Jump to content

What to read after ASoIaF?


Magnetite

Recommended Posts

I like Brooks. It was awesome in 4th grade. That Lord of The Rings fanfic I wrote at the time was nowhere near as good.

I really don't mid if you hate him or life him. It's the vibe i get from people in other threads some times which just started to get to me last night. It probably doesn't help I was trying to fix a PC problem for 6 hours before posting. It's OK. I'm sorry. I love you guys! Really!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK! Here a reply with me not being a whiny bitch! Woo!

I highly recommend The Arthur Books by Bernard Cornwell. Closest in style and feel to ASoIaF that I've come across. In fact I started reading Cornwell's Sharpe books because of a recommendation GRR had on his page.

All the others people have mentioned are good, Abecrombie sounds specifically like what you;re looking for. And everyone brings up Bakker every third word around here, so that's probably a good bet. (I have actually been convinced to give it another go, but the B&N here was sold out. Pooey).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ETA: Also, your criterion are so broad as to be rather meaningless, they just mean "a book that doesn't suck". You also only mention two bad series but don't say why you stopped reading one of the two. People will list their favourites, while barely acknowledging there was to be a filter
.

Sorry, but I have to reply to Errant Brant's post. I'm not going to write an essay on my preferences. I gave people general guidelines, and received some great recommendations. I'm not here to write an essay with regards to my reading preferences, and this isn't the only place at which I've done my research. I thank you for your recommendations, but please ..

lighten up!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You should also check out Robert E. Howard's Conan stories (and Kull as well for that matter). I've found Howard to be an excellent writer (can you tell I'm a big fan with the username I have? :D), and his stories are mildly similar to ASOIAF (at least in the way that it reads like historical fiction).

The stories themselves are rather short, but because he wrote quite a number of them, you can usually find most of them in anthologies.

Also if you're going to get into Conan, I'd say to avoid anything written by other writers at first (i.e. avoid the L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, Robert Jordan, and other authors), until you read Howard's Conan. The other authors do give some interesting takes on him (and some are really bad), but I've noticed that they tend to cloud the view of who Conan really is.

It's a shame that Conan can be so abused like that though, but eventually you'll find out what's great and what's crap.

Also the Conan graphic novels by Kurt Busiek and published by Dark Horse are equally a great take on the stories (being that they use Howard's work as the foundation).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry, but I have to reply to Errant Brant's post. I'm not going to write an essay on my preferences. I gave people general guidelines, and received some great recommendations. I'm not here to write an essay with regards to my reading preferences, and this isn't the only place at which I've done my research. I thank you for your recommendations, but please ..

lighten up!

heh, , sorry to disappoint, but it wasn't intended to be offensive or aggressive, I was just warning you that you could have shortened your first post of half its lines with the same result, while I was already there posting links and titles. No good deed goes unpunished, is that how they say?

But on the other hand, now that you mention it, maybe I should have lightened up and not posted. Seems like good advice in general for me. Heh.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

heh, , sorry to disappoint, but it wasn't intended to be offensive or aggressive, I was just warning you that you could have shortened your first post of half its lines with the same result, while I was already there posting links and titles. No good deed goes unpunished, is that how they say?

But on the other hand, now that you mention it, maybe I should have lightened up and not posted. Seems like good advice in general for me. Heh.

It's all good, thanks for your suggestions. I picked up The Lies of Locke Lamora, and thoroughly enjoyed it, even though he's absolutely invincible. I'm going to pick up something else tonight after I've done more research into the books mentioned in this thread.

Thanks again people!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Sword of Shannara was the 1st fantasy read that I realized was truly atrocious. I think I read the first 20 pages in 3rd grade or so.

Honestly, there's plenty of fiction better than ASOIAF, but I'll try to recommend a few things that I consider similar-types of reads

Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion, etc.

La Morte D'Arthur

The Killer Angels

Gates of Fire

anything by HP Lovecraft

anything by Bernard Cornwell

Conan series

Lies of Locke Lamora and The Once and Future King both have good reps

But I'm a better reference for non-fiction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I'd suggest reading something absoluely atrocious: Goodkind maybe. That way you get back into perspective.

Pull your head out of your arse. I read the first few books when I was 13, and yes I thought it was a decent story at the time. Nothing exceptional (hence, the 3.5 out of 5 stars).

My point (if you can read), is that I want to read something much better.

So provide me with some good suggestions or get the hell out.

Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Sword of Shannara was the 1st fantasy read that I realized was truly atrocious. I think I read the first 20 pages in 3rd grade or so.

Honestly, there's plenty of fiction better than ASOIAF, but I'll try to recommend a few things that I consider similar-types of reads

Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion, etc.

La Morte D'Arthur

The Killer Angels

Gates of Fire

anything by HP Lovecraft

anything by Bernard Cornwell

Conan series

Lies of Locke Lamora and The Once and Future King both have good reps

But I'm a better reference for non-fiction.

I think I'll check out Bernard Cornwell and/or Joe Ambercrombie next. I read the first two Locke Lamora books, and they were great in terms of adventure, but the characters really don't have depth.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All the recomedations here are good my personal vote would be Bakker, the only fantasy I like better than ASOIF but alot of people hate them so take that with a grain of salt.

On Terry Brooks I feel he gets a bad rap yeah the Sword of Shannara is a bad ripoff of tthe Lord of the Rings but it is his worst book, granted the others aren't nearly the caliber of the books represented in this thread but I felt that his Heritage and Voyage series were decent young adult books. I actually really like Voyage in the same way I like the chronicles of Narnia its a cool adventure with airships and the villian is a supercomputer trying to power itself to store knowledge from a technologically advanced past that is pretty orignal yah know, or not typicall in a fantasy novel. Its just most people start with Sword which is shit and then move on but I had a limted knowledge of authors in fourth grade and so I pushed on to the decent stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, this seems to be the 4000th iteration of this subject, just in the year or so i've been a fully participating member of the board.

I'm always torn as to wether or not I should post something supportive, or repeat the statement that he/she should check the fucking 2 stickies that are posted at the top of the forum to answer questions such as this.

Fuck it. Pull your head out of your ass (arse sounds so European) and use the goddamn search function, or read the links provided by the Bard. You aren't going to get any new or insightful information by starting a thread that aren't already included in those threads.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All the recomedations here are good my personal vote would be Bakker, the only fantasy I like better than ASOIF but alot of people hate them so take that with a grain of salt.

On Terry Brooks I feel he gets a bad rap yeah the Sword of Shannara is a bad ripoff of tthe Lord of the Rings but it is his worst book, granted the others aren't nearly the caliber of the books represented in this thread but I felt that his Heritage and Voyage series were decent young adult books. I actually really like Voyage in the same way I like the chronicles of Narnia its a cool adventure with airships and the villian is a supercomputer trying to power itself to store knowledge from a technologically advanced past that is pretty orignal yah know, or not typicall in a fantasy novel. Its just most people start with Sword which is shit and then move on but I had a limted knowledge of authors in fourth grade and so I pushed on to the decent stuff.

That's fine and all, but I'm not going to trudge through all his stuff when there's lots of other books out there I actually want to read.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...