The best fantasy books?

[BlueSalamander]

I'll have to check out Mistborn and Malazan. Has anyone read the Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) series?

[ErrrorWayz]

I'll have to check out Mistborn and Malazan. Has anyone read the Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) series?

Yep, heavily overated. Pullman has a message: he doesn't like God or religion, and he likes to get this message across. Repeatedly. First book quite good, second book not so good, third book a bit dull.

Film of first book has Nicole Kidman in it and so is OK. She's lovely.

[MonkeyLancer]

I kind of think of the Golden Compass series as an antithesis to the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and I believe it is intended for kids/teenagers, with that in mind I think its pretty good.

[Demiath]

Haven't read any fantasy books in many years, so there are some interesting suggestions for me here in this thread. I was the steretypical mainstream fantasy reader during my teenage years (in other words, I read Tolkien, David Eddings, Terry Brooks and not much else) but I have never returned to the genre to read the more mature and sophisticated stuff.

Nowadays I guess I get most of my knighs in shining armor, damsels in distress and supernatural events from re-readings of Shakespeare, whose body of work (when taken as a whole) includes all the essential ingredients of fantasy. Aside from the obviously fantasy-esque plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest and Macbeth, you also get power politics and courtly intrigues in Henry VI and Julius Caesar, epic battle scenes in Coriolanus and Henry V, improbable journeys half across the world in Cymbeline and Pericles and familiar fairy tale plot devices in plays as different as King Lear and As You Like It.

Also, sooner or later I'll hopefully get around to reading Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590), which basically has fantasy written all over it...

[ErrrorWayz]

If you want something worthy but amusing, Alexander Pope, the Rape of the Lock, satire at it's finest. Or, if you fancy somthing well written but different, Robin Hobb, Liveship Traders, well worth a read. Or Ian Banks, pretty much anything he wrote, he's brilliant.

[ErrrorWayz]

I can't spell BTW... : (

[MytGroo]

Recently I enjoyed reading The Red Wolf Conspiracy by Robert V.S. Redick. It was much more than a typical fantasy novel-- it included a lot of interesting themes in addition to fighting-- marriage, slavery, political manipulation, thievery, poisoning, dark magic, and fantasy languages. I am reading The Songs of A Dying Earth Stories In Honor of Jack Vance with an introduction by Dean Koontz, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin. The Malazon Empire books are well done. Graceling, by Kristin Cashore, a young adult novel recently was very well reviewed. Harry Turtledove has a duology called Tales of the Fox which I liked a lot. George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones is excellent. If you want modern urban fantasy, a mix of a detective story and an urban fantasy, you might want to try China Mieville's The City and The City. For a humorous fantasy novel, Terry Pratchett's Making Money is excellent. For a story that is epic fantasy that is a bit different about a woman who is the concubine of a soldier, a healer, and a bit touched in the head, there is Sarah Micklem's Wildfire: A Novel. This novel is not for the faint of heart, it is filled with sex, violence, and exotic descriptions of herbalism, strange cultures, and the raw edge of medieval life.

[MytGroo]

If you must know, the magic system in Dungeons and Dragons comes from Jack Vance as do many of the things in the game. Gary Gygax was an avid fan of Jack Vance and considered him to be the best of fantasists. http://www.dyingearth.com/files/GARY%20 ... 0VANCE.pdf

[MytGroo]

Because I am book obsessed, I will now suggest The Baen Free Library of books on the interweb-- lots of good free stuff.
http://www.baen.com/library/

[BlueSalamander]

I've read lots of Jack Vance and they're all splendid... A lot of them are science fiction though.