coyoteblue

Both his The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man are great books.

johnnysd

Of recent series I highly recommend the Emperor's Blades and The Providence of Fire the first 2 books in a series called the Unhewn Throne by Brian Staveley. The first book is excellent and surprisingly the second book is better. It seems like it is going to follow a standard arc but doesn't and goes in unexpected directions. Quite excellent.

If you like Jane Austen, (and you should) then the Magicians and Mrs Quent series is well worth reading as well. I loved them.

arminius

Pick up Tales From Watership Down after you are done. A series of short stories about the same rabbits. Watership Down is easily one of my favorite books. I probably reread that more than any other book.

hanshotfirst1138

I would think of Watership Down as high-fantasy inflected. It's kind of Tolkien with rabbits.

Dr. DVD

Finished Watership Down . Great read. Going to go back to some Star Wars EU with Lords of the Sith, even though I think it is technically canon since it has the Disney brand logo on the back and has a timeline at the front that eschews previous EU outings.

crazyronin

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.

All forty.

Dr. DVD

Been over 8 years since I started this thread and still no continuation of SOIAF. Needless to say, I read books 4 and 5 in that time frame. I also have Martin's "spin off" books about the Hedge Knight and the Targaryen book. I have read several Stephen King books since then, particularly The Shining and Doctor Sleep back to back before the movie came out last year. Good stuff if you're into King. I did some non-fiction with Killers of the Flower Moon, some Agatha Christie, and now I'm on the second book of the Dune series by Frank Herbert. Digging it overall.

mndtrp

I've been going through these series over the past... quite a while. I started with the third trilogy, and then went back and started at the beginning. I agree that each set of books has a definitive end, and are enjoyable on their own, but mean a lot more when taken into context with each other. I'm kind of glad that I read the third trilogy first, because even though I felt like I was missing a lot, it was covered well enough that I didn't feel entirely left out. Once I went back to the beginning, it was cool to see the origins and paths that led up to where I started with the characters. I'm in the middle of the second book of the fourth grouping of the series. I'm going to feel a little lost once I get through the next six books and have no new one to look forward to.

brainee

Since this thread stopped several years ago, other fantasy series that I enjoyed:

I really enjoy the writing of Brandon Sanderson and I've had a chance to read everything in his Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series. The first Mistborn book, The Final Empire, is a nice one for new readers to start with him since it functions well as a stand-alone novel.

Jim Butcher's Codex Alera books were recommended by others and I greatly enjoyed them (I think I prefer them to his more famous Dresden Files books).

N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy won just about award possible. And for me, the acclaim was earned. It was a novel fantasy setting and while a trilogy none of the books are doorstops (and it's not a difficult read). I have to get back to more of her work at some point.

I enjoyed all of Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy. It's a different type of fantasy setting (middle-ages Russia) but something different is a positive for me. Like Mistborn, the first book (The Bear and the Nightengale) serves well as a stand-alone story. And it's relatively short (~300 pages) for a fantasy book.

I've been getting into the works of Robert Jackson Bennett this year and have enjoyed everything he's written. The Divine Cities trilogy has another interesting unorthodox fantasy setting ... a 20th century level world where a naval power India-like empire rules the world, after oppression from a Russian-like empire who had the aid of ultra-powerful "gods". Each book tells a complete stand-alone story (though they should be read in order starting with City of Stairs). His newest trilogy Foundryside sounds very good, but I'm waiting for it to be finished (a policy born of writers like GRRM and Patrick Rothfuss). Though Bennett has been publishing his books at a consistent pace, so I doubt he'll jerk around his readers like those others.

Another fantasy series after this thread I enjoyed was Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series. It is more of a YA style, so that may not be for everyone. I haven't read the newer two books though.

I gave Stephen Erikson's Malazan series my best shot, having read the first 5 books of the series. I just don't think I want to continue. I admire the world-building and there were elements in all of the books that I liked. I just don't think I like his writing style. Everything is so dense and wordy and long, and I look at the remaining 1000+ page monsters in the series and just can't bring myself to devoting all of the time and energy to read anymore. I was an idiot too and blind bought the next three books in the series (after #5) and they've been sitting on my bookshelf mocking me.

coyoteblue

The final book in G.S. Denning's Warlock Holmes series, "The Finality Problem" has finally been released. It is, obviously, a fantasy Sherlock Holmes parody and as parodies go I think it's pretty good. The other books in the series are -- "Warlock Holmes - A Study in Brimstone", "Warlock Holmes - The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles", "Warlock Holmes - My Grave Ritual", "Warlock Holmes - The Sign of Nine."

Dr. DVD

Been thinking of giving Sanderson a try. I took a break from fiction to read some non-fiction consisting of a biography of Andre the Giant and an autobiography of Terry Gilliam. Both very good.

TerrorTerror

I've wanted to read Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children series for quite some time.

Kurt D

Robin Hobb Elderling series worth another mention! I've been working through them in publication order, just started number 12 of 16 (City of Dragons). Fantastic stuff, no pun intended.

zinpgh

I highly recommend the Sword of Shanara series!

Eric F

The Robin Hobb stuff is great.

I also enjoy a lot of Guy Gavriel Kay's works, The Fionavar Tapestry is excellent.

Gene Wolfe is amazing- If you haven't read The Book of the New Sun you need to right now.

coyoteblue

Azimut (Lupano/Andréae)

Though the cover blurb calls it 'Terry Gilliam-eque' it's more like an aged up OZ with a touch of Wonderland. I haven't even finished it and I want to re-read it. What more can you ask for?