Unironically who are the best Fantasy writers...

Unironically who are the best Fantasy writers? I've read The Book of the New Sun and The wizard/ knight by wolfe and thought they were spectacular, but I dont know where next to go. I normally read literary fiction as opposed to genre but gene wolfe is great. Anything like him or of similar caliber in the fantasy genre?

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The dying earth by jack Vance

Checking out the rest of the Solar Cycle by Gene Wolfe wouldn't be a bad idea to do while looking other potential authors to read (The Book of the Long Sun, Book of the Short Sun)

My wife is obsessed with Brandon Sanderson atm. Where should she go from there?

Wheel of time

If you don’t mind terse prose try The Black Company by Glen Cook.

Your wife is cringe.

Black Company is great. I'm on a re-read - on the 8th book. I'd say the first three or so are amaziing

Vance, Peake, Dunsany, McKillip, LeGuin, Ballard, arguably Mieville.

Gene Wolfe's style, and the setting of BotNS, is heavily influenced by Jack Vance. Vance is more irreverent and pulpy than Wolfe. I consider Fritz Leiber a discount Vance but he was a considerably less eclectic in subject matter and cynical than Vance.

Tolkien, if you haven't read him he excels at a "mythic" style and of course built an incredibly elaborate world, although it isn't as alien as Wolfe's Urth.

Lord Dunsany wrote in a consciously fairytale style as well although he was much more fond of archaisms than Tolkien, and you can't get lost in Dunsany's mythos like you can with Tolkien.

Of the "Sword and Sorcery" pulp hack-and-slash stories, Robert E. Howard's Conan stories are the best. Might be worth checking out, they're not for everyone.

If you liked the density and weirdness of Urth, look at Dune. The Dune sequels peter out, and I never found Frank Herbert's non-Dune novels to be as good.

reddit

I've read tons of fantasy and it's almost all garbage, it's generally where fiction goes to die. Here are some outliers that stuck out as being actually pulp fun or fantasy with actual aesthetic:
The Broken Sword (lotr but without Tolkien's autism)
King of Elfland's Daughter (og fantasy as a 'genre')
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (best fantasy in the last 30years and a personal favorite)
Selected works of Moorcock like Glorianna

Thanks buddy.

And thanks to everyone for the recs

Forgot Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

I didn't mention Peake because I didnt want to scare anyone away. Also reminds me that I need to check out Vance, was going to start with Lyonesse or maybe something else? I really like Leiber, have I been missing out this whole time?

Hyperion is good

Dunsany and Tolkien are the only fantasy authors I could call as good quite as good as Wolfe.
That said, MacDonald, Eddison, Vance, LeGuin, Peake, and Lewis are all great. I've only read sci-fi from Zelazny, but Lord of Light approached fantasy in some ways and overall his nearly poetic prose is worth mentioning.

Brandon Sanderson ass-to-mouth?

read Latro in the mist

>Also reminds me that I need to check out Vance, was going to start with Lyonesse or maybe something else? I really like Leiber, have I been missing out this whole time?

Different user here, but I suppose that depends on what you like about Leiber. Lyonesse is Vance's only overtly fantasy series, and it's as far away from leiber's Newhon S&S as you can get, but the trilogy is excellent in its own right.
I'm of the opinion that Vance is the most fun you can have reading SF. Sensual prose in uniquely well-fleshed settings, and masterfully dry humor to dollop on top.

Do not do yourself a disservice and skip over Long Sun and Short Sun. The former might seem to drag and bewilder at first, but it pays off masterfully in Short Sun, which might even be better than New Sun.

>reading genre fiction
You can always read more Wolfe.
Gormenghast by Peake.
Lord of the Rings
Lyonesse by Vance

Currently reading Titus Groan

Half way through, not much has happened but enjoying it nonetheless

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Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what it means.

No. My wife is awesums

What’s wrong the Mr Sanderson?

These are the books that led her to the Cosmir.
She loves them and they grace our bookshelves lovingly!

Tolkien, Dunsany, Peake, Howard and Wolfe.
Ignore the rest. It's all derivitive trash.

Not much really happens in Gormenghast. It's a strange book. The prose and worldbuilding (ick) are one-of-a-kind, but I can't really figure out what the point of the book is other than an excercise in technically sound writing.

Nothing against Howard, he really was a great writer, but he hardly fit in that company.

I'm on the 2nd book of WoT series. Does he ever stop the relentless over-characterization and descriptions? Its not interesting at all. Whenever something finally happens I have to read another page of uninteresting horseshit to finally learn what happens. I mean jesus christ.

Black Company is YA shit don't listen to these FOOLS.

Agreed, I honestly loved the first 2 books. Not a lot happens except for the burning of the library . I found book 3 really weird though and I'm still not 100% what happened there. but generally the worldbuilding and the whole happenings in the castle were so nice to read about for me

Sanderfag a hack.

>I found book 3 really weird though and I'm still not 100% what happened there
The author literally got Alzheimer's and it melted his brain. He don't have any idea either.

Nothing. But this is a thread about literary genre fiction and the best writers, not the most generic.

I dont get the appeal of Le Guin.

I read half of a Wizard of Earthsea and it felt like a book meant for little kids and didnt have anything to offer other than "rollicking adventure" for young people who could self insert as the protag

Yes leguin is meant for young people dont listen to the memes that place her alongside great fantasy simply because the western canon has adopted her

Read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, you can find it online

cucked and cringepilled

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>her book written for kids feels like it was written for kids
um.. no shit. read the hainish series

So why is Yea Forums talking her up on the same level as Wolfe if her shit is harry potter tier

It actually gets worse in the later books

Eathsea was literally written for children (It is better than harry potter BTW). She has written several other books and series for ages spanning from adults to literal toddlers.

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in all seriousness you don't belong here

try out reddit's fantasy board

Andrzej Sapkowski is unironically my favourite fantasy prose writer, he has a dry fairly crude style but he has made me laugh so many times that I just can't forget it

Not very good at writing extended narratives though, that's why the first three witcher books are the best and the last four are not so good

George MacDonald

The strugatsky brothers

Dumb

Post your wife's fat rack, I bet she's a real porker

which version of this is best? is the one in your pic the one i should get?

Try the Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake , I think they are pretty amazing.

get the exhaustive Jeff Vandermeer anthology of fantasy short stories and follow up on whichever authors you like
the anthology is exhaustive and includes most of the authors mentioned here plus other obscure ones (theres a little author bio before each story).
Jeff also has a weird fiction anthology that is great

I got bored as shit reading Book of the New Sun.
Main character named "Severian" already cringed.
>main character screws all the chicks
>survives all the fights
>deus-exes his ass through the book.
That's about all I remember from that trash-fire of a book pseuds like to jerk each-other off to.

but, that's literally all wrong

It all depends on what you look for in a fantasy. This is is the best answer you are going to get.

Brainlet tranny LMAO

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I'm reading it right now, about 2/3 of the way through shadow. Severian does sort of seem like a loser male self insert:
>tough yet kind and sensitive with a bitchin weapon with a cool name
>met 3 women so far, all loved him (maybe not thecla as she was his prisoner)
>randomly gets involved in a "duel" (havent read the outcome yet so idk how it turns out)

The book doesnt seem above the trappings of genre fiction so far

I look for lurid descriptions of place, a lived-in sense for the environment, a character arc that maybe is a little different than "main character must accomplish x task to save all of civilization". Basically borderline prose poetry with a coherent narrative. Best I've found so far is Clarke ashton Smith, Dunsany, some of Lovecraft's dream cycles. I've read a lot of weird fiction though and most of it gets it all wrong in terms of my proclivities

What I meant was there are very few definitive "Best" fantasy authors. For example someone who is more into light-hearted and fun fantasy isn't going to name Bakker as one of the best(Though I do believe in that). And someone who is more into the grimdark side of things isn't going to name David Eddings as top tier. It all depends on how you want your fantasy.

Jack Vance bro

the deus ex is kind of right though, even if that user doesn't know it

I know but not how they meant it

unironically tolkien

read Left Hand of Darkness, dummy.

Unironically Jeff Vandermeer and NK Jemisin. anyone who says otherwise is a filthy contrarian.

>all loved him
this is wrong
and it is genre

That's almost entirely because he's doing the writing, it's not always as it happens.
Wolfe is great for this, Vance, and I recommend checking Zelazny's work as well even if I haven't read his fantasy. Several of his short stories are available online.
I honestly enjoyed Wizard of Earthsea more than Left Hand of Darkness. Granted, first half of Wizard was generic as all hell, but it improved a lot after that. Left Hand felt less interesting than the introspection into Earthsea's magic, and the gender aspects of it weren't all that developed despite the time they got. Lathe of Heaven was more enjoyable than left hand.

>because he's doing the writing
Even by his own account none of them love him. Thecla is a prisoner, Look-alike Thecla is a prostitute, what's her name is trying to con him, and he rapes the waitress.

All those are also derivative.

0/10

It's true, though. Tolkien is just a remix of various myths and legends. He's like the Tarantino of fantasy.

I don't get what people see in Wolfe.

>I look for lurid descriptions of place, a lived-in sense for the environment, a character arc that maybe is a little different than "main character must accomplish x task to save all of civilization"
Mervyn Peake is the answer. Be aware that he takes your 'lurid' and he runs very, very far with it

>ctrl+f "malazan"
>no results

terrible thread

but that's bad

Keep reading the Solar Cycle. Long Sun may seem slow, but its a joy to reread. Short Sun is on the same level New Sun. Maybe even a better for me because im borderline obsessed with Silk.

Also basically everything Wolfe has written is quality. Start with Fifth head of Cerberus, Peace after that (you may not like, i consider it strange even for wolfe standards), maybe Soldier after that.

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Peace is his best novel and one of the absolute English language greats of the past 50 years. It defies analysis though.

I enjoyed the ride, reading through Peace but I dont think I really "get" that book and most of it propably went right over my head. It really does defy analysis as you say. But like I said, the ride along was great. It really got my mind spinning.

What do you think of Wolfe's "newer" works? (Home Fires, The Land Across, A Borrowed Man). I recently finished Home Fires for the first time and it never really hooked me.

the morgue

Women usually don't

What would you guys say is the most entertaining fantasy book you have ever read?

Lord Dunsany