It's pretty hard for other authors to even come close to Tolkien, I mean the man fucking made his own languages up and compared it to drinking wine. Not to mention he spent most of his life making up and writing down middle earth and it's history down before picking up the pen for LotR. So when you start to read Lord of the Rings is actually feels like a real place because it's so saturated with little details and filled with lore the author didn't make up on the spot. So honestly to get someone to rival his works you would need another author to put as much time and love into his material as Tolkien did. And even then it may fall on the spot.
TLDR: I would suck Tolkien's cock.
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Anonymous2009-11-04 19:42
The Dark Tower series by Stephen King i thought was better than LOTR. Maybe LOTR was just too far out there fantasy for my liking.
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Anonymous2009-11-04 21:48
The Dark Tower series died after book 4
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Anonymous2009-11-05 19:07
The Gormenghast Novels.
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Anonymous2009-11-06 6:42
Wheel of Time
inb4 trolls
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Anonymous2009-11-15 23:18
The Dune series, six books of pure awesome. Herbert is an amazing writer, and he successfully weaves a plot that spans thousands upon thousands of years.
The Dark Tower series is also REALLY hard to put down.
I've never been a fan of Tolkien, I really hate the "oh woe is me, how can I handle this responsibility I don't want" emo type character. Then through a series of lucky situations, and mainly through the work and sacrifice of others, the hero succeeds.
How about The Malazan Book of the Fallen series by Steven Erikson. Covers multiple races, thousands of years, well over 10,000 pages by now, will make you rage, baw, and feel for the characters like a proper epic should.
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Anonymous2009-11-23 21:52
Pick up some Robert E. Howard stories like Conan or Kull.
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Anonymous2009-11-24 0:40
>>I really hate the "oh woe is me, how can I handle this responsibility I don't want" emo type character.
That's not really book-Frodo at all. He only whines a bit at the start then sucks it up. Movie-Frodo on the other hand...
I second Dune. Isaac Asimov wrote it was the only series he knew that could rival LotR in epicness.
The Conan stories are also good but they're really a series of short stories and one novel.
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Anonymous2009-11-24 17:05
The Drenai Saga by David Gemmell
Fucking awesomely epic heroic fantasy, especially the tales based on Druss.
Also the pair on Skillgannon the Damned (white wolf & the swords of night and day)
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Anonymous2009-11-25 11:48
>>22
I don't know if you're trolling or if it's just bad typing. Isaac Asimov did NOT write the Dune series. It was Frank Herbert.
IMO he surpasses that pansy Tolken, and his 3 books about going for a walk.
LOLZOMG qualifier. I've read them, I understand he was first to really give modern fantasy a foot-hold within respectable writing. I just feel that most of the hype and circle jerking is from nostalgia. It's also really obvious that "Paradise Lost", "The Odyssey", and "Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" are MAJOR influences on how he developed the plot, characters, and crafted his prose.
ALSO
Read the Magic: the gathering series. For being based on a card game, it's goddamn fucking epic. From what I can remember, this are the order of the books worth reading.
The Thran
Brothers War
Planswalker (my personal fav.)
Time Streams
Mercadian Masques
Nemesis
Prophesy
Invasion
Planeshift
Apocalypse
No, it's good, it's good all the way through. The first few books are MORE interesting than the final ones, because after book 3 Merlin is all grown up and he runs around being a mysterious faggot