Suggestions for a new author / series of books for me to read?

Entirely fair criticisms, especially on the corn knights thing. Solid fantasy standalones are rare though. Everyone expects a 7-book series with massive worldbuilding.

If you're ok with more of a high fantasy LOTR feel, (requiring substantial suspension of disbelief, and recognizing that it was written in the 70s), his Fionavar Tapestry trilogy is highly enjoyable. Again, the prose is what gets me. It's like the first time I read Patrick O'Brian, only fantasy.

Obligatory Black Company suggestion, and for something a little more in the GRRM style, this:

The Riyria Revelations series by Michael J. Sullivan

Long series, it's finished, and if Audiobooks are your thing the narrator is absolutely fantastic.

Late do the party but since you like King and Crichton really recommend the passage. It is a lot like a combo of both of them and one of the best books iv read in years.

The Passage (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CaughtCross_sl said:

Late do the party but since you like King and Crichton really recommend the passage. It is a lot like a combo of both of them and one of the best books iv read in years.

The Passage (novel) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Click to expand...

I liked that book quite a bit, definitely a great read.

For some reason though, I can't get into the second one (The Twelve), I've started it 3-4 times and haven't made it more than a few hours in.

these are not new authors by any means but they are great writers.

Richard Adams, for books like Watership Down and Shardik

Douglas Adams for his dirk gently and hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy books. you will be laughing out loud til it hurts.

Anne Rice for her Vampire Chronicles, i mentioned this already in the movie remake thread and i think she needs a mention here. her non vampire books are alright, but the vampire stuff is easily her best. she is probably the greatest writer on vampires.

Pearl S Buck for her Good Earth Series of books, i started these in the 80s because i had seen the film and figured i would give the book a try, i was immediately hooked and then i moved onto the other installments. its about revolution and the rise and fall of power in china.

John Steinbeck for grapes of wrath, of mice and men, tobacco road, tortilla flat and a bunch of famous others though i have not read them.

Arthur Conan Doyle. there is Sherlock Holmes series of books which made him famous, though he has made some very good fantasy novels like The Lost World.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, for her Little House series of books. yeah they made that shit into a cheesy tv show in the 70s, but that show was maybe ten percent of what actually happened in the books. the hardships she and her family faced while homesteading and trekking across the country (she was only in walnut grove for a few years before she moved further west) will make anyone cherish what they have.

oh and of course Charles Dickens is required reading for everyone and shame on you if you have not read at least 2 or 3 of his books.

As long as we're mentioning some literature up in this bitch:

Salman Rushdie-Satanic Verses
Rulyard Kipling-Kim

Maybe some Cryptonomicron by Neil Stephenson.

Str0 just assigned you a high school reading list plus Anne Rice and Pearl Buck=P

lol, why didnt you just watch the movie and try to fake it? none of those books were assigned to me in school, i watched their respective films and decided to give the books a try because the book is always more in depth. i liked The Good Earth so much i just kept going. it also helps that i love old old films and so the lingo in some of these crusty old books was not a problem to get through. the 2 hardest books was Dracula by bram stoker and my dad's old copy of the complete unabridged version of of sherlock holmes's mysteries. i literally had to read both with a dictionary next to me for references. i was around 14 or 15 and didnt know too many olde english words. i think dracula took me a few weeks to get through and that book is probably under 300 pages long. i do not recommend anyone read it unless you have a lot of patience and are a horror geek like me.

those books i listed really are awesome and i can see why some of them would be required reading in school. ya know because they teach you shit about life. though i can also see why some kids would not want to be forced to read a book because fuck people trying to make you do something you did not want to do. in my school they used to just let you choose what book you wanted to read so i would just write one up on a book i already read. made it long and voila. instant A grade. my class was pretty dumb so i think the teacher just wanted people to read something, anything as long as it was reading.

With Anne Rice Vampire books, it gets pretty bad after Queen of the Damned.

Sterling_sl said:

With Anne Rice Vampire books, it gets pretty bad after Queen of the Damned.

Click to expand...

i heard that, heck i even believed that for a number of years, then i was cleaning out my old books and ran across the body thief and said to myself. what the hell ill give it another shot. and that book turned out to be pretty fucking sweet.

i just checked wiki and there are ten vampire chronicle books.
The Vampire Chronicles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
i think i got as far as the vampire armand or merrick before i stopped. i didnt even know there were others.

If you're a Stephen King fan, try Joe Hill. Horns is my fav. Also, Clive Barker is a really dark twisted Stephen King. Cabal is my favorite (Nightbreed). What Dreams May Come, I am Legend by Richard Matheson. Ghost Story, Peter Straub.

Vvoid_sl said:

Because it was like 1980 and I was 11? Skipping the fact that it is likely there wasn't even a VHS version of that movie available then, it isn't like today where I could have just searched Netflix for it and watched it on my own TV without anyone knowing.

Click to expand...

ahh ok. i was in my teens when i saw the film in the mid 80s. it was on AMC or TNT when they showed good movies.

Sterling_sl said:

With Anne Rice Vampire books, it gets pretty bad after Queen of the Damned.

Click to expand...

It sure does. I remember ripping through the first three and thinking "this is awesome". I read the next 2-3 or so, and ended up stopping after the 400th occurrence of over the top dude vampires describing other dude vampires using words like "luscious" and "succulent". I think Anne went off the deep end and got a little overly wrapped up in her own romanticizing of her characters, and the latter books were basically like supermarket romance novels.

If anyone's looking for a solid vampire series, Lumley's stuff is awesome and has a pretty unique spin on the whole thing:

Necroscope (Necroscope, #1) by Brian Lumley ??" Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

in Rice's defense she does state that her vampires have their senses amped way the fuck up. so her vampires descriptions need to be extreme in order to convey that. i agree she does overdo it a bit, but her stories are pretty solid. there is some fun shit going on with the angels and jesus crucifixion stuff.

Read The Carpet Makers on earlier suggestion. I loved it. nice to see a scifi story not blasting you in the face with it's scifi-ness or super heroic infallible good characters.

I liked that they told a story with new characters most chapters. very cool.

I landed on The Carpet Makers browsing the winners list of a major french price for speculative fiction (Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire). I enjoyed it greatly so mentioned it to my pnp rpg group (which doubles as a speculative fiction reading club). Verdict: one already read it and loved it, another borrowed my copy and loved it, a third downloaded the original german version for his kindle and loved it. I mentioned it here and the two people who posted about it enjoyed it too. I was about to say that it's a 6 out of 6 for this very clever book, but then I remembered that I tried to make my mother read it (an avid reader of classics and of detective stories), because I felt, as noted above, that the sci-fi elements play third fiddle to the plot and its structure. Well... that was a bust as she gave up fairly quickly, but I suspect she did not put much effort into it (as far as I am concerned, the effort was putting the book down to get some sleep!). Her loss, but still 6 out of 7.