re: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Recommendation & Discussion Thread

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I think John Gwynne's Faithful and the Fallen would probably be one where the last book is the best too (and the follow-up trilogy is the same way).

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That one I can agree with for sure.

SPOILERS


I really dont' know exactly how I feel about the Malazan ending, it doesn't stand out but there is just so much happening. Now that I think about it - and I forget which character / storyline it was - but the guy with the "singing" sword or whatever in the rift did just make my jaw drop. The whole idea of it shouldn't work with that much overpower, but somehow it was perfect in so many ways.

I'm working my way through a re-read, i'm putting together a full Malzan hardback collection as I do and listening along with "Ten Very Big Books Podcast" - which Erickson has mentioned in some recent interviews and he does a post book interview with them when they finish each one, so it really is awesome.

Ya that is what I was talking about - something about that whole sequence stuck with me.



Also I got A Little Hatred on audiobook from libby, have a big roadtrip coming up tuesday or wednesday so hope to knock out a good bit.

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You haven't read the stand alones yet have you?

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I would read the standalones. Not only are they great, but they develop the world more.

Oh well ill return that one then, it was the onlyone libby had. Ended up listening to something else on my trip yesterday

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Feist's books were solid old school fantasy back in the day, though they get pretty repetitive at a certain point. The first couple main storylines (6-7 books) are very solid though. And the companion trilogy he wrote with Wurts that occurs in between the first part of the series and the next is very good too.

R Scott Bakker is someone I'm very mixed on. His first trilogy was very solid, with a unique protagonist. The next series gets weird and is kinda a slog, I stopped reading it half way through.

From what I understand that 4 book series still doesn't finish the main storyline (and ends on a cliffhanger empire strikes back negative style ending), and given how poorly those books sold who knows if he'll even ever be able to finish the series. He has an issue I like to call author wank on page, where he loves to use high level vocabulary and have long wordy prose for no particular reason, even when it really adds nothing to book. And that has always killed his books popularity.

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Ya i feel that, i'll probably just check out their early works - now that I've been finding out so much good stuff, i'm much more lenient on just reading a few of a certain author. The recommendation I got for Bakker was for his main trilogy.

Would you rank Feist early stuff above Robin Hobb? Is it similar / comparable?

I was also thinking about the vocabulary thing earlier today reading Pratchett. He uses a surprising number of words I don't know for how easy his books are to read. There is really something to speaking / writing in a way everybody can follow while still sounding smart. Guys like Erikson and Malazan are hard to follow a lot, but they don't (in my opinion) sort of circle around a topic that is intended to make them sound smart.

When an author delivers a great piece of foreshadowing or pulls together some great plot points in an incredible way, readers can tell. I feel like one of the things that sort of tears me out of a story is when something cool happens, and then the author sort of circles back to make sure the reader knows how cool / trippy / awesome or whatever it was.

Erikson sort of tows the line in Toll The Hounds - going back and reading some of his commentary I can give him that one because (1) he was really trying to get into some sort of "meta" fiction and (2) the rest of the series have helped build up and let him earn those sort of scenes.

I think you can say the same thing to some degree about King and The Dark Tower series. There was some stuff that didn't work but he has also earned some of the scenes that did work by laying the foundation in the series and also over the course of his career in terms of his style.

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think you can say the same thing to some degree about King and The Dark Tower series. There was some stuff that didn't work but he 

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Ugh, never been so disappointed with a series ending. Dark Tower is a perfect example of why I won't give authors too much crap for taking too long with series (obviously guys like Rothfuss and Martin are exceptions here and beyond ridiculous). Him freaking out and writing the last three books back to back after his near death experience was a terrible idea. Books 2,3, and 4 in that series are among my favorites.

While the 5th book was decent, him writing himself into the book with the priest's alcoholic struggles was unnecessary and brought the book to a crawl. And the last two books were straight garbage because of him rushing them. The Wind through the Keyhole prequel showed he could still write great stories in that setting, which makes it all the more disappointing.

The Lost Swords Trilogy by Fred Saberhagen
The Belgariad by David Eddings

Both from the 80s so may be hard to find but both great reads.

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Getting another strong recommendation for Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time, anybody familiar?

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I read 6-7 books of his Shadow of the Apt series and then got kinda bored and stopped reading it, but I'll probably finish it someday. I've never read those books though, they seem to have better reviews than the series I was reading.

He's a solid writer, but not someone I'd go out of my way to recommend based on what I read.

Those two were initially my favorite, but then going back on a reread, I loved Midnight Tides and really that whole middle trilogy just worked for me.

For me, Malazan is definitely the massive worldbuilding series with the highest percentage of books that just really worked well.