/lit/ - Literature

Have you read "His Dark Materials"? (More Hobbit than LOTR)

>>615907
try out Eragon
level of english??

>>615908
>>615908
i heard Eragon wasn't that great, and i am in college

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
Prince of Nothing by R. Scott Bakker

>>615917
>>615909
OP, this should be good for now, no need for a long thread....and yes Eragon was a little sub-par

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
Silmarilion by Tolkien.
The Riftwar Cycle by Raymond E. Feist.

Eragon was terrible and overwrought. Paolini tries too hard to sound intelligent by using multisyllable words, but just comes off as a pretentious asshat. Not worth reading; just think of Star Wars in a fantasy setting with dragons and a lot of teenage angst.

>>615937

Well done, sir

Eragon was awful. The plot is almost completely copied from LotR/Star Wars and the writing was horrid. Eldest however, was actually okay and probably the most amazing improvement between two books from a single author I've ever seen. For those who slogged their way through Eragon, I recommend giving Eldest a try just to see how much Paolini improved in a short span of time.

A Song of Ice and Fire has already been mentioned, but that would definitely be my pick.

Some other good ones are:
Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan
Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series by Tad Williams
Dying Earth Saga by Jack Vance
Lyonesse Trilogy by Jack Vance

I also tried Blood of Elves (first of the Witcher books, by Andrzej Sapkowski) recently, and it was actually alright. Worth a read, in my opinion anyways.

Glen Cook's Black Company
Brust's Taltos books
Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn

move on from fantasy

You could try the Codex Alera by Jim Butcher, I always enjoyed them.

Eragon was written by a teenager and the only reason it got published is because the teenager's dad was a publisher and did it for him. That should be enough to convince you to put this serie outside of your consideration.

I'll echo reading the Silmarillion, if you like Tolkien. I think it's better than LOTR, but most Tolkien fans disagree with me.

David Eddings wrote a damn good series of books, those being The Malloreon. Don't read the prequel, The Belgariad. It's not all that well-written comparatively. But it is great and witty fantasy.

Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea cycle can be pretty entertaining. It's six books, and the only real stinker is Tehanu, the 4th. That's because LeGuin turned feminist at the time, so she retconned the fuck out of every character, and it is very hard to swallow. It got better after that, though. The original trilogy is pretty damn great, though.

Also: The Worm Ouroboros.
It can be seen as the other end of the fantasy spectrum with Tolkien, in a way, considering how they are roughly in the same time period of sorts.

I see it as the other end, because after Ouroboros and LOTR, fantasy started to be more like Tolkien and less like Ouroboros. Which is a shame; Ouroboros is probably one of the most entertaining fantasy novels ever written, and Tolkien's imitators are not all that good.

Excerpt from Eragon: Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world. A tall Shade lifted his head and sniffed the air. He looked human except for his crimson hair and maroon eyes.

He blinked in surprise. The message had been correct; they were here. Or was it a trap? He weighed the odds, then said icily, "Spread out; hide behind trees and bushes. Stop whoever is coming . . . or die."

There - you've read it and know you know that it sucks. I've saved you a lot of time and I would appreciate compensation via paypal

>>616125

And he dressed up in costume and went around hawking it at schools.

Peter David's Sir Apropos of Nothing. Never before have I read a fantasy novel that simulatenously parodies and homages the genre so well.

>Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world. A tall Shade lifted his head and sniffed the air. He looked human except for his crimson hair and maroon eyes.

He blinked in surprise. The message had been correct; they were here. Or was it a trap? He weighed the odds, then said icily, "Spread out; hide behind trees and bushes. Stop whoever is coming . . . or die."

christ, i'm not even a serious litfag and i can tell that's shit

The Eternal Champion cycle

>>616133

>Also: The Worm Ouroboros.

You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman.

OP, besides Moorcock, GRRM and Eddison, I'd suggest Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books, George MacDonald's Phantastes and Lilith, and pretty much anything by Lord Dunsany.

>>615974
The fuck are you talking about? Eldest was crap.

How has nobody suggested The Dark Tower?

Wheel of Time

insert awesome Lord of Chaos art, since dragonmount is down and I can't get to it.

Dragonlance is alright. And pic related and its sequels.

Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the Dark Tower series were all phenomenal. Elizabeth Haydon wrote Rhapsody, Prophecy and Destiny (I can't remember if there was an official name for that series) along with 3 follow-up books in The Symphony of Ages series. The writing wasn't always mind blowing, but I seriously enjoyed the storyline. Along a less serious line, there's always Terry Pratchett. Sure his books are 'comedy', but the stories are no less intriguing for it. If you really can't find anything else to read, just use http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/

>>615905
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>>616413
This one?

>>615905
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>>615905
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>>615904
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I'd recommend some LE Modesitt's books, but you really only need to read 2 or 3 before you get the idea and can move on.

Lawrence Watt-Evans: Lords of Dûs, Ethshar novels, Annals of the Chosen, Obsidian Chronicles.

Good world building, great stories

Anything by David Gemmell, prepare for manly tears

>>617971

Yeh go for some Gemmell, it's manly, easy to read but still complex enough to keep you hooked. Great characters too, he uses so few words to describe people but you still get such a defined image of them.

Guy Gavriel Kay's pretty awesome. Fionavar Tapestry, Tigana, and Song for Arbonne.

>>615917
This 100 times

Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.
Robert E. Howard's Conan.
Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast.
Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom Series (* of Mars)
Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, The Fifth Head of Cerberus and the Wizard Knight.
Steven Erikson's Malazan: Book of the Fallen.
Patrick Rothfuss: In the Name of the Wind.
Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, the Broken Sword, Hrolf Kraki's Saga.
Jack Vance's Lyonesse, Dying Earth, Planet of Adventure, Demon Princes.
Lord Dunsany's Gods of Pegana, Sword of Welleran, The King of Elfland's Daughter.
Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborea, Zothique, Averoigne.
George MacDonald's Phantastes.
Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung series.
Sir Thomas Mallory's Le Morte D'Arthur.
Richard Adams Shardik.
James Cabell Branch's Jurgen.
William Hope Hodgson's the Night Land.
Hope Mirrlees Lud-in-the-Mist.
William Morris the Glittering Plain.

>>616133
u kinda need the belgariad to understand the mallorean tho. i loved both, didnt notive any bad writing in belgariad

The Bazil Broketail series

I'd suggest Sword of Truth, but I'm going to get a shitstorm of people telling me how bad it was, how stupid it is, how it's just a medium for Goodkind's propaganda, etc. Fuck it. I loved that series and still do.

Here's a bunch, OP.

Shannara series by Terry Brooks
Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan
Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind
Belgariad series by David Eddings
Doppleganger and "Witch and Wizard" by Marie Brennan
Green Rider by Kristen Britain
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R Donaldson

>>615907
Check out 'A Wizard of Earthsea'

>>618064
The characters were a bit too simplified for me, and it did something i hate in fantasy, the OMG YOU NOBLES TREAT THE PEASANTS SO BAD sequence, which is about as enjoyable to read as a sock to the nuts. I mean, it's good in plenty of places, but you can really see that Eddings got a lot better at writing by the time of Malloreon.

I read the Malloreon first after recommendations of a good fantasy lover telling me "You won't really need to read the Bel. to understand it."

Of course, after Malloreon, I loved the world so much that I BOUGHT the Belgariad and read that, and Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress.