I would love some recommendations on some good fantasy books. I enjoyed Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, The Emperor's Soul, LOTR, Wheel of time, Farseer Trilogy. Not interested in grimdark writers like Abercrombie, Bakker, Martin, Erikson etc.

 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3437309-empire-in-black-and-gold

 

Kushiels Chosentrilogy, a great story set in a AU France with superb world building and characters though it features some very explicit content which can be a hit or miss depending on your tastes.

A song for Arbonne,or really most other works of Guy Gavriel Kay who is a great writer especially in the world-building department though the fantasy elements in his work tend to be quite low and he leans more towards alternative history.

The Traitor Son Cycleby Miles Cameron features an interesting magic system and perhaps the best battle/combat scenes written in fantasy which make up for a somewhat weak ending to the series. His Cold Iron series, set in an alternative Byzantium might also be worth checking out though it is a bit to "by the book" standard YA fantasy for my tastes.

And while I suspect I will catch some flack for suggestion this but Trudi Canavans works, like the Black Magician trilogy,are not the worst idea if you are looking for some lighter fair.

And lastly maybe something of Modesitt like the Imager series? It has been some times since I last red his works but I think I enjoyed most of it well enough and if you like his style you would have a vast library to choose from.

 

I have a soft spot for The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. It's (often more than) a bit by the numbers, but sometimes that's exactly what you want. The sequel series, Paladins Legacy is more of the same, just better. Just plain enjoyable.

And if you're down for some thoughtless Hack n' Slash, I always turn back to Gotrek and Felix. It's just watching a very angry dwarf kill increasingly improbable things and that is brilliant. Again, very much by the numbers but fun.

 

Trudi Canavan's Black Magician is enjoyable. It has some very visible hallmarks of being written by a woman, e.g. how romance is handled, which may be offputting to some around here, but it's still decent. Her other series is also readable - the setting was interesting, but I didn't enjoy it quite as much.

But even though they're not what I'd call epic fantasy masterpieces, they're solid books to unwind with.

 

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. Very different to the ones you mentioned - set in an alternate version of 19th century England - but excellent, and certainly not grim dark.

 

Codex Alera by Jim Butcher is a good shout for schlock adventure. It's not the best fiction out there, but it's inventive, the characters are good, and the setting is fun.

 

Rothfuss's Name of the Wind and Lynch's Lies of Locke Lamora are excellent, and justifiably the most famous fantasy series in the business right now behind ASOIAF. Neither is particularly grimdark. Indeed, Stormlight Archive is probably darker; I mean, the story is literally about a hopeless, eternal grinding war against the darkness in a world where God is dead and his chosen heralds have abandoned you after an infinity of torture.

 

I avoid books where everything goes bad, and then worse. And everybody is a selfish a-hole, with no redeeming qualities. Its why I avoid books written by Martin, Bakker, Abercrombie or Erikson. All are excellent at worse case scenarios for their characters. I don't remember a single moment in asoiaf when something good happens. So yeah.

 

Both of these series authors haven't released the next / final installment in their series for years? I don't want to start another series where the author won't finish the books. I got burnt badly reading a million words of asoiaf only for it to end in all cliffhangers and the author has basically abandoned it.

 

That's definitely fair, but Name of the Wind is definitely good enough a read and unique enough an experience that it's worth reading no matter the fact we are almost certainly never getting book 3. Meanwhile, Lies of Locke Lamora works well enough as a standalone, so the lack of sequels generally doesn't bother me.

 

Is it finished? I enjoyed Dresden files till book 12 but I gave up when the later books became full on high fantasy then detective novels with no end in sight.

 

Are the latter Dresden books good? Do they ever return to detective stories?

 

No, to both questions. There's a couple bits of the post-Changes DF books that are decent to good, but by and large there's a pretty sharp drop in quality from Changes onward and it never really climbs out of that hole.

 

I honestly wouldn't really recommend the Name of the Wind. The second book in particular is cringe, surpassed only by the fact a third book will never come out after several years because the author's wasted away almost all the goodwill.

Names that haven't been mentioned are:

• Percy Jackson by Rick Riordian. Only ever read the first book and felt they were a little too YA, but very popular
• the Night Angel series by Brent Weeks
• Discworld series by Terry Pratchett - wild that they haven't been named
• Felix Castor, urban fantasy about ghosts and other spooky stuff
• Daniel Faust, urban fantasy about a Las Vegas criminal - very pulpy, fun reads
• Sandman Slim - Dresden but crank the power fantasy up to eleven
• the Shadow Campaign series by Django Wrexler
• the Ryria Chronicles by Michael J Sullivan
• the Powder Mage series by McClellan (might apparently be getting a TV adaption?),
• Cradle by Will Wight, which is a very different kind of flavour to the others but might be your thing anyway

 

My fantasy fantasy bookshelf excluding grimdark (really the only thing I would add if I was including grimdark is ASOIAF):

Harry Potter
Lord of the Rings
Stormlight Archive
Mistborn
Discworld
Kingkiller Chronicle
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
His Dark Materials
Dresden Files
Codex Alera
Age of the Five trilogy
The Black Magcian trilogy
The Wind on Fire trilogy
The Pellinor Quartet
The Ropemaker
The Red Rising trilogy
Duncton Wood
Good Omens
The Bartimaeus Sequence
The Old Kingdom series
Artemis Foul series

 

Have you gotten into the Hopepunk titles?

https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/are-you-afraid-of-the-darkness-a-hopepunk-explainer/

gem: The Goblin Emperor.

 

I love The Goblin Emperor; wonderful Legalist fantasy book even if it stretches a little to justify the premise, but I have a desire to stab anyone who calls it Hopepunk. Or really uses that as a genre at all.

I'd add Three Parts Dead to the recommendation list; it's an enjoyable book about a Necromancer-Lawyer investigating the murder of a God Corporation