Some great suggestions - will be adding these to my summer reading list - have The Lies of Locke Lamora already on my book shelf - won't be there much longer ....

I agree wholeheartedly regarding The Name of The Wind (or The Kingkiller Chronicle) series but boy is the wait for the third book beyond exasperating.
They are also a great listen as audio books.

Loved wheel of time until Brandon Sanderson finished the final one after he died. It just did not flow like the others used to and have still to go finish it.

Was just about to say the same. Notw and wmf are 2 of my favourite books ever! I swear people think I'm on commission the way I talk about them lol. I'd say both are pretty long books but for me it never felt long it felt like a journey I was part of. Amazing :smile:

Oh I also managed to pick up the first 5 books for 1.50 (boot sale and charity shop bargains!) what luck!

Previously posted
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/a-song-ice-fire-7-books-23-99-amazon-2727584

Great deal - paid £32 from Amazon Warehouse 2 months ago.

Heat.

Thanks for the suggestions folks, keep em coming.

A recommendation of my own (hasn't been mentioned) - Blood Song by Anthony Ryan.

It's the first in a trilogy but 1st book by far the best. Second is comparatively poor and third is terrible. Still, a good read on its own.

Read all those authors bar Steven Erikson, and nearly all suffer a similar issue of continuing a series of books way beyond their shelf life. Take Robert Jordan the first, four or five books were classics until the author started to rush publishing the titles and the quality suffered greatly until his death a few years back. Only with his widows blessing did a new author, Brandan Sanderson finish the Wheel of Time series and probably bought the standard of writing back to it's original high quality.

Similarly Janny Wurts who wrote the Wars of Light and Shadow series. This series not only would have been classified as one of the greatest, modern classic fantasy series with outstanding writing, complex plots and detailed storyline until the author made the largest monumental mistake ever. As the series was coming to the conclusion, instead of finalising the storyline and ending the ten books on a highpoint with nearly all the questions, subplots and backgrounds answered in meticulous and well thought out, she makes a faux pas of technically rebooting the series!

I love the Robin Hobb books, got all the Farseer related ones, even read the soldier son trilogy ones that are unrelated.

Brent weeks, read them, very good but unfortunately not quite up to Robin Hobb,

My other top authors for fantasy are

Markus Heitz
Adrian Tchaikovsky *
Elizabeth Moon
Brandon Sanderson (Easy read)

*Adrian Tchaikovsky warning! Shadows of the apt can take about half a book to get into due to a slight descriptive shortage in the first half of the 1st book, if you can get past it then it becomes clear and its a good 9.5 books after that.

Totally agree. Season 6 was definitely my least favourite but the last two episodes made up for it. Cannot wait for season 7 and Winds of Winter!

Peter V Brett - The Painted Man (Demon Cycle series)
Joe Abercrombie - The Blade Itself (First Law series)
Patrick Rothfuss - The Name of the Wind (and subsequent books in the series)
Brent Weeks - The Way of Shadows (Night Angel trilogy)
Scott Lynch - The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentlemen B*st**d series)

I've read all of the above and recommend them - some great 'young' authors (relatively speaking) in the genre.

Amazing value. After watching the series multiple times, the books are unbelievably good.

The recent TV scripts are so much poorer without GRRMs input.

For more of the same:
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time
J V Jones - Sword of Shadows
Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow, Thorn
Raymond E Feist - Riftwar + Empire trilogies

or for something a bit different, but still top notch fantasy:
Robin Hobb - Farseer
Steven Erikson - Malazan

PS. Still think the first 3 GRRM books are the best fantasy I've ever read, it's only books 4 and 5 that dip below his very high standards and have started to drag a bit.

He's getting slower and slower.
A Game of Thrones (1996)
A Clash of Kings (1998)
A Storm of Swords (2000)
A Feast for Crows (2005)
A Dance with Dragons (2011)
There's a very real chance he will never finish.

Such as? Looking for some good recommendations..

If he'd stuck to the original plan of a trilogy this could have been quite good.

Unfortunately dragging it out to ten volumes or so has meant the pacing has suffered and these are rather tedious. I'd skip them in favour of his other, better works.

Cold, no-one reads paper books anymore.

Is there another book coming? If so, they'll probably change the cover design on that so it'll be annoying if they don't follow the set!

Wish the fud would stop indulging in HBO spin off series and finish the books :disappointed: