A Song of Ice and Fire: Discussion thread [spoiler: Book 5]

[Overread]

Those were the only 2 I could think of, off the top of my head, when you asked for examples.

Any recommendations for epic fantasy series? Right now I am reading the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind for like the 5th time. I need something new to read.

Malazan Book of the Fallen - first book Gardens of the Moon by Steve Erikson - fantastic series and very epic. Like ASOIAF it has a big cast of characters, but the world is totally different; magic oozes from every corner and there are dragons, gods, demi-gods, mages, necromances are more around every corner. Furthermore the pace of each book is far more speedy.
They can throw people though as the second book jumps to a whole new continent of action and the character cast doubles. But the stories interweave a lot with each other and its all building a fantastic story worthy of the title "Epic".


Magician by Raymond E Fiest is also a very good read (split into 2 books in the US). It's only one book long, but has all the granduer of epic scale. He has also written a long series of books in that same world, but they fast feel a little less epic after that great opening - although his works written jointly with Janny Wurts are a refreshing air and very good reads.

Robin Hobb is also worth checking out. Tends to get a bit slow in the 2nd book of 3, but always picks up the pace fast soon after. She's a few series starting with the Fareseer Trilogy, then moving onto the Liveships (same world, but a different region and new characters - and one very key character from the 1st series makes an appearance), then back to the lands of the first series with Tawnyman (with crossovers). There is now also a new Dragon series which returns to the liveships lands.

The first and second series are written in a journal style and get right behind the mind of the main character; whilst the others are 3rd person style with multiple characters and points of view. Hobb's strength is very much in her characters though and she also makes the difficult choice to have rather unconventional hero characters.

 

[MTVision]

Malazan Book of the Fallen - first book Gardens of the Moon by Steve Erikson - fantastic series and very epic. Like ASOIAF it has a big cast of characters, but the world is totally different; magic oozes from every corner and there are dragons, gods, demi-gods, mages, necromances are more around every corner. Furthermore the pace of each book is far more speedy.
They can throw people though as the second book jumps to a whole new continent of action and the character cast doubles. But the stories interweave a lot with each other and its all building a fantastic story worthy of the title "Epic".

Magician by Raymond E Fiest is also a very good read (split into 2 books in the US). It's only one book long, but has all the granduer of epic scale. He has also written a long series of books in that same world, but they fast feel a little less epic after that great opening - although his works written jointly with Janny Wurts are a refreshing air and very good reads.

Robin Hobb is also worth checking out. Tends to get a bit slow in the 2nd book of 3, but always picks up the pace fast soon after. She's a few series starting with the Fareseer Trilogy, then moving onto the Liveships (same world, but a different region and new characters - and one very key character from the 1st series makes an appearance), then back to the lands of the first series with Tawnyman (with crossovers). There is now also a new Dragon series which returns to the liveships lands.

The first and second series are written in a journal style and get right behind the mind of the main character; whilst the others are 3rd person style with multiple characters and points of view. Hobb's strength is very much in her characters though and she also makes the difficult choice to have rather unconventional hero characters.

Thank you so much!

 

[Big Mike]

I'm not too widely read...I've read LOTR 30+ times, rather than getting new books.

But have read, and gone back to, the main books in the Dragonlance series by Weiss & Hickman. There are a ton of DL books, with many different authors, but the best ones (that I've read) are the main ones.
List of Dragonlance novels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and Dragonlance Legends - Chronicles Trilogy

I was also recommend the Sword of Shannara series by Terry Brooks. I read the main series (3 or 4 books) and it was decent. There seems to be many other books but I never bothered to follow up on them.

 

[JAC526]

Tyrion and Jon Snow are the only characters I can think of off the top of my head that have any redeemable qualities.

Having said that I read these books a long time ago.

I have read a LOT of epic fantasy and in my opinion there are much better series.

Those were the only 2 I could think of, off the top of my head, when you asked for examples.

Any recommendations for epic fantasy series? Right now I am reading the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind for like the 5th time. I need something new to read.

I highly second the Malazan books. Also Esselmont writes books in the same Malazan world which are really good as well.

But the book that I would go out and buy right now if I were you and put it at the top of my list to read is "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss.

Branden Sanderson's Mistborn series and Way of Kings series are both really good as well.

I could do this all day.

 

[MTVision]

I'm not too widely read...I've read LOTR 30+ times, rather than getting new books.

But have read, and gone back to, the main books in the Dragonlance series by Weiss & Hickman. There are a ton of DL books, with many different authors, but the best ones (that I've read) are the main ones.
List of Dragonlance novels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and Dragonlance Legends - Chronicles Trilogy

I'll check them out and LOTR. If you haven't read them you should check out The Sword of Truth series. I really like them. They were the first sci-fi/fantasy books I ever read. The series is done but the author just signed a contract for 3 more books - same characters/world but different story. And the author just self-published a prequel to the series. You name it - these books have it - war, magic, dragons, love, sex (not that much).

Kushiels Dart by Jacqueline Carey is really good. I'm not sure if that's the title of the first book but it's a trilogy. The first part of the book was a little hard to get into - at least for me. But they are really good. It's weird but this series is made up into 3 trilogies.

 

[OrionsByte]

Actually he was going to make book 5 and 6 have a 10-20 year or so time gap between them (story wise) to allow some characters to mature to an older age. However the shelved that idea in the end (which is partly why this book took so long to come out as he had to re-write a lot of material).

As for the slowness - eh - I've yet to read any trilogy that doesn't get a bit slow come the middle of the book or any big multi-book saga which doesn't have slower patches. Books need as slower bit in the middle and ASOIAF has a lot of interweaving story lines to follow so its no surprise that the slower period gets enlarged. It's all setting the scene for the finale though

Yeah one of the reasons I didn't care for book 4, apart from the fact that it only contained half of the characters, was because it felt so "transitional." The War of the Five Kings has basically ended, and everyone's kind of clamoring for power, but not a whole lot really happens on a large scale (although I really enjoyed seeing how incredibly stupid/insane Cersei can be). Dance with Dragons, being in large part the other half of A Feast for Crows, was kind of the same way. It's like the first three books were this intricate game of chess (or cyvasse ), and then someone came up and knocked the game board off the table. Now all of the pieces are trying to figure out what to do with themselves in preparation for the next match. In essence I think the slowness is intentional, like the eye of a storm.

I've read the whole series at least three times, except for the last book, which I've only read through once so far (though I'll probably make a second pass very soon).

My guess is that Jon has warged himself in to Ghost (a suddenly apt name). The book started with a warg getting himself "stuck" in an animal after he died, and there were several places throughout the book that showed Jon exhibiting some warg abilities with Ghost, so all that seems to hint to me that that's where he ended up. Don't know if he'll stay there though.

 

[JAC526]

Roger Zelazny's "Great book of Amber" is also a must read.

 

[MTVision]

I'm not too widely read...I've read LOTR 30+ times, rather than getting new books.

But have read, and gone back to, the main books in the Dragonlance series by Weiss & Hickman. There are a ton of DL books, with many different authors, but the best ones (that I've read) are the main ones.
List of Dragonlance novels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and Dragonlance Legends - Chronicles Trilogy

I was also recommend the Sword of Shannara series by Terry Brooks. I read the main series (3 or 4 books) and it was decent. There seems to be many other books but I never bothered to follow up on them.

Is it weird that I've never watched the LOTR movies??

 

[Overread]

I'm just going to drop this here : Share Book Recommendations With Your Friends, Join Book Clubs, Answer Trivia

A fantastic site to build your own library of owned and read books up with to share with others; make reviews; find new books and also excellent for building a reading list up (which I use to dump names of any "interesting" books others suggest so that I don't forget the titles).

 

[MTVision]

Roger Zelazny's "Great book of Amber" is also a must read.

Oooohhhh -- I actually have that book. My boyfriend read it a while back. I'll have to check it out.

Thanks for all the recommendations.

 

[Overread]

Is it weird that I've never watched the LOTR movies??

never read the books and never seen the films??

OMG GO READ THE BOOKS NOW!
Forget the darn camera go read!!!!!

The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are must reads!
The films are - different in some content, but make a fantastic experience which captures the essence of the books very very well.

 

[MTVision]

I'm just going to drop this here : Share Book Recommendations With Your Friends, Join Book Clubs, Answer Trivia

A fantastic site to build your own library of owned and read books up with to share with others; make reviews; find new books and also excellent for building a reading list up (which I use to dump names of any "interesting" books others suggest so that I don't forget the titles).

I'm a member there. What is your user name so I can find you??

 

[Overread]

same there as here

 

[Big Mike]

I'm on there too, but only check in every few weeks or month.

never read the books and never seen the films??

OMG GO READ THE BOOKS NOW!
Forget the darn camera go read!!!!!

The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are must reads!
The films are - different in some content, but make a fantastic experience which captures the essence of the books very very well.

Yes! Absolutely...start reading right now.

The Hobbit was first published in 1937 and along with LOTR (published in the 50s) practically created the fantasy fiction genre. You could say that all the other fantasy books we're talking about, wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Tolkien's work.

And actually, he started writing envisioning his world of Middle Earth, back during the first world war. He was really into languages and was creating his own and needed a fictional world for them to live in. The majority of his writings were only ever published posthumously. The Hobbit and LOTR are only small stories that are set in Middle Earth, which has a vast and long history...he just never got it all together to publish anything. His son took over after he died, and meticulously sorted though the pages, notes, letters etc. and published most of it. There are, I think, 10 books in 'The history of Middle Earth', but the best of that is condensed into 'The Silmarillion'. And in the last few years, 'The Children of Hurin' was published.

I certainly do recommend all of those, but the real point of my rambling, is that the reason why LOTR is so good...is because it does have this really rich history behind it. The languages aren't just made up words like they are in practically every other fantasy series.

The Hobbit is essentially a precursor to the more popular LOTR. It was originally just a story for his kids, that eventually was set in middle earth. A few alterations later brought it into synchronicity with the story line of LOTR. The style is rather different between the two, the Hobbit really is a great story for kids while LOTR is more of a teen/adult story.

Sorry...wasn't this thread supposed to be about ASOFAI?

 

[MTVision]

I'm on there too, but only check in every few weeks or month.

Yes! Absolutely...start reading right now.

The Hobbit was first published in 1937 and along with LOTR (published in the 50s) practically created the fantasy fiction genre. You could say that all the other fantasy books we're talking about, wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Tolkien's work.

And actually, he started writing envisioning his world of Middle Earth, back during the first world war. He was really into languages and was creating his own and needed a fictional world for them to live in. The majority of his writings were only ever published posthumously. The Hobbit and LOTR are only small stories that are set in Middle Earth, which has a vast and long history...he just never got it all together to publish anything. His son took over after he died, and meticulously sorted though the pages, notes, letters etc. and published most of it. There are, I think, 10 books in 'The history of Middle Earth', but the best of that is condensed into 'The Silmarillion'. And in the last few years, 'The Children of Hurin' was published.

I certainly do recommend all of those, but the real point of my rambling, is that the reason why LOTR is so good...is because it does have this really rich history behind it. The languages aren't just made up words like they are in practically every other fantasy series.

The Hobbit is essentially a precursor to the more popular LOTR. It was originally just a story for his kids, that eventually was set in middle earth. A few alterations later brought it into synchronicity with the story line of LOTR. The style is rather different between the two, the Hobbit really is a great story for kids while LOTR is more of a teen/adult story.

Sorry...wasn't this thread supposed to be about ASOFAI?

Same name on goodreads??
Do you have a picture of a duck as your avatar??