Alright /tg/, I've got two unused Audible credits and a need for some good fantasy. What would you recommend?
Already read/own:
The Lord of the Rings/Hobbit
The Wheel of Time
Name of the Wind
ASoIF
The Witcher books
Pic Related
Conan!
>>44933808
Anything by Brandon Sanderson.
I'd definitely recommend the Mistborn Trilogy or the first two Way of Kings books.
If he doesn't tickle your fancy, I'd also recommend Malazan, Book of the Fallen or the Abhorsen books.
Dresden Files is good if you want some Urban Fantasy too.
>>44933808
Gormenghast.
>>44935064
second for Sanderson work
>>44933808
>black company
>good fantasy
>>44933808
Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles and Saxon Chronicles are fantastic, especially on Audible since they both use the same narrator. Historical fiction more than fantasy, but they're both great. If you're an arms and armor autist like me you'll have some issues, but the books and narration more than make up for it.
How are the Malazan audiobooks, for anyone that knows? I've heard that not having text makes them a bit hard to follow with all the various plot lines. Is this true?
>>44935064
Don't fall into the Sanderson trap. Guy has an excellent imagination but he is a goddamn horrible writer and his plots, characters, literally everything read like the storyboard for an anime.
Malazan Book of the Fallen is what you need, Sanderson is for thirteen year olds.
The Sarantine Mosaic by Guy Gavriel Kay
>>44938406
A thirteen year old can understand what is going on in Sanderson's books as much as he could in Erikson's.
>>44935064
Thirding storm light archive.
On top of everything else, you get about 100 hours for the two of them.
>>44938425
There's a chance the thirteen year old may see the magical setting-hopping god characters, random resurrections of highly forgettable supporting cast members, and overabundance of Mary Sue protagonists and identify them as being uniformly shit, yes.
No such problems in Malazan, because it is actually good.
>>44935064
Watch out for the first two Dresden books.
Not only are they sloppily written, but the sound editing was Godawful. The constant jarring stops and starts, as well as weird speed increases and decreases, make them both a goddamn mess. Didn't help that Marsters was either far less invested, or was restricted from going all out, causing disconnect between the narrative and the voice (I.E a voice described as a bellow being barely louder than normal conversation).
After book 3, the quality of writing and narration skyrocket, though I'm aware some anons disagree with the former and I can empathise with their reasoning.
>>44938483
>Mary Sue
Oh boy, here we go
>>44938550
Kaladin had LITERAL plot armor, dude. I don't know how much worse you want things to get.
I think Sanderson's settings and magic systems are nothing short of brilliant but he is a SHIT author, friend. Like the only reason anyone tolerates this level of awful is because his imagination is so out-of-control genius. But he cannot write. He cannot.
>>44938578
But that's not what Mary Sue means, m8. Stop making the term even more worthless than it already is.
>>44938614
A Mary Sue or Gary Stu or Marty Stu is an idealized fictional character, a young or low-rank person who saves the day through unrealistic abilities.
The plot literally bends itself to save this fucking kid from arrows while he's running bridges and you say he does not fit the definition.
>Butthurt fanboy detected
Your literary crush is a hack, get over it and try reading better books.
>>44938662
>mary sue
>>44938718
>toss a reddit-tier meme at it
That definition is from Wikipedia you knob.
>>44938662
No, it isn't.
It's a fan made character put into setting which has no substantial flaws and has everything revolve and bend around them, for the purpose of making them look better, despite all logic.
That last part is why the fan made aspect is so critical to the definition.
Incidentally, Szeth gets given a chapter at every interlude for the precise reason of telling the reader why Kaladin can do what he does. It's hardly subtle, but it apparently went over your head quite neatly.
>>44938738
This
Kaladin is basically a warrior/wizard and the reason he seems to have a plot armor is because he is one of the few who can actually use magic.
>>44938738
Ehhh not all Mary Sues are fanmade.
Look at Eragon.
>>44938738
>A Mormon creates a protagonist who must remain on the moral high ground to retain his incredible abilities
You're really telling me that isn't a self-insert? Sure, you can mince words about the difference between "fan-made" and "author-devised" but at the end of the day an insert is an insert and Kaladin is a Mary Sue.
>>44938826
A protagonist that generally tries to be a good person? Powers based partially on keeping oaths?
Gee fucking wiz, what a unique concept. I have literally never heard the like before.
>>44938796
Not even Eragon fits, though I'll grant he comes perilously close. I'll give you Bella Swan though, but that's because Meyer was quite obviously writing a fan fiction about her life in general.
>>44938888
Wait, wait, wait. So because it's been done before, makes it better now? Because the concept is unoriginal, the author's self-insert is forgiven?
Honestly man, just go re-read Words of Radiance. You clearly enjoy it, so it's not like I'm asking you to drink your own piss or anything. If you really cannot see what I am talking about, then just curl up and die because plebs like you are the reason art in general is so fucking terrible right now.
The only non-shit fantasy books are the Book of the New Sun and Terry Pratchett novels, according to 4chan.
>>44938826
>what are paladins ? the post
I am just glad that we have a book with paladins that fall because of their faults and not dm's fiat and slowly rebuild their faith and believes despite having no powers.
Deed of Paksenarrion is amazing but it is nice to have something else to read for the paladin fix.
>>44933808
Bartimaeus Trilogy.
Not sure if it's on audible but it's funny and very entertaining.
>>44937598
this desu
>>44938929
What I'm saying is that you're clearly and hilariously grasping at straws.
Retreading solid ground is bad because he's a Mormon, so he's clearly writing about himself? What a fucking joke.
may as well say all Christians are self inserting when they write about charitable characters
You know what? Lois McMaster Bujold is God-tier.
Check out her Curse of Chalion series. Well, it's three standalone novels set in the same universe.
She also has another series called The Sharing Knife, and while it IS good, be warned that is's actually a romance novel series doing a good imitation of a fantasy series. You have a race of hereditary monster hunters and terrible life-destroying magic and everything, but while those things are important, they aren't nearly as important as the romantic relationship between the heroine and I Swear I'm Not Geralt With One Arm.
>>44933808
Everything by Joe Abercrombie
>>44933808
Chronicles of Amber. Just the first series.
>>44938406
>Complains about bad plots and characters
>Uses Malazan book of the fallen as an example of something better
The plotline of the Malazan books are fucked beyond comprehension. A mess of a storyline losely held together by bullshit. This comes from someone who has read through the series twice.
It's a cool world with lots of shit in it, but fucker should just have stopped after Bonehunters(and skipped Midnight Tides entirely).
Characters aren't really that much deeper. There are some genuinely good characters and amusing characters, but most of them are pretty poorly handled, and reads like a GM trying way too hard to make his shit look enigmatic and deep.
>>44939045
Oh, Lord of Light, also by Zelazny, is fantastic as well.
>>44933808
>>44935064
I loved Abhorsen and second that.
Read Dresden and I liked it though towards the end it seems to lose itself, it feels like its all over the place. But I like the world he build.
>>44939053
You know, I don't agree with you entirely, but I have to admit that as much as I like the Malazan series, Erikson DOES tend to go for intentional obfuscation.
And he does it quite deliberately - the man runs a writing workshop where he teaches people that the way to write is to write a scene where two guys have a conversation in a room, and you have to write it so that the reader can tell there's a corpse in the room with them without ever saying there's a corpse there, either in narration or by having either character mention the presence of the corpse.
That's what Erikson's idea of good writing is - take what should be self-evidently the most important thing, and hide it so that only the most astute reader can find the clues that it's even there.
>>44937598
Mah negro
>>44938977
omfg shit yes!
i lived the trilogy.
>>44938514
I actually thought Dresden Files was good the first books, from a content standpoint if not from a writing style standpoint. It was probably the private investigator part that I enjoyed the most, mixed with the urban fantasy.
The series tried way too hard, and Dresden saved the world in every damn book. Really didn't like the episodic form of it either, felt way too pulp, with every book trying to be its own self-contained story, until that just wasn't convenient anymore.
>>44938989
>remove all causality from argument
>rearrange anon's words to make him sound stupid
>call him desperate
I actually came here to recommend Sanderson but you're an idiot.
Thought on Wheel of Time series?
I read the first three and although the premise sounds cool I seriously disliked the whole "she didn't know how to do it/ she never trained in that but she tried and did it.."
Example from the top of my head: when the village healer Nynaeve straight up healed a female with the power. I know she was Wisdom but I just couldn't eat that up.
>>44939208
The main thing I took away from the WoT is that Jordan really hated women.
>>44939137
I don't dispute his writing style, he is quite good at that, although at times he can be incredibly obtuse in how he structures his information. See: Midnight Tides. When you are finally getting a grasp of the setting in some way, he throws that shit in, completely out of the blue.
I just don't think the storyline of the Malazan books as a series/epic/thing holds up. Some of the continual storylines such as the Bridgeburners(as it is), are quite nice. The world is cool and original. His way of presenting the world is done very nicely, although I personally think it can be obtuse at times.
>>44939208
Rollercoaster. The start is good and sets up the setting quite nice, the middle(I should say about 60-70% of the series) is quite a drag. While it sets up a nice epic of the hero uniting nations, defeating villains and stuff, it is generally very slow. Gives a lot of time to the supporting cast, which can be relevant at times, but are at many times very slow as well.
The ending starts to speed things up again, and the ending is... well, I wouldn't say bad. But it ironically needed more time, which the middle of the series had already eaten up.
>>44939237
I don't see that. I think Jordan genuinely tried to write women as more than just supporting casts as opposed to more classic fantasy, and he put them on quite the pedestal in the setting with how magic works. I think he bungled it though, and didn't really know how to write women in a good way, and it came off as really dumb at places.
I also got the impression that he had this giant hardon for bondage and humiliation. Which is ok, because so did I.
>>44939301
It was more of a joke on how almost every female character is an enormous bitch at some point.
My main problem with the WoT is that Darth Rand was so much more interesting and realistic than the warrior Jesus he turned into in that mess of an ending.
>>44938940
/lit/ can go fuck itself on those marks, speaking as a member of /lit/.
>>44939200
Don't defend weasel words. He's an idiot, and resorting to it made it grasping at straws.
>>44939509
Me disagreeing with his argument doesn't make yours any less stupid.
>>44939053
Yo, I stopped on the second book when he introduced all of these new characters that I couldn't bring myself to give a shit about.
I liked the first book, the Bridgeburners, Tattersail, that crazy ass doll man...but the writer can't even into exposition and explains fuck all of anything.
Should I even bother trying to read the second book and continue the series?
>>44939778
I think the series is solid up until Bonehunters. Skip Midnight Tide, it introduces an ENTIRELY new plotline that has nothing to do with the other books(ties in only in later books).
The storyline with the Bridgeburners continue, and there are some new characters introduced that are very cool.
>>44938328
You shut your whore mouth.
>50 posts
>no mention of Grunts!
What, it /tg/ too wimpy for the Orc Marines?
>>44933808
Spellsinger.
>>44933808
Assasin's apprentice is pretty good and similar to Name of the Wind, except the love interest isn't an annoying bitch like Denna.
I find these books to be very interesting, although I kind of wish the author would have stuck to congames and deception a bit longer in the series.
>>44939958
I find the setting so much more interesting than the characters or plot.
Magic alien civilization wiped out by eldritch abominations who may be coming back and the entire world is infested with monsters and inexpiable shit.
>>44939993
I like the characters, simply because they aren't really great heroes. He lies his way to success, and it's pretty interesting to see.
Fucking dick-ass wizards though.
>>44939932
man, does anyone like Denna? it's so infuriating seeing Kvothe be so caught up on worst girl, when there's a bunch of better and more interesting women that want his dick.
>>44939778
Shit, I'd say the second book is hands down the best in the series.
And there's so much shit going on in the first book that doesn't make any sense whatsoever without information you won't have for like five books yet.
Although if you want to stick with most of the Bridgeburners (minus Kalam and Fiddler, who are in Book 2) you might try reading Book 3 before Book 2, because Book 3 returns to Darujhistan and Dujek Onearm and Whiskeyjack and stuff on that continent. And the ending of Book 3 is a character promising to tell people what happened in Book 2, so you won't even get spoiled.
>>44940300
The heart selects its own society anon
Stay away from the Safehold series. The author thinks his naming "convention" is too clever by half and what would otherwise be a sorta neat way to spell mundane names in otherworldly ways to show cultural drift over the centuries instead becomes stupid Welsh looking moon language.
Abercrombie is awesome.
>>44939932
>Assasin's apprentice
A bit heavy on the angst for me back when I read it (not yesterday...). Seemed like it was largely about the main character exploring various shades of depression.
>>44939958
The first one on its own is such a comfy read. I cannot wait to see how Lamora fares in a war environment, but yea, the con games are always a blast to read. Lies of Locke Lamora is fine as a standalone book. If you haven't, you should give it a try, OP.
Still amazed I got into this by pure chance. My aunt was buying a book for me while I was bedridden with a broken jaw that would be wired shut for 6 weeks. She picked it up off the shelf, flipped it open, read some lines, thought: this writing is up his alley. Apart from knowing I'm a geek, she knows next to nothing about my /tg tastes, so it was a welcome surprise.
Any recommendations for epic fantasy? Something akin to Exalted, perhaps?
