Good epic fantasy!

triv88

"The Book of the New Sun" sounds amazing!! thanks fionnmatthew..I think thats the epic adventure i've been longing for:)

http://www.play.com/Books/Books/4-/419296/The-Book-of-the-New-Sun/Product.html

ZorbaTehZ

@FionnMatthew
lol I thought myself and my brother were the only ones to appreciate Wolfe's excellence - very nice write up too mate. Have you had a look at The Fifth Head Of Cerberus? I got it a while ago, but haven't started it yet. I heard that its some kind of prequel to the Book Of The New Sun?

ZorbaTehZ

triv88 wrote:

"The Book of the New Sun" sounds amazing!! thanks fionnmatthew..I think thats the epic adventure i've been longing for:)

http://www.play.com/Books/Books/4-/419296/The-Book-of-the-New-Sun/Product.html

What you've got there is the first two parts:
The Shadow Of The Torturer
The Claw Of The Conciliator

There are four in all, this is the other two:
The Sword Of The Lichtor
The Citadel Of The Autarch
Best getting both tbh.

Illkillya

FionnMatthew wrote:

Just to throw in my bit with the Robert Jordan bashing: It's awful.
...
I've read an awful lot of this genre, trying to get back to the original thrill of Tolkien. I still don't think anyone has superseded Tolkien at what he did, but there are writers in the genre who have done comparably amazing work, just in a different vein.

Someone's already mentioned Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun. The Book of the New Sun is an incredible work; it's stunningly intricate, thematically mature, heavily atmospheric and demands multiple reads. It feels like a great epic, and it is also a singular work of literature. If you don't mind the fact that it is also, secretly, a science fiction sequence, (which is something to bear in mind while reading it) it is highly recommended.

Gene Wolfe's other work is equally recommended. He's an ex-engineer, but also a war-veteran, and a classicist. His prose is always excellent, and he never sticks to any one style. For instance: The Book of the New Sun is written in the first person, as a memoir, in a Dickensian/Chestertonian register, with just the right air of eloquent wistfulness and mystery to endear it to the reader after the first sentence: "It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future." But, say, Free Live Free, one of his single novels, is written in a compact, stripped back, third person style, like Hemingway.

He wrote two other sequences in the same universe as the Book of the New Sun. These are The Book of the Long Sun and The Book of the Short Sun. Each is unique and self-sufficient. He also wrote a historical fantasy sequence, which he appears to be returning to recently, called Latro in the Mist, which follows the exploits of a Roman mercenary during the Persian wars in Greece. The first three books of this sequence are available: Soldier in the Mist, Soldier of Arete and Soldier of Sidon.

...

One final note. I'd recommend, for further exploration of the genre, Clute and Nichols The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. It's comprehensive up till the 1990s, and it's so informative you won't be able to help getting lost in it, and imagining epic fantasy novels better than any you ever could have read. Check it out.

Good luck.

Good post, although I disagree with some of your opinions. I don't have a problem with same old clichés in fantasy books, it is part and parcel of the genre, although it is refreshing when something truly original comes along. A lot of the fantasy authors (e.g. Feist/Brooks/Jordan) are good at storytelling but bad at writing.

I'll have to check out Wolfe's stuff. I'll elaborate on my original post, since this thread has evolved a bit and is no longer a response to what the OP was originally looking for, in my opinion, but moreso recommendations of fantasy epics in general.

I strongly recommend Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, Thorn. It is my favourite fantasy series - it has its weaknesses, but when I finished reading it, I immediately started back on book 1 again. The only other time I've done that is with Tolkien.

Robert Jordan is getting a beating here, and I think it is a bit unnecessary. I agree what most people say about the weak characters and repetitive writing, but there was some excellent stuff in the first 6 books. The world of the warders, the Aes Sedai, the ajahs, The Ways, the flame and the void, etc. It is well worth reading up until book 7 at least, when it gets too frustrating.

johnnyskeleton

Illkillya wrote:

Robert Jordan is getting a beating here, and I think it is a bit unnecessary. I agree what most people say about the weak characters and repetitive writing, but there was some excellent stuff in the first 6 books. The world of the warders, the Aes Sedai, the ajahs, The Ways, the flame and the void, etc. It is well worth reading up until book 7 at least, when it gets too frustrating.

I think it is quite necessary to expose the poverty of robert jordan's books (which is inversly tied to the riches in his pocket). The Wheel of Time is being dragged out beyond any kind of sense and if there is going to be an end to it, it will be a dramatic change to the pace of the books. But if you take WoT as one large book (written as a series) rather than as individual books, what is the point of starting to read something (and speding €70+ to buy seven long volumes) only never to finish it because it becomes too frustrating?

Sarky

I see no mention of R. Scott Bakker. His "Prince of Nothing" trilogy is pretty awesome. Swordplay, sorcery, backstabbing, intrigue, and all in the middle of a massive jihad. It's very "holy crusades" but with some great dark magic and interesting takes on the nature of cause and effect. And the Consult are just COOL.

Also, why only one mention of Steven Erikson? Granted, like A Song Of Ice And Fire and Wheel of Time, his Malazan Book of The Fallen isn't finished yet, but completely unlike those others, it's obvious he knows exactly where he's going with it, and he knows there will be a total of 10 books, no more. He's on 7 so far. It's also really original, and as far as I'm concerned it's the benchmark for what defines an epic story. The mix of subtle, intricate little subplots all joining up into one incredibly epic, vast megaplot is just breathtaking. I cannot recommend it enough.

While I'm at it, Robert Jordan's WoT is really well worth a read up until about book 5-6. Steer clear of the rest, as it just becomes a bloated morass of pointless little stories where nothing interesting at all happens. Mordeth has summed it up quite well. Shame, really, it had potential.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

libraries people, libraries.

if you must read the Wheel of time, and I will admit that for a number of years I absolutely ****ing loved it, get them for free.

Books one through six, I read them and re-read them, and re-read them another seven or eight times... couldn't find a flaw, loved every second of it. I wouldn't attempt it now though, my hatred of most (just about all, one or three exceptions) of the characters would completely colour the experience.

book seven... meh, some alright stuff hapens.. but overall, very.. meh. The start of a serious slide in quality, but readable if only for the plot advances (which if I recall correctly are few and reasonably significant).

book eight.. this is where I started to lose hope in a big way, it was about half the size of any previous book and absolutely ****ing nothing happened. just.. ****ing... awful. Absolutely dreadful. but not quite unforgiveable.

Book nine.... cringeworthy. The first time I picked it up, still somewhat of a WoT fan, I got to about page 107 after about two weeks (up until this point I would read any WoT book from cover to cover, pausing only to urinate and for any food preperation that required hand eye coordination). I left the book down in disgust and forgot about it for a half year or so, after which I resolved to plough my way through it.
It was horrible. At the very end, one beautiful thing happens, that if you were at any point a fan of the series, you'll like. And I will admit to walking around the house with a silly grin on my face in delight for the accomplishment, but it didn't last.. the sheer power of will it took to force myself through book 9 weakened me, and I swore never to read another Wheel of time book again.

So I bought book 10 anyway, and after another two or three weeks and only being able to push myself 100 pages in, I gave up. Threw the book as far away from me as I could in my room, and left it there. It never reached my bookshelf, it's decomposing somewhere in wicklow as I type this. I should mention, I own just about every book I have ever read.. I do not throw books out, just in case.. twenty years from now I will want to read them again.

So if you want to read the Wheel of Time, be prepared to fall in love with some characters, places, stories and an overall sense that this series is going somewhere.. and prepare also to have this love trampled on by a diseased maniac, so drunk on his own power that he refuses to draw his story to a close.

It will never end, and neither will your pain.

D

Well I got in Robert Jordan very recently. I basically got the whole thing as an e-book. So I read the whole thing in about 3 months. Starts off good and then he must have gone senile as he just keeps repeating himself.

Oh look one of the women has been kidnapped again.

This character is still wrestling with the emotional barrier that they had in book one.

I remember starting book 11 and thinking: "He'll never be able to tie this thing together in one book". I hit the end of book eleven and thing "bastard he still hasn't finished" I don't hold any hope for the 12th book but I know I will read itanyway just to see what happens.

I hadn't read a fantasy book that I liked in a while until my father gave me "The Assasin's Apprentice" by Robin Hobb. I really enjoyed it and would reccommend it.

So I bought the follow up and was really dissappointed. No character development, very little plot development. In fact the second book could have been changed to an extra chapter at the end of the first book and a prologue at the beginning of the third book.

The third book was much better though. As a series I would reccommend it. I also intend to check out other Robin Hobb books.

johnnyskeleton

D wrote:

Starts off good and then he must have gone senile as he just keeps repeating himself.

There are several chapters in WoT called "A cup of tea" or something similar. What invairably happens is that the main characters go to meet some random enemies (who were created just for the chapter and don't have any real purpose) and sit down to a cup of tea over negotiations only to find out that "Oh no! They have poisoned the tea" and get rescued by some random chance. Apart from the fact that these are obvious traps and it's the same charaters over and over again, they still fall for it like little lemmings jumping off a cliff.

That, plus thousands of other annoyances, together with some alright stuff, but nothing really outstanding or novel, and you have the written, fantasy version of Big Brother.

I would be very wary about rubbishing a book or writer, horses for courses and so forth, but I really think there is no reason for anybody to start reading WoT other than to see how bad popular American fiction can be.

Miss Fluff

Well nothing is more epic or fantastical than The Odyssey by Homer. It's not at all heavy going and if you want fantasy and excitement than you have it in spades.

FionnMatthew

Miss Fluff wrote:

Well nothing is more epic or fantastical than The Odyssey by Homer. It's not at all heavy going and if you want fantasy and excitement than you have it in spades.

Well, with respect, I don't think it's really what the OP was thinking of. What he/she seems to have been looking for is more something of the epic/fantasy genre than something which could be said to be epic, or fantastical. That means something which corresponds to certain unspoken conventions which were inaugurated in the wake of Tolkien. Such as: a pseudo-medieval setting (and not an ancient mediterranean one), replete with an heroic code and social order that owes more to that era than to the Greek counterpart, a preoccupation, nay almost fetish for the 'quaintness' of the technology and lifestyle of that (ideal) era, ie. swords and armour, inns and cobblestones, leather and rope, horses and carts, flagons and sides of meat, etc. (as opposed to the indifference found in the Odyssey, since that work was not as ideally retrospective.)

Genre fantasy is a modern phenomenon. I would think the Odyssey is, while enjoyable, an entirely different experience.

Besides which, while it might be described as "epic", I don't know whether "fantastical" applies. Homeric poetry is part of the mythic consciousness of Western Civilisation. It's myth, which has something of a historical/religious character to it, and in Homer's reckoning this myth is reconciled with our own past. The worlds of most fantasies are fabricated, and could not coexist with our own histories.

And if ancient mythological epic poetry is your thing, I would think the Aeneid is more epic and (slightly more) fantastical than the Odyssey, as well as being altogether more involving.

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

@FionnMatthew
lol I thought myself and my brother were the only ones to appreciate Wolfe's excellence - very nice write up too mate.

We're not a numerous lot, we Gene Wolfe readers!

ZorbaTehZ wrote:

Have you had a look at The Fifth Head Of Cerberus? I got it a while ago, but haven't started it yet. I heard that its some kind of prequel to the Book Of The New Sun?

I haven't got it, but I've read about it in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Apparently it is remotely possible that it takes place in the same universe as Severian's, but the clues to such an interpretation are sparse. To be honest, it sounds remarkably similar, thematically, to the Book of the Short Sun. It sounds deadly though.

I forgot to mention the Urth of the New Sun, which is a fifth book, tacked onto the end of the Book of the New Sun, and finishes the tale of Severian's adventure after the events of Part 4: Citadel of the Autarch. It's really good too, and actually clarifies an awful lot of the mysteries in the quartet.

Illkillya wrote:

I don't have a problem with same old clichés in fantasy books, it is part and parcel of the genre, although it is refreshing when something truly original comes along.

I think there's a distinction to be made between clichés and conventions. I'd be the first person to admit to enjoying a good old romp through a classic fantasy landscape, complete with rural villages, bustling cities and furtive flagons of ale in a pokey old inn. I love that setting, and I do believe it is part and parcel of the genre - I think it is a constituent part of the genre.

But writers like Robert Jordan don't quite manage to understand such conventions as anything other than marks. It occurs to me, while reading a Jordan work, that he believes all he has to do is stick in a few of these fantasy "signposts" and fantasy fans will be happy.

This is a most superficial way of thinking about epic fantasy. Epic fantasy is not just inns and roads and Dark Lords and foundling boys who become knights or wizards.

There are also less visible elements in a good fantasy novel, which are just as necessary, and without which those conventions we mentioned become empty cliches

Jordan, for instance, fails to invest the confrontation between good and evil convention. He continually throws his characters into confrontation after confrontation, with all manner of identikit Forsaken, with only superficial differences. All of these enemies are the same enemy with different colours - there is nothing to differentiate them apart from their names. The occurrence in the plot is not integral. It needn't actually occur where it does - it doesn't really change the story very much. It's just a setpiece culmination to each book, because "that's how a fantasy book should end - with a big confrontation between good and evil".

It's like the empty inclusion of a car chase, or romantic interest in an action movie, even when it's not demanded by the plot. Nothing really changes. Rand's heroism consists in simple victory, and the villain is incidentally evil. The villain's death doesn't mean anything (especially when they start coming back! Yawn.). There's nothing else to it, really.

A good writer mightn't include that convention, if the story isn't going that way, and if he/she does, you can be damn sure it'll be significant in some way. There'll be a narrative symmetry to it, or it'll change something about the plot, or it'll thwart your expectations, or it'll bring to a close certain character arcs. It'll be integral and hence be invested with life by the substance of the story, instead of sticking out like a sore thumb.

It's like those blue lights that boy racers put on the underside of their Nissan Micras. Those blue lights don't make them the cars from that (awful) Vin Diesel film. Equally, countless thinly allegorical cities, countless watery hack'n'slash heroes, countless buxom maidens and haughty matrons, countless identical villains and random 'magical' items on, and Jordan's books still do not feel like fantasy. They feel like a generic teen-coming-of-age story, with exactly that facile, everyday ethos and sterilised, suburban America idiom, processed and regurgitated with the trappings of genre fantasy, and strung out forever for the long buck. It's a teen soap opera wearing Tolkien's breeches.

And that's the big crime in all of this. Instead of creating a different world, into which we can venture, and revel, Jordan makes of the world of faerie something altogether more everyday, more mundane. It's the colonisation of Middle Earth by the left-of-Atlantic monoculture. It wouldn't be completely out of place to find a "Ye-Olde-McDonalds" in Cairhien. After all, "the Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again."

In a genre with such pedigree as Tolkien himself, and Wolfe, and le Guin, it's nothing but pulp.

Illkillya wrote:

A lot of the fantasy authors (e.g. Feist/Brooks/Jordan) are good at storytelling but bad at writing.

I cordially disagree with this. I can't speak for Brooks, and I think Feist is so much better than Jordan as to be generic, rather than pulp, but Robert Jordan is, as far as I'm concerned, very bad at storytelling. He's pretty bad at everything.

George RR Martin doesn't have phenomenally good prose, but his plots are excellent. They are compelling, and subvert expectation regularly. I would have said what you said about him. But not about Robert Jordan.

Illkillya wrote:

I'll have to check out Wolfe's stuff.

I humbly recommend it.

Illkillya wrote:

Robert Jordan is getting a beating here, and I think it is a bit unnecessary. I agree what most people say about the weak characters and repetitive writing, but there was some excellent stuff in the first 6 books.

I would say that the first book was fair, the second passable, and the third tolerable, and that after that it just gets worse.

Mordeth wrote:

book eight.. this is where I started to lose hope in a big way, it was about half the size of any previous book and absolutely ****ing nothing happened. just.. ****ing... awful. Absolutely dreadful. but not quite unforgiveable.

Perhaps I'm just intolerant, but I think it was around book three that I became aware that the story was out of control. I was willing to see where it went after book one, but the story became directionless pretty much immediately after that. There was nothing compellingly necessary about book two, and - all that stuff about the Horn seemed a step down from the relentless pursuit of the first book. Besides which, he began to demystify his world systematically, by "touring" each city on the map, instead of creating the story first, and then seeing where he wanted to go. But I thought, perhaps it was a lull. I'll read the next one, I thought. But book three was more of the same - it was only superficially different from the other two.

I read up to book nine anyway. But I think it was obvious that the beginning of the end for the sequence began in book three, maybe even in book two!

JohnnySkeleton wrote:

I would be very wary about rubbishing a book or writer, horses for courses and so forth, but I really think there is no reason for anybody to start reading WoT other than to see how bad popular American fiction can be.

Yes! That's precisely why I continued reading it. I didn't believe it could get worse after book six or so, and then book seven came along. And, to my almost gleeful disbelief, it's gotten exponentially worse each time.

What I think is hilarious is websites like this.

FionnMatthew

I just came across this now, but I think the OP should take it into account. Neil Gaiman wrote it, and it's here in full, if you want to read it. I think it's perfectly correct.

Neil Gaiman wrote:

How to read Gene Wolfe:

1) Trust the text implicitly. The answers are in there.

2) Do not trust the text farther than you can throw it, if that far. It's tricksy and desperate stuff, and it may go off in your hand at any time.

3) Reread. It's better the second time. It will be even better the third time. And anyway, the books will subtly reshape themselves while you are away from them.Peace really was a gentle Midwestern memoir the first time I read it. It only became a horror novel on the second or the third reading.

4) There are wolves in there, prowling behind the words. Sometimes they come out in the pages. Sometimes they wait until you close the book. The musky wolf-smell can sometimes be masked by the aromatic scent of rosemary. Understand, these are not today-wolves, slinking grayly in packs through deserted places. These are the dire-wolves of old, huge and solitary wolves that could stand their ground against grizzlies.

5) Reading Gene Wolfe is dangerous work. It's a knife-throwing act, and like all good knife-throwing acts, you may lose fingers, toes, earlobes or eyes in the process. Gene doesn't mind. Gene is throwing the knives.

6) Make yourself comfortable. Pour a pot of tea. Hang up a DO NOT DISTURB Sign. Start at Page One.

7) There are two kinds of clever writer. The ones that point out how clever they are, and the ones who see no need to point out how clever they are. Gene Wolfe is of the second kind, and the intelligence is less important than the tale. He is not smart to make you feel stupid. He is smart to make you smart as well.

8) He was there. He saw it happen. He knows whose reflection they saw in the mirror that night.

9) Be willing to learn.

johnnyskeleton

FionnMatthew wrote:

What I think is hilarious is websites like this.

http://blacktower.net/reader.htm

Even hardcore WoT fans get sick of his writing.

Dades

Am off on hols in a couple of weeks so have ordered The Book of the New Sun as per the recommendations here, and despite of Neil Gaiman's.

FionnMatthew

The Atheist wrote:

Am off on hols in a couple of weeks so have ordered The Book of the New Sun as per the recommendations here, and despite of Neil Gaiman's.

Well I don't really know anything about Neil Gaiman, but he's on the nail with that recommendation. He couldn't be more accurate about Gene Wolfe, whether or not he's worth a look himself.

Good luck with the book!

nonamemark

johnnyskeleton wrote:

http://blacktower.net/reader.htm

Even hardcore WoT fans get sick of his writing.

That Wot Readers Digest is brilliant, remember reading it a while ago

Dades

FionnMatthew wrote:

Well I don't really know anything about Neil Gaiman, but he's on the nail with that recommendation. He couldn't be more accurate about Gene Wolfe, whether or not he's worth a look himself.

"American Gods" bored me to tears - that's all I know of him!

FionnMatthew wrote:

Good luck with the book!

Cheers!

Illkillya

The Atheist wrote:

"American Gods" bored me to tears - that's all I know of him!
Cheers!

I was similarly disappointed with Anansi Boys.

That Wheel of Time satire is brilliant.

lordgoat

Ok here's the ones i like:
Feist. From Magician right through to his latest book, character development and introduction and mergeing of new characters is done splendidly. I really enjoy how he writes, mainly characer and plot driven, not like Tolkien where the ****ers stop for dried bread and cheese every two minutes or full of ****e songs by the annoying Bombadil.

Geroge R R Martin: The best stort out there at the moment i think. Although i won't read anymore until he finishes it or at least is writing the last book.

Stephen King's: The Dark Tower series.

Like Feist the first book of this was written very early in their career (circa 86 for both i think) the quality of writing improves with each book, i found this extremely enjoyable when re-reading them.

JV Jones and Robin Hobb. Both have excellent series out there well worth a read.

Stephen Donaldson's Unbeliever and Gap series' are both worth reading.

Others that are easy to read: Eddings if you are 15 and easily pleased and can overlook a simple basic plot. Prachett as he can be very funny. Gemill, Druss was and is a Legend, much like Ole.


Avoid the Wheel of Time as it becomes utter drivel after book 5 or so. Painful is not even close.