Ask Lemmy

Discworld (Terry Pratchett), no question.

DISCWORLD

His dark materials aka the Northern Lights series. I read it as a young teen and again as an adult. Really good.

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5

Firsthand account of one of the scariest events of the Second World War in the shape of highly entertaining sci-fi novel.

Must read for everyone.

Earthsea.

Oglaf 😆

Robin hobb farseer books are great

Chronicles of the Black Company

If you're into early 20th century pulp fantasy, I highly recommend Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars and Robert E. Howard's Conan.

Series?

• Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy

• Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain

• Discworld, especially the Night Watch books

• Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series

Individual Books:

• Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown, or anything else she wrote

• Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock and Howl's Moving Castle, or anything else she wrote

• Philip K. Dick, "Galactic Pot-Healer" (Dick straddles the line between science fiction and science fantasy, but this one's firmly the latter)

• Madeline L'Engle, Many Waters

I'm sure I'll think of more but my break is up.

Most of the classics have been well covered at this point. One of the best books (and authors) I've read lately and would argue is a modern classic already is M.L. Wang's Sword of Kaigen. It is a stand alone fantasy novel set in a world similar to Avatar (the last airbender) where magic is elemental and controlled nationally. It covers the story of a young man and his mother and father, defending their village against overwhelming invading forces.

Wang's strength is in her character building: everyone is highly complex, multifaceted, and nuanced. Despite the tropey premise, the story manages to completely subvert the standard clichés and covers themes of nationalism, propaganda, grief, forgiveness, patriarchy, and identity. It also has literally the best redemption arc of any book I've ever read. Please go read it if you haven't already!

The hobbit is great. I loved every page of it. Just don't base your opinion of the movies if you've seen them, and not read the book. How the fuck did they shit out a 3.5 hour long turd from a 15 page chapter in the battle of the five armies. Holy shit.

Here are some series I can't recommend enough:

Cradle by Will Wight — A young man born too weak to matter in a world where martial artists can shatter mountains and walk on air decides that's not good enough. Starts small and intimate, then escalates into genuinely insane power fantasy. The progression system is crack cocaine. 12 books, all out, binge-worthy.

The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan — A slum girl accidentally discovers she has magic, which is very illegal if you're not from the right family. Gets accepted into the Magicians' Guild under suspicious circumstances and slowly uncovers something rotten at its core. Cozy, character-driven, and surprisingly political.

The Lightbringer Series by Brent Weeks — Magic is literally made of light and color, and drafters slowly go mad from using it. Packed with political scheming, morally grey characters, and one of the best slow-burn mystery plots in fantasy. Weeks hid twists in plain sight for five books and sticks the landing.

The Licanius Trilogy by James Islington — Time travel, prophecy, and a magic system where using power costs you years off your life. Dense and intricate in the best way, the kind of series where you flip back to chapter one after finishing it and realize how much you missed. Islington clearly planned every page from the start.

All are fantastic series, happy reading! 📚

Worm by Wildbow, 10/10 all the way through, which is incredible given it's 7000 pages and written by an indie author.

Since you like D&D, my rec goes to Erin M Evans' Brimstone Angels series. It's set in the Forgotten Realms, the default setting for 5th edition and the setting used in both the recent D&D movie and the Baldur's Gate video game series. Brimstone Angels stars two tiefling twins and their dragonborn adoptive father. One of the twins accidentally stumbles into a warlock pact with a devil, and the series is largely about dealing with the consequences of that.

It's so well written with excellent characters. And when the final two books (five and six) go to the dragonborn kingdom of Tymanther, an area and culture comparatively unexplored by FR canon, Evans gets to really bust out her worldbuilding chops and put her background in anthropology background to good use.

The good thing is, IMO you don't need a very big investment to decide if it's right for you. If you get through the prologue of book one and aren't interested, it's not for you. Evans does an amazing job of condensing her style, tone, and themes into the prologue of her books specifically for that reason (and because the first few actual chapters are often slightly different in tone).

If you've read the 2014 PHB, you've already read some of it. The quotes in the tiefling section and dragonborn section come from the prologue to the first book and from the 4th book, respectively.

Brimstone Angels is a lot tighter than some of the sprawling epic fantasy recommended elsewhere. It's comparatively easy reading compared to some of the great recommendations others have made like Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, or Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere. It could make a good palatte cleanser between books like those, if you're so inclined. Though I found myself wanting to binge the whole thing.

Only downside is, last time I looked, you literally cannot get the first book in paper. It's ebook or audiobook only, since it's been out of print for a long time and second-hand copies go for instance amounts. When I looked, the rest of the series was easy, but that may have changed; it's been like 8 years.

I really like Frank Herbert's Dune. It is science fiction, but takes many aspects from history, like fiefdomship/politics and religion, especially from medieval times. Some argue the book is too much into details and thus can be dry (no pun intended) but I like it as the world seems more authentic, the characters more relatable.

Malazan, Malazan, Malazan. Literally the result of two bored archaeologists and their DnD campaign while they were out on a dig.

It hangs with the best in terms of humor, tragedy, epic scope, and heroism. It does not hold your hand, in fact it will delight in letting your hand go while leading you through a dark room. Deeply philosophical, challenges and embraces tropes in equal part, absolutely interesting magic system(s). It is hardcore hopecore, it champions the little guy, empathy, and the bright mind over the slow. Main series is finished, 10 giant books. Also a bunch of others outside that series by both creators.

Be patient with it, some payoffs take a while. Read Gardens of the Moon and then Deadhouse Gates to see if it's clicking. It isn't for all.

Ah, I love recommendation posts.

It depends on what you actually enjoyed reading and why. I see you already have a lot of great suggestions. The only author I haven't yet seen mentioned is perhaps Asimov, although you said you prefer fantasy to sci fi. That's also my preference, however I find his short stories are worth reading and also low commitment for this reason.

One thing I find useful in recommendations is to know what else people have read and what they think about that. It helps me get an idea of which books I'm more likely to enjoy best or not, especially if I can compare their thoughts to mine about the same books. With that in mind, my thoughts:

Discworld is amazing. Pratchett is a great author. I like that he can write a story that on the surface is just a simple comedy/adventure, but if you are the type that also analyzes what they read you will soon see his stories go much deeper than what they appear to be. He will keep things entertaining and witty but also throw at you a piece of his mind for you to mull over and reflect on various aspects of life. Small Gods is one of my favorites.

I also really enjoyed Dungeon Crawler Karl, and I mean really really really. Hilarious. But it doesn't have the depth Pratchett has.

On a similar vein, The Witcher- loved the characters and the story is very entertaining, but t can't say I was blown away as with Pratchett.

I absolutely loved Abercrombie's First Law trilogy. Now that's some solid writing. The characters are so well fleshed out, unique, original. Somehow the world and the plot feel realistic, crazy as it sounds for a fantasy book. It may feel a bit slower in pacing than any of the three I previously mentioned, but not slower than LOTR which you have already read.

Some that I didn't see listed

Tad Williams Memory Sorrow Thorn trilogy. It starts really show, but if you make it through the first fifty pages it gets really good.

Tad Williams Otherland series is also really good, but kind of blends sci fi and fantasy.

Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

The Awakeners by Sherri S Tepper. All of her books are good, but again some of them mix sci fi and fantasy, but The Awakeners is straight fantasy.

Brandon Sanderson books, specifically the cosmere stuff are all pretty fucking good.

My favourite is probably Mistborn but I know a lot of people prefer The Stormlight Archives. All worth reading!

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials books. Hyperion (first 2 are best buy i love all 4 in the series). Read some of the classics like Philip k dick "do androids dream of electric sheep" and robert heinland's "stranger in a strange land" isaac asimov's "i robot" books and foundation series are excellent too.

The Neverending Story. Beautiful story and a deep musing on why humans need fantasy and storytelling.

I'll share my favourite part. Gmork the werewolf has revealed that, when a creature from the magical world Fantastica falls into the Nothing, it emerges in the real world as a lie.

"When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts. That's why I sided with the powerful and served them - because I wanted to share their power."

"I want no part in it!" Atreyu cried out.

"Take it easy, you little fool," the werewolf growled. "When your turn comes to jump into the Nothing, you too will be a nameless servant of power, with no will of your own. Who knows what use they will make of you? Maybe you'll help them persuade people to buy things they don't need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them. Yes, you little Fantastican, big things will be done in the human world with your help, wars started, empires founded. . ."

For a time Gmork peered at the boy out of half-closed eyes. Then he added: "The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fantastica doesn't exist. Maybe they will be able to make good use of you."

There is an unfortunate lack of female authors in this thread so I will post two recommendations:

• I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weiss and Tracey Hickman

The Black Company by Glen Cook. It's like what if a mercenary chronicled the Vietnam war but with wizards. The next two books in the trilogy are good, too, but don't quite live up to that first. The follow up trilogy is fine, but didn't really do it for me.

Lord of the rings of course you have read it but what about a second time

Ok so since you're doing sci-fi as well, Hyperion/Hyperion series.

Didn't spot the chronicles of amber by Roger Zelazny in the thread, so that's my recommendation if you want a long one!

Surprised I haven't seen someone yet mention Magician by Raymond E Feist. That whole first riftwar trilogy is great. Also the spin off Empire trilogy with Janny Wurts.

Seconding those who mentioned the R.A. Salvatore books including the Dark Elf series and the Icewind Dale series.

The original "The Princess Bride" by S. Morgenstern