Some of my recommendations along with justifications! Enjoy! Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. It begins with "Storm Front." He's a practicing wizard for hire who rents out a basement in Chicago. He lives with a cat and a talking skull. Great stories. Harry Potter series. No plug necessary. The DaVinci Code. Not a fantasy novel, but borderline. No plug necessary. The Keep. Not a fantasy novel, but as with the DaVinci Code, it's borderline. Hard to describe. I suppose the core tale is two cousins who haven't met since a horrible childhood incident. One ends up a vagabond, the other a millionaire. The vagabond shows up in Eastern Europe to help the rich cousin refurbish a medieval castle he's just bought. For people who love character's with depth, but streamlined prose, this is about as good as it gets. Simon Green's Nightside series. It begins with "Something from the Nightside." He's a private eye, and apparently the son of some unspeakably evil being. Gods cross the street when they see him coming, and faceless beings with razors for fingers are constantly trying to kill him...and he has no idea why. At least his secretary works pretty cheaply since he saved her from that man-eating house. Tongue-in-cheek, but incredibly great stories. "Sunshine" by Robin McKinley. There is this quiet girl who works at a quiet cafe. Her name is Sunshine and she loves to cook.
I am not a fan of vampire books. I never made it through the 1st chapter of Anne Rice's "Interview with a Vampire." I thought this would be a vampire book, more so because the bookstore clerk kept gushing about it, but when I got it home I realized it was an incredibly awesome urban fantasy that just happened to include vampires. Very surreal. It's candy for the mind. I'd explain it more, but I can't. You kind of have to experience it to understand. I wish I had wrote it. Five damn stars, all the way. "Dauntless" by Jack Campbell. It's your typical soldier-gets-frozen- for-100-years-only-to-dethaw-and-discover-that-there's-a-war-between- his-side-of-the-galaxy-and-the-other-side-and-he's-a-living-legend story. Things look grim, the chips are down, and he's suddenly in command of an entire space fleet (or what remains of it). I thought I wouldn't be that interested in this book, let alone recommend it, but somehow it works really well. He continues it with several books. All are awesome and that's saying something since I don't read sci-fi much anymore. "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman. This girl can open doors between normal London and *real* London. She's on the run and about to die at the hands of assassins. She opens a door to "somewhere safe." Enter a Londonian wage-slave. Great book by Gaiman. "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman. And hell, "American Gods" too. The first is about a modern British lad who's trying to get a girl. Just to get rid of him she tells him that if he fetches the falling star that just streaked through the sky for her, she'll marry him. And thus begins his quest. Prolly the best Gaiman book. The second book is a modern tale about long-forgotten gods... "Goblin Quest" is the first novel in a trilogy and is very entertaining. To give a brief synopsis (which is leaving out an awful lot), the lead character is a goblin, huddling in his cave, trying to avoid "adventurers" whose only purpose is to slay his kind...until he "decides" to join up with one such group. Very imaginative and certainly the most different novel I've read in a long time. I love how it's creative, engaging, and humorous (from the goblin's perspective) and yet serious (when from the...other...lead character's perspective). "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss is a phenomenal fantasy novel. It's the author's first novel and it's right up there with the classics. Yeah, it's that good. Like "Sunshine" it's a novel where the prose is so smooth and flowing it's a joy just to read the text written by a master. "The Magician's Guild" by Trudi Canavan. It pains me to recommend this, it really does. The author is overly wordy (but nowhere near Robert Jordan's or Terry Goodkind's level) which is the main drawback. This is the age-old tale of the zero who becomes a hero. It's the clichéd story of a poor urchin who discovers she has strange abilities and gets sent to a prestigious school. I really can't say why I like this trilogy except to say that I'm a sucker for "magic kids going to a magic school" novels. A good read, if you can get around her overly descriptive tendencies. "The Way of Shadows" by Brent Weeks. Every Christmas someone will buy me a novel as a present and every year the novel sucks. Last year was an exception when I got this novel. I thought I wouldn't like it but the trilogy had me enthralled. It's the tale of a slum child who becomes the protege of a master assassin...who turns out to be far more than just a mere assassin. Get it. You'll love it.
