I'm waist-deep in book 10 of the Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan. Ye gads, I love this stuff.

Other than that, there's only a handful of Star Wars books that I haven't read. Something like 8 out of the hundred-some-odd.

I thought it was time I joined the discussion.

George R.R. Martin have elevated himself to top om list of favourite authors since he began A Song of Ice and Fire series. The decision on book 4, A Feast for Crows, to focus on half the characters fully, was an interesting one. It leaves you desperately wanting to know about the characters that were not in this book, while hinting at some of the things that are in store. I would probably rate this slightly lower than the previous three... but it's still far better than most of the books out there right now.

Robert Jordan... well I gave up on him. The first couple of books were superb and had me hooked... but then he started to drift. Every book started to fill with what seemed like pointless banter, and not much really happened. Then when he started skipping all the best characters... I just gave up. I think I read up to book 7 or so... though now he is now up to 11 plus the additional book 0 that he added. I love a long fantasy, but this just started to bore me.

L.E. Modesitt Jr. was another very good author who drove me away over time. I really enjoyed The Magic of Recluse, but the series lost interest for me after a few books. I tried the Spellsong Cycle, and again, it started out well, but the last book in the series was so bad that I have no intention of reading anything else by this author for a while. I can't remember the specifics of what bugged me about it, but I remember it was one of the hardest books to finish.

Terry Goodkind started out well but took his series in very strange and monotonous directions. I think Faith of the Fallen was the last book I read and decided to give up on the series.

So who do I like other than George R.R. Martin? Quite a few good authors actually:
Tad Williams
Trudi Canavan
David Farland
J.V. Jones (though she hasn't done much for a while)
Raymond E. Feist
James Barclay (has his moments)

Arabin

When I reach a slow period in my current "To Read" stack of books, I might pick up "A New Spring" then, but I won't touch the rest, at least until it's finished. I don't think he will finish the series until he either retires, or runs out of ways to milk it, at which point it'll probably have a rushed ending.

Arabin

My post will be edited over time so I don't make pages and pages of posts.

For Modern Campaigns:

Eagles Fly by Sean Flannery (I personally think this is one of the best books I've ever read)
Dancing Dodo by John Gardner (book is not well written, but the plot is good enough for a nice Modern adventure)



Horror:

A Gathering of Evil Michael A. Stackpole

Evil Ascending, Michael A. Stackpole

Evi lTriumphant Michael A. Stackpole

This set of books (a trilogy) was pretty neat, introducing the "Dark Conspiracy" Horror RPG from GDW.

SCI-FI

Anything by H. Beam Piper. The Little Fuzzy series is great to gain ideas for first contact and planet exploration and explotation. Federation is also a great read.

Arther C Clark: Childhood's End, Rendevou with RAMA (excellent scientific resource)

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (together): The Mote in God's Eye. I've read this book 5 times in 30 years. Lucifer's Hammer; Footfall; Inferno.

Jerry Pournelle: Mercenary; King David's Spacehip;


Fantasy:

The Dragon and the George by Gorden R. Dickson. Great modern meets fantasy body swap book. Was the basis of one of the characters in our group. GET IT, READ IT, I COMMAND!!!

by Robert Silverberg.

DracRTC, thanks for the update on the Wheel of Time series. It is good to hear that the pace is finally picking up, and that the end might be in sight.

As for Sci-Fi, do you mean Timothy Zahn? I loved his Star Wars books, but haven't read anything else.


CCotD, I have enjoyed some of Michael Stackpoles work... primarily his Starwars books, but have never gained any enjoyment from horror... be it in book or movie form. I have enough trouble sleeping at night


Arabin

Wow, so much stuff I haven't heard of before... this is great

I forgot to mention Robin Hobb as one of the authors I really enjoy.

I haven't met Michael Stackpole, but I've seen R.A Salvatore at GenCon... always with a massive crowd around him so I haven't managed to get close.

CCotD, you might enjoy George R.R. Martin. It always throws curveballs at you, and whenever you think you know the directions it's heading in... WHAM, everything changes on you. A few times I have had to go back a re-read a page or two as I just can't believe what happened.

Kind of strange, but right now, I'm interested in fantasy fiction, but sci-fi gaming. I'm sure that means something... *shrug*

Arabin

Arabian: That's him, I have his Heir to the Empire series (its one of very few star wars novels/series that I enjoyed), but he also has a few others like the Conquer's Saga and Dragonback series. They should be fairly easy to find at a book store like Books a Million or Walden's Books. Of course you could always look at Amazon.com too. And thanks for catching my spelling error.

Richard

Off subject side note: How does everyone do the quotes with the grey text box? My computer literacy ends at the on/off button, I even broke my coffee cup holder

Edit: Never mind I'm apparently blind as well. It's that big huge giant quote button thing-a-mabober isn't it?

I've been avoiding this topic as long before I got into gaming I was a big reader, but I'm gonna toss in some that havn't been mention, btw, I also recommend most of the above books that have been listed, most of which I have read.

Authors & Books:
-Anne McCaffrey: The Pern series, Brain & Brawn books, Sassinak trilogy, Crystal Singer trilogy, Tower & the Hive series, and pretty much any of her writings. It is interesting to note that many of her worlds interlink allowing for some incredible crossover stories.
-Terry Brooks: Yes I know he's a plageristic bastard , but he's gone his own path since the Sword of Shannara ripped of LoTR, so I feel he should be mentioned, and I do recommend the Shannara series.
-Heinlein: A great inspiration no matter which of his books I have read
-Niven: As previously mentioned...
-Melanie Rawn: So far I have only read the Exiles trilogy, but if this is any indication she's a great inspiration.
-Piers Anthony: How could you not, lol.
-Tad Williams: Many of his books are great read.
-Frank & Brian Herbert: Then Dune series of course.
-Conan & Gor: If your into barbarians and barbaric worlds then I have to recommend both of these series, they are incredibly great references for the worlds of the Barbarian
-Jack Whyte: Very realistic and brutal historical fantasy.
-Andre Norton: May she rest in peace, died this year in march.
-Jack McKinney: The entire Robotech book series, not just for incredible references to mecha, their purpose, and their uses, but for pure sci-fi fiction as well, I'm rereading it and enjoying it as thoroughly as I did the first time around.

Manga & Comics:
Surprisingly I'm not going to be able to mention much yet, but there are some that fit the bill, more Sci-fi than fantasy though.
Fantasy
-Berserk: A great story mixing demons & european like medieval times, some incredible castle setups as well for those looking for ideas on castles to build with CWU.
-Heavy Metal: Tonnes of reference material in these magazines, an endless supply of information for both fantasy and scifi fans.
Sci-Fi
-Ghost in the Shell: An incredible reference of information for both futuristic gaming and cybernetics (I use this manga alot for reference's to cybernetics and bionics).
-Ghost in the Shell: Man Machine Interface: Some further reference material for futuristic cybernetic gaming.
-Battle Angel Alita: The third I can add to the list for cybernetic and bionic games.
-Blood: The Last Vampire: If your into vampires I can defineatly recommend this one, though it's more of demonic vampires than romanticized vampires.
-Akira: A perfect view of a post apocalyptic world, with great examples of the use of Psionics in combat. And a stunning story all around.
-Escaflowne: Perfect for people who like mecha in a medieval like world, with technology as well as castles and swords.
-Neon Genesis Evangelion: This one I have gotten several ideas off of, and is much more detailed than the series was.
-Knights of the Dinner Table: How could you not recommend this one to any gamer, it's downright funny and can give GM/DM's great warnings about what they may expect from their gamers, I'm an avid collector and have many of the comics and specials .
-Planetes: Yes that's how it's spelled, a realistic manga based on the near future of space exploration, and the problems inherent with it (such as what debris can do, and phycological problems, as well as how lonely and far away from home astronauts have to be and put up with, and the physical problems with living or being born in space). This one comes highly recommended from me for anyone regardless of interest, at least if you want a really good idea of where our future in space is going .

There are many, many more I can recommend, but I don't want to get as wordy as I did in the Anime thread .

Watched Mystery Men over the weekend and really enjoyed it, in fact its my favourite superhero movie (replacing the first 2 X-Men) and a bargin at £4 at HMV. So if anyone hasn't seen it (OK very unlikely I know!) I would recommend you go get it

I have recently finished reading Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrel... A thousand pages in paperback, yet too short.

A rather relaxed book in some ways, magic is... disturbing in some ways. There is a lot of room for a sequel, but given that the first book took the author ten years to write I suspect that it may be a bit of a wait. But a good book none the less.

The Auld Grump

"Pandora's Star" by Peter F. Hamilton

I want to preference this by saying that the book has explicit content, i.e. a few attempts at adult material. Normally, when I reach this sort of thing the book goes out the door but in this case the subject passages were irrelevant and easy to skip over. Some of the gaming premises were interesting enough that I decided to press on.

The story begins at the point where spaceship travel and the ability to create wormholes intersect. It is found that wormholes provide a more effective means of interstellar exploration and colonization and humanity soon uses them form a large Commonwealth of planets.

A few interesting alien races are discovered which peacefully co-exist with humans. The most interesting race is the Silfen who travel between planets (and dimensions?) using paths that almost imperceptibly transition from one planetary environment to another.

The main theme of the story relates to the discovery of two solar systems 300 light years away from the Commonwealth that are rapidly enclosed by Dyson energy spheres. (To keep something out or to keep something in?) Since these are too far away to use the standard exploration/colonization wormholes humanity again develops spaceships but these use wormhole technology for FTL travel. Upon reaching the first sphere the humans inadvertantly unleash a hive race called the Prime which soon duplicate the human wormhole technology. The Prime use their wormhole technology to launch nuclear missile attacks and send invasion fleets against the outer fringes of the Commonwealth worlds.

At the time of the invasion the Commonwealth only has about six ships against tens of thousands of Prime warships. While the use of wormhole technology on the human ships provide some advantages, the odds they are facing are vastly overwhelming. In order to slow down the Prime advance the Commonwealth counters with electronic warfare, aerobots, and trying to turn the wormholes against the Primes by destabilizing them with some success. ... and then we wait for the concluding novel.

While I can't recommend this as a literary work since I felt that the book was overburdened by too many storylines, characters, and "filler" which diluted the story, it did provide some rich descriptions of a 24th century setting and some interesting technology and roleplaying situations which I thought were worthwhile. I'll keep this book for ideas sans the aforementioned passages.

More information can be found at .