I’ve been a huge fan of the movies since they first came out but didn’t read the books until the beginning of this year. I just wasn’t a reader until recently. I’ve been yearning for some more fantasy but haven’t been able to find anything similar. I tried The Silmarillion but it reads too much like a textbook to me.
What are some other great fantasy books that I might like?
The Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy by Patrick Rothfuss. It is not so much LotR becauseitt focuses on one main character. But it has a pretty clever and thoroughly thought out magic system and I for my part enjoyed the story. Link to openlibrary
Stormlight Archive (Sanderson). Wheel of Time (Jordan). Broken Earth trilogy (Jemisin). Elric of Melniboné (Moorcock). Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn (Williams).
To name a few.
A neglected series is Riverworld by Philip Jose Farmer. There are five volumes that are a great read.
All humanity is resurrected after death on the banks of a strange river. Each book deals with a real historical figure and the struggle to understand the mysteries of Riverworld. Each volume more or less follows characters from history (Richard Burton, Mark Twain, Cyrano de Bergerac and others) who embark on a journey to travel to the end of the River in order to solve the mystery of their resurrection. It’s quite pulpy but very enjoyable.
It’s a little different in style, but my all-time favorite series is the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix. (Lord of the Rings is a close second). It’s a series with extremely well-written female protagonists with a very interesting and detailed magic system, and the protagonists are a family lineage of anti-necromancers.
I love these two series enough that I have a tattoo of a quote from the Old Kingdom series written in Quenya. (I did a phonetic translation due to the lack of appropriate vocabulary in the conlang, but the calligraphy is correct.)
Have you tried wheel of time?
That series has been on my radar, but I’ve been weary because I’ve heard that there’s a big lull in the middle 5 books or so.
Fair point, but I would say the first 4 books are an equivalent load to LOTR and worth the time.
