Looking for a new fantasy series, suggestions?

@ L O Shea

I was going to suggest the The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant series, i really enjoyed them but you are right they can be a bit heavy. On a lighter note there are always the discworld books.

As an aside don't you just hate it when you get into series and then find one book is months away or even years away from being published it makes me want to scream

Even if you don't have a Kindle you can download the free Kindle app for PC. You can then download the first chapter of any Kindle ebook available and try before you buy. Saves you wasting money on a book you can't get on with. You can then buy the paperback, hardback or ebook version as you wish.

Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn triology has very good characters and it leaves it up to the reader to decide what is good/evil in some of the characters. Also Robin Hobb Farseer triologies have some of the best written characters I have read in any genre

Thanks Mr A Jenkinson - that's a fantastic idea!

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. A brilliant book and very much recommended.

I can't believe no one has mentioned the (probable) father of sword & sorcery fiction Fritz Lieber. If you are new to SF & fantasy then you must read the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series by Fritz Lieber.

If Margaret Weis reads your comments Ben i think HE will be pleased !!!!!!!!!!!

Eh? Don't get it. Margaret Weis IS a SHE.

(It's Tracy Hickman who is commonly mistaken as a SHE).

As someone stated above, if you're a newbie to fantasy then you can't beat David Eddings, it is pretty much a comedy dressed up in a fantasy world. Almost like watching an episode of red dwarf or blackadder. Such an easy read and love the humour. He was a hilarious writer (RIP).

Terry Brooks is also very light hearted, but his characters are far too one-dimensional and i hate the way his characters all seem to say "no let me go first and you stay here where its safe"...."no you stay and i'll go on my own"....."no please let me"....it drives me insane how patronising he makes the characters....but there is something very Dan Brown about his writing style that does make me read his books.

If you want something a bit deeper then Feist's Magician and Darkness at Sethanon etc definitely fills the gap, although his writing is a little inconsistent.

Then deeper still is George R R Martin a song of fire and ice. I too am waiting impatiently for the next one. His world is so rich and detailed it will really suck you in, and the evil in it is VERY evil, and you can never tell who is good and who is bad. The only downside is that he tends to skip from character every chapter and it drives me mad sometimes. I sometimes skip a chapter just so it seems continuous and then go back a chapter to see what the other character did.

I'm also a big fan of Stephen Donaldsons Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It is heavy going at first and too psychological but what really comes across is how smoothly it all flows. Stephen Donaldson is excellent at making a story flow and using excellent English (which someone like Feist is not). Anyone who got sick of the series first time around, i recommend them to read it again and again, it only gets better and better.

There are plenty of authors listed in this thread i havent read, so will give them a read and see what i think. In fact there seem to be too many!

I couldn't put these books down either, I read a book per day for 10 days and I work too.. thats how bloody good they are.

Why does nobody mention Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series?
Because it's Stephen King?

P. Dorrian... No one mentions it because it is so long winded and dull!! Plus the end was so disappointing. Just my opinion of course, but having read many of the authors listed on this thread, and being a fan of fantasy in general I think that Stephen King should stick to what he's good (?) at - horror!!

My recomendations for someone starting out in the fantasy genre would be:

Raymond E Feist
Trudi Canavan
Robin Hobb
Maria V Snyder
David Eddings
Terry Brooks
James Barclay
Robert Jordan (though the series isn't finished yet)
Barb & J C Hendee
Anne Bishop
Kelley Armstrong (set in the modern world)
Sara Douglass
Christopher Rowley
Christopher Stasheff (comedy as well)
Christopher Paolini

Once you have read a few of these and hopefully decided you like the genre then tackle:

George RR Martin
Stephen Donaldson
Katherine Kerr
Tad Williams
Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Steven Erikson

I would like to reccomend The Riftwar Saga Starting with Magician, If you fancy something a bit funnier Try some Tom Holt; Odds & Gods, Paint your Dragon. You could also try the Pern books By Anne McCaffrey

Lucy Fletcher.....IMO I think that's being a bit hard on Mr King, I actually enjoyed the series, but I had the pleasure of listening to them and the 2 narrators were the "great" Frank Muller and George Guidall , and believe me once these narrators read a book everything else is forgotten and you just listen to their voice.

Too many authors are leaving us waiting for the next installment. Martin,Rothfuss,Lynch etc. There are those that are pretty consistent in their publication dates. Erikson, Abercrombie,Butcher manage one a year which is pretty good, especially Erikson whose books are enormous. Saying that, I couldn't imagine myself writing a book like those mentioned and have no idea what's involved. It's frustrating for those of us that want to read the next installment, but almost impossible to understand the work that goes behind it. So although I moan I'm always glad when they're published.
The most annoying thing, for me, is when publication dates are messed around with, it happens a lot on amazon. A publication date is posted and it is evidently incorrect. e.g Scott Lynch's Republic of Thieves was given a date in March (or so) of this year, after lynch had stated on his blog that it would be at least a year before publication ( this all happened in jan/feb). Miscommunication?. Just post an informed date and I'll deal with it. Don't mess about.

The Discworld Books are great, have them all (except for Small Gods..for some reason or other) and loved almost all of them.

While I haven't read a vast range of different authors and aren't as avid a reader as many, for anybody remotely interested in fantasy I can't recommend highly enough the Legend of Drizzzt series by R A Salvatore, starting with the Icewind Dale Trilogy. While on the surface they may seem like fairly typical D&D Fantasy yarns, once you get into them you find some pretty deep and poingnant running themes, especially later in the series, not least being the theme of prejudice against one's heritage, and they feature a throughly engrossing cast of characters that really do grow and develop throught the series. There's a good reason that Drizzt Do'Urden is one of the most popular characters in the whole Forgotten Realms campaign setting

May I suggest the Dragaera series by Steven Brust. the main sequence now runs to 12 novels (out of a projected 19) starting with Jhereg. In contrast to other fantasyt series they are not particularly long (around 200 -250 pages each; some authors are barely out of chapter one at that point). The books should be read in order but the events are not linear - one novel might leap back a few years to fill in some details while the next will continue with the main storyline where it left off. Brust's style varies greatly from one book to another - he clearly enjoys experimentation and novelty.

For even more backstory there are five more novels set centuries earlier that are deliberate pastiches of Dumas' Musketeer novels. This series begins with The Phoenix Guards.

They might fall under the sci-fi not fantasy genre, but simon r greens deathstalker series is worth a look

Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss) is one of the best books I have ever read. He does, however, take some time to write his novels. Again, the Martin books are excellent as well as the malazzan book of the fallen. You would probably have to read the latter a few times to get all the ins and outs though because they are very complicated!! The Lies of Lock Lamora is pretty good as well as J V Jones' Baker Boy. Anything by Brandon Sanderson (mistborn and Stormlight Archive especially) are excellent - funny, dark, amazing plots. If you want something more simple, go for Eragon ect or Trudi Canavan's The Age of the Five. Im terms of sience fiction, you can't go wrong with Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure - very very very very very very very good; Also Peter F Hamilton's The Dreaming Void. These two books will blow your mind and leave you dazed afterwards!! Hope this list helps!!

Catch a Succubus
by J.R. BOWLES

Daniel has just turned seventeen but he still hasn't hit puberty. He is only five feet tall, no body hair and pudgy. He and his buddy, Jimmy, have one last game on the Ouija Board before he moves away to an odd country house owned by a new stepfather.

Daniel's mother Kelli, has married Duncan Osborne , a high school football coach who has taken an interest in his overly indulged new stepson.

Daniel despises his new "XXXX-for-brains" stepfather, mentally accusing him of abuse.

One night Daniel awakens to someone in his room and is propelled into a fast pace sexual paranormal escapade, accelerating him into puberty.

His friend Jimmy comes to spend a few days with him and they soon get caught up in the most confusing adventure either one of them could have imagined.

The Seventh Chakra

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For something with a bit more of a comedy edge, I'd highly recommend Terry Pratchett's Discworld. The tales are well written but are more mainstream than a lot of the genre and the jokes have had me laughing out loud for years. There are so many novels to get stuck into but it is entirely possible to read them out of order as standalone pieces and still get the most out of them. Can't recommend them enough.