LibriumArcana.Games

In a similar vein as my sci-fi thread, I'm looking for original fantasy stories. We all know about the Tolkein brainbugs, along with the brainbugs of ancient civilizations and everybody having medieval European tech and so on. I'm looking for something different, fantasy and magical but original and fresh.

My example here is The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever. While I hated the books and characters (damn rapist leper) and the sequels, I have to admit that the world and its magic were quite original in concept.

Any suggestions?

In all honesty, the Anita Blake series seems to combine several aspects of Noir, Fantasy and Gothic literature (though it later turns a wee bit more erotic) while having its own original spin.

Star Wars, to me, also has that whole 'fantasy, magical, and slightly different' thing going on, being wizards, knights, and classical fantasy, set in space.

Define 'original', please. The FAN genre is so vast, and has been around so long, that chances are there's a lot of stuff that, while not mainstream, HAS been touched on already.
My entries for not neccessarily original but something I haven't run in elsewhere are
1. The Bard's Tale series. The idea that Bards aren't just a part of the scenery but actually VITAL isn't something you run into a lot, with the possible exception of
2. Tanya Huff's 'Quarter' series, where Bards are the only Magic Users.

Glen Cook The Black Company series

Steven Ericson The Malazan Books of the Fallen

R. Scott Bakker The Prince of Nothing

Narsil wrote:In all honesty, the Anita Blake series seems to combine several aspects of Noir, Fantasy and Gothic literature (though it later turns a wee bit more erotic) while having its own original spin.

Star Wars, to me, also has that whole 'fantasy, magical, and slightly different' thing going on, being wizards, knights, and classical fantasy, set in space.

I'm sorry....Anita Blake? Original? Out of her "Anita Blake" series and the one about the Faery Princess, all she did was rip off the World of Darkness stuff, and touch it up slightly so she couldn't get copyright infringement notices.

As for somewhat erotic? Bad porno. Extremely bad porno, there's no real plot, beyond endless sex scenes involving her main character and some oddly deformed shifter, or cold vampire with a 12" cock.

Hell, the latest book in her Faery series, has the protagonist having to stay with the twelve "most beautiful" Faery men and not succumb to fucking them, or she'll be killed by her aunt. (I read the back of the book....instantly turned me off).

And people bitch about Dan Brown's lack of writing, look at Hamilton's crap.

As someone who's read the entire Anita Blake series I won't say it's quite as bad as DS puts it. Now I do admit that in the last few books she's gone from abstinence to absolute abandon in about half a chapter a piece.

The first books were damned good, up till about book 9 or 10...

The last one, Micah, that came out in Feb wasn't as bad as some of the other recent ones. Hopefully the one that comes out this month (Danse Macab) will be interesting.

On a similar vein to Hamilton's Anita Blake series, if you want the action, magic, etc without the massive "OMG, she just gangbanged a werehyena, two werewolves and a werechicken" go for Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, which is a good series or Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan series.

I enjoyed Lackey's Bedlam's Bard series and her SERRAted edge series.

I'm going to be blunt here:

Hamilton's first couple of books were decent and then they went downhill.

Mercedes Lackey's stuff rises to the heights of "okay" as fantasy when she maanges to control her impulses to indulge in emo and angst.. They're better as romance novels in a fantasy setting.

The Dresden Files are okay.

I'm currently reading Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance (found it on sale for $3.00) and while it's supposed to be science fiction, by my standards it's pretty original fantasy. Sure, they have the wizards and the casting of spells, but they're also growing bodies in vats and defeating demons by unraveling them into spools of thread. A little depressing, though.

Can't believe I neglected to mention this universe, but; Discworld.

Easily surpasses anything and everything in both originality and entertainment.

Mayabird wrote:I'm currently reading Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance (found it on sale for $3.00) and while it's supposed to be science fiction, by my standards it's pretty original fantasy. Sure, they have the wizards and the casting of spells, but they're also growing bodies in vats and defeating demons by unraveling them into spools of thread. A little depressing, though.

My Avatar and location are from the Dying Earth series (Rhialto the Marvellous). The latter books are lighter and funnier. They consist of the Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga (linked) and Rhialto the Marvellous.

I wouldn't consider Discworld original as such (bear with me, I'm still relatively certain this will make sense eventually).
Discworld is NOT original in that all the classical fantasy clichés are there, it's what Pratchett does with them that makes it fun. Pterry does not do something new or even rarerely done so much as taking the everyday approach to fantasy and twist it into a pretzel. His characters are the typical fantasy archetypes except in the way they act-you have the powerful slightly snobbish wizard, the lost son of a king who becomes a hero, the ruthless tyrant who rules the city, you have greedy dwarves, stupid trolls, witches, elves, the whole gamut-except they don't behave like you'd expect them to.
The Discworld series isn't original in the sense that it does something that hasn't been done before. It's original in what it does with everything (or at least a good portion of) what has been done before.
Or, depending on what we're talking about, does to everything done before.
Plus, a series that can make Blues Brothers and RoboCop references work in a fantasy setting absolutely rocks.

Discworld is NOT original in that all the classical fantasy clichés are there, it's what Pratchett does with them that makes it fun. Pterry does not do something new or even rarerely done so much as taking the everyday approach to fantasy and twist it into a pretzel. His characters are the typical fantasy archetypes except in the way they act-you have the powerful slightly snobbish wizard, the lost son of a king who becomes a hero, the ruthless tyrant who rules the city, you have greedy dwarves, stupid trolls, witches, elves, the whole gamut-except they don't behave like you'd expect them to.

Ah yes, but that's what makes it original. Originality isn't what you make, it's how you make it.

I'm reasonably certain I commented on that in the paragraph following that excerpt.

uhm....

I'm hoping that These will fit into the search.

Hatching Magic

A School for Sorcery

they're light reading but they're very good stories.

Discworld! How could I forget? I love those books. I wasn't thinking in terms of parody, but you're all right in your way. Anybody who can combine a space turtle, new-age vampires, and DEATH (riding his horse Binky) among so many others is brilliantly original in his way.

I'm glad the later ones are more fun. I got all the novels together in one big combined book, so I've been reading through them.

And thanks, Lindar. I'll check those two out if I find them.

I cannot stress this book enough:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
In my humble opinion, the book (authored by one Mrs. Susanna Clarke) is one of the most well written and original books I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Also, on the genre of historical fiction: Naomi Novik is proving to be an entertaining read so far.

Cynical Cat wrote:

Mayabird wrote:I'm currently reading Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance (found it on sale for $3.00) and while it's supposed to be science fiction, by my standards it's pretty original fantasy. Sure, they have the wizards and the casting of spells, but they're also growing bodies in vats and defeating demons by unraveling them into spools of thread. A little depressing, though.

My Avatar and location are from the Dying Earth series (Rhialto the Marvellous). The latter books are lighter and funnier. They consist of the Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga (linked) and Rhialto the Marvellous.

I remember Cugel's Saga being cool.