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 Post Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 6:58 am 
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I'm looking for something good, but relatively unknown in SF/Fantasy genre (actually I'm kinda looking for the mix of both, but that probably doesn't exist or turned out to be terrible, unless there are actual Sluggy books that aren't comicbooks ;) ). I've read through most heavy hitters (LOTR, Harry Potter, Heinlein's/Dick's stuff and of course Lem) but I'm looking for lesser known authors that have a good writing.

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 Post Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:09 am 
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I suppose Lois McMaster Bujold, Mercedes Lackey, Jom Butcher and Timothy Zahn fall under well known.

I am not that sure how well known other authors i read actually are.

Barb and J.C. Hendee Noble Dead
Fantasy with vampires. For a change evil vampires again. Like with most contemporary stuff it's an never ending cycle.

Gail Z. Martin
Writes fairly standard fantasy. Her cycles usually end.

Charles Stross
Of him i know computer heavy new future SF (Halting State, Rule 34) and the Laundry Files cycle, that is about a Man in Black style goverment agency, that fights Lovecraftian horrors (and it is tonge in cheek).

Glenda Larke
I especially liked the Dagger cycle. She also should be commended for ending her cycles (i think she only wrote trilogies so far.)

Simon R. Green
The Deathstalker Cycle would be an example of fantasy+SF.

C.S Friedman
The Coldfire Cycle also has a blending of fantasy and SF. It also is one, where the author did stick to a trilogy.

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 Post Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 2:59 pm 
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not particularly unknown but David Weber's Safehold series just wrapped up its phase 1. It's like 9 novels and Weber's writing style gets a little dense near the end, but it's a good read.

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 Post Posted: Mon Feb 19, 2018 5:08 pm 
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Thanks! Will check these out and if I like the synopsis I'll probably buy it. If you have amazon links or links to some ebook stores that aren't amazon (Smashwords and lulu in particular as I'm registered there), I'd be glad if you post them along in future recommendations!

Thank you again!

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 1:30 am 
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Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International Series. He also has the Grimnoir series and the Dead Six novels written with Mike Kupari as well as the first of another series Son of a Black Sword.

John Ringo has a great many series including Troy Rising {Hard SF} (Live Free or Die, Citadel, and The Hot Gate) and Black Tide Rising {Zombie Apocalypse} (Under a Graveyard Sky, To Sail a Darkling Sea, Islands of Rage and Hope, and Strands of Sorrow. The first anthology is simply known as Black Tide Rising. There's also a forthcoming book cowritten with Mike Massa, who is not at all like Uncle Tom from the first book, nope, not one bit. There's also another anthology due out.) I will warn you about his Paladin of Shadows series. The first book has been compared to Fifty Shades with guns, but better written.

Also, if you do electronic format, I recommend going to the Baen website and checking out their free library.

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 Post Posted: Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:47 am 
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LobosSolos wrote:
John Ringo has a great many series ... I will warn you about his Paladin of Shadows series. The first book has been compared to Fifty Shades with guns, but better written.
There's a trope... It's called "Oh, John Ringo, No" in regards to this series. It is the ONLY series of his i could not get into. He even acknowledges it went too far.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 2:20 am 
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gregnier wrote:
LobosSolos wrote:
John Ringo has a great many series ... I will warn you about his Paladin of Shadows series. The first book has been compared to Fifty Shades with guns, but better written.
There's a trope... It's called "Oh, John Ringo, No" in regards to this series. It is the ONLY series of his i could not get into. He even acknowledges it went too far.

In fairness he wrote the first book, "Ghost", in order to get it out of his head. He had no plans on it being published, then he mentioned it on Baen's Bar, snippets were cajoled and Jim Baen decided that it would be published. And while I never got the chance to meet him, from what I understand, once he decided something was going to be published, it was published. Subsequent books had less of that type of material in them. Also, apparently they're the only series of his that Miriam, his wife, hasn't read.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 22, 2018 7:11 pm 
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Oh, I already know about Baen publishing. Even considered it for publishing my book, but some of the requirements are weird, such as obsolete format the book has to be sent in (RTF as far as I remember) or the fact they don't want proper quotation marks, apostrophes (what you have on your keyboard is not an apostrophe, not the thing that is under "quote" symbol, not the thing that is over tilde key) or other punctuation. Smashwords and Lulu are okay with any characters as long as fonts can display it (and most these days can) and they only want you to have your manuscript formatted in certain way, so the winner is clear.

You see, I want to read a bit in my genre in order to improve my own writing ;). Anyway, I'll take a second look at Baen's lib. Not sure if I've looked through it carefully enough, but earlier didn't see anything of interest, but I'll check it out again. Cheers and have a nice day (or evening, or night, depends really when you will read it).

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 Post Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 5:19 am 
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If you don't mind listening to stuff, I can't recommend Myths and Legends enough

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 Post Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2018 12:40 am 
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I've just finished reading Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho.

Her writing style in this book may not be for everyone as she's parodying 19th Century novels (think Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) but it's a rollicking adventure with wizards and magical creatures and intrigue if you can get into it.

Also really liked Uprooted by Naomi Novik. I don't think I'll spoil too much by saying that the antagonist is an evil supernatural forest; I just want to give Novik mad props for how creepy she manages to write it.

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 Post Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 7:57 am 
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I highly recommend Taylor Anderson's "Destroyermen" series. The series, originally planned to be a trilogy, according to a conversation I had with the author at a book signing in Fort Worth, TX, will publish the 13th book in the series this summer. His books are well researched with regards to the weapons used by his characters and references to WWII. The characters are well developed and the action flows well throughout the story and plot arc.

I really like the way the ship, US Walker, becomes a character that you will care about in it's own right.

Taylor Anderson is a Texas resident and History teacher. What I would have given to have been in one of his classes in college.

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 Post Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2018 8:02 am 
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John Ringo was also an early fan of Sluggy Freelance and Bun-Bun having named a giant tank after Bun-Bun in his series Legacy of the Aldenata. That series is how I found out about Sluggy Freelance and started reading the strip back in 2001 or so. If you like rocking Sci-Fi battles and lots of explosions (in books) this is a series you will want to read.

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 Post Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2018 8:58 am 
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Patricia McKillip has been my favorite author since I was in fifth grade and I found The Riddle Master of Hed at the library.
I love all of her books, but I think my favorite of hers is Song for a Basilisk, but I also highly recommend In the Forests of Serre

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 Post Posted: Thu Oct 18, 2018 4:29 pm 
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I really highly recommend Sheri S. Tepper's Marianne trilogy. It's out of print and very hard to find, but ranks among my most favorite ever fantasy.

The quality varies widely, but anything by Samuel Delany is a mindblowing, worthwhile read. His perspective is so different from everyone else. Dhalgren is his masterwork --it's so difficult to read, but so worth the effort. Babel-12 is a more accessible if lesser work.

Sylvie & Bruno is a much less well known book by Alice writer Lewis Carroll. It might be the strangest book you ever read, but it was light years ahead of its time.

Neverness by David Zindell is a trippy, philosophical mythopoeic science-fiction epic.

The Raw Shark Texts - A tall tale about a man being chased down by a conceptual shark.

Caught in Crystal - The rare sword & sorcery adventure story whose hero is a single mom raising two young children.

Master of the 5 Magics - One of the few books I loved as a teenager that was just as good when I reread it decades later.

------------------------

BONUS: These books aren't exactly lesser known, but they are all worth the read if you haven't gotten around to them yet: Anathem - Stephenson, Neverending Story - Ende, Old Kingdom Series - Nix, Chronicles of Amber - Zelazny, Wind-up Bird Chronicles - Murakami

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