Seriously!! This is the book RECOMMENDATION thread, where you recommend a book to people who HAVEN'T read it. Therefore, treating this as the discussion thread for said books is not cool and in fact is wholly opposite to the point of this thread.

For instance, this Iron Druid series sounds decent, but if you post the Cliff's Notes version here, what is the point in my picking this up to read?

 

Sorry about that.

 

Ive read the Iron Druid Chronicles and its okay. Not brilliant but good enough to kill a couple of hours. Ill give the next book a read when it's out but it's not 'OMG it's out, where are they selling it' like i am when a book in my favorite series comes out.

 

I recently read Full Body Burden by Kristen Iversen, the book is centered around the author's life growing up in Rocky Flatts which was the site of a nuclear trigger plant. Also included are the numerous ways in which the people of the town and likely those living just a few miles away in Denver were exposed to ridiculous amounts of trace radiation and nuclear waste.

Also on the list was a book by A. J. Jacobs titled, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. The title is fairly self-explanatory in that the author spends a year trying to follow every rule in the bible which totals up to a few hundred. Personally I thought it was a great book and it served to expose me to facets of Christianity that I'd never even heard of before, and admittedly set me straight on a lot of the false ideas I had about the religion.

And currently I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land, which is a science fiction novel in which the plot centers around the- uh experiences of a kid who was born on Mars and was just recently brought back to Earth. I only just started reading it so I can't give much of an impression but it does feel like it's going to be an enjoyable read.

 

I also finished 4 books in the Iron Druid Chronicles, and they were bad. I mean really really bad. The main character is basically a Gary-Stu. And he tries so hard to copy Jim Butchers Dresden that it's not even funny, and the damn dog was funny in the second book but now he's just mildly amusing.

The only book I enjoyed in the series was Hammered which was the third book , I think. That one was pretty good, but only because of the absence of the dog and the female-love-connection.

Also, Thor and the Russian God of thunder were awesome. By the way in Hammered, he says something like Sussano is the Japanese god of thunder, but in Tricked he says that Raijin(sp?) is the god of thunder.

Anyway I recommend only reading this series If you are really really bored.

 

Darren Shan series is solid. However, I sometimes wished while reading it that it wasn't targeted at young adults. Some situations I felt blatantly suffered because of its target audience and could've hit harder or explored more interestingly if the audience was more mature. However, aside from book four (I think it was that one) which was kind of dull, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I can't really remember whether I liked the ending though. Trying to avoid spoilers for those who haven't read it, but let me say that even with my uncertainty on that ending I thoroughly enjoyed the journey.

I don't know how well these have aged but I enjoyed the majority of them as they came out. Scorpia (book five) and Snakehead (book seven) are simply excellent books in my opinion. There were a few weak points, such as Ark Angel (book six) and I never terribly enjoyed Point Blanc (book two). Ark Angel didn't sit well with me because of a dull villain (same for book eight, Crocodile Tears) and Alex being shot in to space (not much of a spoiler, trust me). That just ruined any immersion I had left as being just a bit too much.

Again, the ending was a bit mixed. The final book lacked a big escape in the vein of every other book, and several mostly pointless reveals (and a death) made the novel feel so cheaply like the last in the series and a method to raise the stakes. But the entire series is well researched and put together. If you aren't bothered by the obvious mini-James Bond comparisons (which turned off a friend of mine), I don't see why you wouldn't enjoy this series.

I never saw the movie, but I heard it changed a lot of aspects of the novel unnecessarily. But that's the case for a lot of adaptations. I'm a little disappointed that the film didn't end up with a sequel (I'd want to see Scorpia brought to life).


I had the same problem with Pendragon though. Put me off reading any more young adult books.

 

I enjoyed Pendragon, although I did read it quite a while ago, Uglies in my opinion while a tad too preachy was an excellent series. Percy Jackson and the Olympians is well worth a read although the sequel to the series is mediocre in comparison.

I would also like to add the series' known as the Belgariad and the Mallorean, which were written as by David Eddings, if you enjoy high fantasy these books will likely catch your attention. The Mallorean books are written as a sequel to the Belgariad, so I would suggest that you read those first.

 

I really enjoyed Artemis Fowl, but the most recent book (The Atlantis Complex) was pretty weak - not a great deal of plot, and it kinda killed Artemis' character (justifiably, sort of, but still). Pretty much the same for Alex Rider; really good, but the later books have gone down hill, although I haven't read the final installment.

The same author has a decent fantasy series on the go though, the Power of Five series. Fairly standard: the world used to be run by demon types, five special children came together and kicked the shit out of them at the head of an army. Now they're coming back, and the children are being reincarnated. Suffering from schedule slip though - it's been a couple of years since the last book, and there's still a few to go.

 

I think Artemis Fowl should've left off at the third book. The ones after that (well, the two I've read) were quite a letdown.

I have the same opinion on His Dark Materials.

... And now I realize I haven't read much young adult fiction at all. Of the ones you've listed I've read Harry Potter (duh), His Dark Materials, Artemis Fowl (up to the fifth book I think) and Animorphs (maybe like, ten of the books overall, including the prequel with the horse-alien as the main character).

 

Oh god, Warriors. This books series was my life in six and seventh grade. It is solely responsible for turning me into a nerd. I grew out of them by the time the third series came about -- that and the growing mediocrity turned me off of the new characters.

But if anyone wants to read YA, I highly, highly recommend them. The first series, especially, is quite good. Murder, betrayal, forbidden love, fluffy kitties -- the works.

 

I'm actually slowly reading the first book in that series. So far, I actually like the narrative jumping around like a jackrabbit. Then of course, I'm also concurrently reading Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation, which has a similar narrative, so maybe it's not so much of a stretch for me. The plot itself is completely silly, so the reader's mileage may vary.

My Google-fu though has let me know that Brandon Sanderson wanted to write five books in this series, but Scholastic only contracted him to four. If I somehow get to the end of the series, something tells me there will still be loose ends.

 

Ugh... Cheddar, you were seriously deprived of decent reading material as a child. For those looking for good YA fantasy that hasn't yet been mentioned in this slew of YA posts, here is a list of some of my favorites in order of descending quality:

- The Dalemark Quartet -- Diana Wynne Jones

- The Chronicles of Chrestomanci series-- Diana Wynne Jones

- The Prydain Chronicles (quintet)-- Lloyd Alexander

- Circle of Magic (quartet) + The Circle Opens (quartet) + random non-serialized sequels-- Tamora Pierce

- The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown -- Robin McKinley

- Abarat + sequel-- Clive Barker

- Everything else written by Diana Wynne Jones... (HMC, Derkholm, Deep Secret... everything.)

- Sabriel and Lirael-- Garth Nix (READ THESE BOOKS NOW. THEY'RE SO FUCKING UNDERRATED!)

- Outlaws of Sherwood-- Robin McKinley (not exactly fantasy but sort of fits)

- The Bartimaeus Trilogy -- Jonathan Stroud

- Wizard's Hall -- Jane Yolen (This one's for a much younger audience, but I thought I'd mention it. Yolen is probably the only author who should ever be allowed to claim that JK Rowling 'stole' some of her ideas for use in Harry Potter. Likely not true, yet there are quite a few similarities between WH and HP.)

- Peter and the Starcatchers -- Dave Barry (also slightly younger audience)

- The Earthsea Quartet -- Ursula K LeGuin

- The Looking Glass Wars -- Frank Beddor

- A Wrinkle in Time + sequels -- Madeleine L'Engle

The crappy books I see young people reading nowadays makes me want to punch babies.

 

And no one has mentioned The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper?

That was my absolute favorite series as a child. It's the series I always thought Harry Potter should be compared against. I've been meaning to reread it and see how well it holds up.

(Do not judge it by the spectacularly crappy film "The Seeker" that came out a few years ago. That movie barely had any resemblance to the book.)

I'm like a lot of kids from the generation before YA was really a genre, though - I pretty much went straight from children's books to adult fiction.

 

The prydain chronicles are still probably my favorite books of all time. Combine tolkien and rowling and you get Lloyd Alexander. I loved Diana Wynne Jones too. Sad to hear she passed. Before jkr surfaced, she was pretty much the end all be all of ya fantasy authors. Chrestomanci is one of my favorite series, but Howl's moving castle is probably her best work though. Start with that, Castle in the air, and room of many ways to familiarize yourself with her style.

I'd forgotten how much I loved the Abhorsen books until you mentioned Sabriel, khan. I'm going to go read them again. (how awesome would these be in movie form?)

 

Huh, glad to know I'm not the only one who completely skipped a lot of YA literature. While you started with Star Trek, I started with the Star Wars novels (I was lucky to start off with the good ones by Timothy Zahn and Michael J. Stackpole and Aaron Allston). Man, those books were a ton of fun, even though I was around 9-10 when I was reading them.

From there, I have my dad to thank for giving me my first Dragonlance novels. Yes, I know that everything coming out of D&D is considering by some people to be 'B-list' fantasy, but I fucking love that series and War of the Twins remains probably my personal favourite book of all time. And it's a fucking shame TSR and WotC never figured out how to make the series continue forward after Weis, Hickman, Knaak, Grubb, and the rest of the group jumped ship.