| Extremely good:
- George R.R. Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire (4books)
- Glen Cook: The Black Company (10 books)
- Jack Vance: Everything, but first: The Cycle of Lyonesse (3 books)
- Terry Pratchett: Discworld (a million books)
Good:
- JRR Tolkien: Lord of the Ring and The Hobbit (4 books)
- Robin Hobb: The Royal Assassin, the Tawny Man and the Liveship Traders (3x3 books). Almost good enough to be with ASoIaF and the others.
- Katherine Kurtz: The Derynis (12~ books) Original. "Realistic" fantasy.
- David Eddings: The Belgariad and The Mallorean (5 and 5 books iirc.) Simple, but fun. Prequels are more of the same. All the other books by Eddings were disappointing.
- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman: Everything they wrote is pretty good. Dragonlance (only read the first books), the Death Gate Cycle (I really liked this one), The Black Sword (so-so.)
- Mickael Moorcock: It ranges from awesome to extremely bad. The serie on Corum (6 books iirc) is the best. Elric and Hawkmoon are ok (if you forget the last couple books.)
- Stephen King: The Dark Tower (7 books.) Western-flavored fantasy. Very good (although overrated, in my opinion.)
- Orson Scott Card: The Tales of Alvin Maker. Very good, and better if it gets to the end some day.
- C.J. Cherryh: Fortress in the Eye of Time (and sequels, 4 books.) Good !
If you are out of good stuff:
- Robert Jordan: The Wheel of time (too many goddamn books.) Long serie with very high ups and very deep downs.
- Raymond E. Feist: Krondor stuff. Overrated.
- Elizabeth Haydon: Rhapsody / Prophecy / Destiny and the sequels (5 books so far.) Decent but a bit too girly.
- Tad Williams: Memory, Sorrow and Thorns (4 books.) Way too long. It really gets boring. The War of the Flowers, on the other hand, was very good. But it's not classical fantasy.
- Fritz Leiber: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Fantasy from the 1940's.
- Robert Howard and al.: Conan stories. Entertaining.
- R.A. Salvatore: The basic stuff about Drizzt and his buddies is decent.
Not worth reading:
- Stephen Donaldson: Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever (6 books or more) Meh.
- Roger Zelazny: The Princes of Amber (10 books.) Yawnfest.
- Terry Brooks: The Books of Landover (5 books.) Very, very bad.
- Terry Goodkind: The Sword of Truth. It's like a lame Wheel of Time. Don't give that man any money. If you've gotta read it, steal it.
If you want something close to Dragonlance, I would say:
1) More Weis&Hickman stuff: The Death Gate cycle.
2) David Eddings: Same kind of stuff, except maybe better. Simple and fun.
3) Raymond E. Feist and R.A. Salvatore. Not as good as the above. |