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Fantasy Books

liv

Record Breaker
Joined
Oct 12, 2015
I love the Robin Hobb books.... the Farseer trilogy/tawny man a nd now Fitz and the Fool...
And I love the Patrick Rothfuss books about Kvothe.... waiting and waiting for his next one...
And, of course, ASOIAF, goes without saying :)
 

elbkup

Power without conscience is a savage weapon
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Mar 3, 2015
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Two fantasy authors that have meant a lot to me are Ursula K.LeGuin and Jennifer Roberson; I have read their works over and over thru the years. Fantasy is totally subjective and personal and these authors have resonance for me

Ursula LeGuin's writing is reflective, innovative, very spiritual and seems to transcend generations in that my nephew (now an anthropologist) also grew up reading her books and was profoundly influenced by them..... My favorites are:
The Earthsea Trilogy (Wizard of Earthsea; Tombs of Atuan; Farthest Shore), Tehanu (my very favorite about a damaged child who is so wise and far more than she appears to be!), and, of course, Left Hand of Darkness.

Jennifer Roberson's books are entertaining, full of action & romance, along the lines of Game of Thrones (but better IMHO). She wrote two extensive series:

The Cheysuli Chronicles is a timeline of two opposing families over many generations and has overtones of Native American folklore... Books are:
Shapechangers
Song of Homana
Legacy of the Sword
Track of the White Wolf
A Tapestry of Lyons
Daughter of the Lion
Flight of the Raven
A Pride of Princes

Her other series is The Sword Dancer Saga including
Sword Dancer
Sword Singer
Sword Maker
Sword Breaker
Sword Born
Sword Bound
About relationship between equals and races
 
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LRK

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
Geraldine Harris: "The Children of the Wind" (Re-read) - The second book in the Seven Citadels quartet. Prince Kerish and his half-brother Forollkin continue their quest for the seven keys.

Note: I read this in the '80s, and it is interesting to revisit a book almost 30 years later; to see if it holds up to one's memory of it; in this case it does, and in fact, I probably like it even better, as I can deal better with flawed characters who may sometimes be less than admirable, than I did when I was 14-15 (I liked the books, but there was this feeling of... uncomfortableness, perhaps.) Obviously I don't necessarily like to wait decades between re-reading good books, but...
 
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LRK

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
Michelle West: "The Broken Crown" - The first book in the Sun Sword series. Intriguing - and full of intrigue. Complex and complicated. Absorbing world and characters.
 

LRK

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
Neil Gaiman: "Odd and the Frost Giants" - Scandinavian mythology based children's fantasy. Lovely.

Note: Whilst in the book the frost giants have caused winter to linger unseasonally, I myself would actually like some - winter, that is, not frost giants.:)
 

dna5019

Final Flight
Joined
Jun 5, 2014
Neil Gaiman: "Odd and the Frost Giants" - Scandinavian mythology based children's fantasy. Lovely.

Note: Whilst in the book the frost giants have caused winter to linger unseasonally, I myself would actually like some - winter, that is, not frost giants.:)

No joke, I came here to ask about Gaiman's work and I see this! :biggrin: As someone who is looking to study legendary, Germanic literature, I will definitely check this one out! :)
 

LRK

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
Martha Wells: "The Wizard Hunters" - The first book in the trilogy The Fall of Ile-Rien. Ile-Rien is being attacked by the mysterious Gardier. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they want?

This was my second book by Martha Wells - I'd previously read an earlier book of hers,"The Death of the Necromancer", which I can also warmly recommend. It too is set in Ile-Rien, but takes place a few decades earlier than "The Wizard Hunters".
 

LRK

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
J K Rowling: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" - A worthy conclusion to the series, I thought - and probably my favourite. It's funny how suspenseful it was, even though I've seen the movies several times, and knew - at least in the main - how things would turn out. I loved encountering the gems that had not made it into the films, and how emotionally involving it was - if anyone had told me I'd go "awww!" at anything involving Dudley, or feel a lump in my throat for Kreacher, it is safe to say I would have been highly sceptical! And vindication for Professor Snape... It was Brilliant. It was Beautiful.
 

dna5019

Final Flight
Joined
Jun 5, 2014
J K Rowling: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" - A worthy conclusion to the series, I thought - and probably my favourite. It's funny how suspenseful it was, even though I've seen the movies several times, and knew - at least in the main - how things would turn out. I loved encountering the gems that had not made it into the films, and how emotionally involving it was - if anyone had told me I'd go "awww!" at anything involving Dudley, or feel a lump in my throat for Kreacher, it is safe to say I would have been highly sceptical! And vindication for Professor Snape... It was Brilliant. It was Beautiful.

:agree: I must have read the Harry Potter series at least five times by now (yes, I'm a nerd :slink: ), and I find it interesting how I still pick up things that I've never noticed before. Just goes to show how talented Rowling is I guess. :cool:

Has anyone here read the Wheel of Time series? My boyfriend is really into the books and is trying to get me to read them.
 

LRK

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Joined
Nov 13, 2012
:agree: I must have read the Harry Potter series at least five times by now (yes, I'm a nerd :slink: ), and I find it interesting how I still pick up things that I've never noticed before. Just goes to show how talented Rowling is I guess. :cool:

Has anyone here read the Wheel of Time series? My boyfriend is really into the books and is trying to get me to read them.

I was thinking myself as I was reading "Deathly Hallows" that I think I'll enjoy the books even more on a reread (which won't be soon, sadly).

I've read the Wheel of Time books, and enjoyed them.
 

dorispulaski

Wicked Yankee Girl
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Jul 26, 2003
Country
United-States
I read the first several Wheel of Time books, and liked them, but the series got way too long, and the books seemed to get a bit more repetitive, so eventually I quit reading the series.
 

dna5019

Final Flight
Joined
Jun 5, 2014
I read the first several Wheel of Time books, and liked them, but the series got way too long, and the books seemed to get a bit more repetitive, so eventually I quit reading the series.
That's what I'm afraid of; the series is, what, 14 books? :drama:
 

LRK

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
That's what I'm afraid of; the series is, what, 14 books? :drama:

But at least you won't have to wait years between insallments - like some of us had to. Also, the length of the series is no problem if you don't actually like it - you can always quit.;)
 

ramurphy2005

Unabashed Mainer
On the Ice
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Feb 12, 2014
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United-States
One of my more recent finds was the Millennium's Rule trilogy by Trudi Canavan. My sister and I were roaming the bookstore one day, and I happened to pick up the book and was intrigued after skimming the first few pages. The mechanics of magic in this series are some of the most interesting ones that I've ever come across.

The first two books have been published, and the third one is due to be released sometime this year. I haven't looked the date up yet, but anyone who starts the series won't have to wait too long to finish it.


The author has some other trilogies set in a different universe, and I'll have to check them out someday after I finish some of the other things in my house I've yet to read.
 

karne

in Emergency Backup Mode
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Jan 1, 2013
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Australia
So I found out the other day that Isobelle Carmody has finally finished and released The Red Queen, the final book of her Obernewtyn Chronicles.

I've enjoyed the rest of the series so far, but I had actually given up on The Red Queen ever coming out (I think its original release date was 2012!), and now I'm not sure whether to buy it or not. It's quite a brick, so it'd go nicely on the flight to/from the US, but I also found The Stone Key (the previous book) quite difficult to get through in places, and also the last couple of times I've bought "final books" (The Land of Painted Caves, Clariel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) I've found them quite limp additions to their various epic series.

To buy, or not to buy, that is the question...?
 

LRK

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
Tanith Lee: "Law of the Wolf Tower" - The first of the Claidi Journals.

I'm sort of an orphan. My parents aren't dead - although I suppose they might be, in fact, by now. That's a grim thought. But I can't even really feel much about it, because I never knew them.
There are so many Rituals. The House and the Garden live by them. What else is there to do? But the Rituals are taken entirely and stonily seriously. They're immovable. And if you profane a Ritual - if you break one of the idiotic rules of this place - you're punished.
Sometimes they're only slight mistakes and the punishments aren't too bad. (Let's say you miss lighting every single candle in the Lighting of the Candles Ritual, or do it in the wrong order. Then you may only have to stand in the Black Marble Corridor for a few hours - something like that - though your lady would probably beat you, too.) But for profaning some of the most important Rituals and rules, the punishments are fierce. The worst punishment, of course, is to be exiled to the Waste.
It's a death sentence. At best, if you do survive, a living nightmare. Hell-on-earth.
The Waste is the worst thing in the world.
This is what they tell you.
It is always stressed how grateful we should be, that we were born here, the House, the Garden, this earthly paradise, and not out there, in the Waste. I can recall them drumming this into me when I was a child, a baby, and crying for my mother and father. To be an orphan, and the maid of a (cruel) lady in paradise, was better than existing in the Waste.
The weather there is unthinkable. White hot heats, freezings, rains of stones, gales that tear up the dry starving landscape. There are terrible mountains of black rock, and from there the dust storms come which sometimes pass over the Garden. In the Waste you go hungry always, and thirsty. Water is poisoned. Nothing grows, or if it does, it's horrible to look at and disgusting to eat.
No wonder the people and things that survive out there are peculiar and dangerous. Madmen, murderers and monsters roam.
From a couple of the highest towers of the House, if you're willing to climb hundreds and hundreds of stairs - I have - you can just glimpse something beyond the edges of the fortressed Garden walls. That must be the Waste. But you can't see much. Only a sort of threatening, shimmering vagueness. A pale shadow.
Once a lion got into the Garden. A monster lion from the Waste. This was in the year before I was born. It was an ugly and lethal beast, foaming flame, they say, from the mouth. So they killed it.
But why have I gone on so about all that, the outside world, which I've never even seen?
Because my parents profaned one of the greatest Rituals. (I don't know which one.) They were promptly exiled to the Waste.


But is all that they've been told true? There is much for Claidi to discover and experience when she does leave the House and Garden behind and ventures into the outside world.
 

ramurphy2005

Unabashed Mainer
On the Ice
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Feb 12, 2014
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I would like to recommend The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. It's her only book so far, and I look forward to the next!


I just finished this book recently, and I enjoyed it. My youngest sister insisted that I read it, and now I've pawned it off to my other sister. She's currently reading it, but I don't know how much further she's gotten since the last time we chatted about it.


I'm currently rereading The Books of the Pellinor by Alison Croggon. This is another one of those series that I just randomly picked up off a shelf a bookstore, and ended up really enjoying it.
 

Sam L

Medalist
Joined
Mar 23, 2014
I like Tolkien. I read the Harry Potter books but I don't like them so much now that I think about it. I love GRRM Song of Ice and Fire. For me, there are a lot of themes and visions in it which are really remind me of Figure Skating. Images of sunsets on frozen lakes and all that. LOL! Anyone else a fan?
 

Interspectator

Record Breaker
Joined
Dec 25, 2012
Something Wicked this Way Comes was thrilling to me when I was 17. -by Ray Bradbury.
If you want a great Halloween scary fantasy, this is the one.
Recently I have enjoyed The Graveyard Book and Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
 

LRK

Record Breaker
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
Terry Pratchett: "Unseen Academicals"

From the back cover:

FOOTBALL HAS COME TO THE ANCIENT CITY OF ANKH-MORPORK

- not the old-fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing. And now the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match without using magic, so they're going to try everything else.

The Big Match draws in an urchin with a gift for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might turn out to be the greatest fashion model ever, and the mysterious Mr Nutt. (No one knows much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt.)

As the match approaches, four lives are changed for ever. Because the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football.

HERE WE GO! HERE WE GO! HERE WE GO!


The book, of course, is not solely, or even primarily, for football lovers. As a "taster", I'll also quote the first paragraph - and, of course, accompanying footnotes:):

It was midnight in Ankh-Morpork's Royal Art Museum.*

*Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari.
And yet it does work. This has annoyed a number of people who feel, somehow, that it should not, and who want a monarch instead, thus replacing a man who has achieved his position by cunning, a deep understanding of the realities of the human psyche, breathtaking diplomacy, a certain prowess with the stiletto dagger, and, all agree, a mind like a finely balanced circular saw, with a man who has got there by being born.+
However, the crown has hung on anyway, as crowns do - on the Post Office and the Royal Bank and the Mint, and, not least, in the sprawling, brawling, squalling consciousness of the city itself. Lots of things live in that darkness. There are all kinds of darkness, and all kinds of things can be in them, imprisoned, banished, lost or hidden. Sometimes they escape. Sometimes they simply fall out. Sometimes they just can't take it any more.

+A third proposition, that the city be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city.

 
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