General Discussion

@Rainforest
100% recommend it. The 2nd book is crazy, almost completely different than the first, but its still really good, just a different tone/feel.

@poochyenarulez - Then I had better start reading! :3

@Rainforest

I would recommend Tamora Pierce's novels to anybody. She's famous for her fantasy realms and strong female characters.

She's written multiple series that all tie into each other, but they can still be read independently without having to read every single series in the book, as they refer back to previous characters and events.

The series (that I have read, I believe there are more) are as follows:

Song of the Lioness (Alanna: The First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, Lioness Rampant)
The Immortals (Wild Magic, Wolf-Speaker, Emperor Mage, In the Realm of the Gods)
Protector of the Small (First Test, Page, Squire, Lady Knight)
Daughter of the Lioness (Trickster's Choice, Trickster's Queen)
The Circle of Magic (Sandry's Book, Tris's Book, Daja's Book, Briar's Book)
The Circle Opens (Dance Magic, Street Magic, Cold Fire, Shatterglass)
(There's another series after The Circle Opens called The Circle Reforged, but I can't remember the name of the books in it.)
Beka Cooper (Terrier, Bloodhound, Mastiff)

I would also recommend the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. There are a lot of them, so there are guides all over the Internet as to how to determine reading order, but the most popular mini-series in the overall cluster of books are the ones featuring Death and the ones featuring the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. They're satirical fantasy and very well-written.

I also enjoyed The Ranger's Apprentice series by John Flanagan. It's fantasy but there isn't much in the way of magic or spell-casting - there's a sorcerer in the fifth book, but he uses pyrotechnics and stage magic instead of actual arcane spells. It follows a young boy named Will who gets taken under the wing of a Ranger, a type of stealthy scout/archer, named Halt. The books are full of adventure and very little sappy romance, and the world-building is great.

@Rainforest Check this out: https://storybundle.com/noir

Unfortunately you just missed a bundle all about witches, but the way these are setup everything is super cheap. If you don't like something in there it's not much harm. :P

@Rainforest
I can recommend the Wings of Fire series ^-^
Or else the Inheritance Cycle , both for dragon fans ^^

@Rainforest
My recommendation is Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. It's about Lazlo Strange, a librarian obsessed with the mythic city of Weep, which dropped off the map without warning 200 years prior and has since become little more than legend. The opportunity of a lifetime is presented to him when people from Weep arrive, requesting volunteers to come with them to finish off the remnants of what happened two centuries ago. It's got a lot of mystery, a whole bunch of fantasy, a fair share of action, amazing visual imagery, and very, very relatable characters. The ending is freaking intense, too. I also suggest Taylor's previous series, The Daughter of Smoke and Bone Saga, which is about a girl raised by chimeras.

I know other people said it already, but I'm going to support the idea to read the Wings of Fire series as well.

*slaMS FIST ON TABLE*
Six of Crows. Just read it. You have to. It's one of my favorite series, and it's absolutely a m a z i n g

@Rainforest

The Age of Fire by EE Knight is definitely one of my favorites. It's kinda like a cross between Lord of the Rings and Watership Down, but with dragons as the main characters. The story primarily revolves around three siblings: AuRon the scaleless grey, Wistala the avenger, and the crippled Copper outcast, and how each of their stories intertwine and clash in a world full of dragon politics, elves, dwarves, and the Dragonblade.

Surprisingly, I found myself liking the Copper the most despite how morally dubious his character could be in the beginning. I named one of my G1 imps after a character in the series, Tighlia.



The Dragonback Adventure series by Timothy Zahn are my favorite books hands down. It's more of a sci-fi than a fantasy, but one of the main characters is a draconic-alien named Draycos. A quick summary:

Less complex than such recent novels as Manta's Gift and Angelmass, this start to a new SF adventure series from Hugo Award-winner Zahn will appeal largely to younger readers. Fourteen-year-old orphan Jack Morgan, former small-time thief, is on the run, framed for theft from megacorporation Braxton Universis. Hiding out on an unoccupied planet, his only companion an artificial intelligence programmed with the personality of his con man uncle Virge, Jack witnesses a battle between incoming spaceships. While looking over the wreckage, he meets Draycos, a dragon-like K'da, sole survivor of an advance team of K'da and their Shontine allies-murdered by their enemies, the Valahgua, with a terrible energy weapon called "the Death." With Valahgua-backed mercenaries searching the planet for survivors, Jack and Draycos work together to escape. Despite Virge's continuing doubts, Jack agrees to help Draycos find out who betrayed his people; but first they must prove Jack's innocence and get the police off his back. Along the way, each will earn the other's trust as they learn to work together as a team.

Okay, the thing that really stood out to me in this series is the way that the symbiosis between Jack and Draycos works. Draycos's species need 'hosts' so they don't fade away and die, so the way they do that is by becoming two-dimensional and riding their host's skin like a living full-body dragon tattoo. Jack, a master-thief, absolutely abuses the crud out of this despite Draycos's warrior ethics. Draycos is an absolute bad****, there are so many times in the series that Jack gets his bacon saved because his enemies have no idea he's literally packing a warrior dragon up his sleeve.




I haven't read this one in a while, but The Firebringer Trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce is a gorgeous piece of literature too. It's about unicorns, but it has a feel very much like the Warrior Cats series in that it takes itself seriously and, while not as bloody, does have a lot of dark implications in it's lyrical writing:

Aljan the unicorn is impulsive, a hothead. He is also the Prince's son, and he is awaiting the initiation which will make him a warrior. Aljan's destiny is as his name, which means "Dark Moon," and is tied to an ancient prophecy and an ancient evil. Aljan's pilgrimage becomes more than a personal quest to prove his worthiness and to understand the significance of his disturbing dreams. Through vanquishing the deadly wyvern, Aljan is able to confront his hidden past and gain insight into the eternal dance of life and death. The untangling of the satisfying plot and Pierce's ability to foster belief in her unicorns, consistently describing the action as these horse-like animals feel and sense it, are enhanced by her stately use of language and the sense of their history and culture which she creates and sustains. The tale of a heritage realized and a prophecy fufilled is not new, but the vital characters and the unique device of a narrator whose identity remains hidden until story's end give it a fresh appeal.



The Dragon Jousters by Mercedes Lackey is another much beloved series. I frigging read them so much that I had to purchase the books more than once because they fell apart:

Hunger, anger, and hatred are constants for young Vetch, rendered a brutally mistreated and overworked serf by the Tian conquest of his homeland. But everything improves when a Tian jouster requisitions Vetch to become the first serf ever to be a dragon boy. His training is intense, and his duty clear-cut: to tend his jouster, Ari, and his dragon, Kashet. He discovers that, because Ari himself had hatched Kashet, the dragon is different from others that have been captured live in the wild and must be drugged to be made tractable. Vetch finds he really likes and understands dragons, and soon he becomes the best dragon boy of all. He still harbors anger, however, toward the Tian invasion. Could he, perhaps, hatch a dragon, and then escape to help his people? In Vetch's world, Lackey gives us a wonderfully visualized society, similar in terrain, climate, religion, and the differing circumstances of slave, serf, and free person to ancient Egypt. Moreover, she fills the book with well-limned characterizations and convincing, detailed dragon lore to make up a whole in which Vetch's coming-of-age becomes an integral part.

The thing that sets this apart from a lot of other dragon-centric novels is rather than the dragons being telepathic and intelligent, they are actual animals. They're very intelligent, but they're violent, so they have to be kept drugged so the jousters can control them. The other thing that sets this series apart is the worldbuilding and setting that it takes place in. Tia is a reflection of ancient Egypt, while Altea is based off of Atlantis/Babylon. The sheer amount of detail that the author went into about the care and temperament of the dragons, and the history of Tians and Alteans, or just mundane day-to-day novelties is just mindblowing. It's so easy to get lost in the world of the Jousters, it's 10/10 one of the best fantasy novels I've ever read.

@Rainforest

The Razorland Saga - Ann Aguirre

I have??? now ords??? for this series?? 3 books, each one has FANTASTIC character development and action that makes your hair stand on end. I really love it.

It's apocalyptic, set in the distant future. A virus has caused humans to transform into brainless monsters called "freaks." The remaining population moves underground to escape nuclear fallout (or so they think,) living in isolated "enclaves," fighting off the freaks. They're stupid and vicious - generally easy to kill. But then they get smarter.

*whoooo jazz hands* ILOVE

@Rainforest

-smashes through wall- Did someone say good books?

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini (Eragon)

His Fair Assasin trilogy by Robin LaFevers


-leaves through hole in the wall, muttering 'I love fantasy'-