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freethought  1yr ago (text post)   2711 thread views

Old Culture War Thread: Your good books list

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Going to repost the list I made in the other thread. Mostly obscure epic fantasy and space opera, with a lot of 'grimdark' esque series, but not all. All of these series are completed.

If you have questions about a specific one feel free to comment and I'll explain it a bit.

  • Malazan - Steven Erikson

  • The Traitor Son Cycle - Miles Cameron

  • The Black Company - Glen Cook

  • The Second Apocalypse - Scott R. Bakker

  • The Inda Quartet - Sherwood Smith

  • Chronicles of the Black Gate - J. P. Ashman

  • Mother of Learning - Domagoi Kurmaic

  • Commonwealth Saga - Peter F. Hamilton

  • Night's Dawn Trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton

  • The Void Trilogy - Peter F. Hamilton

  • Diaspora - Greg Egan

  • Aching God Series - Mike Shel

  • Annihilation - Jeff VanderMeer

  • The Broken Earth - N. K. Jeminsen

  • Memory, Sorrow, Thorn - Tad Williams

  • Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe

  • Otherland - Tad Williams

  • Gravity Dreams - L. E. Modesit Jr.

  • Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Stephen R. Donaldson

  • Magician series - Raymond Feist

I'm quite a fan of many of these.

Malazan and Second Apocalypse are particularly excellent.

Haven't read a few of the others, and the only one which really left me lukewarm was Thomas Covenant.

I may add my own top-level, but you've covered some chunk of it.

For search purposes, would you be willing to add authors to your listings?

Annihilation is a bit hard to distinguish.

Yep, Malazan and Second Apocalypse are some of the best fiction ever written IMO. Traitor Son Cycle is very similar to those in scope, length and tone if you're looking for a new series.

I agree that Thomas Convenant wasn't the best - I added it in because it fits well with the kind of theme I like. Execution was sadly a bit lacking.

I'll go ahead and add the authors I know off the top of my head, may get to all of them at some point.

Haha, I'm currently swamped.

Reading an Elric anthology just for some historic value.

After that it's probably Jonathan Strange... since my girlfriend wants book club. Or possible the Locke Lamora sequel, or these Vorkosigan books, or...

I like Vorkosigan. Definitely struggles to make sense in the context of modern day technology, but if you like sci-fi from that era it's very well written.

In the sci-fi theme, Diaspora by Greg Egan is probably my favorite book. It's a complete standalone story too, so not a huge time investment.

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