Gregor the Overlander, by Suzanna Collins. Fun little series about a boy finding a world beneath his own with crazy magical creatures and a kingdom of almost-human people with a room full of prophecies, many of which involve the boy himself. Won't blow your mind, but it's a good time. It also has berserkers. No, I'm not kidding.

 

Nonfiction? I have no idea what it is. Wikipedia came up with an article that I don't understand.

The Dragonrealm series by Richard A. Knaak is pretty enjoyable read. The Shrouded Realm in particular. I think it could be read as standalone. It is about race of insanely powerful wizards. Imo, rest of the series is not as good, but still worth a read.

edit: I just remembered that i've read pretty interesting book a few years ago. Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky. Not entirely my cup of tea, but some parts were.. well, interesting.

 

The Red Knight

Fantasy set in a really interesting medieval world full of interesting ideas, intriguing characters and well written battle scenes.


Kushiel`s Dart

Fantasy set in AU where the angels decided to act a bit differently. I like for its interesting characters, its intriguing world and because it is simply very different to your typical fantasy.


The Children of Hurin

A tragic story set in Tolkien`s Middlearth modeled afterthe saga of the Nibelungs.


The Last wish

The story of the witcher Geralt of Rivia, very popular in eastern Europe. The first two books are a collection of short stories but the rest are normal books.

Eisenhorn

It, and it sequels, are the ultimate books you you are interested in Warhammer 40k and its Inquisition but still enjoyable if you have no idea what that is.


The Black company

It is a classic but mostly forgotten today.


Tales of Kin

Perhaps the only challenger of The Red Knight for my most liked series.


Tales of the Otori

The Memory of Flames

Imager

Peshawar Lancers

Death`s Angels

Kormack

October Daye

Saxon stories

 

Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone, a weirdly unique fantasy book with bits of a courtroom thriller thrown in and a really strange world.

I also second Tales of the Otori.

 

One of my favorite short stories. It's a little dark, but ultimately beautiful. I don't want to talk too much about it's themes because tht might spoil it too much, but it focuses on inevitability, entropy, and the wonder of life and consiousness. It's also written in an entertaining, quirky, almost 19th century style.

Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

 

The First Law + other related books.

This is all.

 

My go-to recommendation for this kind of thing:

Bridge of Birds

One of my favorite books ever. Clever, fantastical, unique. Have only ever met one person in real life who's read it.

 

These are three books that I recently added to my to-read list so I can't judge their quality. Basically recommendations that I've gotten somewhere and that did sound really interesting. (My to-read pile is growing faster than my read pile, I'm not sure if that's a problem or not.)

Modern: The highly anticipated Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
Semi-old: Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint
Ancient: Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

 

Duncton Wood by William Horwood

Probably the most underrated work of "fantasy" around. The story follows anthropomorphic moles in a tunnel system in Duncton Wood. Sounds crazy I know, but the characters are well developed (so much so that you forget that they're moles), and the location is beautifully fleshed out. The plotline is a sprawling epic which incorporates a lot of elements of fantasy, including the rags to riches type of hero.

There are a variety of sequels, but the first book is an entirely self-contained story which is fully satisfying as a stand-alone.

 

Hi, a really good zombie book that I've read within the past year has to be The Girl With All The Gifts by Mike Carey. It's basically a zombie apocalypse type of book but the main character(the girl) doesn't know she's a zombie until later on in the book. I believe the zombies here were referred to as the "hungries". Seeing her struggle against her need for blood as well as seeing the length some humans were going to find a cure was nice. The other characters definitely added some flavor to the story as well. My favorite part is the bittersweet ending though. I didn't know if I should be happy with how it ended or upset tbh, Good book, 7.9/10 imo.

 

Spoiler

Wait didn't you just spoil the book

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellum_%28novel%29The Book of All Hours, by Hall Duncan. On the surface, a fairly typical story of a supernatural war impinging on humanity, but quickly becomes apparent that it's far more intelligent than that.

 

Not much of a spoiler... you have to blind to not see it after reading the first few pages.

That said... I read the book and found it meh. Its characters never really captured my interest and the pot was pretty standard.

 

We, the Drowned is an amazing book about a Dutch town through the great wars.


All the Light we Cannot See. Another WWII book about a blind girl

Trigger Warning a Neil Gaiman book of short stories published about two months ago, need I say more?

 

Surprised you were able to read to begin with while you were stoned

For the OP:

I honestly have no idea what's really "talked about" or well known, normally just pick up stuff in second hand bookstores that look interesting, nevertheless here are some that I'm assuming might not be so well known.

The Riyria Revelations and prequel series the Riyria Chronicles are both good reads. Nothing earth shattering but good reads nonetheless!

The Damar Series by Robin McKinley is also one I enjoyed.

Also The Dreaming Tree is another one you might like? The writing style and pacing are a bit different than normal but it's a good Celtic fantasy.

Low Town which is a 'a detective thriller in a noir fantasy setting'.

The Imager Portfolio series was one I read a few years ago and I haven't got past book 4 yet but I was enjoying it last time I read it!

The Dragon Griaule might be a bit more well known but definitely worth reading if you haven't already!

The Cemetary of Forgotten Books series - I get the feeling this will be well known seeing as the front cover reliably informs me the author is a New York times bestseller, but once again had to fling it in in case you hadn't read it!

 

Well shit, there's quite a bit of those to be honest, because when I was 11-12 years old I basically spent most of my time in the local library, picking out books from the fantasy/SF section at random. This led me to being introduced to Elric, Book of the New Sun, Earthsea and dozens of other series, but those three are basically always sitting at the forefront of my mind.

If you find yourself enjoying BotNS, I'd also highly recommend you read Dying Earth by Jack Vance.