Best Fantasy Novels

[rah]

Originally posted by Zhu Yuanzhang
Oh and I remember really liking Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy but I read 'em a looong time ago (early HS I think) so its hard to tell if they're really good or if I was being a stupid kid (I was even dumb enough to read some of the WoT books three times ).

Yes I know the feeling. Ming's has over 10,000 books in his collection. I've figured I've read over 80% of them in the last 40 years. I'm sure I thought many were great when I read them, and they were really crap. The 50+ books in the Perry Rodan series (sp?) come to mind.

RAH

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Rah


Good calls. Piers Anthony Rider on Pale Horse was a great intro to that series and the last two were also very good The one with the D Evil and the other with G(o)od were also well done (forget the actual titles).

If we were to expand to SCIFI I would also include Anthony's Bio of a Space Tyrant as well as the First Ender's Series book and the accompanying Ender's Shadow and Hegemon books(The middle two were mediocre IMO) , throw in The Mote in God's Eye series and Asimov's Robot and Foundation series for good measure. But since this is strictly Fantasy, scratch the above.

Og

[Ming]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
If we were to expand to SCIFI Og

We've already had a few threads on that subject

I just look at all the Fantasy series on my shelves... most were entertaining, but I still have to go with LOTR

But for sword and socery... I'll take the original Conan stuff by Robert E. Howard (not the crap re-edited or written by other authors)

[rah]

Originally posted by Zhu Yuanzhang

Tried those, got be bit turned off after the rape scene though and ended up dropping it not much past that...

I'm not 100% sure, but doesn't that scene happen in like the first 100 pages of the trilogy? I wish I had done the same. I kept thinking he would get more likable. God was I stupid.

RAH

And yes the ORIGINAL Conan stories rocked. No matter how you pronounced his name

Even though it's scifi, I like the BIO series also
But please ignore, this is for fantasy.

[Arrian]

LotR clearly is great.

I enjoyed the Belgariad... and confess to still liking the Mallorean, even though I was concious that it had gotten stale. I guess I just like the characters.

I really enjoyed the DeathsGate Cycle (Weiss/Hickman).

I enjoyed the Farseer and Liveship Traders books by Robin Hobb.

Oh, yeah, and the Taltos books are cool too. I love the dry humor.

-Arrian

[rah]

My wife always jokes that the there's only two differences between Fantasy and Science fiction

what do they ride. Horses or spaceships.
what do the kill with. Magic/sword or rayguns.

needless to say, she is not a big fan of either.
But since her idea of a good author is Danielle Steele.......

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

LOL

Mine reads "Barbarian at the Gates" , "Atlas Shrugged", & "Zen and the Art of Motorcylce Maintenance"

Go figure at least its not Danielle Steele


I just remembered if Conan is in there Fritz Leiber's Grey Mouser and Farfahrd (Sp?) should be considered for comic relief alone

[Andemagne]

Originally posted by Zhu Yuanzhang
Moorecock's Elric series definately also deserve a nomination.

true

[Buck Birdseed]

Glad to see someone besides me likes Conan. Just read through the collected original Short Stories (out now in two volumes of the Fantasy Masterworks series) and it's still bloody brilliant writing. Pacy, gory, exciting (and racist, sexist, pro-violence, but hey).

[rah]

snapy,
And the scenes where the hair on his neck would rise or his skin would crawl when he was around magic or deities, it would on mine too. Well written.

[- Groucho -]

A quick and not that well thought out ranking of the top 5 fantasy stories:

1. LotR
2. Taltos - Steven Brust (just because here it is, years later, and I'm still reading them)
3. Winter of the World trilogy - Michael Scott Rohan (there is a new fourth book, but I haven't read it)
4. Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin
5. A Song of Ice and Fire - George R.R. Martin

A quick and not that well thought out list of the worst:

1. All series written by authors who descended into verbal diarhea after teasing us with one or two good books and thus destroying our appreciation of anything they've written (Anthony, Eddings, Donaldson, the Wheel of Time guy, etc. et-bloody-cetera)

[Zoid]

LOTR of course..

The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay

The Empire trilogy by Feist & Wurts

Earthsea trilogy by LeGuin

Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card

All the Pratchett books.

Elric series by Michael Moorcock

That´s all I can think of right now...

[Buck Birdseed]

Oh, and chalk me down with the "Read the first book of Thomas Covenant until the Rape Scene, which was disturbing, so I stopped soon afterwards" crowd.

[Clear Skies]

Only read the second page of this thread, but am surprised that no-one's mentioned Magic's Pawn by Mercedes Lackey. Damn good book.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Snapcase
Oh, and chalk me down with the "Read the first book of Thomas Covenant until the Rape Scene, which was disturbing, so I stopped soon afterwards" crowd.

Chalk me down for another I should have stopped after the rape scene, but still read the entire series anyway.... ouch...