I am a bitter Fantasy fan (now with recs)

[mothwing]

I have been reading Fantasy written by English and American authors ever since I was fourteen. It is my favourite genre, and most of my favourite books are Fantasy books. This genre was my cure for sadness, loneliness, and boredom ever since I discovered it. And even though I love that genre and spend quite an amount of time defending its literary

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[squinting_kitty]

I looooove this post and the comments. I'm also an avid fantasy/(sci-fi) reader and it so very often drives me insane because I can't find good books.

I had been considering trying some Pratchett after seeing the books in the bookstore. Glad to hear some good recommendations here, so mayhaps I should try to pick those up.

My absolute favorite fantasy series is The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. The writing is exquisite, and I love the story. He does okay with female characters. They can fall into stereotypes sometimes (the temperamental, red-haired, man-hating priestess who ends up falling in love with a man later, for instance), but he does it well, if that makes sense, and manages to not make the characters believable, interesting, and dynamic. There's a relatively equal balance of "main" female and male characters. Trigger warning: There is a rather icky rape "chapter" near the end of the first book, and it is pertinent to the plot throughout all three books, so it gets referred back to sometimes.

I would recommend avoiding The Sword of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin and also The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson. I have serious issues with both because of how they treat women. (I've read most of the first two books in Martin's series [for lack of anything else to read at the time] but only part of the first book in Donaldson's, so maybe they would get better, I dunno.)

[squinting_kitty]

Er... that should read:

and manages to not make the characters believable, interesting, and dynamic

Re-worded that sentence and forgot to take that out.

[mothwing]

Terry Pratchett is awesome, and while my opinion may be biased by my ten years of fannish devotion to this man, I don't think my fandom goggles change his awesomeness a lot. His witches series especially has a large variety of awesome and badass female characters, but even in the other novels there are often strong female characters as minor characters.

I tried reading George R.R. Martin's series and put it down pretty much instantly. It is so long-winded, and the story is just horrible - quite apart from the things he does with his characters and what happens to them. Child brides are cool, and marital rape can totally lead to deep affection! Yuck, yuck, yuck.