Someone mentioned it already, but I have to strongly encourage it for any SciFi fan who has not read the author or any of the series.

Terry Brooks.

I just bought all of them this weekend (had read them already) and could read these 200 times and never get bored.

Start with the Legends series:

The Sword of Shannara
The ElfStones of Shannara
The Wishsong of Shannara

They give you a base to read the Heritage series, which is by far, my favourite set of 4 books ever written.

The Scions of Shannara
The Druid of Shannara
The Elf Queen of Shannara
The Talismans of Shannara

Give it a try if you haven't, I can almost guarantee you won't be disappointed. Just starting to read the new ones myself, but will be rereading the old ones. The main villains are my favorite parts, as they are so unique in each book (Shadowen, Dadga Mor, Furies, Warlock Lord, etc.)

Terry Brooks? The story is ok, but characterisation and actual writing style is nothing to be impressed with. At least for the Legend series.

I read quite a bit.

Not fantasy, nor are they all particularly humourous, but they're good books nonetheless.

I'd strongly recommend Q & A by Vikras Swarup. Cobain's Journals is another must, especially if you're old enough to remember grunge, and I'd also highly, highly recommend Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and The Rum Diaries. I would not suggest trying to emulate Hunter in any way, though.

Hmm. What else is on the bookshelf...Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor (particularly nihilistic, the author is the guy that wrote the books the movie Fight Club was based on), Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting is a favourite, Miller's Sin City collection is good as well.

This is of course in addition to the usual 'These are good, read them' authors, like Plato, Homer, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Alighieri, Orwell, and all the others.

Compared to what? Shakespeare..then yes.

But if you compare to many of the other SciFi series (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Feist, etc.), the series itself is quite on par as far as writing style. Most SciFi writing styles are nearly identical as they were all written by:

A) Nerds
B. Nerds who played D&D
C) Nerds who still play D&D


Seriously, read the bio in the back of any SciFi book and you will probably see that. R.A. Salvatore...who wrote the Drizzt stuff...still plays D&D with the same group he has played with for like 10 years. Most come from that background and hence end up writing in the same fashion/style, unless they went on to get formalized training. I can flow from series to series and see little difference, and would actually put Brooks above most of the reading I've done in other series. Feist is the only exceptional example I can think of right now, but even that is relatively the same...

Nonetheless, to each his own!

Shakespeare didn't have much of a style either, he was just hilarious. But I am comparing it to Jordan, Tolkien, Rice, etc. While you may not like their actual stories, they write (or wrote) far better than many today. Brooks just seems really flat 'this happened then this happened then this happened, oh and this happened back there but I forgot to mention it'.

Ann rice does not deserve to be considered an author.

Who says I was talking about her? Her husband wrote too .

wagner. he wrote really really good stuff! to bad they never made a book out of der ring des nibulerdung or whatchamacallit. i can't speak german.

At the least, she can string together her prose. And she deserves a fair shake, writing has been her outlet for losing a kid.



I read that not a week ago. I never knew ex-cultmembers-turned-media-messiahs could have so much to say. Diary was a good read, as well.

Personally, Gibson is god for myself, William that is. Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Bridge Trilogy, Altered Carbon, Idoru, etc. Also Blood Music by Greg Bear, Asimov is always good, Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson.
Can't say no to sword-wielding pizza delivery men in snazzy cars, but I digress.

It's a matter of personal choice, depending on your tastes. Those are some of mine.

Steven Brust, Dragaea novels series.

I've read five by now and I enjoyed them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Brust#...Dragaeran_books

Much for Gibson.

Not to argue semantics, but the style you laid on Brooks is the exact style that Tolkien wrote in. This happened, this happened, then these people did this, then this happened...oh yeah, this happened because of this...then this happened, etc. Why is that? Terry Brooks fashioned his books off his love for Tolkien, so they wrote in the same style. I'm not a huge Jordan fan, so can't really argue that point too much.

Rice was terrible on style, so I have to also object to that name being included.

They wrote the same style? Hmm, I don't see that. I think just about every fantasy author could be compared to him though I guess, he kind of laid a lot of the groundwork.

But oh well, as you said, different tastes. Brooks does wonderful stories it is just the way he writes them down that gets to me.

Gibson sucks. I don't know why everyone is so keen on his books. I know he was the first with cyberspace and all, but his books are boring and undescriptive.

Just cause someone else likes someone you can't stand, doesn't mean others won't.

Play nice, kiddies.

Huh? I just stated my opinion, wasn't trying to offend anyone.

You weren't the only one. Plenty of people were making disparaging comments. I happen to like Anne Rice, for one. And Terry Brooks. And many others.

* Anything by JRR Tolkien.
* Any series by Terry Brooks.
* "Anthem" by Ayn Rand, sort of a sci-fi in the sense it takes place in a post-cataclysmic dystopic future, though being a post-cataclysmic dystopia means the science isn't all that advanced so maybe you wouldn't call it sci-fi. (Though if "1984" by George Orwell can be billed as sci-fi then so can this.)
* "Hard Sell" by Piers Anthony, a comedy sci-fi that doesn't have as much of Piers' normal annoying idiosynchracies. Other Anthony books I like (and I have read over 100 Anthony novels, no exaggeration): "Chthon", the Incarnations of Imortality series, "Total Recall", and "Sos: the Rope" (now published as part of "Battle Circle" with its two crappy sequels).
* "The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells.
* "The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guin.
* "Farenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury.
* "Brave New World" and "Ape and Essence" by Aldous Huxley.
* "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlen is a very good book to grok.
* "Planet of the Apes" by Pierre Boulle. Get a translation of the original French novelette. It is actually surpringly good, despite Tim Burton's attempt to ruin it. The original movie also had nothing in common with the book.
* "Against the Fall of Night" by Arthur C. Clark.

Oh yes Piers Anthony, now I never really liked the Xanth series to any huge extent, but I think I have read every single one, and that is like a list of about 20 or something books. To tell you the truth in his new ones, every time they go into a pun-border-field thing, in the moon ptro, or whatever I skip it... I know its terrible but I just skip it, Piers is to nice, people send him in thouuussaaands of puns, and he just squashes them into these field things. Sometimes they are good but alot of the time they annoy me.

Also Anne Rice if you like that sort of thing.