by TheNesta » Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:38 am
I'm churning through as many Fantasy novels I can nowadays. I never used to read that much, but I bought a Kindle last year and I cannot stop reading. In fact, one of my favorite moments in the day is laying down to go to sleep, and losing myself in these novels.
A few series of note...
A Song of Ice and Fire
I'm sure everyone knows about this by now, seeing as how popular it's become with the Game of Thrones HBO series. This is my passion right here, there's not many things I love more than ASoIaF. Above, I mentioned that I didn't really read that much, the exception is this series. I own all the massive hardbound books in the series and have recently started to repurchase them on Kindle. Hell, I bought the latest book A Dance With Dragons on Kindle, and the actual physical copy at the same time. Haven't touched the actual book though.
If you aren't aware, it's a gritty low fantasy story, it does have some magic elements in it, but they're down played a bit. It has a huge focus on politics, which, I dunno about you guys, but politics bore the shit outta me in real life, but in fantasy I find it very compelling. A lot of crazy stuff happens in the books, and some of the chapters are infamous at this point for catching you totally off-guard.
I highly recommend the HBO series as well, as it is pretty true to the books (so far), and has some amazing acting in it. But if you get started on that, and don't want to wait several years to get caught up on the story, then you should dive into the books.
The Kingkiller Chronicle
Another fantasy series, this one deals more with magic, but it has some really cool explanations to most magics, making it almost scientific. The main character Kvothe is amazing, and you basically follow his life story. The character arc he goes through is one of the coolest things I've ever seen, and by the end of the second book I had some very passionate feelings and expectations for the character. This series isn't nearly as gritty as ASoIaF is, but it's still pretty centered in adult literature. This is probably my second favorite book series.
Ready Player One
This is actually more Sci-Fi than fantasy. It's a standalone book that tells the story of the not too distant future. Where the world has gone to shit, and most people spend their time plugged into a virtual world. If it sounds a bit like Snow Crash, it is I guess, though I only just started reading Snow Crash, so forgive me. The hook here though is that a billionaire has left behind his entire fortune to anyone that can solve his "game", and the key to that is by being very well versed in 80's culture. Yeah, it's pretty neat. It's not the greatest book around, but I really enjoyed all the references in the book, and it was just a lot of fun to read.