[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Sauce: http://www.reddit.co...dations/c1aw4sh

Quote

Okay. Here are some starting points. Many of these have been mentioned in this thread.

Contemporary Epic (longer books, deeper plots, slower pacing): GRRM And Stephen Erickson. Both are on the gritty side. GRRM is a brilliant writer, maybe a 9 or 10 on the gritty scale. Erickson's more like a seven or eight. Both are good. GRRM favors shorter scenes with a lot of character punch to them. Erickson prefers deeper worldbuilding and more description. GRRM's series is not done, be warned, and it is taking time. Erickson can be more difficult to get into, but is an excellent writer. His series is nearly finished, though be warned that it hops around a lot.

Contemporary Heroic (faster plots, shorter books, fewer characters): Joe Abercombie and Scott Lynch. Both have good, twisted senses of humor. Both are fast reads. Both are Butcher-like (or a little more) in the gritty department. Joe's series is done, Scott's is not. But the Locke Lamora books stand pretty well on their own. (As you like Butcher, I'd guess that you'd like Lynch a lot.)

Now, if you want to try reading widely as you said you might, here are some suggestions: Tigana by Guy Kay. I always suggest this one, as it's my favorite stand alone epic fantasy. If you want to sneak a peek at steampunk, Boneshaker is the book everyone is reading right now. It's quite fun. Zombies and steampunk.

Knights of Dark Renown by David Gemmell is a good stand-alone heroic fantasy novel that shows what gritty heroic was like during the pre-GRRM era. It'll give you some context for Abercrombie and the like. Daniel Abraham's Long Price series (four books, relatively short novels) are a good place to look if you're interested in political-intrigue fantasy with a slight flair of epic.

For literary fantasy, China Mieville would be the first place I'd look, or maybe Gene Wolfe. Finally, if you want to explore historical fantasy, I'd suggest His Majesty's Dragon.

All of these are going to be slightly more toward fantasy in its maturity. If you look at a few and they don't work for you, we can push the other direction toward something more like Eddings or Salvatore.

[HoosierDaddy]

People here misspell his name at times. Lol.

[HiddenOne]

That's why we call him "SE" - but it's good to know that becoming a fancy novelist doesn't interfere with one's sense of taste...

[End of Disc One]

Awesome...for some reason I was thinking Sanderson had never read Erikson. I seem to remember him tactfully dodging questions about Erikson in interviews, but maybe I just misinterpretted.

Edit: Erikson's book contain more description than GRRM's? Did we read the same books? More philosophizing, yes, but not description.

This post has been edited by End of Disc One: 31 December 2010 - 09:04 PM

[polishgenius]

The problem with that misspelling is that there is already an author called Stephen Erickson (although he's published as Steve) who's quite well known and is associated with spec-fic, although I gather he's rather on the fringes of what's assoicated with that label.


Also, I'm surprised he thinks Erikson tends to 'more description'.

[Adjutant Stormy~]

End of Disc One, on 31 December 2010 - 09:00 PM, said:

Awesome...for some reason I was thinking Sanderson had never read Erikson. I seem to remember him tactfully dodging questions about Erikson in interviews, but maybe I just misinterpretted.

Edit: Erikson's book contain more description than GRRM's? Did we read the same books? More philosophizing, yes, but not description.

It's not that GRRM lacks description (you can't very well write without it), so much as he doesn't spend as much time fleshing out setting and history as SE, which some people see as a plus, some as a minus. The Malazan books certainly have plot and character, but in each book there are incremental improvements on the reader's knowledge of the world, whether or not it's relevant to the story, whereas IMHO reading GRRM can suffer from character tunnel-vision.

[Captain Beardface]

Apparently I'm going to be adding Sanderson to the reading list... since I enjoy 5 of the authors that he mentions...

[Icarium Kalam]

I read Elantris... I didn't think it was that good. Perhaps I should read something else like the Misborn stuff but he just wasn't that interesting.

[James Hetfield]

I recall meeting Sanderson before he signed onto the WOT series. At the time he was a fan of Erikson. I believe he had read up to BH and he was occasionally messaging on our board here. Not sure if he has stayed up to date on the series but I hope he has. I am glad he(Sanderson) has been given credit finally for his writing. It took him lots of years to get published and he worked his ass off to get where he is today.

To have him give credit to Erikson and others while being a blockbuster author at the same time makes me feel like he has not lost touch with reality and fame and money have not gone to his head. Kudos to Sanderson. Class act.

[RolandDeschain]

Icarium Kalam, on 01 January 2011 - 12:23 AM, said:

I read Elantris... I didn't think it was that good. Perhaps I should read something else like the Misborn stuff but he just wasn't that interesting.

I just finished Elantris and wasn't impressed overall. But The Way of Kings was an amazing read!

[End of Disc One]

Icarium Kalam, on 01 January 2011 - 12:23 AM, said:

I read Elantris... I didn't think it was that good. Perhaps I should read something else like the Misborn stuff but he just wasn't that interesting.

While I see this opinion on Elantris pretty often, I don't recall seeing anyone who didn't like the first Mistborn book.

[Aptorian]

While I didn't hate it, I certainly didn't love it either. The Mistborn Trilogy was painfully slow and tedious pretty much all the way through. An interesting magic system and some good characters, but overall it was a very slow trilogy. I can see why they'd want Sanderson for the Wheel of Times.

[HoosierDaddy]

Mistborn itself, the very first book, was neither tedious nor slow. The second book, The Well of Ascension, is slow. That I'll grant.

However, considering EoDO was talking about just book one, I think your criticism is misplaced.

This post has been edited by HoosierDaddy: 01 January 2011 - 07:41 PM

[polishgenius]

HoosierDaddy, on 01 January 2011 - 07:41 PM, said:

Mistborn itself, the very first book, was neither tedious nor slow. The second book, The Well of Ascension, is slow. That I'll grant.

However, considering EoDO was talking about just book one, I think your criticism is misplaced.

Wait, his criticism is misplaced because you thought only the second book was slow? His criticism might be wrong, in your opinion, but you just can't come in and tell him he was talking about the wrong book when he clearly wasn't.

[HoosierDaddy]

No, his criticism was misplaced because he was talking about the trilogy as a whole, as opposed to just the first book, which is what was being referred to. If he had qualified the criticism to just the first book then it'd be different. However, there is a large difference between books one and two in that series, which is why I brought out the very common opinion of the second book and that that criticism is much more of a valid complaint of the second book.

[Aptorian]

polishgenius, on 01 January 2011 - 08:56 PM, said:

HoosierDaddy, on 01 January 2011 - 07:41 PM, said:

Mistborn itself, the very first book, was neither tedious nor slow. The second book, The Well of Ascension, is slow. That I'll grant.

However, considering EoDO was talking about just book one, I think your criticism is misplaced.

Wait, his criticism is misplaced because you thought only the second book was slow? His criticism might be wrong, in your opinion, but you just can't come in and tell him he was talking about the wrong book when he clearly wasn't.

No, no, he's right. I thought every one of the books were about 200 pages too long. There was waaayyy too many pages consisting of an obtuse character pawing at the obvious clue right in front of them without them getting anywhere. Way too much filler consisting of "Oh my King how I long for you, I am not good enough of for you, whaaaa, I just want to wear pretty dresses all day" etc. And it's not really the characters fault rather it is that Sanderson made the world a bit too simple and empty for my liking.

This post has been edited by Jenisapt Rul: 01 January 2011 - 09:23 PM

[HoosierDaddy]

The dresses bit is perhaps right, been a while since I've read Mistborn: The Final Empire. But, I thought the angst was much more books 2 and 3 than one. Book one was fairly action packed for me, but mileage varies.

[Azathmaster]

RolandDeschain, on 01 January 2011 - 01:37 PM, said:

Icarium Kalam, on 01 January 2011 - 12:23 AM, said:

I read Elantris... I didn't think it was that good. Perhaps I should read something else like the Misborn stuff but he just wasn't that interesting.

I just finished Elantris and wasn't impressed overall. But The Way of Kings was an amazing read!

Way of Kings= Closest to SE in awesomeness.
Mistborn was ok but I never read elantris