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Stormblood by Jeremy Szal
Prob the best book I've read so far this year. Similar to altered carbon or along that ilk.
Also read the Revenger series recently by Alister Reynolds - which is a great 'pirates of the Caribbean, but set in space' trilogy and good fun read.
+1 for Joe Abercrombie if fantasy is more your thing.
Going a bit OT here sorry. I’ve read all the Abercrombie books that are set in the First Law world and really enjoyed them all. I have Half a King sat on my Kindle whilst I wait for the third book in the second First Law trilogy. I keep getting distracted by James Lee Burke novels so haven’t started it yet.
Half a King is good, but bear in mind that it's a young adult book so a bit less, er, visceral than his other stuff.
Excellent thread, thanks chaps.
Again, big Iain m banks fan.
I've enjoyed the old man's war series by John scalzi which are well written with some really good ideas.
But the best thing I've read in ages was the name of the wind by Patrick rothfuss. I was gripped from the start
The only problem is it's the first book of a trilogy but it doesn't look there will be a third novel as it's been 10 years since the second.
On the fantasy side, there's a really good blog series that charts the history of epic fantasy with all (most) of the key titles:
https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-history-of-epic-fantasy-contents-link.html
Easy reading but the bloke evidently knows the field inside-out - has some nice insights on why some stuff from back in the day was successful, even if it reads formulaic nowadays.
A lot of Zelazny’s stuff is more fantasy than SF, but I like all of it. Roadmarks is a particular favourite.
Well done you for discovering Roadmarks! I adore that book, but I’m a huge fan of Zelazney anyway, and have been for more years than I care to think about; I still have all my original paperbacks, most are early 70’s, my copy of Roadmarks is an American import, but amazingly it hasn’t succumbed to the usual blight of American SF paperbacks - they’re deciduous! It’s a crying shame that much of his work doesn’t seem to be in print any more, apparently something to do with his estate, but I’ve managed to acquire lots of his back catalogue as ebooks, slightly hooky ones, but if his estate can’t be arsed, what can you do…
The Amber series is great fun, and there’s a continuation series, which I actually enjoyed very much. Zelazney also wrote a book with Alfred Bester, often referred to as the father of CyberPunk SF.
At the moment I’m re-reading Kate Griffin’s ‘Matthew Swift’ urban magic series, having not read them for some years, and it’s like discovering them all over again! I thought I remembered them pretty well, but I clearly haven’t, it’s like I’ve never ever read them, which is great.
I definitely recommend them, starting with ‘A Madness Of Angels’.
Once those six books are finished, the series of unconnected books she’s written as Claire North are also well worth looking out too.