Any epic books I shoud read

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Well I went for the Peter F Hamilton and Nights Dawn trilogy and I must admit I finding them hard going, I was on the 2nd book (put it down half way through) and I just finding it boring right now, most of the interesting character have just went missing and right now I fell like I’m following the red shirts around also I fell like the author has trouble getting to the point and something he just has problem’s moving the plot along.
 
This series is worth reading...great books IMO :)

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GREAT:

George R R Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire
It can get a bit confusing, because of the number of characters that pop up. You basically will not know what the hell is going on at times. But!! Stick with it. The payoff is IMMENSE. 4 Books.

RA Salvatore: The Dark Elf Trilogy
Set in the Icewind Dale + Baldur's Gate universe. Really nicely detailed fight scenes. You cannot help but like the main character, Drizzt, even if he is a bit too.. 'god mode'. The dwarf, Bruenor Battlehammer is awesome. But Pwent Battlerager is even better. 3 books, Homeland, Exile and Sojourn. Later books tend to drag things out a bit, but are still ok.

GOOD:

David Eddings: The Belgariad and The Mallorian series, 10 books (?) in total. Ditto to what others have said, very good series but apparently his other stuff isn't so hot (so I'm told).

Robin Hobb: The Royal Assasin. Can't remember much about this to be honest, other than I really enjoyed it.

AVOID:

Terry Goodkind: The Sword Of Truth
I was just annoyed by it. Really overblown torture sequences in Wizards First Rule (?) the first book that dragged on and on and on. Might have got better afterwards, couldn't care less.

EDIT
This might be of interest to some of you. The Sword of Truth series is being aired on American tv atm (it's called Legend of The Seeker). Due for release here later on in the year. Though, like the books, I wouldn't recommend it tbh.
 
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Meridian said:
It had huge battles, a fight against a god, flying unicorns, King Arthur, sea serpents, dwarfs, giants, elves, mystic weapons, and the Wild Hunt. How can it be anything other than epic?

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Nope, all that makes it confused and borderline ridiculous at times, not to mention pretty childish. Still a good read though :). You can see that Guy Gavriel Kay was cutting his teeth with the Fionavar books before going on to the really good stuff.
 
Trick said:
Nope, all that makes it confused and borderline ridiculous at times, not to mention pretty childish. Still a good read though :). You can see that Guy Gavriel Kay was cutting his teeth with the Fionavar books before going on to the really good stuff.
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More specifically, he was getting all that out of his system. Remember that he was heavily involved in editing the posthumous Tolkein stuff, and was widely tipped to be writing a book of his own. So he took every Fantasy trope he knew of, and flung them into one book/trilogy. Then he effectively said: "Right, I've done that stuff, no I'm going to do what I want." - and wrote the proper stuff.


M
 
spirity said:
GREAT:

George R R Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire
It can get a bit confusing, because of the number of characters that pop up. You basically will not know what the hell is going on at times. But!! Stick with it. The payoff is IMMENSE. 4 Books.
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Strictly, four books to date. At least three more are due, and Martin thinks he may need one more than that tie everything up.


M
 
manic111 said:
Personally I thought that the first 2 books were remarkable, and that the third was incredibly poor.
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Sums up my feelings on His Dark Materials. The third book was awful and ruined what could have been an absolutely fantastic series.

One series that hasn't been mentioned that I've read recently is the Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks. I picked these books up because I liked the look of them (judging a book by it's cover and all that). I was surprised by how good the books actually were. They are the authors' debut novels and they are in my opinion fantastic. One of the few series' of books I've read where the story was so engrossing I had real issues stopping reading them to do something else.

Echoing sentiments of other people as well, George R R Martin's series (A Song of Fire and Ice) is immense. I'm only on the 3rd book at the moment and it really is a fantastic piece of storytelling.
 
I don't think anyone here has yet mentioned the 5 book Gap series by Stephen Donaldson - I just reread this again and I still think it's the best work he has produced and is definately epic. Not one for the kids though!
 
Missed this thread to start with, here's my input :)

nero120 said:
Forgot to mention the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams. Great fantasy epic and I found it better than Shannara.
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Memory, Sorrow & Thorn isn't bad at all, but can get rather dull at times if you're into faster paced stuff :)
On the other hand, Otherland (Tad Williams again) is far, far better.

gurusan said:
This. One of my favorite books. The whole Farseer trilogy is awesome. Read it.
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I agree that there's some very good stuff by Robin Hobb. The Farseer & Tawny Man trilogies are good, but IMHO the Liveship Traders is far better than the others. Either way, read the lot!

Eye Seven said:
I don't think anyone here has yet mentioned the 5 book Gap series by Stephen Donaldson - I just reread this again and I still think it's the best work he has produced and is definately epic. Not one for the kids though!
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Another series I'd reccomend. Very much a marmite set of books though.

Otherwise, I'd also reccomend:
1. The Crystal Singer trilogy by Anne McCaffrey. Not as well known as her Pern stuff, and is better for it.
2. Under Pressure (The Dragon Under the Sea)- Another little known work, this time by Frank Herbert. Excellent psychological submarine novel.
3. The Grand Tour of the Universe by Ben Bova- Another series I'd highly reccomend reading. A lot of books, but very, very good.

-Leezer-
 
Bes said:
Some Murakami
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Now there's a good call right there. 'The Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World' is quite epic but 'The Windup Bird chronicles' is probably his best known 'epic'. They are both also unbelieveably good reads and quite different. Hard Boiled Wonderland... is more fantasy orientated while Windup Bird is more of a historical epic wound into a more typical Murakami storyline.


I'll throw James Clavelle's Shogun into the ring too. One of my favourite epic reads.

Also Norman Mailer's The Naked And The Dead. A semi biographical WWII novel set in the Pacific. Published in the late 40s it's very gripping and gives a very real, if maybe not realistic sense of combat, combat fatigue and life in the US Army in the Pacific theatre.
 
Why is epic necessary? To my mind that removes a number of superb series which might not meet that particular requirement. There's a lot of stuff mentioned in this thread which I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy, but that's the joy of reading - you might love what I find boring, repetitive and...frankly, rubbish :D In the interest of impartiality, I'll leave that up to you though.

There are some amazing suggestions though, so I strongly suggest going out and buying four or five books - each of which is the first in a series by a particular author. Then you can decide whether you want to splash out on more (it's how I do it every six months or so):

A Song of Fire and Ice by George R R Martin (intricate and I found it very emotive)
Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan (This is one of my "bleh" options, but it's popular - to be fair, I loved the first five or so)
The Dark Elf Trilogy - R A Salvatore (very accessible - swashbuckling!)
Riftwar Saga by Raymond Feist (start with Magician - then there's loads more)
Legend by David Gemmell (not part of a series, but he's written plenty and he's one of my favourites)
Temeraire by Naomi Novik (a bit different from the others, but superb)
 
Well if you'r into that kind of book then David Gemmel and Raymond E. Feist are fantastic, i would suggest reading legend and magician, both are fantastic and i have read them numerous times :D
 
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