Favourite Book series?

[Proverbial Jon]

Chris Wooding's Tales of the Ketty Jay series is a lot of fun.

 

[Gizmo1990]

The Dresden Files By Jim Butcher
Codex Alera by Jim Butcher
Night Angel Trillogy by Brent Weeks
I can never deside which one I like more. Probebly Dresden as it is still ongoing so I get to read more.

Honorable mentions goto:
The Lord of the Rings
Nightside series by Simon.R.Greene
Secret History series by Simon.R.Greene

 

[iwinatlife]

The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny

Read it. GO NOW!

I went through the first few books in that one and lost steam but it is very interesting the most fluid mix of sci-fi and fantasy ive ever read

 

[Crimson_Dragoon]

Animorphs, out of pure nostalgia value. I've been reading through it again, and its held up surprisingly well for a 90s kid's series.

 

[MiskWisk]

OP: Can you tell me some about the Dragonriders of Pern? My oldest sister really wanted me to get into them when I was a kid but at the time if it wasn't DragonLance or Forgotten Realms, I didn't give a shit.

Sure, although I'm not particularly good at describing books I like though.

The series focuses on a group of Dragon riders on the planet Pern who are tasked with defending the planet from Thread, a non-sentient thread-like spore that will rapidly devour anything organic, including coal, causing massive environmental damage. The Thread falls in 50 year periods when the Red Star completes its year, roughly 250 years. The first book deals with the problems resulting from a Long Interval where Thread does not fall for one of the predicted passes. As a result, the riders drop in number (already badly hit from a mass disappearance at the end of the last pass) until they have barely enough dragons to fill one weyr (basically, the rider's bases) when the previous pass needed six to defend fewer people. Meanwhile, the lords refuse to give the proper amount of food and supplies to the one remaining weyr (as the majority of people, including some riders, believe the Thread is wiped out) making issues worse. The first book deals with the above problems with some fairly well characterised and fleshed out characters.

The world of Pern is also fleshed out quite well with a well built social system regarding the holds (essentially the cities) containing the majority of the population along with the weyrs holding the riders who are often seen as exotic and apart from the world, although naturally, some see them as arrogant. The Holds and Weyrs effectively have separate moral systems as Weyrs almost exclusively chose from their own population which also results in problems later on.

The books also deal with various themes which weren't touched on too much when first released, being quite open about riders committing suicide after the death of their dragon and vice versa.

Unfortunately, a lot of back ground information could possibly spoil the plots of the other parts of the series.
That's about the best info I can give without starting to sound like I'm trying to convert you or spoil key plot points. Sorry

 

[BathorysGraveland]

Robert E. Howard's Conan saga would probably be my favourite. Conan is quite possibly my favourite fantasy character (alongside Geralt of Rivia) and the grand collection of short stories he is featured in are all very enjoyable and well written. Haven't read the full-length novel yet, but I will in time.

I've recently started exploring other Howard creations, such as Kull (which is more or less the original version of Conan), Solomon Kane and some of his less known material that are included in several compilations. A very good author and my biggest influence to my own aspirations for writing.

 

[Vhite]

The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss who is amazing person and you should totally visit his blog right now.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'd say Lord of the Rings because of the sheer volume of stuff I read about it (The Hobbit, the trilogy, The Silmarillion, etc.) despite the fact that I don't like sword 'n magic fantasy book serieses very much (or maybe I don't like them precisely because there's nowhere to go after Tolkien? They all seem to be milking the same cosmic literary cow). I suspect this is an obvious answer so I'm gonna go ahead with the more mysterious/pretentious possibility and say Salinger's Glass family series is easily my favorite (Nine Stories, Franny & Zooey, Raise High the Roof-Beam Carpenters), and I wish there was more about them.

 

[wolf thing]

Right, just a quick forum thread. What is your favourite book series?

Mine would be the Dragonriders of Pern series, a book series that began in 1967 written by Anne McCaffrey. I'm just going to say it immediately got points from me because it said dragonriders not dragonslayers which I dislike a lot.

Anyway, looking forward to the comments, just hoping it isn't all game of thrones.

i second dragonriders of pern, the world and character are intresting and well developed. The witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski are great and the book of the new sun by Gene Wolfy is also really good in a very pulp science fiction way.

 

[Rascarin]

Robin Hobb's Farseer, Liveship and Tawny Man trilogies. (They actually form one long-reaching series). I heard she wrote another trilogy (or more...?) which I'm very interested in reading.

The Obernewtyn series by Isobelle Carmody, which has taken a frustratingly long time to wrap up. We're just waiting on the last installment, apparently, but it's taken bloody years to get there.

 

[Toaster Hunter]

In no order:

The Middle Earth continuity (The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Silmarillian, Children of Hurin)by J.R.R. Tolkein

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

Codex Alera also by Jim Butcher

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson

First Law by Joe Abercrombie

 

[RedDeadFred]

A Song of Ice and Fire
The Lord of the Rings
Hitchhiker's Trilogy

I think I like A Song of Ice and Fire the best out of them. I didn't like the 4th book as much as the others because it didn't feature 3 of my 5 favourite main characters but I still liked it a lot. Cersei's chapters were significantly more entertaining than I had originally thought they would be. Also, Jamie has swiftly become one of my favourite characters which after the first book, I never would have thought possible.

I'm liking A Dance of Dragons more though because Tyrion, Jon and Daenerys are in it.

 

[rcs619]

Right, just a quick forum thread. What is your favourite book series?

Mine would be the Dragonriders of Pern series, a book series that began in 1967 written by Anne McCaffrey. I'm just going to say it immediately got points from me because it said dragonriders not dragonslayers which I dislike a lot.

Anyway, looking forward to the comments, just hoping it isn't all game of thrones.

Oh wow, I remember the Dragonriders books. There was a short story from the setting in my english textbook back in, oh gosh, middle-school I think. So I went out and read a couple afterwards. Kinda fell off after that though. It's a neat setting, but I just don't guess it was for me.

As for series I enjoy...

My favorite at the moment would be the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. A long-running sci-fi series dealing with naval conflicts, space-politics, and all the people caught up in the middle. Also there are telepathic six-legged cats The universe itself is actually pretty deep and interesting, and has spawned a couple spin-off series from the main plot, and five anthologies of short stories set within the setting. It's also a bit more realistic than other sci-fi settings, like star wars, or star trek. Ships lob missiles at each other from millions of kilometers away, and lasers are considered close-range weapons, only suitable for knife-fights at a light-second or two (400,000-800,000km). The politics, factions and characters are great too.

Also, the publisher, Baen books is awesome. The first two books in the series are available for free, in their entirety online. You can read them in your browser, or download them in various formats, both for PC's and book-readers.

http://www.baenebooks.com/p-304-on-basilisk-station.aspx There's the first book in the series. "On Basilisk Station"

I have also enjoyed Game of Thrones as well. It was a nice change to get back into fantasy after reading almost exclusively sci-fi for as long as I had.

The Dark Tower series, by Stephen King was a fun read, a few years back. It is pretty insane though, and I can understand why some people don't enjoy it, or King's work in general.

And since we're talking about series. I have to mention my first. The Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate. That was my first real exposure to a long-running, continuous book series. The cool thing is, the characters actually kind of grew up as the series went along, and the conflict got darker, and more violent as the stakes rose. It felt like a pretty good progression. Also, it's a series about kids using alien shape-shifting technology to transform into Earth's most dangerous animals, to wage a guerrilla war (occasionally with actual gorillas) against mind-controlling slugs from outer-space who are trying to slowly infiltrate and take over the Earth. How isn't that awesome?

I think it was part of what got me into sci-fi when I was younger as well.

 

[Blunderboy]

I'm also a huge fan of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, which I've read through to completion (seven books) about four times.

Eight books now my fellow Gunslinger.


+1 to The Dark Tower and Discworld here.
I also love the Drenai series by David Gemmell, The Belgariad/The Mallorean by David Eddings, The Sharpe Series by Bernard Cornwall and the Eagle series by Simon Scarrow.

 

[Mr.Squishy]

Hrm. Toss-up between the Dresden Files and whatever that ever-growing konga line of drizz't books is called now.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

Eight books now my fellow Gunslinger.


+1 to The Dark Tower and Discworld here.

Ohhhh, yes, The Wind Through the Keyhole or something similar, isn't it? I'll admit to having not read that one, yet. At the time it came out, I had a huge backlog of books and games to get through. Now that it's almost a year old, though, it really is something I should be jumping on.

 

[Kafloobop]

I'm a huge Night Angel fan. Brent Weeks is easily my favorite author.

 

[Dead Seerius]

The Pendragon series is probably my favorite. I've re-read those books so many times half of them are falling apart. Definite recommendation.

Also, obligatory Song of Ice and Fire nod.

And as a kid I also enjoyed the Alex Rider spy novels. Gotta love those gadgets.

 

[Ziame]

Horatio Hornblower series by Forrester (Napoleon times, follows british naval officer from midshipman (think a cadet) to an admiral)

Legacy of Aldenata is pretty darn epic (Sci-Fi)

Sector General by James White is awesome (a space hospital)

Metro 2033, though most of them are in Russian, many books.