Recommend books to a hater

[peterbound]

In the first place, no you shouldn't, because at some point they're going to release a revised and, one hopes, improved version of the series. This year, theoretically.

In the second place, could you try to be slightly less creepy? :P

I"m just trying to paint the picture for him. Don't want him to walk into that scene unprepared like i was. I saw the release dates posted above, but i haven't seen anything on his website that actually confirms this (at this point someone will dig up the link and prove me wrong). sorry for the creepiness, wasn't intended, just a bit of humor. I'll try to avoid it in the future

[Migey]

To the thread starter.

Dont dis WoW!! Its great. (well actually right now it sucks, but it used to be great... and it might be great again in a few months when the next x-pac / rehaul comes out...)

Anyway... I know how you feel. I've always liked books but since i read GRRM i feel like everything else sucks.

Anyway. Try The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. Great book and a rather refreshing style. And its one of the only good books in an otherwise terribly written genre.

Try Stephenie Meyers Twilight. Its so suffocatingly bad that it will make the next few books you read pretty damn good, which might be worth it. Honestly. It will make you want to kill yourself, so everything else will be great.

I very much liked Trudi Canavan. An interesting style of writing, good characters, good plots, etc. She wrote the Black Magician trilogy. Her other series, The Age of the Five was very good too, (and very nice twist at the end, even if you did see it coming).

[Migey]

Oh, sorry for double post, but if you didnt like Assassins Apprentice, read The Liveship Traders trilogy. The Farseer trilogy was terrible, but if ou skim through the first book of the Liveship Traders (its not bad, but its not great, it mainly sets up the next two) then the second and third books in The Liveship Traders are absolutely amazing. A bit of a corny final action scene, but it was still pretty good.

[Barnes]

Sure, but we're talking about fantasy here, aren't we? Or do you mean it'd help if I listed which non-fantasy I like?

Still waiting on those books brother!

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

sorry for the creepiness, wasn't intended, just a bit of humor. I'll try to avoid it in the future

It's just...it was, what, your third post? We--well, I--have no sense for your board persona. For all I know you could be someone who thinks that werewolves raping people is, like, totally wicked, dude, and reaches for a tissue every time. And doesn't have a problem expressing that.

No worries.

[MadMardigan]

I suppose I might raise Jackal of Nar by J. Marco but only halfheartedly since I thought it was uneven military fiction but it was frequently brought up in the same breath as Martin 10 years ago.

There's an author I haven't heard from in a while. I really liked the Jackal of Nar series, and thought it was pretty good quality for a new author. But his second run at a series was pretty bad as I recall. I read The Eyes of God, and got a couple-hundred pages into The Devil's Armor and set it aside. I just was not feeling that series. And the writing really did not improve as he went, if anything it tapered off in quality. That was really disappointing, because I thought he had a lot of potential after Nar.

[Martin Silenus]

just a bit of humor. I'll try to avoid it in the future

See that you do!

[Underfoot]

I definitely second Bernard Cornwell, and in that vein I'll recommend Steven Pressfield, specifically Gates of Fire, a retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae.

I've also enjoyed S.L. Farrell, both his Cloudmages and Nessantico Cycle books, and I believe he writes as Steven Leigh. I rarely see those books mentioned here, and personally I've always thought they were great: good character devolopment, some epic battle/battlemage scenes, indiscriminate killing...

Just throwing this out there, though you probably won't like it either: Michael A. Stackpole's Draconis? series, starting with A Dark Glory War as a prequel, then the trilogy of Fortress Draconis, When Dragon's Rage, and The Last Crusade. Typical, cliched fantasy, but well-done for all that.

If you've only read the Dreamsong books by GRRM, you're missing out. Fevre Dream, Tuf Voyaging, and The Dying of the Light are among my favorite books (though admittedly, I do have quite a few), and Windhaven is very entertaining, though not at all typical fantasy. You won't find any battles of epic proportions there.

[Tas]

How about The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson? You'll probably hate it but it will keep you occupied for awhile.

[Eponine]

I haven't read the Baroque Cycle, but in all seriousness, it seems that some of Stephenson's other books would be suitable for someone who's a fan of fantasy without liking fantasy. I don't like epic fantasy or quest stories and I enjoyed Anathem.

If you don't like a certain type of fantasy, do you EVER change your mind midway through a book? There have been a few books that were a little hard to get into, but the story was promising from the beginning, but I don't ever recall a time where I thought that the premise was silly and the characters unappealing and changed my mind by the end. So my recommendation would be to read the first chapters of a lot of books and be ok with not finishing them if they don't seem interesting.

[Gigei]

I liked the Amber Chronicles.

Good, there is hope for you yet.

Yeah, I mostly hate epic fantasy, especially the huge doorstopper Tad Williams type of books. I also loathe the whole bakers boy/orphan/farmer/shepherd turns out to be the prophesied messiah/returned king plot.

I'm pretty sure I actually hate 90% or more of all types of books, there's just a lot of crap floating around.

For those who hate fantasy:

Zelazny, obviously!

Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter and The Dragons of Babel. Both are very well written subversions of fantasy tropes. Don't be fooled by plot summaries of either book.

Daniel Abraham's Long Price Quartet. I loved the first book to death but lost some enthusiasm on the second book. I have not read the other books in the series yet but just the first book has a pretty self-contained story and satisfying ending (no cliffhanger endings like GRRM).

Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher Series. It will do you good to read non- US/UK based writers. :P More like kick-ass monster hunting than anything serious. It's fun, don't expect too much though.

Have you tried Dune?

Three small words that shouldn't even need explanation: Ursula Le Guin.

Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun

Ahem The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson is ringing a bell, is this the book I basically hated but there was this one scene about genius dentist that made me laugh out loud and decide it was worth it, just for that one scene?

[Papirolle]

It's obvious you should stay away from the standard epic fantasy books.

Try these:

Crooked Little Vein - Warren Ellis (very funny and cynical)

Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson (also the Baroque Cycle and Anathem by him)

The Scar - China Mieville (if you only read one of his books, this is the one)

The Road - Cormac McCarthy (haunting, sad and scary)

Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis (funny and surrealistic)

[Papirolle]

Ahem The Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson is ringing a bell, is this the book I basically hated but there was this one scene about genius dentist that made me laugh out loud and decide it was worth it, just for that one scene?

That would be Cryptonomicon by him.

If you like that style, try Nick Harkaway's The Gone-away World.

[Datepalm]

That would be Cryptonomicon by him.

The book that functions either as a mediumish quality book or as a really great 1000 page super nerdy stand up show. (my favorites are either Amys gung-ho, well mannered redneck cousins or the depressed finnish smugglers."Give those finns a grim, stark, bleam moral dillema and a bottle of schnapps and you could pretty much forget about them for 48 hours.")

[moirne]

I couldn't get into Gormenghast or The Baroque cycle. They seemed over written to me and just boring.

I'm currently reading The Once and Future King and I didn't like volume 1 (Sword in the Stone), the 2nd volume was better but all of Pellinore's dialogue was annoying. I'm on volume 3 and it looks like things will start getting good now.

[peterbound]

If your going to jump into some Stephenson, read Snow Crash first. Give Anthem a fair shake next. Then call all your friends, family, neighbors and let them know you will be unreachable for the next month or so while you try to muscle your way through Crypto and the Baroque Cycle. As a fellow hater though, i can tell you that you won't make it very far in those books.

BTW, you should read Paul Kearney... or did i say that already.

[Quarterman]

Once again:

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson

The Other by Thomas Tryon

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

The Ninth Configuration by William Peter Blatty

Legion by William Peter Blatty

Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Hell House by Richard Matheson

The Beardless Warriors by Richard Matheson (awesome WWII war novel based upon the author's war experiences one of the Matheson's very best)

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne

Jaws by Peter Benchley

American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis

can't go wrong with any of these!

[Iskaral Pust]

I'm not the OP, but thanks for all the recs here. As I posted earlier, I shared some of the OP's frustration with mediocre books.

Based on this thread, I tried:

Hobb - Farseer Trilogy - Reasonably well written, but childish compared to ASOIAF (like Feist or Tad Williams). Lacks scope and depth. Whiny, emo POVs are tiring.

Paul Kearney - The Mark of Ran (#1 of Sea Beggars) - pretty good, but the overall arc was not hugely compelling. I'll read the second one eventually.

Mieville - The City and the City - boring and I struggled to suspend my disbelief (not usually a problem for me at all).

Daniel Abrahams sounds like he might be worth a try, although comparisons to Hobb are not reassuring. I'll skim the posts again to pick up some other recs to try.

I would echo suggestions for Neal Stephenson - I'm a very big fan of his. I'd suggest Cryptonomicon first before Anathem and the Baroque Cycle. I also like Bernard Cornwell, particularly the Sharpe series and the Archer/Grail series (the Saxon/Alfred and Arthurian ones seemed a little weaker to me). Pressfield's Gates of Fire was very good too.

But already the stronger recs are falling outside of fantasy. I'm happy to read non-fastasy, and perhaps I need to if everything seems much weaker than ASOIAF.

JV Jones Sword of Shadows series is pretty good and still in the fantasy genre. I don't think it got any other mentions here.

[Lyanna Stark]

I liked the Amber Chronicles.

Well, I hated them :) And I love ASOIAF so to each their own, I guess?

Still, if you want something well written and different, try Mieville or Abercrombie. "Kraken" is what Nevewhere aspired to be, with added crack, chaos nazis and stroboscope lightning.

[Galactus]

Reasonably well written, but childish compared to ASOIAF

Funny, I always felt ASOIAF was more childish.