Ask Lemmy

You will get varying degrees of people crapping on A Song of Ice and Fire, because it is incomplete... But the tale telling in his books are imo, unparalleled. Ive read and reread the series several times, and it always pays off, especially if you get into the deeper storytelling that you miss on the first read. Ive finally reached a peace with the author, after hating in him like everyone else... That is because i realized that id rather live in a world with the story he started, than live in a world where i never experienced the story at all.

Last week i finished the first book of a trilogy i had never heard of, and its a damn shame it doesn't have more fans. I urge anyone who sees this to add at least the first book to their reading list. That would be Bernard Cornwell's "The Winter King". It is a retelling of the King Arthur tale, from a new angle, and i LOVED it. The first book is pretty amazing on its own, and it stands alone. I have started the 2nd book, but not gotten too far into it.

Id also like to recommend The Black Company books by Glenn Cook. These are a different slant on fantasy, and really good.

Discworld is great, but the first few Rincewind books aren't as good as later books. Find the Discworld reading guide for help. You can't really go wrong with any top Fantasy or SciFi lists.

I'm more of an SF person, but I really enjoyed the Raksura series, by Martha Wells, about a guy who can shape shift into a sort of dragon. I'm also currently rereading the Amber Chronicles, by Roger Zelazny, and it's very good.

In case it helps any, I made a post with a giant number of spoiler-free short reviews of SF and fantasy books I've read over the last few years, and many of the books mentioned here are in them.

Titan, Wizard, and Demon by John Varley. The first book starts off with a bog-standard "first human exploration of Saturn's system" bit, but starts going off the rails immediately. By the end, you'll meet a 50 foot clone of Marilyn Monroe and think, "eh, I'll accept that."

It's one of sci-fi's more delightfully unhinged stories.

I always loved the Bartimaeus books from Jonathan Stroud.

I also think if pop culture catch-up is a concern you could read Twilight and Eragon both were quite influential in my social circle at the time they were new. I have read both and I liked them too. I don’t think that they are revolutionary or the best pice of writing but they had arguably an impact.

I'm gonna suggest a web novel, Practical Guide to Evil. Great series about 8 books long that follows the apprentice of a medieval fantasy villain. Looks like the first book just dropped on Amazon for kindle and audiobook last year

"A Song of Ice and Fire" if you can accept that the last books will never be written

I would recommend Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series as well as his Lyonesse Trilogy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Earth

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyonesse_Trilogy

My ex was really fond of Dragonlance which is a DnD original setting. Inspired a bunch of heavy metal music I guess.

My mother is pretty obsessed with Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, which blends sci-fi into fantasy.

I can remember liking fantasy way too much as a teenager but nothing that I still think holds up now. Maybe Sabriel by Garth Nix, it was about necromancers

I have already read some excellent suggetions. Here's some of mine:

The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb (the Lifeship Trilogy is excellent as well)) The Many-Colored Land series by Julian May Imajica by Clive Barker

Don't bother with the Ice and Fire series by GRR Martin. The first three books are good and the rest is meh. As per the fourth book, an entirely new set of characters and storylines were introduced, without actuallly finishing the story after the first three books. The story will not be finished and that's a bummer. Life's too short and there's too much better stuff out there.

Although it's more recent, my favorite fantasy novels are the first law series by Abercrombie (I suggest the audio book). It's grim dark fantasy, very pessemistic with great character work.

If you fancy a small change over to comic/graphic novels, I can highly recommend the Alan Moore run of Swamp Thing. Two years ago I would have also included Neil Gaiman's Sandman, but it seems that he's a piece of shit, so if you do want to read his stuff, please pirate it to avoid giving him any money.

Along the same lines as Discworld and Hitchhikers Guide, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The Amazon tv adaptation is excellent as well.

I read Dresden Files for the first time within the last 18 months and I've been relentlessly shilling it to everyone ever since. I've been a bookworm my entire life and it's probably my favorite series I've ever read, ever. It fucking slaps, it's SO good.

Hand of the Emperor is the start of a many novel, interwoven set of stories. Calming, delightful.

Some classics are Conan by Howard, Michael Moorcock's Elric books and Fritz Leiber's "Swords" books. I really like Dune as well (but that's sci fi I guess). Have fun with Discworld!

The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander.

"Where the Red Fern Grows"

Glory Road is begging for an adaption, even tho a bunch of other stories have ripped off the premise. Like, it'll be a "new" story to you, but you're going to constantly see shit that other writers ripped off in the 60 years since it was published.

It's Heinlein pulp SciFi too, so you can legit read it all in a day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_Road

If you like that and want more, he wrote a shit ton of novels about "Lazarus Long". Like, true old school 1960s sci Fi where the books weren't telling a single coherent story, he just had to keep pumping out pages so he kept coming up with new stories.

There's also "Stranger in a Strange land" which was known as "The hippie bible" during the height of the counter-culture movement, despite being about a man raised by Martians who returns to Earth.

Just anything by Heinlein really

Such good recommendations so far. If you like comics, I will add:

Saga

Lucifer

And since I don't see him mentioned here: anything by Ian McDonald is wonderful, and I like everything by Mike Carey too. Not swords & dragons but fantasy books.

If you’re open to manga: Dungeon Meshi

• The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
• Earth's Children, technically “prehistorical fiction” but I think that qualifies as fantasy.