If you could recommend one fantasy book...

Remove all ads!

Natatatatatatatataben, I think T2 and CtR are on the right track. I'd add that you might look into the World Fantasy Award, as their selections tend to be much higher brow than, say, the Nebulas or Hugos (seriously, John Scalzi? John Scalzi? Fun, yes. Talented, yes. Best of year? Are you...is...wh...how...who...why?).

A few authors I'd throw out for consideration:
China Mieville (depending on how much tolerance you have for Really Weird Stuff. Or at least Really Weird Stuff that isn't modeled on Tolkien and standard mythology)
Gene Wolfe (might be your best choice)
Robin McKinley
Hal Duncan
Jack Vance

I'd advise against Gemmel, the Dragonlance stuff, Robert Jordan, Raymond Feist, and Elizabeth Moon. They are, IMO, very clearly not what you're looking for. I like Erikson quite a bit, but I think the same applies. Hobb may closer, but I'd still be leery of recommending her to you.

 

With great trepidation I recommend Neil Stephenson's Baroque cycle, Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World. The trepidation comes from the staggering length of the books and the admittedly uneven pace of the plots. The recommendation comes from the astonishing way Stephenson blends very solid history with very inventive fantasy. Yes, Sir Isaac Newton really was that interested in alchemy and finding the Philosophick Mercury.

I don't really know how to classify Stephenson's books so maybe they don't count as fantasy.

All I can say is I'm still rereading them and marking pages to re-read again, something I almost never do with fiction.

 

Caradhras: I don't mean to imply that there is something wrong or sub-par about reading for mere entertainment... its just not my style. I admire people who can do it, but personally I don't have a good enough attention span! So I have to make due with my own limitations, and thats why I can't appreciate LotR. I realize a lot of people are passionate about LotR and defend it as high literature and not mere entertainment, and thats where I just can't find anything of merit to say about LotR. I guess the one exception would be some interesting and skillful language at places. Note that entertainment does not imply "escape literature" or somesuch pejorative. Entertainment is every bit as valid a means of enjoying literature as deep literary quality.

 

Quite the contrary in my opinion, he IS a good storyteller.
I've never read any 'modern' fantasy novels that got me hooked and fascinated until the end like LotR or The Hobbit.
But I might give a try to some of the books mentioned in this thread, I didn't know about.

 

You know, I really wanted to let this slide, just to be polite. But your insistence that reading fantasy is "mere" entertainment, particularly LotR, is starting to grate on my nerves. Believe it or not, Tolkien is actually taught at the unversity level in some literary programs. These links are from Rice University, one of the best rated colleges in the US and is here in my hometown.

It would appear that there are at least a few "well-read" literary professors who believe that Tolkien and his works are more than "mere entertainment," as you insist.

Dr. Jane Chance specializes in medieval literature and is a Tolkien expert. The reason I bring this up is because it dovetails nicely with the idea that if you knew something about the literature and the mythology of the middle ages you may find that Tolkien's work is informed by a real literary tradition. And that his fiction (and his non-fiction work on the topic) is a valuable part of how that tradition is not only viewed, but expanded upon in our own time.

This is from Dr. Chance's website:

Dr. Chance has systematically indentified the literary devices and deliberate constructions and choices that Tolkien has used to convey DEEPER meaning within his literary work. Yes, it is "literature."

http://www.media.rice.edu/media/NewsBot.asp?MODE=VIEW&ID=1530&SnID=2

http://www.xenite.org/talk/tolkien.html

 

Nataben, two of the best Fantasy series ever are
- 'The Book of the New Sun' (5 volumes) and
- 'Soldier of the Mist' (3 volumes)
by Gene Wolfe.
I think they qualify as "literature". And as AMaster said above it should be your best choice

Furthermore I'd recommend the 'Prydain chronicles' by Lloyd Alexander (5 volumes).
Though it's mainly for adolescents it's still a very interesting read for adults as well.

 

Other than Tolkien, the Prydain Chronicles are the only books on this list that I recognize. I loved them! Of course I read them in 4th and 5th grade, so who knows how well that stands up now... Though I did read Tolkien's stuff at about the same time and enjoyed it, though I really didn't understand as much until years later.

 

Sorry for not responding to all the people who are offering me great suggestions... I don't have much to say other than a big THANKS! I'm looking into every title thats suggested here.

"mere" is not a term of abuse for me. I use it to indicate that entertainment is the only major value of LotR. Entertainment is not bad, its not unintelligent, or anything else... its a perfectly legitimate way to enjoy a book! All I am saying is that I don't like to get my entertainment that way. Its just a statement about my personal taste and nothing else. And I don't think that all fantasy is mere entertainment! That is precisely why I created this thread. I feel like I must be missing some great literary fantasy works, because I consider it extremely unlikely that so many smart people are wrong about fantasy.

Okay, but why should I believe they are correct? Literary studies in our universities have been being dumbed down for a long time. You can graduate with an english degree now without ever having read Dante, or Milton, or Cervantes, or Chaucer, or Homer, or Goethe, or Tolstoy, or (the list goes on). There are professors who think Harry Potter and other cliche-ridden tripe is high literature. There are professors who think The Simpsons is high literature. There are professors who think Ayn Rand novels have redeeming value. There are professors who think World War Z has literary value. There are a lot of institutional things going on in English departments that I'm afraid you just don't understand. Having a work studied by english professors does not entitle it to being called literature. This is just obvious if you knew the prevailing school of literary criticism in the united states. Classical critics (critics who study works for their literary value) are extremely rare these days. Today literary criticism is dominated by "cultural studies", who do *not* study literature for literary merit (in the classic sense of literary merit).

I have no doubt that Tolkien was informed by a literary tradition! Any author of intelligence is. Merely being informed of a literary tradition, or attempting to use literary devices does not a classic make.

Okay, maybe Tolkien really is high literature but you have to study medieval literature in order to "get it". Its at least metaphysically possible, but I have my doubts. First of all, in a work of high literature, there is almost always a wide variety of literary devices used. The areas of Tolkien I am competent to analyze (i.e. his use of every literary device other than allusion) he does poorly in. Maybe he makes up for it with fantastic amounts of allusion, but I highly doubt it. Among other things, every respectable literary critic I know isn't a Tolkien fan. Now before you go screaming "argument from authority!" at me, realize that its mainly just a bit of side evidence... the main evidence is textual.

As a side note, I don't understand why there is this cottage industry trying to prove that Tolkien has literary merit. What is wrong with a book's just being entertaining? Entertainment is every bit as valid a form of enjoying art as reading for deeper literary value. There's nothing unintelligent or dumbed down about reading for entertainment. Heck, I wish I could do it!!!

In the end, I don't think I'll ever understand the Tolkien cult, just as I'll never understand the Harry Potter cult, or the Ayn Rand cult, or the people obsessed with proving that Shakespeare was someone other than Shakespeare. Maybe they just desperately wish for Tolkien to be preserved in the canon... well maybe he will be just for the sheer skill with which he sculpted his work, even if the work is just entertainment with no major literary value.

I think its best that this Tokien discussion rest. Feel free to have the last word! If you want to be nasty, I'd recommend deriding me as uneducated, insisting beyond all reason that I just don't get it, and further insisting that I am somehow diminishing Tokien by pointing out whats obvious to people who aren't Tolkien fanatics!

 

You want to read something that demands thought from the reader? Then I restate my recommendation of Steven Erikson. If you can read and understand his books without engaging your brain, then you are some sort of advanced superhuman. I've read each one about 3 times and I still haven't figured out all of the threads of what is going on.

Don't go near Robert Jordan or Raymond E. Feist or Terry Brooks or R A Salvatore as they are everything you don't like about Tolkien, but without the excuse of having invented genre standards.

From all my years on these boards, the 3 authors that are consistently recommended over and over again are Erikson, Martin, and Hobb. I suggest that they are good starting points and will keep you busy for a number of months.

 

Really? During the time that I spent in the English department at a major university, I did not notice any conspiracies to "dumb down" anyone. I had classes devoted entirely to Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, two of which were REQUIRED for my degree. I'm afraid that it's you who don't understand what's going on in the English departments. Of course, you may want to take the time to qualify at least a few of these statements with a few comments that revealed some formal experience with literature, since the only qualification you have been able to list is that it should be "deep." Perhaps you can find a moment to actually qualify that statement.

But that would necessitate academic discipline. As an example, you should have bothered to a look at Dr. Chance's qualifications on the subject of medieval literature. Instead, you made some cheap comments about what "some professors" are teaching at "other institutions," without even bothering yourself to look at the qualifications of Dr. Chance, or her particular universtiy. The plain fact is that you were not even intellectually curious enough to look at Dr. Chance's web page. Did you notice that she is a published author on Chaucer? And that she teaches Chaucer? The very author whom you lamintaed about as not being properly represented at the university level? Here is a list of her many published works on medieval literature, and this link is provided through SP:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/s...-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Jane Chance

My experience at the university was almost exactly the opposite of what you describe: There were a number of profs who despised Tolkien and fantasy but THEY were the cultural studies types; the more"classical" literary types were the ones who admired Tolkien's work as a continuation of the mytholotical medieval tradition.

Let's put the "authorities" aside for the moment. I'm not saying that you have to approve of Tolkien, or that you even have to like his work. What we are debating is if it can be classified as literature in the broader sense. Your problem may be with medieval literature itself. It may be that the imaginative sweep of that particular type of literature might not be to your literary taste. You may prefer realism or naturalism. The imaginative qualites of fantasy literature can make it appear like "entertainment" to the casual reader of fantasy (and that is not an insult). The real crux of the conflict here is that you seem to be implying (over and over and over again) that because YOU don't consider Tolkien to be literature, no one else should. But, conversely feel free to be just a tiny bit "nasty" by referring to us as "fanatics" and "cultists." No offence taken, none given.

 

My Goodness. I thought it was just posts in the alleys that became an excuse for all out warfare.
Not everybody likes the same things....people are entitled to different opinions
Also, IIRC, this was a thread asking for book recommendations, not a literary slanging match!

Has it become impossible for people to stick the point of late?

 

Amber? By Zelazny.

Hyperion?

 

@Merlanni:
The Amber series is nice entertainment for sure, but certainly not "literature".
And the Hyperion/Endymion books written by Dan Simmons are Science-Fiction.

---------- Added 0 hours, 1 minutes and 34 seconds later... ----------

Another suggestion:
Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson.

 

If he's going to read Stephen R Donaldson, he should read the Gap Cycle and skip the Thomas Covenant stuff.

 

Don't read those R. Scott Bakker books either. At first they seem like they are of Erikson-like quality, but then they descend into a downward spiral once you figure out that it has characters that seems to be ridiculously overpowered (like someone invoking a secret cheat mode in Baldur's Gate).

 

Erikson, however, is famous for his modestly powerful characters

 

Bakker is a decent recommendation and a lot of people swear by him. My opinion of him is that he is trying, he is trying oh so hard to be like Martin, Erikson or Hobb and he might have gotten there if he didn't try so hard. Everything is always a little bit too much, still good, great even but not awesome.

Oh and somehow a character from Malazan that can extuingish suns does not feel as powerful as the zen master of Bakker.

 

It's all in the context of the stories though. Erikson's books are populated with 'gods' so a lot of them are generally powerful, but not more than each other. The Bakker character in question is silly compared to the other characters he encounters.

 

@AMaster: The Gap Cycle qualifies as Science-Fiction (space opera type) and not Fantasy.
And there are much better space operas by Peter Hamilton, Dan Simmons or C.J.Cherryh ...

@Nataben: Two last recommendations from me regarding Fantasy books:
Try Guy Gavriel Kay. Either 'Tigana' or 'Sailing to Sarantium'.
And 'The Dreaming Tree' books by C.J.Cherryh.