Best recent fanatsy debuts (or thoughts on these books)?

[End of Disc One]

I've made a decision to not read any debut until it's been out for a couple of years....let the hype die down and see what people are still talking about years later*. However I keep seeing these authors show up on sites I visit and people keep raving about them which makes them hard to ignore. Could be good marketing, too. Which would you say is the best of these?

Anthony Ryan - Blood Song

Brian McClellan - Promise of Blood

Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

Brian Staveley - The Emperor's Blades

Probably the newest author I've read is Mark Lawrence, whom I no longer see as one of the new boys, what with four published books under his belt. What are your thougts on the above series, or any other recent debuts?

*This approach is not fool proof by the way...Mark Charan Newton is one author who people stopped talking about, and I've recently found his books to be absolutely brilliant.

[mgambino]

I've read 3 of the 4. Blood Song is, by far, the best of the bunch. I'd say Promise of Blood is next, then The Thousand Names.

I should say that I enjoyed all three quite a bit, but I think Blood Song is the safest bet.

[polishgenius]

I've read Blood Song and The Thousand Names. Both are decent; neither is spectacular.

[SkynJay]

Read them all. Was not a fan of Stavely. Liked all three of the others. Wexler was probably my favorite, followed by McClellan and then Ryan's book.

Blood Song seems to have the biggest following though, at least based around the buzz.

[Maester Llama]

Have read Ryan's Blood Song and Wexler's Thousand Names. Still getting to the other two.

Blood Song's got a lot of narrative drive and is very well-paced. It's also got a layer of uniqueness that's just thick enough slathered on top of a very, very, very familiar story of a young man with parental issues growing up and getting trained and becoming the awesomest dude who has ever awesomed. This gets wearying and borderline ridiculous if you're not in the mood. Has an interesting backstory that it plays very close to the chest, so sometimes comes off feeling like what uniqueness the story and setting have are being sold short. Hopefully this will emerge in future books. Reads very easily. Characters not that great but very digestible. Huge case of damsel in distress syndrome. Very fun action read in the moment, but it has a massive fanbase and I can't figure out why.

The Thousand Names starts off a little confused but very rapidly resolves into a very solid, fun early gunpowder era fantasy focused on a military unit in hostile country. While this first book is very tightly focused, it's clear the rest of the series has a much larger canvas to work with, and even in this first book we get a lot of hints about what's going on on that wider imperial stage. Magic is interesting, though introduced somewhat abruptly sometimes. Great, compelling characters in this one, comfortable to spend time with but not without complexity. Action sequences rare but excellent and chunky when they do come around. My preference between these two by some ways, though Blood Song does have virtues.

Blood Song is perhaps the more compelling traditional young-man-kicks-ass fantasy narrative in terms of the immediate reading experience but I think Wexler's is gonna be a better series once everything shakes out, and I don't think it's gonna be that close.

[Toblakai]

These are the exact new authors I have been looking at.

So, yeah, nothing to contribute, but I will watch this thread.

[Serious Callers Only]

You should read the Neil McGarry & Daniel Ravipinto & Amy Houser Grey City books. They're actually pretty good.

[Spockydog]

Angus Watson's Age of Iron is pretty good. Set in Celtic Britain just before Caesar's first attempt at invasion, it's dark yet funny, and really well paced. The characters are cool, though at times, particularly when describing the female characters' attire, it reads like a fourteen-year-old-boy's wet dream. Even so, highly recommended.

The blurb:

Dug Sealskinner is a down-on-his-luck mercenary travelling south to join up with King Zadar's army. But he keeps rescuing the wrong people.

First, Spring, a child he finds scavenging on the battlefield, and then Lowa, one of Zadar's most fearsome warriors, who's vowed revenge on the king for her sister's execution.

Now Dug's on the wrong side of that thousands-strong army he hoped to join ­- and worse, Zadar has bloodthirsty druid magic on his side. All Dug has is his war hammer, one rescued child and one unpredictable, highly-trained warrior with a lust for revenge that's going to get them all killed . . .

It's a glorious day to die.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

I've made a decision to not read any debut until it's been out for a couple of years....let the hype die down and see what people are still talking about years later*. However I keep seeing these authors show up on sites I visit and people keep raving about them which makes them hard to ignore. Could be good marketing, too. Which would you say is the best of these?

Anthony Ryan - Blood Song

Brian McClellan - Promise of Blood

Django Wexler - The Thousand Names

Brian Staveley - The Emperor's Blades

Blood Song: read this and liked it the most out of the 4 listed above.

Liked the McClellan enough to read book #2.

Read the Staveley and thought it was just ok.

Debuts i started but DNF:

Moth and Spark by Anne Leonard

The Shadow Master by Craig Cormick

Debuts i started but have yet to complete:

The Thousand Names by Django Wexler (stuck at 40%) - does this get any better ? i don't care about any character so far.

Shield and Crocus by Michael R. Underwood (stuck) at 15% - ditto,don't care for the characters

Unwrapped Sky by Rjurik Davidson (stuck at 26%) - ditto

2014 debuts that i liked:

Traitor's Blade by Sebastien de Castell

The Incorruptibles by John Hornor Jacobs

Son of the Morning by Mark Alder

The Godless by Ben Peek

Smiler's Fair by Rebecca Levene is another 2014 debut (epic fantasy) that's getting lot's of praise.I plan on reading this soon.

[Darth Richard II]

I keep poking at The Godless at B&N, but I'm always leery of anything that gets promoted as the next BIG THING.

Edit: Also, aren't Mark Alder and Ben Peek established authors in the genre already?

[AncalagonTheBlack]

I keep poking at The Godless at B&N, but I'm always leery of anything that gets promoted as the next BIG THING.

Edit: Also, aren't Mark Alder and Ben Peek established authors in the genre already?

Yes, but this is Peek's first foray into epic fantasy so i've included it.

Alder has the Wolfsangel series under the name M. D. Lachlan which is a horror/historical fantasy hybrid . This new book/series under the Alder name is his take on epic fantasy so i've included it as well. :D

[peterbound]

Yes, but this is Peek's first foray into epic fantasy so i've included it.

Alder has the Wolfsangel series under the name M. D. Lachlan which is a horror/historical fantasy hybrid . This new book/series under the Alder name is his take on epic fantasy so i've included it as well. :D

So, in other words, you're making shit up, and doing what you want?

Hey, i'm with you, screw the OP.

I hear there's a guy out there named Martin with a really good epic fantasy series you should check out.

[Darth Richard II]

Eh, Wolfsangel is marked heavy as fantasy everywhere I've ever seen. It was published by Pyr for fucks sake.

[Faint]

Of those four, Blood Song is the best by quite a bit, although I did enjoy the others to varying degrees.

[Calibandar]

Another one I'm really looking forward is the standalone epic fantasy " The Free" by Brian Ruckley ( Previously of the Winterbirth trilog), due next month.

[red snow]

Out of the "new" authors I think I have "the incorruptibles", "blood song" "malice" and "emperor's blades" on my kindle. The incorruptibles sounds the most interesting but "blood song" has the most hype around it.

I think Mark Lawrence and Adrian Tchaikovsky were the most impressive of the recent batch but they've both been around 4-5 years now. I'm curious to see how Tchaikovsky does with his new series as I think he's grown a lot as a writer (it was noticeable the improvement from book 5 on compared to book 1 of the "apt" series).

[MisterOJ]

Thanks for this thread.

I am just about caught up on all my established authors that I like to read - just need to get Cibola Burn and maybe the new Robin Hobb (haven't made up my mind if I even want to go there after the last series though) and then I will be searching for something new. I already had Blood Song on my radar as a possibility, but some of the others mentioned sound good as well.

ETA: Could someone, either the OP or a mod, please fix the thread title though. My OCD would be ever so thankful.

[Rooster]

Another one I'm really looking forward is the standalone epic fantasy " The Free" by Brian Ruckley ( Previously of the Winterbirth trilog), due next month.

Likewise. Actually, last summer when I read Luke Scull's the Grim Company I had actually mixed up the synopses in my head and I thought I was going to read The Free (likely because of the 'Company' in the title).

[williamjm]

I think Mark Lawrence and Adrian Tchaikovsky were the most impressive of the recent batch but they've both been around 4-5 years now. I'm curious to see how Tchaikovsky does with his new series as I think he's grown a lot as a writer (it was noticeable the improvement from book 5 on compared to book 1 of the "apt" series).

I heard Tchaikovsky reading an excerpt of his next book called Guns of the Dawn (his summary was that it was a bit like Lizzie Bennett joining the army during an alternate history fantasy version of the Napoleonic Wars). It's a bit hard to judge from a short excerpt but it sounded reasonably good, although it looks like the worldbuilding will be much more conventional in this book.

[Mexal]

I've enjoyed them all but Blood Song was by far my favorite. The others are all on equal level in that I enjoyed each of them and will read their sequels (or already have).

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett is getting a lot of hype as well. I haven't read it yet but I'll get to it at some point in the near future.