[Agraba]

I am only a recent recruit in fantasy reading. Well, I read Lord of the Rings 5/6 years ago, but recently, getting into fantasy again, I got into Wheel of Time. Having read almost nothing before that, I could only think good about WoT. Then I read the whole Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (not fantasy, I know), and then later on, a Song of Ice and Fire, and finally A Malazan Book of the Fallen.

In my opinion, I kept on going up and up (each one was better than the last). In the WoT forums, I read an "Other Fantasy" forum with people recommending aSoIaF, saying it's better than WoT, and then in the SoIaF forum, I saw in Other Fantasy section, someone recommending aMBotF, saying it's the best series they ever read.

I want to continue the pattern and keep on going up and up and up before I crash and burn (like the stock market). So everybody please name one fantasy author with a series that they think is better than Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, not almost as good, nor as good. I'll see if one recommendation stands out in this thread, and then thank you all very much.

[Abyss]

No such animal.

Altho', with the qualifier this is utterly subjective....
Bakker's Prince of Nothing series and Mieville's New Crobuzon novels are in a similar category. Maybe not quite as mind-blowingly good, but brilliant in their own ways.

- Abyss, saw where you asked for ONE but decided to exceed expectations.

[polishgenius]

It's difficult to say. I have several favourite authors.
But since you've already mentioned aSoIaF, I'll say China Mieville as he's slightly more consistent that Neil Gaiman.
So yeah. Mieville.

[Werthead]

Well, you've already read GRRM. The only other candidates I can think of are Jack Vance, Peter F. Hamilton and Neil Gaiman. And Guy Gavriel Kay, possibly Alastair Reynolds. Maybe Paul Kearney, by a hair.

[Dolorous Menhir]

It's a matter of taste. The only authors of note I've read are Martin, Jordan and Bakker, and they've all been dismissed already.

I think Erikson and Martin are not comparable, they are both excellent authors with differing strengths. Jordan used to be good, up til about book 6 or so, and Bakker left me cold.

How about Stephen Donaldson? I wouldn't say it's better than Erikson (at all), but he's well regarded.

Peter F. Hamilton writes Sci-Fi, not Fantasy, I wouldn't class any of his books as Fantasy.

[Brys]

There are a few who I think are better writers than Erikson, but only one that I prefer to Erikson as well:
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake - an absolutely different style of fantasy to pretty much any other author (including those influenced by him). If I have to name one, it'd be Mervyn Peake, but unfortunately he didn't write much.

There are quite a few others of similar or slightly higher quality than Erikson, but while I like them, I still for some reason prefer Erikson:
M John Harrison
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Salman Rushdie
R Scott Bakker
Graham Joyce
Charles de Lint
Michael Moorcock
China Mieville
Ian R Macleod
Roger Zelazny
Matthew Stover

There just a few of those I rate at a similar level to Erikson - some are better, some are slightly worse, but they're all excellent. There are very few authors though who write epic fantasy as well sa Erikson - in fact, other than Martin and Bakker I can't think of any.

[stone monkey]

It all depends on what it is you actually want to read - and also what it is you value about what you do read.

As we're talking Epic Fantasy, I suspect Erikson, Martin and Jordan are the best out there, despite their shortcomings. I've said before that I don't think Erikson's style is the best and I have rather serious issues with both Jordan's writing and his plots. Martin's books tend, to my mind, to be lacking in incident, as most of what he writes about is going on inside his characters' heads.

There are certain things about other fantasy authors that I love. I adore Ursula Le Guin's writing style; it may be sparse but it's impossible to find even a single word she writes that doesn't work (Something which I think that SE might be able to learn from as his prose does occasionally take on purplish tinges from time to time). The same goes for John Crowley's prose. I have the utmost respect for the sheer imaginativeness and originality that China Mieville brings to his work. Michael Moorcock's insane energy is something I love too; his books rarely stop to take a rest. Guy Kay's sense of drama is great. If I were to design some composite beast of an Epic Fantasy writer it would be all of the above plus Erikson's worldbuilding and GRRM's characters.

[Dagger]

I second everyone's nominations here but I must emphasize that once you get up into the Martin/Erikson/Jordan/Kay league, you've pretty much reached the upper rung for epic fantasy. There's Robin Hobb's 9 books, they hold up pretty well. Paul Kearney too. And the first three of Glenn Cooks's Black Company but they should have been read as a precursor to Erikson, not after. I cannot and will not endorse Donaldson. Worst.protagonist.evah. And the opening five books of Zelazney's Amber will always be classic epic fantasy - just the phrase "the one true world" still brings a smile to my face.

[Brys]

Jay Tomio said:

If you are speaking epic fantasy only I tend to think Martin, Bakker, Erikson and Kay are the class of epic fantasy (although I do love Mckillip's work as well).

I keep forgetting about Kay and McKillip - Kay I've only read one novel of and McKillip only one trilogy, but they are both very good - though I would put them both just a little lower than Martin, Bakker and Erikson. Then there's quite a big drop until you get to JV Jones' Sword of Shadows and Greg Keyes' Kingdom of Thorn and Bone, which are good but not spectacular at all.
If we're counting Zelazny and Wolfe as epic fantasy, obviously they're in the top league, along with Erikson, but I don't usually think of what they write as epic fantasy as such.

[kkyyyssss]

I really dont know why you keep naming Bakker since almost everything he writes leaves a bad taste behind and that s just not something I'm looking for when i read a book... as for Kay, he is truly brilliant and i really love most of his works, if you havent read him yet do so.

[Werthead]

stone monkey said:

Martin's books tend, to my mind, to be lacking in incident, as most of what he writes about is going on inside his characters' heads.

Sorry, I find this comment perplexing :confused: Martin hardly suffers from this problem at all, certainly to a far smaller extent than Erikson.

Sorry, whenever I see the term 'fantasy' I tend to replace it in my brain with 'spec fic' of whatever stripe. On those terms Hamilton and Reynolds emerge as better writers (albeit in different arenas) to Erikson. Actually, from the limited amount I've read of him, Iain Banks would probably go in there as well.

I agree that Jones is a step below Erikson, but not massively so. Still very entertaining and she has GRRM's gift for creating great characters, even if she hasn't harnessed it quite as well as GRRM has (yet). As an aside, it was JV Jones' (positive) review of Gardens of the Moon that encouraged me to pick up the book in the first place.

Kay is an exceptionally good author, albeit with perhaps a hint of repetition entering his work (certainly all of his novels, bar his opening trilogy, seem to have a similar structure to them). Hobb I think can write excellent opening novels, but absolutely cannot write an ending if her life depends on it. Her books are also very overlong.

[caladanbrood]

I find that to improve upon Erikson, you have to look to sci-fi, rather than fantasy. Hamilton and Reynolds are the two that have already been mentioned, and I would say Richard Morgan too:)

[Agraba]

Wow, thanks a lot for all these replies. I honestly didn't think I'd get this many so quick.

I saw earlier that someone mentioned a distinction between fantasy and epic fantasy. What's the difference between the two?

Now, the one author I saw mentioned the most here was Neil Gaiman (and I also saw him mentioned quite a bit on other threads). Does he write series' or separate books? Fantasy, or sci fi? And also... how is he? Very spontaneous; you can't predict what he'll do next? Does he have a hard time killing his characters? Etc...

Also, I don't mind if you put Science Fiction. In fact, although I loved GRRM and SE so much, I also loved that they were so different from each other. I'm looking for diversity, so I'd rather a whole different style than something similar to either of the two.

Question to anyone: If GRRM and SE are deemed among the top of epic fantasy, who would be the corresponding top one/two/three of sci-fi?

[Werthead]

'Epic Fantasy' general refers to a novel or series set in a 'secondary world' (either Earth in another time period or a totally different world), usually involving magic and nonhuman races. Tolkien, Erikson, Martin, Jordan, Kay, Jones, Elliott, Kearney, Modesitt, Keyes etc etc fit into this definition. Pratchett does as well, because of the secondary world definition.

Epic fantasy is a subset of Fantasy, which is a much broader church also incorporating urban fantasy (which is probably the closest definition we are going to get to Gaiman), magic realism, supernatural horror (King, Barker etc) and anything up to including folk tales and legends.

Neil Gaiman only has one series, The Sandman, which is a series of ten graphic novels. However, his last two 'proper' novels (American Gods and Anansi Boys) are set in the same continuity as I understand it. He writes fantasy (and not epic fantasy at all) but has a great deal of respect for SF and some of his stories veer towards SF in tone and style (particularly the alternate history strata of SF). A good book to get you going with Gaiman is Good Omens, which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett. Quite funny and easy to get into. If you get into that, odds are you'll enjoy his other books.