[Taysir]

I'm looking for a trilogy, series, whatever!

Here is some background on my reading to help you, help me :p


I'm looking for something that is intelligent yet a fair amount of action. And, although I loved aSoIaF, this time around I'm looking for something a little smaller scope. It can still be fairly complicated.

Right now I am reading Assasin's Apprentice . I find that it doesn't really have a definitive plot 320 pages in and it is too glum. That said, I still enjoy the book for the characters and the nice little world that has been created.

So I would like recommendations for other books and I'd like to know if the other Farseer books pick up at all. I've got Royal Assasin on my shelf, should I read it?

[fybonacci]

I recall the whole trilogy being a bit dull. But Liveship traders is much much better, IMO.

You might try Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. I enjoyed everything he wrote. As he mostly writes, stand-alone books (except Fionavar tapestery, which I thought wasn't as good as his other stuff), his work is not quite as involved as Martin's saga. He also tends to have quite a bit of graphic sex and violence. His prose, though, measures up to Martin's which is quite a rarity, IMO.

I also think that Jaqueline Carrey's Kushiel's dart measures up to Martin's prose. It seems rather contraversial though because of rather graphic portrayal of BDSM. But it is wonderfully written.

Daughter of the Empire by Feist & ... is very clever and exciting, and quite tame too. I didn't like the later books in that series as much as the first one though. I feel that the whole moral development theme is too stale.

[Taysir]

Tigana seems like a good suggestion, especially because I found a copy on my brothers book shelf-- he studied it at school last year.

Perhaps I'll pick up that when I'm done this book.

Thanks for the suggestions!

The more the merrier! :D

[Brys]

1) Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the fallen (starts with Gardens of the Moon - admittedly not smaller in scope, though)
2) Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast (starts with Titus Groan - like A song of Ice and Fire, but set in the ominous castle of Gormenghast,with better characters, but it is smaller in scope, though harder to read. Amazingly well written though)
3) China Mieville's New Crobuzon books (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, Iron Council)
4) M John Harrison's Viriconium (find the Fantasy masterworks edition, which has all 4 novels in 1 book)
5) Michael Moorcock's Elric series
6) R Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing (The Darkness that Comes before)
7) Steph Swainston's The Year of Our War
8) Raymond E Feist/Janny Wurts' Empire series (starts with Daughter of the Empire - a slightly simpler version of ASOIAF)
9) Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales
10) Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun (starts with Shadow of the Torturer)

All of them are excellent, but shown in order of quality. Erikson's is the most complicated of those, but also the best. Should keep you going for a while.

[Rob B]

I'm closing this one as we've got an enormous Recommendation Thread (http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8580) that should point you in the right direction of what you should read next, and we try to keep threads of a similar nature to a minimum. However, these two specific threads should point you in a more clear direction:
If you like ^^^^^ then you might like ##### (http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=285)
What Can You Tell Me About.... (http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11024)

In addition we have a Robin Hobb Forum (http://www.sffworld.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=26), where you can find recommendations and more information about the rest of the books. I'd say stick with it because Hobb is one of the best publishing fantasy today.