Fantasy novels worth reading as an adult?

[NH_Clark]

Originally Posted by lefty

I loved Bridge of Birds when I first read it 25 years ago. Thanks for reminding me of it. I'll pick up the other two now.



Kay is fantastic. That Christopher Tolkien asked him to help edit The Silmarillion has to count for something. Tigana is great, A Song for Arbonne is better, but The Fionavar Tapestry is a classic.

Couple of big fantasy novels not mentioned:

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson. .. Notable for it's asshole protagonist, who happens to be a modern day leper.
Riverworld by Philip JosÃ

Farmer. Hard to dislike a story that throws together Sir Richard Burton (the explorer), Alice Hargreaves, Samuel Clemens, King John of England, Nero, Tom Mix, Mozart, Jack London, Lothar von Richthofen and Hermann Göring.

A little known book:

Fool on a Hill by Matt Ruff. Absolute page turner. In fact, you just may re-read it once you turn that last page.

lefty

Didn't notice my recommendation had already been mentioned earlier. I'll +1 it as it is a great read with just enough "real-life" angst and sarcasm injected into a great fantasy setting.

 

[WorkingClassDude]

bump

I recommend highly the first 8 or so of Robert Asprin's MYTH series along with Craig Shaw Gardner's Ebenezum and Wuntvor trilogies. They are obviously not in print but they can either be found at a local used book store or probably most easily on Amazon. They are probably more considered humorous than fantasy, but set in fantasy lands with wacky characters and situations. I revisited these books a few years back after reading them as a teenager (I think they were aimed at teenagers but now the references would probably fly over their heads) and I plan on revisiting them again if I ever find what box they are all in. These series are just a hair of a notch less in quality than Xanth. That is to say if you like Xanth you'll probably get along with these fine.

 

[Rambo]

I read the first 3 Covenant books and found them to be boring. I'm starting on Ian M Banks' Culture series now.

 

[BP348]

I need to book mark this thread. There are several books here I'd like to check out.

 

[captmomo]

I really enjoy Terry Pratchett's novels.
Just finished the Death head series by David gunn, fun sci-fi nonsense stuff.

Other recent reads that I liked:
The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart
Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey
Robert rankins' witches of chiswick
God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe.

 

[akatsuki]

I don't care if I take fire for this, but many of the books listed in this thread are still for children. They might be appealing into adulthood but the themes are still pretty juvenile with no literary merit, just escapism.

Atwood writes adult fantasy but refuses to call it that since she is a bit of a snob and she doesn't want to be associated with the genre.

Chine Mieville is also pretty good - both Perdido Street Station and The City and the City are worth reading. Mieville has a rich style of writing and a lot of imagination.

I've heard good things about Lev Grossman's The Magicians. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell needed a bit of editing but was enjoyable.

Agreed, Dune is stellar, and although the whole series has huge flaws, it is more ambitious than anything else out there.

Bujold's Vorkosigan series I enjoyed as a teenager, but as an adult I find there are more themes that I appreciate now. A lot of it is about adulthood, life and love, responsibility and what honor means - excellent moral philosophy as well which is often not the case in these books where people are handed powers unearned and behave in atrocious ways.

On the more escapist side: the Malazan series has its highs and lows but is worth a read - it broadly copies the themes of Glen Cook's Black Company series. Abercrombie's first three First Law books are reasonably good, the fourth is just too nihilistic

 

[Thracozaag]

Once a year I re-read the following series:

The Dark is Rising Sequence--Susan Cooper
The Amber Chronicles--Roger Zelazny
The Chronicles of Prydain--Lloyd Alexander

 

[Thracozaag]

Originally Posted by Johnny Amiga

Guy Gavriel Kay - Tigana. A wonderful, single-volume epic. Really one of the best in it's genre, and the reasonable lenght (for a fantasy book anyways) def works in it's favour.

Agreed; this was excellent!

 

[MetroStyles]

Never read past the first book, but what about Dune is majorly flawed? Honest question.

Originally Posted by akatsuki

I don't care if I take fire for this, but many of the books listed in this thread are still for children. They might be appealing into adulthood but the themes are still pretty juvenile with no literary merit, just escapism.

Atwood writes adult fantasy but refuses to call it that since she is a bit of a snob and she doesn't want to be associated with the genre.

Chine Mieville is also pretty good - both Perdido Street Station and The City and the City are worth reading. Mieville has a rich style of writing and a lot of imagination.

I've heard good things about Lev Grossman's The Magicians. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell needed a bit of editing but was enjoyable.

Agreed, Dune is stellar, and although the whole series has huge flaws, it is more ambitious than anything else out there.

Bujold's Vorkosigan series I enjoyed as a teenager, but as an adult I find there are more themes that I appreciate now. A lot of it is about adulthood, life and love, responsibility and what honor means - excellent moral philosophy as well which is often not the case in these books where people are handed powers unearned and behave in atrocious ways.

On the more escapist side: the Malazan series has its highs and lows but is worth a read - it broadly copies the themes of Glen Cook's Black Company series. Abercrombie's first three First Law books are reasonably good, the fourth is just too nihilistic

 

[dusty]

I've read a lot of these books since I posted this thread. Lots of great suggestions. Stranger in a Strange Land, though, is one of the biggest pieces of **** I've ever read.

 

[akatsuki]

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

Never read past the first book, but what about Dune is majorly flawed? Honest question.

I actually think Dune (the first book) is almost perfect. The sequels less so. They are still worth reading overall, but I would hate to ruin them by discussing their flaws.

 

[sunror]

i couldn't endure dune's prose, lasted like thirty pages. i vaguely remember some cool fantasy props in it, but that's it

meville's prose, in his novels, is legitimately bad, and also intolerable (very different from dune). i've heard his short stories are better but have no experience with them

i liked jonathan strange and mr norell, though it's very much a book written by a woman. titus groan and the gormenghast trilogy are the best fantasy books ive read i think. i also like the hobbit

the rate at which i can exceed 50 pages of a given book in the fantasy genre is probably 10%, could be lower

 

[Rambo]

Originally Posted by MetroStyles

Never read past the first book, but what about Dune is majorly flawed? Honest question.
Not my fight but I thought Dune was a bit boring

Originally Posted by dusty

I've read a lot of these books since I posted this thread. Lots of great suggestions. Stranger in a Strange Land, though, is one of the biggest pieces of **** I've ever read.
I do not grok

 

[Hop]

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

 

[Journeyman]

Originally Posted by landho

As a footnote, the Elric books are long out of print. I managed to find the six books by scrounging around the mass-market paperback section in used-book stores. Should not be hard to find, but you will have to go to some effort to find them. The writing and the stories are strange, but from what I've read he cranked out the books in two weeks each (!).


The Elric series, along with much else by Moorcock, is still available outside US, at least. Just check out the UK version of Amazon. Certainly worth a read as they are quite original in parts and good, escapist fiction with an anti-hero theme.

Like most people (well, most boys, at least) I read a huge amount of fantasy and science fiction in high school, but have read very little since my late teens.

I read Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy (already mentioned in this thread) a couple of years back and although they are aimed at young adults, I really enjoyed them. As some others have said, a lot of fantasy writing is really tired and unoriginal, and tends to focus on a heroic character and a cast of supporting characters. Of course, the Dark Materials trilogy is not a great deal different, although it has two protagonists, but the writing style just seemed to me to be a lot less juvenile and a lot more enjoyable, with a good dose of wryness. Pullman ruminates on important themes - the nature of belief, the nature of organised religion, the meaning of life and so on, but he doesn't do it in an overly-important way.