I've had The Name of the Wind on my shelf for ages, but I've been putting off reading it because I thought once I started it, it would take over my life, and it has. I've read thousands of books, but this one is something else.
I've bought The Wise Man's Fear, even though I'm only half way through TNotW and I'm already panicking a bit about how I'm going to cope when I've read them both, seeing as the third book is apparently nowhere in sight yet.
Reading it really is an experience not to be missed, imo.
On a different note, I love Harry Dresden. I can't wait for the next one. I'm far fonder of Harry than is reasonable for a fictional character.
I haven't got around to reading he latest one yet - which is unusual for me, in the last couple of years I've leapt all over the new releases as soon as possible.
On an entirely different note - you should check out Jim Butcher's Ice Bucket Challenge!
Do read it - it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you immediately read it again because of a plot twist. The ending is so sweet! (I'm making myself want to re-read it now. )
Just watched Jim's Ice Bucket challenge. It was good, but Pat Rothfuss's was amazing.
Old school SF: E. C. Tubb's "Dumarest" series in which the hero searches for his home, a mythical world called . . . Earth.
There are over 26 books in the series, which should keep you out of mischief for a while.
Right, I've finished The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear.
Now what can I read that's anything like as good? Everything I start reading seems boring in comparison.
Any suggestions?
If you haven't already I would go straight to Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamorra.. not a million miles removed from The Rothfuss novels and I would say they just edged them for me..
If you haven't already I would go straight to Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamorra.. not a million miles removed from The Rothfuss novels and I would say they just edged them for me..
I've tried these - didn't get very far. To me they had none of the lyrical prose of Kingkiller. None of the atmosphere of sadness and nostalgia that permeates Rothfuss' work. They didn't grab me, anyway. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood at the time. I'll possibly try them again at some point. Anyway, I've gone down the Historical Novel route - I'm reading The Lymond Saga by Dorothy Dunnett. Amazing! I don't know how I haven't found these books before.
His Plob trilogy are hilarious.
Plob
Plob goes South
Plob fights back
and his Forever Man series is totally riveting.
Pulse
Axeman
(I believe Amazon is giving away free copies of Pulse this weekend as a run up to the launch of his third Forever Man book)
I've tried these - didn't get very far. To me they had none of the lyrical prose of Kingkiller. None of the atmosphere of sadness and nostalgia that permeates Rothfuss' work. They didn't grab me, anyway. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood at the time. I'll possibly try them again at some point. Anyway, I've gone down the Historical Novel route - I'm reading The Lymond Saga by Dorothy Dunnett. Amazing! I don't know how I haven't found these books before.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
You're welcome
I see what you mean re Rothfuss, I'd forgotten how his style of writing was one of the big appeals of his books..
His Plob trilogy are hilarious.
Plob
Plob goes South
Plob fights back
and his Forever Man series is totally riveting.
Pulse
Axeman
(I believe Amazon is giving away free copies of Pulse this weekend as a run up to the launch of his third Forever Man book)
Excellent, I shall check these out later, have just started the first Joe A book and am enjoying it at the mo..
His Plob trilogy are hilarious.
Plob
Plob goes South
Plob fights back
and his Forever Man series is totally riveting.
Pulse
Axeman
(I believe Amazon is giving away free copies of Pulse this weekend as a run up to the launch of his third Forever Man book)
I never got into plob , felt like he was trying too hard to be funny at times
Right, I've finished The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear.
Now what can I read that's anything like as good? Everything I start reading seems boring in comparison.
Any suggestions?
Brandon Sanderson's been suggested previously, and i can only agree. All his stuff is excellent but his "Stormlight Archive" series is a step above. I'm far more excited about this series than "A Song of Ice and Fire" and read the latest instalment in a couple of days (and now have to wait a couple of years for the next one).
Peter V. Brett hasn't been mentioned yet, but i do really enjoy his "Demon Cycle" series and think it's a shame he's not better known.
I went through a phase of reading urban fantasy for a while until the same-ness of them all burnt me out. Anne Bishop's "Others" series breathed new life into the genre and i also reread her (high fantasy) "Black Jewels" series every year.
There are three Australian female fantasy authors that i always eagerly await new titles from: Jennifer Fallon, Trudi Canavan, and Glenda Larke.
I haven't got around to reading Jennifer Fallon's latest series yet, but her "Tide Lords" series is excellent. Her "Second Sons" series is a bit of a weird one. While set on a feudal type world it has no real fantasy elements, nor are there any sci-fi elements (other than the vague suggestion that the people there originally came from another planet). It's more political than anything else.
Trudi Canavan's stuff seems more YA, but it still really enjoyable.
Glenda Larke's "The Mirage Maker's" series is interesting and has a magic system based on water.
Karen Miller's "Kingmaker, Kingbreaker" and "Fisherman's Children" series are excellent.
I still love reading the classic Foundation series books from the grandad of SciFi - Isaac Asimov. I've always wondered why a TV series was never made based on these.
If you read some of his short stories, you will see how imaginative he was.
Brandon Sanderson's been suggested previously, and i can only agree. All his stuff is excellent but his "Stormlight Archive" series is a step above. I'm far more excited about this series than "A Song of Ice and Fire" and read the latest instalment in a couple of days (and now have to wait a couple of years for the next one).
Another major fan here, already read book 2 twice, it is actually quite disturbing how much I already love a series that only currently has two books.
Although I have read the Mistborn series, I really didn't like it as much, the main characters annoyed me and the ending I thought was shite, but they have loads of fans worldwide, so I figure it's one of those, 'you can't like 'em all' things
Also can recommend Ben aaronovich (sp) I've just finished Rivers of London, not bad, quite good pacing so I'm off to read book 2. If I'm really honest most of my reading now is just filling time between now and the next Sanderson Stormlight book and the next Jim Butcher/Dresden installment
Haven't yet gotten around to American Gods, bit scared by some of the view here, plus there are loads of other recommendations contained within some of these posts so I might attempt some of those before Neil Gaiman'. But sayin that, I did delay before starting the Kingkiller Chronicles, and once I started them I couldn't put them down
His Plob trilogy are hilarious.
Plob
Plob goes South
Plob fights back
This can hardly be meant as a serious comment.
To start with, the cover contains the "praise" BBC Readers Choice, which is a foreboding of what to expect in the books: Nothing but mistakes. The question here is how many readers made this choice. By omitting the apostrophe, the customer is misinformed.
In his Plob-books, Zerf commits more mistakes than a pupil trying to do his A-levels, and Zerf supposedly finished school in South Africa and went on to study at Trinity College.
He does not usually set off introductory prepositional phrases or adverbial clauses with a necessary comma, thereby leaving the reader to decide where the main clause begins.
He often leaves out the commas when designating who is spoken to in direcrt speech.
He tries to write a few words in German, as if characters were speaking to each other in this language. In doing so, he ignores rules of German such as capitalizing nouns. Some words he offers in several different spellings, apparently not sure how they should be spelled.
Although writing in British English, he used the American English word "stories" to designate the different levels in a building.
If one is looking for challenging reading in the sense of understanding the text, then this series is a possibility. The humor is limited, the fantasy is fantastical, the language is confusing, not only because of the above-mentioned problems, but also because it does not fit the time of the story. Perhaps that is the humor.
I've read the whole of the main series plus the Saganami Island sub-series pretty much one after the other.
Really great series and I'd highly recommend it. As a bonus the kindle editions of the first couple of books ("On Basilisk Station" and "The Honor of the Queen") are free - so it wont cost you anything to dip a toe in and give them a try.
My only slight frustration with them is that towards the end of the series (as it currently stands) the story ark starts to slow down to a crawl, with different book going over events from another book again, either giving more detail, or showing things from a different perspective. Hopefully that will sort it's self out once the next main line book comes out (though that's not going to be for a while apparently.)
But dont let the above put you off - it really a great series. I read a lot of sci-fi and I've rarely spent 6+ months on a single series of books before. The frustration of the slowdown in plot advancement towards the end, is only because the rest of the series advances the plot-lines at such a good pace.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned Robin Hobb. All her series are excellent. The Rainwild Chronicles and The Liveship Traders to name but two series.
If you are looking for an immersive series then you couldn't do better than to start with this book by Anne McCaffrey. There's a huge series following these characters and filling in both the past and future of the planet, Pern. The whole series is brilliant.
I was going to mention Anne. I had the pleasure of meeting her several times during the 70s/80s at fan-run conventions at which she was a guest. Lovely lady.
My personal favourite fantasy series is Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover universe. There are quite a few books and also several anthologies written by both the author herself and 'Friends of Darkover' some of whom are also published authors.
I was introduced by a dear friend and often re-read them. I get very invested in the characters. There's also a 'Darkover concordance' which helps make sense of all the people in the books and the family trees which do intersect to a certain degree.
The only drawback is that the 'last' book in the series (which she always maintained wasn't an actual series, more that she just wrote each book individually, although characters do appear and get mentioned from book to book) was written first and retains that 'unfinished' aura. She did re-write one of the earlier ones later and it was all the better for it. But in all, a fabulous series of books.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned Robin Hobb. All her series are excellent. The Rainwild Chronicles and The Liveship Traders to name but two series.
Comments
sympathise completely with the BiB
Do read it - it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you immediately read it again because of a plot twist. The ending is so sweet! (I'm making myself want to re-read it now.
Just watched Jim's Ice Bucket challenge. It was good, but Pat Rothfuss's was amazing.
Now what can I read that's anything like as good? Everything I start reading seems boring in comparison.
Any suggestions?
There are over 26 books in the series, which should keep you out of mischief for a while.
have you tried the first law trilogy by joe Abercrombie that has been mentioned a couple of times in this thread
it has all three books already finished as well ;-)
If you haven't already I would go straight to Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamorra.. not a million miles removed from The Rothfuss novels and I would say they just edged them for me..
I've tried these - didn't get very far. To me they had none of the lyrical prose of Kingkiller. None of the atmosphere of sadness and nostalgia that permeates Rothfuss' work. They didn't grab me, anyway. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood at the time. I'll possibly try them again at some point. Anyway, I've gone down the Historical Novel route - I'm reading The Lymond Saga by Dorothy Dunnett. Amazing! I don't know how I haven't found these books before.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
His Plob trilogy are hilarious.
Plob
Plob goes South
Plob fights back
and his Forever Man series is totally riveting.
Pulse
Axeman
(I believe Amazon is giving away free copies of Pulse this weekend as a run up to the launch of his third Forever Man book)
You're welcome
I see what you mean re Rothfuss, I'd forgotten how his style of writing was one of the big appeals of his books..
Excellent, I shall check these out later, have just started the first Joe A book and am enjoying it at the mo..
I never got into plob , felt like he was trying too hard to be funny at times
I see he's just brought out The Forever Man 3: Book 3: Clan War
I believeThe Forever Man: Book 1 is having a free promotion on Amazon this weekend
Brandon Sanderson's been suggested previously, and i can only agree. All his stuff is excellent but his "Stormlight Archive" series is a step above. I'm far more excited about this series than "A Song of Ice and Fire" and read the latest instalment in a couple of days (and now have to wait a couple of years for the next one).
Peter V. Brett hasn't been mentioned yet, but i do really enjoy his "Demon Cycle" series and think it's a shame he's not better known.
I went through a phase of reading urban fantasy for a while until the same-ness of them all burnt me out. Anne Bishop's "Others" series breathed new life into the genre and i also reread her (high fantasy) "Black Jewels" series every year.
There are three Australian female fantasy authors that i always eagerly await new titles from: Jennifer Fallon, Trudi Canavan, and Glenda Larke.
I haven't got around to reading Jennifer Fallon's latest series yet, but her "Tide Lords" series is excellent. Her "Second Sons" series is a bit of a weird one. While set on a feudal type world it has no real fantasy elements, nor are there any sci-fi elements (other than the vague suggestion that the people there originally came from another planet). It's more political than anything else.
Trudi Canavan's stuff seems more YA, but it still really enjoyable.
Glenda Larke's "The Mirage Maker's" series is interesting and has a magic system based on water.
Karen Miller's "Kingmaker, Kingbreaker" and "Fisherman's Children" series are excellent.
Only about a third of the way through and thoroughly enjoying it.
If you read some of his short stories, you will see how imaginative he was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
The "Rama" series by Arthur C Clark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama
Another major fan here, already read book 2 twice, it is actually quite disturbing how much I already love a series that only currently has two books.
Although I have read the Mistborn series, I really didn't like it as much, the main characters annoyed me and the ending I thought was shite, but they have loads of fans worldwide, so I figure it's one of those, 'you can't like 'em all' things
Also can recommend Ben aaronovich (sp) I've just finished Rivers of London, not bad, quite good pacing so I'm off to read book 2. If I'm really honest most of my reading now is just filling time between now and the next Sanderson Stormlight book and the next Jim Butcher/Dresden installment
Haven't yet gotten around to American Gods, bit scared by some of the view here, plus there are loads of other recommendations contained within some of these posts so I might attempt some of those before Neil Gaiman'. But sayin that, I did delay before starting the Kingkiller Chronicles, and once I started them I couldn't put them down
This can hardly be meant as a serious comment.
To start with, the cover contains the "praise" BBC Readers Choice, which is a foreboding of what to expect in the books: Nothing but mistakes. The question here is how many readers made this choice. By omitting the apostrophe, the customer is misinformed.
In his Plob-books, Zerf commits more mistakes than a pupil trying to do his A-levels, and Zerf supposedly finished school in South Africa and went on to study at Trinity College.
He does not usually set off introductory prepositional phrases or adverbial clauses with a necessary comma, thereby leaving the reader to decide where the main clause begins.
He often leaves out the commas when designating who is spoken to in direcrt speech.
He tries to write a few words in German, as if characters were speaking to each other in this language. In doing so, he ignores rules of German such as capitalizing nouns. Some words he offers in several different spellings, apparently not sure how they should be spelled.
Although writing in British English, he used the American English word "stories" to designate the different levels in a building.
If one is looking for challenging reading in the sense of understanding the text, then this series is a possibility. The humor is limited, the fantasy is fantastical, the language is confusing, not only because of the above-mentioned problems, but also because it does not fit the time of the story. Perhaps that is the humor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorverse#Honor_Harrington_series
I've read the whole of the main series plus the Saganami Island sub-series pretty much one after the other.
Really great series and I'd highly recommend it. As a bonus the kindle editions of the first couple of books ("On Basilisk Station" and "The Honor of the Queen") are free - so it wont cost you anything to dip a toe in and give them a try.
My only slight frustration with them is that towards the end of the series (as it currently stands) the story ark starts to slow down to a crawl, with different book going over events from another book again, either giving more detail, or showing things from a different perspective. Hopefully that will sort it's self out once the next main line book comes out (though that's not going to be for a while apparently.)
But dont let the above put you off - it really a great series. I read a lot of sci-fi and I've rarely spent 6+ months on a single series of books before. The frustration of the slowdown in plot advancement towards the end, is only because the rest of the series advances the plot-lines at such a good pace.
I was going to mention Anne. I had the pleasure of meeting her several times during the 70s/80s at fan-run conventions at which she was a guest. Lovely lady.
My personal favourite fantasy series is Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover universe. There are quite a few books and also several anthologies written by both the author herself and 'Friends of Darkover' some of whom are also published authors.
I was introduced by a dear friend and often re-read them. I get very invested in the characters. There's also a 'Darkover concordance' which helps make sense of all the people in the books and the family trees which do intersect to a certain degree.
The only drawback is that the 'last' book in the series (which she always maintained wasn't an actual series, more that she just wrote each book individually, although characters do appear and get mentioned from book to book) was written first and retains that 'unfinished' aura. She did re-write one of the earlier ones later and it was all the better for it. But in all, a fabulous series of books.
Is she better than Megan Lindholm?
Not, sadly, the third in the Kingkiller Chronicles, but set in the same universe, featuring a character from the books.
I hope to get it soon.
I'd say there's nothing to choose between them. ;-):D