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I'm sure this has been touched on somewhere before, but I'm tired of searching for "best fantasy books" and coming across the same 50 choices (I get it, The Name of the Wind and Hyperion are must reads).

What are your favorites? The diamonds in the rough, the titles you believe deserve ten time the recognition they do and it breaks your heart to see them on the "clearance" rack.

Mine is an easy choice: Rhapsody: Child of Blood by Elizabeth Haydon. I could not recommend a more intriguing and engrossing tale. The series has become stale for me in the long run, but the first few books are pure magic.

The White Abacus by Damien Broderick
Metaplanetary and Superluminal by Tony Daniel (parts 1 & 2 of a sadly never-finished trilogy)
The Risen Empire and The Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfeld
Queen of Angels and Slant by Greg Bear
Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
The Broken Sword and Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson (two older titles that aren't IMO treated like the sword & sorcery classics they are)
The Last Legends of Earth by A. A. Attanasio

The short stories and novellas of the late, great Lucius Shepard (1947 - 2014)

Good News from Outer Space by John Kessel

Also an easy one for me: The Apocalypse Door by James D. Macdonald. A modern day Templar, a killer nun and an adversary that's either an alien AI or a demon prince of hell.

Shame it didn't do better. I'd have loved a series of these books.

Ambassador: Seeing Red by Patty Jansen has been a great find for me.

Trike wrote: "Also an easy one for me: The Apocalypse Door by James D. Macdonald. A modern day Templar, a killer nun and an adversary that's ..."

Thanks for the tip, looks very promising.

My favorite book of all time is out of print, so my abused paperback copy has become my precious - Mermaid's Song by Alida Van Gores. The author died very young, the book is out of print. I did steal an ebook copy so I'll have it no matter what, but if you find a hardcopy cheap - buy it. It's an incredible stand alone fantasy.

Another one I can't find anywhere now - Louise Cooper wrote a series, 7 books I think, starts with Nemesis. I was a melancholy teenager and wow, this series really got to me.

Fred Saberhagen's The Complete Book of Swords is an old favorite.

Miserere: An Autumn Tale by Teresa Frohock is a good one I rarely see mentioned.

And one last series - The Blending by Sharon Green. The writing isn't great, the plotting is heavy handed, but something about this series I really like. The magic system wasn't very original, but what she does with it is. I think I liked the worldview, even if the characters get a bit preachy about it at times. Anywhoo, I liked it :) Starts with Convergence

Oh, I have to add 3 more -

Maia by Richard Adams - a sort of prequel to his Shardik, Maia is so lush and gorgeous. It's also full of sex and politics. And the title character is the ultimate Mary Sue - but on purpose, I'm convinced. She's there for all the other twisted, devious, sick, ambitious, malicious, etc., etc., characters to play with, to manipulate, to fall in love with - Oh god, it's great fun! Warning though - teenagers having lots of sex and enjoying it in some very disturbing ways.

The Silver Metal Lover and Don't Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee. This woman writes teenage females so well, and her SF worlds are wonderful and strange and beautiful.

Vurt by Jeff Noon

I'd recommend any of the books in the loose series. They're very, very strange. It annoys me a bit when people go on about the 'New Weird' but Noon never gets a mention.

I read the Great Game series (The Great Game: Past Imperative ; Present Tense ; Future Indefinite) a long time ago and it's made a huge impact on me and my own writing. It's a portal fantasy, but some amount of it occurs in England during the WWI (the Great War - see what he did there?) His handling of deities and pantheons is what really got me interested.

Below are a few books I’ve read that come to mind immediately. I don’t know if they’re on any lists, but I rarely see people talk about them.

Fantasy
The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham, starting with A Shadow in Summer. I thought it had a unique magic system with poets who create and bind magical creatures at great risk to themselves. I seem to remember the culture being a bit unique also, although it’s been several years since I read this series. I remember that I really liked some of the characters.

The Godspeaker Trilogy by Karen Miller, starting with Empress. I wouldn’t call this a favorite, but the first book was very unique and memorable. If you have to be able to like and respect the characters you read about, you’ll hate the first book. I almost didn’t read the rest of the series because I both liked and hated the book. The other two books were more generic, but made more meaningful because of the first book.

Science Fiction
A standalone book by Chris Dolley, Resonance. If you read the plot synopsis, you’ll read too much info about this book and spoil half the fun. I read this book without knowing what it was about, and I had a lot of fun trying to figure out what the heck was going on. When the book starts off, we’re reading from the perspective of a character who seems really neurotic � he believes he has to do everything a precise way and always the same way or else objects and/or people will vanish as if they had never existed. The first few chapters are available here so you can tell pretty quickly from chapter one whether or not you’ll be hooked.

The Heyoka Blackeagle duology by K.D. Wentworth, starting with Black on Black. I have trouble quantifying exactly why I enjoyed this so much, but I really liked the characters and the story, and I liked that the majority of both stories are told from the perspective of the aliens. The aliens maybe weren’t super innovative and unique, but I thought they were interesting, consistent, and fleshed out well. Each book tells a complete story without cliff hangers. The first few chapters of the first book are here:

The Belisarius series by Eric Flint and David Drake, starting with An Oblique Approach. This is an alternate history series set in the time of ancient Rome. The story is that two factions from our far, far future have sent entities back to the past. One faction wants to change human history by helping a faction in India take over the world. The other faction wants to prevent history from being changed and the entity from that faction ends up with General Belisarius from ancient Rome. The science fiction aspect of the story doesn’t have a very high presence in the series, although it shows up often enough to make sure you don’t forget about it. It’s very much a military story, but I would classify it as more of a “feel good� type of story as opposed to a “gritty� story. The characters are great and there’s a lot of humor. I started it with some skepticism, because I hadn’t really read any military science fiction at that point, but I was pleasantly surprised. The series is complete and has 6 books, none of which end in a cliff hanger. This whole series can be legally downloaded for free here (along with a bunch of other books): . You’ll see the books listed under “Belisarius Saga� on the right-hand side.

I like Harry Turtledove's Crosstime Traffic books, especially Gunpowder Empire and the Disunited States of America. The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson is another favorite.

Granted, these are considered more sci-fi than fantasy, but both Turtledove and Anderson have an element of fantasy in their writing.

I'm doing a re-read of The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny. Can't go wrong with it.

I'm also reading Stories of the Raksura, Volume 1: The Falling World & The Tale of Indigo and Cloud by Martha Wells. Somehow, despite the Raksura novels having no humans in them and the society being very different than what I'm used to, the characters make the story shine. It's a recently released trilogy that I think doesn't get enough notice.

Anything by Carol Berg, especially Flesh and Spirit/Breath and Bone. But really, any of her books. Beautiful prose, memorable characters, unique worlds and magic systems. I believe she should be right up there when all the big boys (Tolkein, Martin, Jordan) are mentioned but she isn't (and she's a much better writer than Martin and Jordan, I think).

I'll also second the Godspeaker trilogy. I love the first book, which tells the villain's story. Knowing that helps you appreciate it more.