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Fantasy

Reviews, favourites and suggestions
Rhyd6
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Fantasy

#255200

Postby Rhyd6 » October 1st, 2019, 5:33 pm

OH and I are both Pratchett fans and miss his work. Can anyone recommend similar styles of writing, I want books with humour as I'm fed up with all the doom and gloom around these days.

R6

Urbandreamer
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Re: Fantasy

#255215

Postby Urbandreamer » October 1st, 2019, 7:27 pm

Simple answer.
NO!

More complicate answer.
Yes but they are not identical.

Ok let's see if I can suggest some
Jasper Fford has produced some great books and the great "Thursday Next" series.
Book 1, The Eyre Affair.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/270 ... yre_Affair
Or the Nursery crime books, like the one about the muder of Humptey Dumpty (or was it?)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/662 ... earch=true

Then again, how about some steam punk with Vampires?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/638 ... earch=true
A woman desturbed in mid tracle tart by a rude vampire!

How about some time travel?
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/296 ... earch=true

Ok, let's try something different.
Esther Friesner is great as a author, but even better at picking other authors.
The "chicks in chain mail" series of short stories (including Thanks for the Mammaries about vampires) is great.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/463 ... earch=true
(chicks in chainmail link)

If you ever did D&D you might like the Morningwood series (though they are a bit rude)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/364 ... earch=true

Hope this helps (though there are others that could be claimed to be SF, like Date night on Union Station)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220 ... earch=true

Slarti
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Re: Fantasy

#256242

Postby Slarti » October 6th, 2019, 5:50 pm

Rhyd6 wrote:OH and I are both Pratchett fans and miss his work. Can anyone recommend similar styles of writing, I want books with humour as I'm fed up with all the doom and gloom around these days.

R6


Well, if you haven't read them, there are are always the Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy trilogy - of 5. And his Dirk Gently books.
Piers' Anthony's Zanth series can be amusing
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede - Juvenile buy enjoyable

A few that pass a comic fantasy, but they all depend on your taste.

Slarti

Rhyd6
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Re: Fantasy

#256244

Postby Rhyd6 » October 6th, 2019, 5:59 pm

Thanks both I shall certainly try one or two of your suggestions. Hitchhikers has been read several times along with his other books :)

R6

kempiejon
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Re: Fantasy

#256302

Postby kempiejon » October 7th, 2019, 10:24 am

Robert Rankin describes himself as a teller of tall tales. The Morning Star describes him as 'The Master of Silliness', and his publisher describes him as The Master of Far Fetched Fiction. He is the author of more than thirty novels, of which he has sold millions of copies, and he is published - and making people laugh - around the world.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/East-Ealing-Br ... B007NNYF12

Urbandreamer
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Re: Fantasy

#256440

Postby Urbandreamer » October 7th, 2019, 8:49 pm

Does it really have to be "funny"?

I ask because there are many comfortable reads that are not doom and despondancy, nor epic tales of high drama.

Ok, I'll admit that it's easy to poke the fun at romanitc fiction, be it Fantasy, SF or just a pot boiler.

However in my experience there are few books that don't have some degree of romance between their central characters.

On the romanitc fantasy fiction side I suggest books by L McMaster Bugold, also a multi award wining SF author.
Ie this, may to november, romance between a young woman and a man twice her age.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61898.Beguilement
Or this non sexual romance between a young man and something that may be described as female and a couple of hundred years older than him.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/257 ... earch=true

Oh and of course I have to get vampires in don't I? Molly Harper, worth reading, but not as brilliant a writer as the above IMHO.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/561 ... earch=true
Still a laugh, but not comic.

Loup321
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Re: Fantasy

#256763

Postby Loup321 » October 9th, 2019, 12:28 pm

I've enjoyed some Robert Aspirin books. Perhaps closer to Douglas Adams than to Terry Pratchett, but somewhere in the middle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phule%27s_Company_(series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythAdventures

I can't seem to find them anywhere apart from ebay though. Haven't read any of the newer Myth books with a co-author, so no idea on them.

LouP

P.S. Just getting my eight-year-old into Discworld, and we're on the final Tiffany Aching book. We had a go at The Colour of Magic, but it was too confusing (and there were a few too many words I was changing as I read to her). If you haven't read the childrens' ones yet, do give them a go even without a small person.

Urbandreamer
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Re: Fantasy

#256765

Postby Urbandreamer » October 9th, 2019, 12:38 pm

Loup321 wrote:I've enjoyed some Robert Aspirin books. Perhaps closer to Douglas Adams than to Terry Pratchett, but somewhere in the middle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phule%27s_Company_(series)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythAdventures

I can't seem to find them anywhere apart from ebay though. Haven't read any of the newer Myth books with a co-author, so no idea on them.

LouP


I'd forgotten them.
If you are willing to deal with ebooks or audiobooks then they are quite easy to obtain.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Another-Fine-M ... 153&sr=8-2

Or you could try Baen
https://www.baen.com/allbooks?q=robert+ ... =relevance

Urbandreamer
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Re: Fantasy

#256843

Postby Urbandreamer » October 9th, 2019, 8:34 pm

Loup321 wrote:I can't seem to find them anywhere apart from ebay though. Haven't read any of the newer Myth books with a co-author, so no idea on them.

LouP


I remebered that one of those co-authors was Jody Lynn Nye. I too didn't read the co-authored works, but did read this series by her.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/ ... hology_101

Funny, but of course not exactly the same funny.

I also remembered Wen Spencer. The "Black Wolves of Boston" is a hoot.

I've just read the GoodReads bit on it, so I won't post a link. The book is VERY funny. I suspect that too many reviewers expected it to be like her other works, which while great, take themselves a bit more seriously.

As a personal review I would claim that I have never read a book by her that wasn't worth reading, yet she is NOT a great writer. She doesn't plan her work and sometimes books in the same series disagree upon events. However read individually they are good.

WORTH READING, but recognise that as a author, She has faults.

tsr2
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Re: Fantasy

#260496

Postby tsr2 » October 27th, 2019, 7:41 pm

Rhyd6 wrote:OH and I are both Pratchett fans and miss his work. Can anyone recommend similar styles of writing, I want books with humour as I'm fed up with all the doom and gloom around these days.

Well, it would be a stretch to call it similar, but the Rivers Of London series by Ben Aaronovitz is highly entertaining and has a, sometimes dark, streak of humour running through it.

SalvorHardin
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Re: Fantasy

#260499

Postby SalvorHardin » October 27th, 2019, 7:49 pm

Fritz Leiber's "Lankhmar" series is fairly humorous, though it is over twenty years since I read all seven books so my memory may be faulty in thinking that they are funnier than they really are.

Those of us who are old enough to remember Dungeons and Dragons when it first appeared may have spotted various bits of Lankhmar in D&D and its various incarnations, especially the Thieves Guild.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fafhrd_ ... ray_Mouser

Urbandreamer
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Re: Fantasy

#260539

Postby Urbandreamer » October 28th, 2019, 7:25 am

SalvorHardin wrote:Fritz Leiber's "Lankhmar" series is fairly humorous, though it is over twenty years since I read all seven books so my memory may be faulty in thinking that they are funnier than they really are.

Those of us who are old enough to remember Dungeons and Dragons when it first appeared may have spotted various bits of Lankhmar in D&D and its various incarnations, especially the Thieves Guild.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fafhrd_ ... ray_Mouser


Others of us may have recognise characters in the opening of Pratchetts colour of magic and the similarity of the name of the city Ankh Morpork when we first read that book.
The disc world certainly came a long way for it's start as a single book, light hartedly poking fun at Leibers work. For the record, my memory is that Leibers "sword-n-sorcery" books took themselves a bit more seriously. Still worth a read though.

Another amusing series is Glen Cook's, Garrett P.I. books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_P.I.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/400 ... lver_Blues

Hard boiled detective, who just happens to live in a world very different from our own.
Situational hummer rather than the puns of Pratchett.

GrahamPlatt
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Re: Fantasy

#263567

Postby GrahamPlatt » November 11th, 2019, 7:46 pm

Closest match to Pratchett that I know of would be Ursula Le Guin’s Wizard of Earthsea series.

bionichamster
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Re: Fantasy

#317769

Postby bionichamster » June 12th, 2020, 7:28 am

I don’t think there is anyone quite like Pratchett for the complexity of the world he created or his ability to weave a satirical allegorical comedy fantasy story.
I have read a few books over the years that have tickled some of the parts of the mind that Pratchetts did although never all. Some have already been mentioned. I particularly enjoyed
Some Early Robert Rankin books in The ‘Brentford Trilogy’ ( probably just the first the
Three, I tried some later ones and couldn’t get into them at all) . And Douglas Adams, both ‘hitchhikers’ and ‘Dirk Gently’.
Perhaps Alan Dean Foster’s ‘Spellsinger’ books also have a slightLy similar flavour of comedic fantasy.

I can also recommend a book by David Langford called ‘The Leaky Establishment’ It’s about a chap who works at a nuclear power plant and some plutonium that goes missing. I read it in the 1980’s courtesy of the public Library and it wasn’t until about ten years ago that I tracked down a copy and read it again and found that there was an introduction I didn’t remember from the original read, written by none other than Terry Pratchett. So I guess for any Pratchett completists out there it may be of interest. Pratchett was in a former life a PR officer for A Nuclear Power station, hence I guess his interest in a comedic novel in that setting.

Bh

Urbandreamer
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Re: Fantasy

#317779

Postby Urbandreamer » June 12th, 2020, 8:32 am

bionichamster wrote:I can also recommend a book by David Langford called ‘The Leaky Establishment’ It’s about a chap who works at a nuclear power plant and some plutonium that goes missing.


That's the one where they all call the local pub "the mushroom cloud", actually the Wheatshief. Where the POV is always searched because it took a week for security to notice that he replaced the photo on his ID with one of chairman Mao.

A quick check shows that David Langford has also been tapped to write Disk World books.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unseen-Univers ... 886&sr=8-6

Can I recommend Drew Hayes.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Hand-Cu ... 009&sr=8-1

Rhyd6
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Re: Fantasy

#319360

Postby Rhyd6 » June 18th, 2020, 11:52 am

I've just finished re=reading all the Pratchet books including the ones for children so when I saw some more posts on this subject I thought I'd take a peek. I've made a note of all your recommendations and I'll be hitting amazon to see if they are available on kindle. TV seems so dire these days that I find I'm devouring books at a rate of knots. Thanks for the recommendations.

R6

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Re: Fantasy

#321416

Postby gvonge » June 25th, 2020, 2:53 pm

Tom Holt might be worth checking out. Not on a par with Terry for humour, but what is? (As well as his fantasy stuff, try his historical works, mainly set in ancient Greece e.g. Alexander at the World's End, The Walled Orchard or Olympiad)

vrdiver
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Re: Fantasy

#321420

Postby vrdiver » June 25th, 2020, 3:00 pm

Terry Pratchett wrote a collaboration with Neil Gaiman, "Good Omens" which makes a nice introduction to Neil's work if you haven't already read any of his.

Another author, Mark A. Radcliffe, wrote "Gabriel's Angel" which is another book I like for its somewhat irreverent approach.

Both authors on Amazon, eBay etc.

VRD

bionichamster
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Re: Fantasy

#322107

Postby bionichamster » June 27th, 2020, 5:41 pm

Urbandreamer wrote:
A quick check shows that David Langford has also been tapped to write Disk World books.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unseen-Univers ... 886&sr=8-6

Can I recommend Drew Hayes.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Hand-Cu ... 009&sr=8-1


Thanks, interesting bit of trivia.....

BH


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