What other fantasy books do YOU read?

[skip spence]

Guess I'm not really a fantasy fan. I've got the impression Tolkien killed the genre off by perfecting it and when I tried to get into other fantasy works in my teens I did not get very far. To me they (I don't remember titles) were just pale copies or inferior variations, with the author obviously writing in the shadow of Tolkien. Then again, the books I did try might simply have been bad apples that put me off an otherwise decent harvest. Maybe I should give it another go. Any suggestions?

[Thinlómien]

Skippy, in your case I'd start from something else than the traditional-style fantasy. Neil Gaiman's Stardust plays with old fairytales and has a lot of sarcasm and evil jokes, and Guy Gavriel Kay's The Lions of Al-Rassan is more "alternative history" than fantasy: one of the main characters is based on El Cid and it is very much like early medieval Spain, but Kay has taken more liberty by placing the story in an imaginary world. That's two very good ones off the top of my head.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by skip spence

Guess I'm not really a fantasy fan. I've got the impression Tolkien killed the genre off by perfecting it and when I tried to get into other fantasy works in my teens I did not get very far. To me they (I don't remember titles) were just pale copies or inferior variations, with the author obviously writing in the shadow of Tolkien. Then again, the books I did try might simply have been bad apples that put me off an otherwise decent harvest. Maybe I should give it another go. Any suggestions?

I would say you are basically right, skip. But I guess people could give you dozens and hundreds of suggestions here, but not sure if that is what you would like: the question would be, what are you expecting of the book. I don't believe there is a "second Tolkien", and if there is, then it would be just a copy. If you are looking for something "similar" in some way, there might be some things worth suggesting, but then again - what would you like: more of a "dragonhunting" stuff, or a more "realistic" world, some plotting, mystery, whatever...
I know for example one author, but first, he's a bit specific, and second, he is Polish and his books have not been translated to so many languages (to English, for example, but just very few of them and he's not probably that well known). His name is Andrzej Sapkowski, and the books would be called something like "Hexer" or stuff like that. Just if you saw it somewhere, I could recommend it to you to just check it - either you will like it or not. It is kind of a "monster-killer" stuff on first sight, but that's really just on first sight, it has much deeper story behind it (and in a way it's a bit parodical of the classic fantasy, but at the same moment remaining serious), and sometimes rather tolkienesque and also a lot more "realistic" in the portrayal of things (like, he is not "black and white" - no way, quite the opposite...).