch - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/127455.The_Lies_of_Locke_Lamora
As one reviewer mentioned ... this is like Ocean's Eleven with Robin Hood set in a very interesting Venetian/Italian settting (not modern setting) but with some magic elements. The writing is not as good as Name of the Wind or Game of Thrones but the story and cons are highly entertaining in a pirate-like way (weird way to describe it I know).
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Excellent, thank you. I've heard of it, but never bothered to read it. I hated Game of Thrones, the books were terrible.
I actually liked Twilight(aaaaaah don't crucify me).
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Canada5565 Posts
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I was going to say JG Ballard's short stories, but they're short stories. There's a lot of them, so they can take up a lot of your time, and there's some continuity between them.
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I will also suggest two other books by the same author which are ok but I think you might like. Wikipedia them both or find them on www.goodreads.com to get more info or reviews. I did not like them as much as the other two I mentioned because I feel like sometimes things become too fantasy cheesy. But I have a feeling we have slightly different tastes and you might like them a lot more than me.
1) Mistborn: The Final Empire (Mistborn Triology) - Brandon Sanderson
This has an interesting magic/rule system where you eat metals and gain particular abilities.
2) The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive) - Brandon Sanderson
Edit: Name of the Wind is definitely the most well written out of the bunch and is a bestseller ... so it's a bit more well known.
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If you haven't read it yet, The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan is definitely one of my favorite series ever. Not sure if it will be your cup of tea but it will definitely fulfill your requirement of being a series, seeing as its like 13 books.
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idk if you've seen this or not, but it was recently posted in the 2012 what are you reading thread. So far i've found 3 books (although all scifi) to read from it, i hope it'll be of use to you.
![[image loading]](http://www.box.com/shared/static/a6omcl2la0ivlxsn3o8m.jpg)
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The Shannara series by Terry Brooks, read ALLL of the books! (:
The first few ones felt "like Narnia, but,,,, not" but then it just goes crazy. I've really enjoyed the series, but it's been a while so I can't give too many details. Easy reading, Legendary swords, saving the elf life-tree, the last of the druids with their dissapearing castle etc. One thing I quite like about it is that throughout the series it's the same sort of locations/items (e.g. The Sword of Shannara) but in really different environments over the course of 'a few centuries passing'.
I would recommend starting from the first one (IIRC "the book of 3") and going from there. Many books, but you can easily blast through them. Another one is the whole Earthsea series by Ursula Le Guin. Only about 4 in them, but it's a novel universe, really gives a different and interesting perspective on the whole 'magic' of things (the drains it has on the wielder, and the hand-in-hand edness of 'good' and 'evil' magic, interesting).
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The Malazan Book of the Fallen series if you like large amounts ofmagic thrown into your fantasy?
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9 princes of amber - Roger Zelazny
Intense, gripping, thought-invoking fantasy about alternate realities and battles for kingship.
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Wheel of Time series
13 (soon to be 14 books) each about 800 pages iirc so plenty of reading to do.
Very well developed stories and characters.
Good vs. evil type of plot (to overly simplify it).
Not really sure how else to sell it (hopefully someone else will help!), I'll just say I've reread it about 5 times now, for each of the past 2 book releases I got it day of and read all day until I was done, and am almost literally counting down the days to the final book's release.
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How do you read so fast? :o Maybe you should try some books which require some critical thinking so you can take them more slowly  I don't particularly like fantasy so I can't help you with recommendations.
Seriously 1000 pages what the hell lol. If you only tried Victorian fiction there would be so many novels written for you.
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On January 13 2012 13:43 Chef wrote:How do you read so fast? :o Maybe you should try some books which require some critical thinking so you can take them more slowly I don't particularly like fantasy so I can't help you with recommendations. Seriously 1000 pages what the hell lol. If you only tried Victorian fiction there would be so many novels written for you.
I'm a bit in shock too. 1000 pages seems like overload, how do you even start to process the information, be enveloped in the atmosphere and characters, while you just race through? And seeing as you enjoyed the Dresden files which is predominately action with very little thought involved maybe try the Abhorsen trilogy? I quite enjoyed it as a teen and there's a very minimal amount complexity like AsoiaF, which you labelled 'boring'.
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I would recommend the Dragonlance series of books starting with Dragons Of Autumn Twilight, thats the first book in the chronicles series. In the entire universe of books theirs 5-6 series of 3 books each. Plus theres a bunch of other people who are now writing books set in the same universe so you always have something new to read!
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Buddy fantasy is for scrubs. Time to graduate to science fiction. You can start with the complete works of Philip K Dick and move on to William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Kim Stanley Robinson.
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I don't read a lot but here you go.
Inheritance series by Chris Paolini
Final book just came out. There's four books and probably about 2500 pages. General idea is the main character is a dragon rider. Feels a lot like Star Wars without the space part. The third book has a lot of interesting ideas in it.
Eragon
Eldest
Brisingr
Inheritance
+ Show Spoiler [sorry, these are probably classics.] +Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
More of the above with different ideas thrown in. She's probably the most well-known sage of dragon fiction.
Dragonflight
Dragonquest
The White Dragon
Dragonsong
Dragonsinger
Dragondrums
sci-fi:
Dune series by Frank Herbert
Original book considered by many to be the best sci-fi of all time. Best-selling sci-fi novel in history, 1966 Hugo Award, etc.
Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune
Chapterhouse: Dune
+ Show Spoiler [maybe classic] +sci-fi:
Foundation series by Isaac Asimov
It's Asimov, and it doesn't disappoint. It's sci-fi though! From Wiki: "According to Asimov, the premise was based on ideas set forth in Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and was invented spontaneously on his way to meet with editor John W. Campbell, with whom he developed the concept." I haven't read it yet, but it's on my shortlist.
Foundation
Foundation and Empire
Second Foundation
Foundation's Edge
Foundation and Earth
Prelude to Foundation
Forward the Foundation
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Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series (ongoing, currently @ 13 books, but they're stand-alones pretty much), and if you like those, you should read the rest of his books, especially his Khaavren Romances series (five books, very good parody of Dumas's Three Musketeers, set in the same world as the Vlad series). He's an amazing fantasy/sci-fi author who is almost too witty for his own good. Sharp, light writing. I haven't read the Dresden Files but I've heard if you like the style of that Butcher's series, you will almost certainly enjoy Brust's style in the Vlad series. The dialogue is amazing, the pacing fast.
Quick dirty summary: Vlad's a human assassin living in a city mostly populated and controlled by Dragaerans (think "elves") who basically constitute the upper social class. He gets hired for jobs. The initial books of the series are basically about him carrying out those jobs. They're written like detective stories -- Vlad figuring out how to carry out his job -- except ... well, from the other point of view. Later stories start to develop more of an arc of development and plotting that go beyond just "he gets a job, he does it" though the structure of the stories essentially stays the same throughout. He's a snarky wise-ass and has snarky wise-ass friends. The characters are very well-written and likeable, even when they shouldn't be, and the setting well-developed and well-presented. There's no Good vs. Evil shit going on, just a lot of human wranglings. Assassinations, bank scandals, untying legal matters, personal and petty revenge, warfare (he gets enlisted into the army against his choice in one of the books and is very annoyed), close escapes, gods-being-fuck-all-irritating-for-no-reason, plots-within-plots -- you name it, Brust's written it and usually with a twist.
It's not a classic (not main-stream enough despite it's subject material, rofl), it's definitely baller, it's SFW, it is a series, it's fantasy fiction, and it's a fast read, so just pick up the first book (Jhereg), get through it, and then you can judge for yourself instead of having me blather at you. You can find excerpts online at Amazon if you want to just take a look at his style.
Some short quotes from his books can be found here, just to give you a feel for his sort of wit: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/27704.Steven_Brust
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EPT
