/lit/ - Literature

>>6020621

Gormenghast if you want something that's original and not inspired by Tolkein's shit.

>fantasy
>good

>>6020621
Metro 2033

The Princess Bride
The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox
Little, Big
just Gene Wolfe in general

I've only gotten through the first page or so of The Godmakers. No idea where it's going. I'm sure it'll be wonderful all the same.

pratchetts discworld

just comfy fun times

Book of the New Sun
Discworld
The Way of Kings
Gentleman Bastards (first book only)
Farseer Trilogy (followed by Tawny Man trilogy)
The Black Company

These are my personal favourites. This guy >>6020653 has some fine recommendations as well.

>>6020621
Silmarillion and Children of Hurin, Book of the New Sun and The Wizard Knight.
Didn't read any other fantasy I would recommend.

>>6022415
The Way of Kings is a badass fantasy book. would recommend it times a million.

Most of Sanderson's works, if you like meta.

Also this is YA but Sabriel is very solid. Everworld too, if you can get your hands on it.

Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicle series gets a lot of acclaim. What's the appeal, exactly?

Seriously, why havent i never read something about Joe Abercrombie and his "The first Law" Series.

You should really give it a shot OP.

Its low Fantasy, some magic but not really Important or flashy. Some Monsters but most of the Antagonists are human and so are their Motives. The Characters in these books are really non Stereotypical and understandable.

Its stunning how realistic its written really.

But its have its fair share of violence and conflict so its wont get boring.

>>6022415
Fuck yeah to the Farseer trilogy, I never see anyone talk about Robin Hobb

>ctrl+f
>malazan
>no matches
if you can make it past the first book, the first half of the series is really engaging and has some of the most tasteful and realized world-building for a fantasy series.

the hobbit is an academic joke doe

>>6022808
There isn't one. It's terrible generic tripe featuring a Gary Stu becoming a sex god.

>>6022808
Self insert demigod sex fantasy.

>>6020621

Narnia, which you may have read as a kid, is actually quite good revisited, really simple and pretty.

I think the main problem with fantasy though is that good writing deals with Truths, things about humanity and our reality and therein lies the value in most literature.

So while there isn't necessarily anything injurious and including wizards and dragons, the fact that a writer would go to all the extra trouble, and laden his prose will all the extra words, in other to add something that is superfluous and doesn't really contribute any Truth, anything of real value, suggests that the writer himself is not great.

So it's not that fantasy is cancer, it's that the writers who would want to write in fantasy tend to be not so great.

But elements of fantasy can be very beautiful, just look at Oscar Wilde's fairy tales, legends of king Arthur, or even Shakespeare.

Well since we are already all here, I gots a question if somebody can name a book I read as a teenager.
It was fantasy without magic and the plot basically revolved around people constructing a computer without electricity or steam, just composed of and powered by people (slaves?) That were basically the circuits. Also politics and some battles I believe.

>>6023048
I enjoyed Deadhouse Gates immensely, especially near the end.
I have to second this recommendation.

>>6020621
The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan

Not the best written books out there, but the story is super engrossing and there are 14 of them so you'll be set for quite a while

I'll rec you some of my favorites:

A Land fit for Heroes series - Richard K. Morgan
The Coldfire trilogy - C.S. Friedman
The Deepgate Codex series - Alan Campbell
The Elric Saga - Michael Moorcock
The Bas-Lag series - China Mieville
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

I also consider H.P. Lovecraft more of a fantasy writer than a horror writer, so look into him as well

>>6023711
>is actually quite good revisited

C.S. Lewis fills his books up with rants that read like an out of touch old conservative man's letters to the editor of his local small town newspaper

>>6023037
I don't know how to feel about the Assassin's Quest's ending though... left me feeling so damn bitter. Loved that Royal Assassin ending.

>>6022878
Glokta getting that pussy; he was such a bro no matter how crippled he was

>>6025247
Wheel of Time is basically a soap opera

>>6022471
>>6022415
considering picking up Book of the New Sun, anyone care to tell me what was good about it?

>>6022878
I read the first book and it was pretty flat, generic, and lacking in any real depth. It made me laugh a few times though. The characters were enjoyable in a simple way.

>>6025490
Bizarre world filtered through fascinatingly unreliable main character. I would recommend the Fifth Head of Cerberus first, I liked it better overall and at ~200 pages it's a great introduction to the kind of games Wolfe plays.

>>6025511
alright ill check it out then

>>6020648
>>6020805

Since no one mentioned him yet, I'm going to go ahead and recommend you Michael Swanwick's two Faerie books, The Iron Dragon's Daughter and The Dragons of Babel.

The setting is amazing. There are elves, yes, but they're capitalist dicks in Armani suits who exploit their half-mortal offspring and make them pilot sentient iron dragons that function like fighter jets.

I consider it a fine example of non-Tolkenian fantasy.

If you want something with a deep lore, rich in mythology and mysticism. What would you be looking for?

>>6027225
Malazan. Writing quality is debated but the world building is pretty much as good as it gets.

>>6027240

>>6025490
It's like a puzzle made into a novel, the setting is haunting, beautiful and bizarre, Severian is complex, the narrative exists on 3 layers (what Severian tells, what he lies about and what he doesn't understand), lots of metaphysics and theology, symbolism on each step. It's probably the most captivating book I will ever read.

>>6020621
>ctrl + f
>no Dune
Why /lit/, why

>>6027347
Because it's classic sf?
Ps it isn't that special

Also Pratchett

>>6023048

I thought Book 2 was the low point of Malazan, actually. The central war in the novel was, bluntly put, cardboard cutouts vs the good guys. We can argue all day long that the actual good guys might have done some bad things, but there was nill characterization of the opposing force, so how could anyone possibly side with them?
Liked Book 1 more than that, where Erikson atleast attached a face to the antagonists, and you weren't entirely sure who the ''bad guys'' were until the very end.
Sudden deus ex machinas in both books not withstanding, some bothered me more than others.

Haven't read beyond that point yet, but I might. I don't know, most people seem to agree that "Memories of ice'' continues in the same vein of ''Deadhouse Gates'', which isn't the best recommendation in my opinion. I mean, it's just generic fantasy upped a notch.

For the OP, try ''The First Law'', Abercrombie is fantastic.

>>6027756
I don't understand what people like about The First Law series.

>>6027791

Great characterization, most importantly. Atleast that drives me to read more of Abercrombie's books. World-building alone cannot keep me engaged. The highly acclaimed "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn'' is a good example of this, great prose and world-building but subpar characterization and boring plot, it never managed to interest me.

But to each their own.

>>6027826
See I read the whole trilogy and I didn't think the characterization came off as all that great. Bayaz, for example, was a character that I thought had potential at the beginning of the series but ended up as something disappointingly simple and shallow.

>>6020621
Chronicles of the Black Company...breakfast reading