So, as I read a lot, I figure I may as well share what some of my favorite series are, as well as some of my favorite authors. These are being listed in the order that they come to mind, not in the order of which I like the most.
David Weber: Primarily consisting of science fiction, David Weber creates elegantly crafted worlds that are amazingly complex and realistic. I love his earlier work, especially the rewritten novel In Fury Born, but as I’ve aged, I’ve found him to be growing a little long-winded for me. But even so, I highly recommend him for sheer complexity and consistency of world-building.
The Dresden Files: Written by Jim Butcher, I first started this series when there were only four books out. I like Harry Dresden, and the world is rich and detailed. I don’t know how much more I can say about it…but sadly, I’ve never been able to get into Jim’s other series.
Lisa Shearin: Magic Lost, Trouble Found. I love this book. A kick-ass redhead elf main character, lots of magic, and a fair amount of moral ambiguity…I have to say that this series pushes almost all of my buttons. Alas, not a lesbian romance, but this is very high up my list of favorite series.
Niall Teasdale: I don’t like his ‘main’ series, starting with Thaumatology 101 very much. Also, his series tends to be very…porn-filled, honestly. I find myself skipping those sections in favor of finding plot, but most of his characters are polyamorous to a degree and bisexual, leaning toward lesbian. My favorite series is the Aneka Jensen series, followed by the Ultrahuman series.
Dire Saga: By Andrew Seiple, this is an alternate history superhuman setting, but is far grittier in many ways than most. Dire herself is a neat character, and I love the ‘voice’ that he uses for her. I had extremely high hopes for the last book which weren’t exactly dashed…but the author kind of wrote himself into a corner. Dire is a villain, and realistically has to rebuild her power base in every book, which is starting to get old.
The Completely Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant: This is the first book in a series by Drew Hayes. It’s written as a series of ‘case files’ as it were from the point of view of Fred, a vampire who would love nothing more than to keep his head down and have a quiet life. I love the series, and highly recommend it.
Dead Witch Walking: By Kim Harrison, this is the first book of the series. I liked it a lot at first, but hated the obvious intended main love interest of the main character. I didn’t finish the series, in spite of reading all but the last book because…well, let’s just say that my favorite character was killed completely off-screen, and this was the second important character in the series to just…be randomly offed off-screen. It pissed me off. The rest of the series was good alternate history urban fantasy, though.
Otherlife Awakenings (The Selfless Hero Trilogy): This is an odd one to me. It starts as an odd LitRPG book that…well, I debated whether to really get into it. But the last few chapters of book one totally made it for me. I’ll guiltily admit that the harem aspect of the book made me happy, and the entire package of how things were dealt with were largely satisfying to me. Better yet, in book 2 goddesses start getting involved, which is always something that gets my attention.
Confessions of a D-List Supervillain: This book is really pretty good. The author started turning it into a series which is…less good. A lot of retcons to allow for more depth to the character that almost detract, and the sequel has a lot of ‘let’s fill in the blanks’ parts to it that bugged me. But the original is a solid book all on its own.
I could go on, but those are the big ones that come to mind right off. Now, before anyone asks, yes, I’ve read The Slime Dungeon and Dungeon Born (The Divine Dungeon). They were a bit of the inspiration that led to Ancient Ruins, but only part. I consider both…decent. I think the latter is a better book, but I got sick of the dungeon fairy/wisp, and how completely amoral the dungeons got. Not to say Sistina is a lot better, but she’s not out to get others.
I’ve also read the first two and a half books of The Game of Thrones series. I actually originally loved the first, because I was utterly shocked that the author would actually dare kill the main character (in my mind). But then, as he kept killing off character after character I liked…about halfway through book 3 I realized I didn’t care about any of the characters anymore and quit. I’ve no intention of ever picking it back up, and actually have come to hate it with the burning passion of a thousand suns. (I’ve actually had to threaten to burn any additional copies I get gifted by my family to get the point across that I do NOT want it to them.)
Anyway, that was longer than I anticipated. Later!
Ancient Dreams 
Wow. You just listed a bunch of my favorite books and series! I have never actually encountered anyone else who has read Confessions of a D list super villain. Super cool!
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Glad to hear that you have some similar tastes! I love reading, but have been getting pickier of late. I’ve got a superhuman setting that I’ve been sharing with a couple of friends…and a story set in it that would need heavy rewrites to get to a point I might be willing to publish it. But it’s on my short list of things I want to publish, so it’s quite likely.
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You’re not finding David Weber more long winded as you get older, he is actually getting more long winded as time goes on. I still like his writing (and the Safehold books are my overall favorite of his newer material), but I find myself enjoying the more recent author collaboration works in the Honor Harrington world more than the mainline stuff.
You’ve got a lot of my favorites on this list, and I have to agree with you on GoT. I think you would enjoy Wen Spencer’s works, if you haven’t read them. The Tinker series is great, A Brother’s Price is an excellent stand-alone novel, and the Ukiah Oregon series is absolutely brilliant.
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You’re probably right on David. I’ve met him, and he’s an awesome guy (when he came to the convention in Utah I was attending, people seemed not to notice that he’d had a signing set up…so me and two others got to spend half an hour just chatting with him. It was awesome.) I also enjoy the Safehold stuff, but the most recent Honor Harrington book disappointed me. It just ended on such a down note.
I have also read Wen Spencer. I loved A Brother’s Price, and liked the first two books of the Tinker series. As it’s started focusing on other characters, I lost interest, and I never started the Ukiah Oregon books, personally.
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Listed some of my favorites as well. In Fury Born is by far my favorite of David Weber’s books. Safehold series is pretty awesome. Thaumatology is my second favorite of Niall’s books, with the Princeps Venator being better in my opinion. I am with Benjamin Griswold in that this is the first I’ve seen someone else who has read Confessions, which is an awesome book. The only ones on your list I haven’t read are the Lisa Shearin, so it’s now on my list to read. Game of Thrones, you made it to book 8? I only made it to book 4, years ago when that one first came out. And for the latest Harrington book in your comment? Which one? The one in the Harrington series, or one of the spinoffs? And…which one, since the last few books have all been recaps of the same events, from different perspectives.
One other thing you have over both Slime Dungeon and Divine Dungeon is that Sistina is already pretty powerful. It’s not an arms race between the dungeon and adventurers, like in every other dungeon story. Ancient Ruins is the best dungeon story I’ve read so far.
Some recommendations for people if they want; Ell Donsaii series by Laurence Dahners, The Kurtherian Gambit series by Michael Anderle and its associated spinoffs. That’s an amazing series. The April series by Mackey Chandler is a pretty good space series. It’s realistic and covers living in space in low-tech, at least compared to most science fiction. And finally, one that I have no idea if it’s on amazon or if it would have to be googled, The New Journey of an Old Soul by Vihyungrang. It is, bar none, my favorite book/serial of all time.
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I want to specify I only made it to book three of Game of Thrones, and only halfway through it (where the youngest daughter meets the old armsman of her father). The Weber book in question was Shadow of Victory. You’re right, it was a rehash, and only advanced the plot by like…12 hours, and ended on such a down note I was pissed.
Also, part of why Sistina is so powerful was that she was growing for centuries before people found her. The reasons why she wasn’t detected earlier are going to be in Spells of Old, so I won’t spoil them, but they’re pretty simple, in all honesty. Only part of the reason. She’s a ridiculously complex character, even if she isn’t my most complex character of all time…that honor lies with Esmyra Telenar. We’ll see if she ever gets into a story.
…I would give more book series I like, but I really need to get my 2,000 word minimum of writing in for the day. I’ll be back later.
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The Kurtherian hype is so far beyond my ability to comprehend that I just can’t help pointing out that I’d pretty much recommend anything before that one. Well. Maybe not, say, the Death Dealer Saga, but it’s a close thing.
Weber is nice, I’ve read a lot of him, too. None of his works are flawless, but, heck, he basically invented military scifi in its modern form, gotta give credit where credit is due. And Alicia is a great character in Fury, no doubt. Read a bunch of the others too, like Thaumatology, which I think could have been awesome if it hadn’t insisted on that cheap porn aspect. Aneka was too Mary Sue-ish for me (and again, that cheap porn aspect. Let’s fuck that rich guy so he supplies coffee for the expedition *shakes head*).
I also never got over the love interest in Harrison’s series. Read the first 5 or so, but then there’s this “cut” from the original progression and that’s basically when I stopped being interested.
As for other scifi / fantasy stuff I like; there’d be Kirstein’s Steerswoman, which I find awesome in that the heroine is basically such a low-key character, just walking for hundreds of miles and investigating stuff, but she does it with such unstoppable determination – gotta like her. Then Hodgell’s Kencyrath, whose heroine is the incarnation of destruction of her people’s god. She’s got really weird powers like the ability to set a blizzard on fire, or command other people to walk out of a window. She’s also married to some 15-year old girl and has a dozen or so children with various women of a native tribe. But mostly she has the hots for her older twin-brother (10 years older or so, due to time-shenanigans). In short: there’s some super weird stuff in the series, which makes it so fun to read (also, she causes destruction everywhere she goes, of course). Oh, and Dickinson’s The Traitor (Baru Cormorant) – gray morality has been mentioned, and it doesn’t get much grayer than Baru. She’s a hair’s width away from being plain evil. Anyway, great, complex plot aside, the writing of that book (especially for fantasy) is fantastic. A definite recommendation.
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Oh, before I forget: Everyone who likes sci-fi should read Perilous Waif, by E. William Brown. It showed up as an Amazon recommendation for me, and I was blown away.
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Love the Kencyrath series. That one is awesome…even if it’s really, really weird. Possibly because it’s weird.
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I keep debating on that one…the audiobook producer who contacted me looked at Ancient Ruins because it was recommended from Perilous Waif by Amazon. Time, time, ask me for anything but time…
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Personally I find little point in writing fantasy if there isn’t a little bit of weirdness involved. Kencyrath got that right. And although the series started in 1983 or something like that it doesn’t feel dated at all. Really ahead of its time (next book this summer!).
Perilous Waif is basically an anime-esque pseudo-bi-sexual YA Mary-Sue action-adventure through space. Fun enough, but get through the book before you start to debate too deeply about what you’re reading ^^
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Totally hear you there. I really ought to put up the prologue to one of my other books that is probably…3rd or 4th on the list of books to publish (because I don’t want to get typecast). Way over-the-top prelude that doesn’t continue into the rest of the book. Not much, anyway.
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Oh yeah. All the others, they tend to be found in a few years, or even just weeks. They’re weak, and it’s an arms race. That’s one of the biggest things I love about Ancient Ruins. It doesn’t do that! She’s ancient and strong right off the bat, and there’s no arms race.
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Yeah…Death Dealer is…Okay. I like the concept. I like the idea. But the execution was..meh, and got worse, in my opinion. Steerswoman, goddess, I haven’t read that in years. Amazing story.
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Yup. Mostly she’s just remembering how to do stuff.
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Seconding the recommendation for Perilous Waif, fantastic book.
Seeing the Drew Hayes book up on your list there, have you looking into his recent release, Forging Hephaestus? Just read it the other day, thought it was really good. It’s another supervillain-perspective thing, which are always fun, though not a comedy (though obviously there’s humour in there).
I tried to get into Kim Harrison’s Dead Witch Walking series, but I think I only got around three books in before I started getting annoyed by most of the characters, and then as I looked ahead and saw reviews for later books I just kinda gave up on it based on what I was seeing there.
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I grabbed the sample of Perilous Waif, but haven’t been able to get into it yet. Something I haven’t been able to place bugged me about the opening lines…but I was also trying to get into the mood to write at the time, so I just set it down and got back to my book. I’ll go back to it at some point.
I also have not looked at Forging Hephaestus *adds it to the List to look at*. I’ll have to take a look.
As to Kim Harrison’s book, I’ll admit I was a fan of Rachel and Ivy in particular. Mostly Ivy, because the idea of the ‘living vampires’ completely fascinated me. I also started the series when there were only two books out, so I didn’t have the chance to look ahead and see how badly things were going to go, alas. I want to love the series, but I just…can’t. Sort of like the later Sword of Truth books for me. I loved books 1 and 2, but it quickly went downhill after that.
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Rachel – Ivy relationship is the best thing about the series, by far. They’re friends, allies, but also, simply by being what they are, enemies. And that Rachel has to rely on Ivy’s powerful (but evil) vampires to protect her … from exactly those same vampires is just brilliant. There’s always this tension that a slight misstep will totally screw everyone horribly over.
But as pointed out later novels just kind of crash and burn that whole complex and go with the standard urban fantasy romance stuff. Meh.
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Yup. They’re awesome characters, and the setup was amazing. And then they destroyed it. It totally killed half the reason I was reading the series, and then…well, Ceri was my favorite character. I love ancient, powerful elves. -_-
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I know I came to this late but this page scores high in one of my google searches (authors like laurence dahners). Thanks for the many suggestions. I would like to recommend the Tanya Huff series Confederation and the follow on series Peacekeeper. It’s the only Tanya Huff series I could get through but the characters and settings are brilliant. The main protagonist is the kick-ass Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr a female Marine and later ex-Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr a peacekeeper. Great alien races including one that is part of the Confederation that has to wear a device to mask their pheromones or no one would ever stop having sex. Lots of laughs, great banter and exciting military and later police action.
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I vaguely remember reading that series years and years ago… yeah, the first book was released when I was in high school, and I think I read the first of the books. It’s been a long time, though, and I went through a lot of books at the time. I might have to take another look at them, so thanks for the suggestion. I hope mine help as well!
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