Terry Goodkind / Robert Jordan

[orion949]

So I finally finished book 14 of Wheel of Time, followed by a sigh of relief, but Ididn't know where to go from there since I had no fantasy books to read. I had already burned through GRRMs Game of Thrones while I was waiting for WoT 14 to come out.

A friend recommended Terry Goodkinds Sword of Truth books to me and I read the first one, "Wizards First Rule", which was a pretty readable fantasy book on the whole but the entire way through, all I could think was how much of it seemed to be straight out of the Wheel of Time. Almost like Goodkind read Wheel of Time and it inspired him to write his own version.

Has anybody else that read both series had this impression also?

 

[JimJohnson]

I picked up SoT series around book 12 (WoT) so I actually had some of the same feelings that it was influenced by it.

Either way I found the series to be remarkable. It would be a good read.

 

[dulak]

Ah, so many sets in that genre. I would suggest Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms.
To start FR: You wanna pick up the Dark Elf Trilogy, follow it with the Icewind Dale Trilogy and from there, lots more.
With DL: You wanna start out with Dragons of Autumn Twilight.

On both sets, inside the book will be a page of other books in the series. Usually in chronological reading order. I'll check my ebook library and see if I can find some of them. If you're interested, let me know and I'll see what I can do. I've got around 55gb of ebooks on my PC atm lol

 

[hawthorne]

I recommend The Runelords by David Farland or Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. Both excellent first books in series by the respective authors. More adult then most of the D&D stuff, no offense Dulak, I love those books too but they are light reading.

Just guessing you've read through the staples: Tolkein, Eddings, Zelazny, Feist, Goodkind, Brooks, Anthony. Otherwise, we could be here all day offering volumes of words in print.

 

[Copperhead]

Anything by RA Salvatore.

 

[riot]

I wish I had the attention span to read. I lose focus after a few minutes and just move on to something else. :thumbdown:

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using Xparent Skyblue Tapatalk 2

 

[sigx]

I share your impressions of the sword of truth series, but it has it's own unique qualities that I enjoyed. Along with the already good suggestions here, il add anything by magaret weis and tracy hickman, they write alot of book stogether.

 

[SiegeTank]

I love these kinds of recommendations. I enjoy fantasy novels of this sort but I hate to invest a lot of time and discover that the writer isn't really all that good or the story gets off to a great start but then craps out after 400 pages lol.

I read the first 3 novels of Game of Thrones but got burned out and when I read the reviews of the most recent 2 novels I'm kinda glad I didn't invest the time and effort. Game of Thrones is one series that would be worth "abridging" or even just composing a complication of highlights. Yeah, that sounds heretical to a real fan of the author but it's the most "schizophrenic" fiction I've ever read: 50 pages of tedious barely tolerable dialogue followed by 20 pages of unbelievably intense and entrancing action... over and over again. Altho as the series advances the mix seems to be 100 pages followed by 10...

With books like these it's never the money, since you can buy used copies so cheap. It's the time. I can only read so many books in my lifetime and I hate to waste valuable time reading something that turns out not to have been worth the time! My mother read a ton, it's probably how I acquired the habit. She would never put down a book unfinished: if she started she had to finish. So I feel guilty if I don't finish a book but if it's bad enough I will cut out early cuz again, life is short!

 

[orion949]

Ah, so many sets in that genre. I would suggest Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms.
To start FR: You wanna pick up the Dark Elf Trilogy, follow it with the Icewind Dale Trilogy and from there, lots more.
With DL: You wanna start out with Dragons of Autumn Twilight.

On both sets, inside the book will be a page of other books in the series. Usually in chronological reading order. I'll check my ebook library and see if I can find some of them. If you're interested, let me know and I'll see what I can do. I've got around 55gb of ebooks on my PC atm lol

Good advise bro! Sadly I have read every single RA Salvatore book (most 2 or more times) I have read the Icewind Dale Trilogy about 5 times since I was a kid. One time was because the Icewind Dale RPG PC game came out and I wanted to refresh! lol Same with all the Dragonlance books.

I think Im starting to scrape the bottom of the Fantasy barrel at this point.

I did some internet searching on Terry Goodkind and I kind of wish I didn't do that because its going to taint the rest of the books for me. This guy is a huge douche bag who has nothing but pure contempt for his readers (the people that pay his salary). I read an interview where he said he refuses to read any fantasy books because he basically thinks they are all crap and he doesnt classify his books as fantasy but rather "human stories" or some bullshit.

I really hate to be the one to break this to the elite Mr. Goodkind but if you write about Dragons, Swords of <insert magical name here>, Witches, Evil Dark Lords, Magic Spells, Night Wisps, Magic Boxes, Wizards, and whatnot.....YOU ARE WRITING A FUCKING FANTASY BOOK YOU FUCKING DOUCHE BAG!!!!!!!!!!!!!! lol

 

[hawthorne]

Siege, I make it a goal to read at least 52 books a year, 1 a week. Usually about half of those are titles I have read in the past, but I try to read at least 20-25 new books each year. Sadly, there aren't always that many worth reading.

Kindle saves my ass a bunch of book carrying though.

 

[orion949]

I recommend The Runelords by David Farland or Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. Both excellent first books in series by the respective authors. More adult then most of the D&D stuff, no offense Dulak, I love those books too but they are light reading.

Just guessing you've read through the staples: Tolkein, Eddings, Zelazny, Feist, Goodkind, Brooks, Anthony. Otherwise, we could be here all day offering volumes of words in print.

I actually have not read anything by David Farland or Jim Butcher, I will def give them both a try. Really the only two things I ever read are Aviation pubs and fantasy books so Im game to try out any recommendation!

As far as the DnD, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance none of them are 800 page epics but I loved them as much as an adult as I did as a kid! Just plain good stories!

 

[DT]

I read TG's books first, then the Wheel of Time. After reading both series, I find it hard to pick up another TG book. A lot of everything he uses seems like a knockoff from someone else.

 

[devestator]

WoT and SoT definitely share some striking similarities, but there are also large differences that make each worth reading individually. Terry Goodkind is still producing more SoT based books, his most recent one The Omen Machine taking place after the major plot finale in Confessor.

I second the recommendation for Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher, it is an amazing series. Very well written, and doesn't have the lag in the middle like both WoT and SoT do. I'm currently rereading WoT, have been since January. Decided to reread before reading book 14 and right now I'm in the really draggy part where it's just so hard to get through sometimes lol.

Also, look into Brandon Sanderson's other work. Mistborn series is truly epic IMO. It is probably my favorite series that I've read to date after discovering Brandon Sanderson when he took over work on The Wheel of Time. He also has his own epic saga in the works but only the first book is released. That first book is very good as well though (Stormlight Archive: The Way of Kings). Book 2 is supposed to be coming out this fall. Lot's of other work by Brandon is good too, I enjoyed Elantris and Warbreaker as well (both stand alone books but Warbreaker is based in the same world as Elantris).

One other series I will mention that I didn't see anyone else mention is The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. It's set to be a trilogy, unfortunately Patrick is very slow and the 3rd final book isn't set to come out until possibly 2014. The first two books are great reads though, just torture to not be able to hear the end of the story yet.

 

[Mspudd14]

Ya I liked the WoT series as well tho they did tend to get a bit sidetracked at times.

Another interesting series not mentioned yet that you may want to check out was The DeathGate Cycle written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

I do agree with most of the authors and books listed though having read them myself. Hell I like them so much I actually have quite a collection of books I own by those authors. I know of another series or two not listed yet that I would recommend as well but its been awhile so cannot remember the titles or authors. Will re-post with that info if I can remember tho!

 

[dulak]

You could check out the Death Gate Cycle. They're written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Good set of book. There's 6 or 7 of them. Also, if you're into Sci-Fi at all, check out E.E. Knight. Wrote a pretty cool series called Vampire Earth. He's working on one or two more for it. There's also The Books of Gor. There's over 30 of them and the author is still releasing them. He releases one a year according to the wiki.

 

[sigx]

like I said, anything by Margaret Wiess and Tracy hickman. an awesome pair, I own almost everything they have done together.

 

[Ccomp5950]

I just finished book 6 of my re-read of Wheel of Time. I remember slugging it through the next 3 books before I felt the series picked back up. Though in Robert Jordan's defense it was pretty tough to top the battle of Dumai's Wells, I don't think he really beat it until ~book 9-10

Spoiler:

when Rand cleaned Saidin.

. Last time I got to the second chapter of book 11 and put it down, then decided to not pick it back up until it was finished by Brandon Sanderson.

Brandon Sanderson is an amazing writer in his own right, if not for quality then sheer volume of output. Stuff that takes George RR Martin 6 (fucking!) years to put out, Brandon Sanderson will have out in 6 months. He is a beast.

Terry Brooks Shanarra series has always been a favorite of mine, I haven't read any of his most recent stuff since the trilogy with the Ilse Witch, though.

And best for last...If you haven't started reading it yet The Kingkiller Cronicles by Patrick Rothfuss is amazing, though he's only written books 1, and 2 of the trilogy so far.

 

[hawthorne]

I'd like to throw out another series, although this isn't fantasy.

Honor Harrington series by David Weber. There are currently something like 23-24 books. It's military space opera with a strong political bent.
First book is On Basilisk Station. And the first 10-12 books are free through Baen books. Or they were.
You can grab Baen CDs completely legit here:
BaenCD at the Fifth Imperium

Enjoy!

 

[dewey2461]

Thanks for the authors so far. I've read most of them. One not listed that I really like is David Duncan. He's one of the few that offer a different fantasy system in each of his sets. While several are similar its nice to go from A -> B with different routes.

 

[lookin]

Brandon Sandersons mistborn series is good and his new one the way of kings. goodkind truth series is also good but dont watch the tv show the books are so much better the tv show just butchered them.
Russel Kirkpatrick has a good series as well.