Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

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vveat
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Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by vveat »

I got inspired by the recent thread about modern sci fi. I prefer fantasy but even that thread gave me good ideas, I bought and am already halfway through Name of the Wind. I am hoping that a more targeted thread would yield even better recommendations.

Now, fantasy is such a mix-up of genres and I definitely don't like the traditional sword and sorcery. At best I can describe my preferences as alternative history (or alternative reality or alternative future) and some urban fantasy. But it may be easier just to list some things I like.
- A few authors that never disappoint me: Gay Gavriel Kay, Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews (I have yet to see something from them that I don't like, their world building is spectacular), Terry Pratchett - especially the Vimes books
- From others I like individual books or series, but don't care much about their other works: Dave Duncan - the Reluctant Swordsman trilogy; S.M. Stirling - The Island in the Sea of Time trilogy; Reimond Feist - the Daughter of the Empire trilogy (I don't like his other books, but this collaboration with Janny Wurts was inspired); Rachel Aaron - the Eli Monpress books; Ann Bishop - Written in Red; some Russian fantasy, esp Lukyanenko's Watch (Dozor) series

Any other authors along these lines that you would recommend? Or favorite books?

Thanks!
vveat
Crow Hunter
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by Crow Hunter »

Alternative History favorite author of mine is Harry Turtledove.

Particularly the Southern Victory series. In this series he proposes that the Confederacy succeeds during the Civil War and what that does to change world history.

I really enjoyed the stories and the characters even though I was more of a fantasy D&D type of reader prior to starting that series.
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Ged
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Post by Ged »

I haven't read a lot of this genre, but I have always enjoyed the work of Randall Garrett and his Lord Darcy series.

Basically it's a world where the Plantagenet dynasty survived into modern times, and a Ango-French empire still holds sway. Magic is the way things get done, although with a Rationistic foundation rather than a spiritual one.

The protagonist is basically a detective in the employ of the empire with a distinct Sherlock Holmes flavor.

Quite well written.
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whaleknives
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by whaleknives »

Lois McMaster Bujold's
  • Chalion series
    • "The Curse of Chalion"
    • "Paladin of Souls"
    • "The Hallowed Hunt"
  • Sharing Knife series
    • "Beguilement"
    • "Legacy"
    • "Passage" (this might be called alternate history, since a credited source is "A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, by Himself", 1834)
    • "Horizon"
C.J. Cherryh's "Fortress in the Eye of Time" (the first and best of the series)
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mhalley
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by mhalley »

Hmm so you want more historical than pure fantasy?
How about the ring of fire series by eric flint? The story is about an entire town in wv is transported back in time to germany in the year 1632 and the impact this has on history. Multiple books in the series with different authors. Starts with 1632.
http://www.amazon.com/1632-Ring-Fire-Er ... 0671319728
Or the story of the Napoleonic wars, except there are dragons.
http://www.amazon.com/His-Majestys-Drag ... 0345481283
Orson Scott Cards the tales of Alvin Maker are pretty good. Frontier america, folk magic works.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_ ... ooks%2C288
Here is a general list of some popular alt hist.
http://bestsciencefictionbooks.com/best ... -books.php
And another
http://io9.com/the-most-unusual-alterna ... 1518395336
If you want a good old pure fantasy romp, try Joe Abercrombe's the first law series
http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Abercrombie/e ... sr=1-2-ent
Or Robin Hobb has multple books set in the same fantasy universe.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_ ... ooks%2C201
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DiDonovan
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by DiDonovan »

I just finished reading Deborah Davitt's The Valkyrie (The Saga of Edda-Earth Book 1) and I highly recommend it - IF you are seeking an epic kind of alternative history fantasy. It's suitable for readers who like their stories sweeping, their protagonists believable and compelling, and their fantasy worlds well-detailed and intricate. It's based on two historical concepts: what if Rome never fell, and what if magic was a real part of human experience?

Be forewarned: this is no light, easy read. It takes a few chapters to fully absorb a cast of characters with different names and purposes, and a setting that is at once quite different from our world yet replete with similarities, right down to the blue jeans.

The Valkyrie is world-building at its highest level: as such, its readers shouldn't be ones looking for a light fantasy adventure, but those who root out the few Tolkien-like epics in the fantasy genre, there to live amongst gods, monsters, and brave adventurers who traverse a dangerous world with purpose, courage, and visions of creation, recreation, and change.

So if you're like me and enjoy alternative history fantasies that are complex and compelling - this makes for a compelling read!
Valuethinker
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by Valuethinker »

The granddaddy novels of alternate history are:

L Sprague de Camp "Lest Darkness Fall" - an American archaeologist in late 1930s Rome falls back to the Rome of about 530 AD, when the Greek/Roman Emperor Justinian is trying to recapture Rome from the Goths (historically he succeeded, but it was a pyrric victory as Italy was devastated in the process and his own Empire was greatly weakened by the plague, and then the moslem invasions of post 622).

In fact that novel led Harry S Turtledove to get a phd in Byzantine history and so to become a SF writer of alternative histories. It has the virtue of being funny as well as very good.

Philip K Dick

"The Man in the High Castle" - a USA occupied by the Nazis and the Japanese

Ward Moore (? name)

"Bring the Jubilee" - a man enters our timeline, from one where the Confederates won at Gettysburg, and severed the union.

All 3 of these are classics and very enjoyable readings.
Valuethinker
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by Valuethinker »

For well worked out fantasy worlds, particularly militarily (author was a Vietnam vet)

Glen Cook

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/glen-cook/

The Black Company (a series of 4 trilogies, the first is the best and will give you the flavour of the others). I could not put down the Black Company when I found it-- waiting anxiously each year for the next novel, to see how he worked it out. In the later books, Croaker (the narrator) gives up writing the Anals of the Black Company (the logbooks of this company of mercenaries) and other characters take it up, so we see Croaker in a different light.

What people like Steve Erickson and George RR Martin built, they built on the foundations of Glen Cook. Cook doesn't do twee fantasy. Just his descriptions of what it is like to sit for days in an ambush position-- there's a whole treatise on counter insurgency buried in there (well buried, the books are never didactic).

His other series are

The Dread Empire - this is, in fact, alternate history. Itsakia is medieval England, Hellin Damiel is medieval Florence, The Empire in the Desert is all about the rise of Islam and its early conquests, the Dread Empire itself is the Mongol rule of China (I think). The military fantasy is extraordinary.

Garret, PI. The series is darkly funny and is about a veteran of some unwinnable and complex fantasy war, living in the town of Tun Faire, working as a detective and trying to keep out of the way of various dark powers, wizards etc. So flavour of a Chandler/ Hammett detective, but in a fantasy world.

Cook gets the politics, the backstabbing and the double dealing dead right. I actually prefer him to George RR Martin.
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by placeholder »

Valuethinker wrote:Garret, PI. The series is darkly funny and is about a veteran of some unwinnable and complex fantasy war, living in the town of Tun Faire, working as a detective and trying to keep out of the way of various dark powers, wizards etc. So flavour of a Chandler/ Hammett detective, but in a fantasy world.
Cook lives in St. Louis (his "day career" was working at the GM plant) and roughly modeled Tun Faire after his adopted city so while I'm not a big fantasy reader I do enjoy the Garrett books but I will also recommend a science fiction space opera type book of his The Dragon Never Sleeps which used to be hard to find but was reissued a few years back and is now readily available.
b4real
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by b4real »

Making History by Stephen Fry - What if Hitler never existed?

11-22-63 by Stephen King - What if Kennedy was not shot?

I enjoyed both books on audible at the gym.
Bob.Beeman

Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by Bob.Beeman »

mhalley wrote:
Hmm so you want more historical than pure fantasy?
How about the ring of fire series by eric flint? The story is about an entire town in wv is transported back in time to germany in the year 1632 and the impact this has on history. Multiple books in the series with different authors. Starts with 1632.
Great recommendation!!! An older lady from church recommended this to me a few months ago. I also found out the series is popular among students at the HS where I work. A really fun read and a lot more realistic than most science fiction.

The homepage for the series is at:
Official 1632 Fan Site

In Summary: There's almost nothing about 21st century US life that wouldn't be a great boon to 17th Century Europe.
We should count our blessings!

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TTBG
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by TTBG »

The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham. The first book in the series is called A Shadow In Summer.

The Sparrow and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell.
Valuethinker
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by Valuethinker »

Besides Glen Cook we should never forget Timothy Powers, who tends to write 'modern fantasy': fantasy set in the modern world.

His novels are very well written and nuanced.

The Drawing of the Dark (his first, or his second arguably) remains one of my all time favourite novels. The Fisher King, the King of the West, is dying, and with him western civilization. He can only be revived by a pint of the oldest beer in the world, the Dark, made in Vienna. Brewed, it is said, since the days of Christ himself. But the Ottoman Turks are at the gates of Vienna (it is 1553 from memory) and their chief sorcerer is well aware of the Dark. It will fall to an Irish mercenary named Brian to save the Dark.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/p/tim ... f-dark.htm

The late John M Ford wrote sparsely. And yet he wrote one sublime fantasy/ history novel:

The Dragon Waiting The Byzantine Empire never fell, and in its ancient evil sorcery it is coming to take the rest of Europe. It will be to Richard III of England to meet them on Bosworth Field... Don't let the romance novel cover put you off (in some editions), this is a superb blending of history and fantasy.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/f/joh ... aiting.htm
Skiffy
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Re: Recommend good fantasy (alternative history) book?

Post by Skiffy »

My son and I like "Dies the Fire" by S.M. Sirling. It is the first book in a series that goes on for many generations. The premise was what would happen if technology stopped working. After about 5 books I lost interest, but my son kept going, I think 10 or12 books.
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