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Pretty much everything written by Brandon Sanderson. Start with the Mistborn series - starting with The Final Empire - if you're new to his stuff, then work your way through his other stuff; once you're sure you enjoy his style, his Stormlight Archive series - begins with The Way of Kings - is his current magnum opus, though it's still in the works.
Everything with Terry Pratchett's name on it. I personally prefer starting his Discworld books with the Witches or City Watch series - Equal Rites or Guards! Guards! first respectively - but pretty much any book is good.
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'Viriconium', by M. John Harrison, is great, as is 'Black Leopard, Red Wolf' by Marlon James.
My favourite Michael Moorcock books are the 'Corum' novels.
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I recommend the Elric of Melnibone series by Michael Moorcock. What about you?
But don't stop there. Most of his other Eternal Champion books are also worth reading, although I was less than impressed with Jerry Cornelius.
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I recommend.
Hop On Pop by Doctor Suess
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson.
And Bloom County Babylon (as well as Classics of Western Literature) by Berkeley Breathed.
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I recommend.
Hop On Pop by Doctor Suess
It's so tragic the way they hopped on Pop...
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Er... ehem... I mean, that is to say, I've a couple books out myself... and people seem to like them.
Most recently I read The City & The City by China Mieville and loved it. And before that was the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Liu Cixin, which was one of the best pieces of science fiction I've ever read. Like, I don't have a lot of long stretches of uninterrupted reading time--and I made time for the third book. So good.
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David "The Mad Wizard" Weber's War God series: Oath of Swords, The War God's Own, War Maid's Choice, Windrider's Oath, The Sword of the South. There were two issues of Oath of Swords. The second one includes the novella "Sword Brother". Make sure you get that one.
From the description of Oath of Swords on the baen.com website: "Whom the gods would recruit, they first tick off…" :-)
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I recommend the Elric of Melnibone series by Michael Moorcock. What about you?But don't stop there. Most of his other Eternal Champion books are also worth reading, although I was less than impressed with Jerry Cornelius.
I've described the Cornelius books as "my favorite books that I don't understand".
They're a very, very different style than the rest of his Eternal Champion stuff.
I liked them a lot when I read them as a teenager, but I must admit I haven't re-read them as much as his other stuff since. I think I should remedy that.
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Jack Vance, "Tales of the Dying Earth"
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I'd like to recommend "The Door Into Summer" by Robert Heinlein and other his novels. One of my favorite authors.
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I've been reading a lot of YA lately, since it's the genre I primarily write. If YA isn't your thing, Naomi Novik's "Spinning Silver" and "Uprooted" are both great dark fantasies with really cool worldbuilding and really well-built-up stakes. I've also heard great things about "The Final Strife", but haven't got around to it yet.
I'm so excited that I get to be the one to mention Ursula K Le Guin, who may be one of the most influential authors in 20th century high fantasy, period. Read the Earthsea Cycle.
In YA, I read Sarah J. Maas's "A Court of Thorns and Roses" recently, and it's a solid three-star--if you like Beauty and the Beast-structure plots and painfully straight romance, it's pretty fun! It's very polarizing, though, and it's definitely not everyone's cup.
In less embarrassing YA, Jordan Ifueko's "Raybearer" is fantastic--an incredibly cool world and some great character work. The main character is really engaging and grows in a messy, nuanced way through the two books.
Frances Hardinge's "A Face Like Glass" and "Cuckoo Song" have her characteristically excellent worldbuilding and cynical but lovable characters.
"The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea", by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, is on the definite darker side of YA, but it's absolutely gorgeous and a great high-seas queer romantic fantasy. One of the two main characters is nonbinary, and it's handled really elegantly as an important facet of a very complex, extremely flawed individual.
For middle-grade reading, Niki Smith's "The Deep & Dark Blue" is a very cute and fun graphic novel about a prince and his (not-out-as-trans) sister having to present as women and join a witch-convent to survive a coup.
Jeff Smith's comic series, "Bone" is also a classic--a lot of the books I've mentioned are pretty firmly of their age group, even if they definitely hold up for adult readers, but "Bone" is sort of like Bloom County; it doesn't really have an age group it's tied to, it's just comedy-fantasy and a total delight.
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Read the Earthsea Cycle.
Seconded. :-)
The Spells Swords and Stealth series of books, I cannot recommend them enough. It's about a group of NPCs in a roleplaying game world it's well written. Book 5 just came out. The first in the series is NPCs.
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My four all-time favorite novels are all of the fantasy genre.
When I was a very young child, it was The Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum - and its 13 sequels (The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, et al) - that first made me the fantasy freak that I've been ever since. In my mind, this was the first modern fantasy series, with all its trappings: a motley crew travelling through a fictitious, high-mana land, overcoming dangers to complete a quest. Even though the books were for children, I still keep reading them; I recently finished my fifth reading of the series. But that first book was particularly special; I couldn't possibly have kept count of how many times I read that as a child. It was my gateway drug for fantasy fiction. So The Wizard of Oz definitely needs mention.
Then there's The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. I wish I could explain what's so great about it. I WISH I could. But I can't without giving away the most major of spoilers. So what CAN I say about it? I first read that book at the impressionable young age of 13, and it deeply, DEEPLY influenced my opinion of how a time-travel story should be written (which may have poisoned my mind against other time-travel stories). In addition to time travel, it has Lovecraftian elements (although I wouldn't classify it as a horror novel). It's got ancient Egyptian sorcerers, one of whom gravitates toward the moon instead of toward the center of the Earth. It's got a body-switching werewolf. It's got magically-created artificial life forms. And yet, no matter how weird the novel gets, the author somehow makes you believe it. I don't know how he did it.
And one author wrote TWO of my four all-time favorites, Master of the Five Magics and its first sequel Secret of the Sixth Magic by Lyndon Hardy. First of all, I should clarify that I'm talking about the original editions that came out in 1980 and 1984, not the revised editions of 2016. I don't dare look at those revised editions; they couldn't possibly have improved the originals and I have reason to believe that those newer versions did away with Hardy's distinctive prose style, which is one of the secondary reasons I liked those books so much. Somehow, Hardy used language in a way that sounded quasi-antiquated but not stilted. But it seems that people criticized him for that style so he did away with it in the 2016 editions.
But the best part of those two books is the coolest magic system I've ever seen. Even I found the system easy to remember, and seeing the "laws of magic" applied in the story made me feel like I understood them, as I do few other magic systems.
And another great feature of those two books is that they're so concentrated. Master of the Five Magics is divided into 5 1/2 parts and Secret of the Sixth Magic into 4 parts and into each part Hardy manages to concentrate as much plot and action as many authors put into an entire novel!
Patricia Mckillip, The Riddle Master Trilogy: The Riddle-Master Of Hed, Heir Of Sea And Fire, and Harpist In The Wind.
Sherri S. Tepper, The True Game Trilogies: Peter: King's Blood Four, Necromancer Nine, Wizard's Eleven. Mavin Many-shaped: The Song Of Mavin Many-Shaped, The Flight Of Mavin Many-Shaped, The Search Of Mavin Many-Shaped. Jinian: Jinian Foot-Seer, Dervish Daughter, Jinian Star-Eye.
One of my favorite quotes: “Hear the words of Himaggery, Wizard of the Bright Demesne. The Wizard does not cry True Game. The Wizard cries Death, Pain, Horror, Mutilation, Wounds, Blood, Agony, Destruction. The Wizard calls all these and more. HE IS NOT PLAYING!”
--- Sheri S. Tepper, The True Game
I recently read Evelyn Hugo. Not a perfect book, but it did manage to make me cry and break down for a solid week halfway through, so... I mean, it's good, just brace yourself if you're sentimental about found family stories.
I also read The Final Strife. It's Saara El-Arifi's debut novel, and, like, you can tell, but it gets really good around the second act, which makes me hopeful for the sequel. It's the kind of adult fiction that reads like really dark YA. It has a trans mute amputee* tritagonist, though she's a little sidelined in the first book by the two main girls--I'm hoping she's more prominent in the later books. If a fantastical exploration about a horrendously unequal and deeply familiar society divided by blood caste with a touch of sapphic romance between the leads sounds appealing to you, check it out!
*There's a reason she's mute and missing both hands. It's a very grim society.
Oh, whoops, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo isn't fantasy.
... what is it?
*googles* uhh, it's listed as historical fiction. Very framed within the genre of Hollywood tell-all, albeit about a fictional woman. It's quite gay.