Your Favorite Fantasy

[Sanvean]

I'm switching us over from the Amazon store to the Powells Books affiliate program.  So here's your chance to shape that effort and help me figure out what we should be recommending.

What are the three fantasy books that most remind you of the game and why?
What are your three favorite fantasy books of all time?
Are there are books that you relate to specific clans?

[Krath]

My favorite fantasy...Well how about the one where this girl dresses up like a maid and begins
to feather my...

Oh wait you mean fantasy books!!!

Three Favs of All Time:
Dune
Dragons of Winter Night
Song of Fire and Ice

[Sephiroto]

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

[mansa]

The Thief's World series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves%27_World

Definitely reminds me of Allanak, with some nobility, a labyrinth area called the 'maze', and some temples for magick.



Robin Hobb's 3 series are pretty entertaining:
The Farseer Trilogy
Liveship Traders Trilogy
The Tawny Man Trilogy

I wouldn't say it reminds me of anything in ArmageddonMUD, but just as a good read it's enjoyable.



Frank Herbert's Whipping Star and The Dosadi Experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipping_Star
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dosadi_Experiment

Though it is SyFy, the world of Dosadi reminds me what Allanak could of been.


All of these books are actually listed in the bookstore right now.

[Jingo]

Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. - Tad Williams

Otherland. - Tad Williams

[Lizzie]

This might sound strange, but the Oankalis of Octavia Butler's world in Lilith's Brood remind me of a combination of mindbenders, desert elves, dwarven focii, and gatherer/sorcerers.

Edited because I was thinking about blood when I typed it. Brood, not Blood!

[Mechafish]

Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels

[aphex]

C.J. Cherryh's Faded Sun trilogy.

There aren't any honor-based societies in Zalanthas -quite- equivalent to the Mri.. but. Well, it's definitely hard to shake the feeling that desert elves are like a combination of the Mri and the Regul. Fantastic books with extremely well developed racial culture.

[a strange shadow]

The Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman.

[jstorrie]

I don't read a lot of fantasy. Some of the stories in Jose Luis Borges' Labyrinths are Zalanthy, though.

[Adhira]

For fantasy that I related to Armageddon in some way that hasn't yet been mentioned, these two series:

The Deathgate Cycle by Weis and Hickman in particular Into the Labyrinth, the labyrinth depicted there was very scary and tres awesome.

Daughter of the Empire by Feist and Wurts. I liked the political intrigue, backstabbing, deal making and so on. A very good intro for an Allanaki noble and I think the spymaster was all that is cunning.

[WarriorPoet]

C.J. Cherryh's Faded Sun trilogy.

There aren't any honor-based societies in Zalanthas -quite- equivalent to the Mri.. but. Well, it's definitely hard to shake the feeling that desert elves are like a combination of the Mri and the Regul. Fantastic books with extremely well developed racial culture.

These books were awful... It was like physical torture. Sorry. Each to their own and all, but... Ick. To be fair there are some very neat descriptions of the environments in particular that I felt were very Zalanthan in feeling.

My own:

Bernard Cornwell's Warlord Chronicles. They aren't fantasy so much as historical fiction but these books have soooooooooo many characters that would fit right in on Zalanthas with plenty of dark-age sorcery that's done in a way that could be explained rationally but still has an arcane feel to it. Filled with murder, corruption, betrayal, sex, love, lust, gore, battle, swords, and asskickery. I tout them every chance I get and finally got ONE person to read them, mood, and he agrees they're excellent reading and very Zalanthan. The Merlin character in particular seems to be plucked right out of Arm. READ THESE BOOKS. DAMN IT. READ THEM. STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND GO BUY THEM IMMEDIATELY. The books, in order, are The Winter King, Enemy of God, and Excalibur. The trilogy as a whole is the Warlord Chronicles.

I'll throw my vote in with Ice and Fire as well, for the politicking.

[Grey Area]

Matthew Stover - Heroes Die

It's a fantasy world where 'actors' from a thoroughly dystopian version of ours pop over and assume the roles of heroes. They go on adventures, fight battles, loot and murder and generally fuck things up for the natives. Then their experiences are are played back as entertainment for the downtrodden masses.

This reminds me of Arm for fairly obvious reasons.


And my other two favourites:

Richard Morgan - The Steel Remains (A just plain thoroughly badass subversion of the fantasy genre.)
Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora (Downright clever in all sorts of Machiavellian ways.)


My list also includes any and all sequels to the above books.

[Morrolan]

Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels

An obvious choice for me as well.  They're about murder, racism, and money.  And everyone's solution is to kill the people in their way.  Well, not everyone.   Just the main character.  And his friends.  And the gods.  And the empire.  Okay, everyone with weapons...

Also, Dune--Sand, spice, storms, intrigue, and knife-fighting.

And Eaters of the Dead, which later became the move (and book) 13th Warrior.  It chronicles the travels of one man through other cultures, with a very medieval perspective.

Morrolan

[Fathi]

And Eaters of the Dead, which later became the move (and book) 13th Warrior.  It chronicles the travels of one man through other cultures, with a very medieval perspective.

Richard Morgan - The Steel Remains (A just plain thoroughly badass subversion of the fantasy genre.)
Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora (Downright clever in all sorts of Machiavellian ways.)

Looks like I already got beat to the punch on most of the things I was going to mention, however, I do have a question.

How about nonfiction books? There are a few nonfictional books that I've picked up / seen around over the years that could be both Armageddon RP-inspiring and more informative as to how things in a Zalanthan culture would work.

[LauraMars]

Some of my favorite fantasy books of all time are:

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel, by Susannah Clarke
The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik (all five, but esp. the first one)
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

Books that remind me of Armageddon a little bit are:

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch (already mentioned but worth another, because seriously.)

[Lord of Charas]

Quarantine --

This book has it all. Fat merchants. Crazy tribal rangers. Desert mystics. Etc.

It's not strictly fantasy, persay, but it is based on fantasty & legend. (Just read the intro, by the authors of 'the Limits of Mortality').

Now the merchant in this book is truely Zalanthan (may he be an inspiration to us all). He's really something else . . . completely unscrupulous, rage driven, and wild; he would have even a few 'rinthers twitching in their cracked boots at the presence of him. This man could sell starvation.

For those who would like schooling/inspiration in RL desert culture, folklore and tribal superstitions--this book is completely built on them. I take this book by my desk and read from it whenever things start getting dull IG. (Better than going out and doing something stupid, I suppose.  )

...

Read it, be inspired; you'll find it to be a [very] hard book to put down. Cheers.

[Wolfsong]

The Black Company is utterly awesome.
Malazan Book of the Fallen is another great fantasy/war series. Gardens of the Moon, etc.

Most anything by Tad Williams (Otherland, Memory Sorrow and Thorn in particular, War of the Flowers was iffy and haven't read Shadowmarch, yet.)

Armor by John Steakley, weirdly enough, even though that's not fantasy and is most definitely sci fi.
Does Neverwhere count? Cause if so, yes. For some reason, the Rinth always reminds me a little of it.

[Sanvean]

Nonfiction books are a great idea, I'll work on adding a section of those as well if people have suggestions for either RP-inspiring and/or informative about the game world.

[th3kaiser]

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. - It's a fantastic debut novel, I demand you all read it.
I'll second the Black Company novels.
Nearly anything by David Gemmel, he's a master of heroic fiction. You just can't help but love his heroes.

[Mechafish]

Black Company novels are great.  I agree with that choice.  (just read them a month ago)

[flurry]

I don't read a whole lot of fantasy, but the ones that pop to mind are

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

I'll also throw in a bonus selection of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. It isn't fantasy, more horror, but it's great book, and it's a story that could happen in Zalanthas.

[hyzhenhok]

The Drenai series by David Gemmel. Especially Legend (AKA Against the Horde). A masterpiece.

[LostArm]

I second the Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson.

The diversity of cultures, the harshness of the world, and the plethora of character types. I'm on the seventh book of the series now and I've been getting plenty of character concept idea from the book.

[Lord of Charas]

The Chung Kuo series is way up there on my list. In terms of sheer plastile grit, politics, and intrigue, it well-outshines Dune (which I could never finish anyway...). Wingrove is a master of it, he interweaves it like an elaborate ecosystem. The setting is unique in that it features only seven vast continent-spanning cities and some farmland as well. It has some  (once civilized) environments that are so poor and desolate people can't even afford light and must resort to cannibalizing their neighbours (because they, forgotten in the construction of the cities, decided they wanted to stay on solid earth, and so when the cities were built, everything got built over top them). There are two sides of this book, Yin and Yang, measured in such a way as to make the whole series seem quite ambiguous in terms of conflict and character. One side is arbitrary and tyranical--but offers stability, while the other is more devious and terrorist-like--but yields change.

Books in the Series:

The Middle Kingdom (1989)
The Broken Wheel (1990)
The White Mountain (1992)
The Stone Within (1993)
Beneath the Tree of Heaven (1994)
White Moon, Red Dragon (1994)
Days of Bitter Strength (1997)
The Marriage of the Living Dark (1999)

(Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Kuo)

Also, no one's mentioned -ANY- of the Darksun series ? Blah. (There are so many of them !)

Prism Pentad - Troy Denning

The Verdant Passage
The Crimson Legion
The Amber Enchantress
The Obsidian Oracle
The Cerulean Storm

Tribe of One - Simon Hawke

The Outcast
The Seeker
The Nomad

Chronicles of Athas - V/A

The Brazen Gambit
The Darkness Before the Dawn
The Broken Blade
Cinnabar Shadows
The Rise & Fall of a Dragon King

[aphex]

These books were awful... It was like physical torture. Sorry. Each to their own and all, but... Ick..

I feel that way about a lot of these books, but I don't really feel compelled to shove that in anyone's face. Black Company and Malazan Book of the Fallen are great.

[Pale Horse]

I've fond memories of the Winter of the World series, by Michael Scott Rohan.
The Anvil of Ice (1986)
The Forge in the Forest (1987)
The Hammer of the Sun (1988)
The Castle of the Winds (1998)
The Singer and the Sea (1999)
Shadow of the Seer (2001)

I've only read the first three, though.  Wasn't aware that more had been written.

Looks like I've got some reading to do.

S.M. Sterlings Nantucket series is great, as well.
Island in the Sea of Time
Against the Tide of Years
On the Oceans of Eternity

And his Emberverse series, set in the same..eh..universe, as the the Nantucket books.
Dies the Fire
The Protector's War
A Meeting at Corvallis
The Sunrise Lands
The Scourge of God
The Sword of the Lady
The High King of Montival
The Blood of the Sun
The Given Sacrifice

[Tuannon]

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

I would say Before They Are Hanged is a good one as well, reference a certain war over a certain mine.

A lot of characterizations that would match up well in Zalanthas as well.

But then again, a lot of Fantasy characters would match up fine with a bit of modification.

[Ourla]

Robin Hobb's "Liveship" trilogy.

[valeria]

I have way, way too many favorites.  My most favorite new fantasy that I've read recently was the Night Angel trilogy, by Brent Weeks.  I also loved the cover art.

I don't really have any post-apocalyptic desert setting books in my collection, but I may have to start finding some.

[SMuz]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the Conan the Cimmerian short stories. A nice compilation is

Yes, they're somewhat racist, very sexist, poor/minimal descriptions, but I love it. A lot of good, swift swordfighting, scary magick, and the pace of written action isn't slowed down by excessive, irrelevant descriptions. Just my thing.

[Fool]

Colleen McCollough's Masters of Rome series.

From Lucius Sulla, Gaius Marius and Pompey the Great to Julius Caesar, Marcus Crassus and Cicero then on to Marc Antony, Austugus Caesar and Cleopatra.

Lotsa great scheming, politics, and backstabbing. I don't know that much about history but supposedly the author followed the rule of only make stuff up that would mesh with accepted histories, so its like educational. Well, at very least I learnt something from the Latin swear words in the glossary. Sesquiculus: more than one arsehole. Heh. From memory that one was levelled at JC suggesting that he whored himself out for favours so much he needed an extra hole.


The Malazan book of the Fallen series I also like, but people I suggested it to have been turned off by the first book. Theres a lot of backstory and world history and not a lot of lube used to ease the reader in. Was the authors first novel, he gets better.


The Wounded Land is the first book of the second of Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeleiver trilogies. The harsh and broken landscape of the world where nature is out to get you with scattered groups of human settlements is similar to Arm. The first Thomas Covenant book Lord Foul's Bane sticks out in my mind for the way you're never quite sure the main character who's a leper in 1960's USA is just imagining this strange land he finds himself in. Its a very different take on fantasy. Also the persucution the main character suffers for being a leper could make great fodder for mutants, or gemmers, or even breed characters to get into what it like to be systematically shunned due to fear and ignorance.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. - It's a fantastic debut novel, I demand you all read it.

Nearly anything by David Gemmel, he's a master of heroic fiction. You just can't help but love his heroes.

These two choices are absolute A+.

[Bogre]

Fourthing Black Company, Song of Fire and Ice, and Liveship/Assassin's Quest

Too add something new: Harry Turtledove's Roman Legion chronicles.

[th3kaiser]

Richard Morgan - The Steel Remains (A just plain thoroughly badass subversion of the fantasy genre.)


My list also includes any and all sequels to the above books.

Just wanted to say thanks, Morghan. I've since devoured nearly all of this author's works and have enjoyed -all- of them. I demand more recommendations.

[Jingo]

I just started Black Company.

I can see why armers recommended it.

[Akaramu]

Definitely Song of Ice and Fire, I have no other Fantasy favourites. Everything else just seems cheesy in comparison...

[Red Ranger]

It isn't exactly fantasy but I thoroughly enjoyed The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and the book definitely puts the reader in the extreme dog eat dog, dying world mindset of Zalanthas.

Red Ranger

[Fathi]

It isn't exactly fantasy but I thoroughly enjoyed The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and the book definitely puts the reader in the extreme dog eat dog, dying world mindset of Zalanthas.

Red Ranger

His Blood Meridian is pretty Armageddony, too.

For those who haven't read it or heard of it, Blood Meridian is a dark, gritty western set in the American southwest, written from the POV of a teenage runaway who's just trying to survive everything the desert throws at him. The story's approach to gang violence, tyrannical authoritarian characters, and the main character's nomadic lifestyle all strike me as pretty Zalanthan.

[brytta.leofa]

... The Road by Cormac McCarthy ...

His Blood Meridian is pretty Armageddony, too.

Does it have, well, quotation marks in it?

[Solifugid]

... The Road by Cormac McCarthy ...

His Blood Meridian is pretty Armageddony, too.

Does it have, well, quotation marks in it?

It sure doesn't.

[brytta.leofa]

... The Road by Cormac McCarthy ...

His Blood Meridian is pretty Armageddony, too.

Does it have, well, quotation marks in it?

It sure doesn't.

I picked up (literally picked up, not bought) a copy of The Road at Barnes and Noble.  I read three pages.  I thought to myself, "This is, ultimately, too lightweight a subject to be worthy of a less-entertaining treatment than S.M. Stirling has given it."  I put it back down.

[WarriorPoet]

I picked up (literally picked up, not bought) a copy of The Road at Barnes and Noble.  I read three pages.  I thought to myself, "This is, ultimately, too lightweight a subject to be worthy of a less-entertaining treatment than S.M. Stirling has given it."  I put it back down.

You missed out. While it's not a masterpiece of anything, it's very entertaining and worth a read.

My biggest problem, aside from the lack of proper punctuation and slightly repetetive dialogue, is that he doesn't go into much detail about the -why- of the setting. It's hot. Ashy. Fucked up... That's about all you get.

Still, I'll probably read it again in a few years. I enjoyed it.

[Is Friday]

I consider The Road a masterpiece. I can enjoy it for being so simple and powerful.

[path]

For some reason Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere always reminds me of the 'rinth.

Kushiel's Dart by Jaqueline Carey always puts me in mind for some political intrigue.

Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsinger reminds me a little of Poet's Circle and bardic training.

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote one, Always Coming Home, which is great for getting into a tribal mindset.


Those are what come to mind, off the top of my head.

[spicemustflow]

For some reason Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere always reminds me of the 'rinth.

Ursula K. Le Guin wrote one, Always Coming Home, which is great for getting into a tribal mindset.

Can only agree on both.

[Kol]

Terry goodkind: Sword of truth series,

before anyone starts ranting about the series, i hated it.

I love these books because of the depth he goes into in creating the world, and the struggle between the new world, and the old world after the barrier comes down can be likened in a way to Zalanthas, especially the fall of the main city of the midlands, with the occupation of tuluk.

[Gobbleneck]

The Pilocene Exile Saga reminds me a lot of Zalanthas, for the following reasons:
-Uhh...

Well, I'm really not good at elaborating.  Just read this amazing series and you'll find out why.
It's also more like Arm with a sci-fi and more modern twist to it.

My three favorite fantasy reads:
-THE PILOCENE EXILE SAGA O: <
-Liveship Traders [I really hope she starts making good books again]
-Farseer Trilogy I guess... I just really don't want to say Song of Ice and Fire.  I loved the books-out-so-far, but for some reason, I have a really bad taste in my mouth about it now.

Black Company is up there, but I only liked the first book.

[spicemustflow]

Also, you simply can't avoid pulps if you're into "sword & sandals & sand" type of low fantasy.

Some short stories of Clark Ashton Smith.

Robert E. Howard, the king of pulp and Conan, the king of, well, everything. A must read. I think these are originals, not shat over by L Sprague & Co.


For some truly weird and quality stuff, I already hawked the Books of the New Sun, with the most amazing post-post-post apocalyptic setting and a hero that cuts off people's heads for a living. The book is presented as his diary and as such, is very subjective and sometimes inaccurate because of his tendency to overestimate his eidetic memory or, simply, to lie. It comes as unbelievably gritty without trying too hard.

Ursula is already mentioned, what else... can't think of anything right now

[WarriorPoet]

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. - It's a fantastic debut novel, I demand you all read it.

I'll put my stamp of approval on this.

After submitting, this morning,  to the3kaiser's demands, I'm now about 250 pages into this after a little over five hours. Wonderful world and telling. I'm just sad there isn't another, or another dozen, to go get once I finish it.