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Looking for a new Fantasy Book to read.
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— Robert Heinlein
Add in David Dalglish's Paladins (available as an omnibus of 4 books) and Half-Orc series (available as an omnibus but not in electronic format omnibus - the separate books are about $3.00 a piece and the first book is usually free). Paladins is good fun, Half-Orc has you hating some of the characters and their motivations are pretty strange.
Joe Ambercrombies' First Law series and the solo books, as well.
I'll also second the Mazalan disliked. Made it through three books, couldn't stomach any more.
I'll add a recommendation for the Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake. These books are very dark and very Gothic. It may be a little hard to look past the very slow pace, but the writing is phenomenal. A lot of fun fantasy books you can forgive some lackluster writing because the story is so fun, but Peake's writing is like poetry. His characters are incredibly deep, and his imagery is astounding. He has some self-drawn illustrations here and there throughout the books, and it's amazing to see an illustration of a character that matches what your minds eye created from his descriptions down to the very smallest wrinkle. The trilogy can be purchased as a single book compilation.
You may be thinking:
"40 books?? I'll never get through 40 books!"
But don't even worry about it, they aren't sequential. Discworld reading order chart:
I've only read a few Rincewind novels and Equal Rites, and I was going to to recommend it based on them.
Oooh, you really need to read the others. In my opinion the Ricnewind books are the weakest of the Discworld cannon, with maybe the exception being Interesting Times and Sourcery.
Plus, I Shall Wear Midnight has an Esk cameo, her first appearance since Equal Rites.
Card is also a militant disgusting, vile bigot.
It looks really interesting! I may bump that up to next after the First Law books.
— Robert Heinlein
I was actually thinking about recommending this as well. This is a lot older than some of the other series mentioned, but it's truly fantastic. It's sort of like a combination of Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe. The first two books have the distinction of being among the few I could stand to read entirely aloud to my then-infant daughter - the writing is that good.
Definitely some winners mentioned here, I think one I might add that hasn't been mentioned is Naomi Novik's Temeraire series - first one is "His Majesty's Dragon." Good quick reads, interesting world theory.
I was like this, I enjoyed Rincewind and his adventures...I think the witch books i may have started reading one of them then gotten irritated that Rincewind wasnt in it, so stopped.
Recently ive gone back and read through the watch series and the death books...The Watch books are really really good, i want more of them post haste.
I'll second that one. Napoleonic War historical fiction.... if there had been dragons.
It also has the advantage of being a series with a book 1 that entirely stands on its own, so you don't feel like you have to commit to the whole slog just to see if it's your cup of tea.
You really need to be in the right frame of mind for Peake, though. Here's a guy who is totally fine with spending 2-3 pages of closely written description of a new character. Yes he's poetic and lyrical, and he writes with a hallucinagenic intensity, but there's a fuck of a lot of writing to get through to get to the story.
Basically, if you read Strange & Norrel and thought, damb this was pretty good but there should be more discursiveness and description and general writing, then Gormenghast is amazing.
Based on the things you said you liked, I would agree with people that recommended David Eddings, Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books, the Deed of Paksenarrion books by Moon, the Lies of Locke Lamora, and I'd also throw in potentially Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, although that would be a little more outside of what you mentioned in your original post.
Oh, and you might also like "Heroes Die" by Stover.