Comments | zigguratbuilder: Suggest a Fantasy book that ENDS?

zigguratbuilder

Suggest a Fantasy book that ENDS?

Oct 12, 2009 10:15

Hey all, my library recently became useful. I can get many books there these days ( Read more... )

Comments 23

gillan October 12 2009, 14:35:35 UTC

Have you read China Mieville's stuff?

zigguratbuilder October 12 2009, 14:45:34 UTC

Inspector Chen ---> Ah, I've heard of this series. Adding to my Library List.
That also reminds me, that Captain Alarste(sp?) series of Spanish books, I've heard they're great as well. Might have to check those out.

China Mieville ---> Not really. Anything you'd recommend?

gillan October 12 2009, 14:52:17 UTC

Perdido Street Station. Single novel, self-contained, dark grungy industrial-esque fantasy.

judd_sonofbert October 12 2009, 17:31:23 UTC

All 3 of his Bas Lag books are self-contained. Perdido Street Station, Iron Council and The Scar. Great stuff. I love Perdido Street Station but it is probably the one I like the least of the three but I've still re-read it and enjoyed it.

gillan October 12 2009, 17:33:49 UTC

I haven't read Iron Council but I like Perdido a great deal more than The Scar.

Fat, ugly, scientist protagonist stole my heart.

joshroby October 12 2009, 16:13:00 UTC

Ahem. I might know of something that fits that description... ;)

nekoewen October 12 2009, 16:52:13 UTC

I really enjoyed The Etched City by K.J. Bishop. It's a subtle and unusual kind of fantasy, and quite self-contained.

I'm also a big fan of Terry Pratchett's discworld novels. They're an odd mixture of silly and significant, and a seemingly endless series of relatively self-contained novels.

weaverchilde October 12 2009, 18:43:20 UTC

Small Gods and Wee Free Men in particular are amazing

tundra_no_caps October 14 2009, 23:16:23 UTC

Need to find the mini-series he likes though.

I love the "Stories" of Granny Weatherwax, as I'm big on Narrativium, but pound for pound? The Watch books, and of course, each stands on its own.

Wee Free Man didn't wow me.

doublefeh October 12 2009, 17:04:49 UTC

Lois McMaster Bujold's Quintarian fantasy is really good. The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls particularly. (I wouldn't read Paladin without having read Chalion, but Chalion is completely self-contained). It reads like what D&D fantasy might be like if it started off with a fairly convincing actual medieval setting and layered an interesting, convincing alternate religious reality on top of it.

If you're willing to either stop at one or go all four, her Sharing Knife series is good too. It's a neat genre-hopping bit of fantasy. The first is a fantasy-romance novel, the second a fantasy... (not sure exactly. Almost a first-contact social sci-fi style story), the third a fantasy river-journey (a la Huck Finn), and the fourth more of a standard adventure story to tie it all up. But much like the Quintarian fantasy above, she does a great job at making a coherent, plausible world and setting fun characters about in it.