Recommend a Fantasy series that is beautifully written

I will echo the Rothfuss comments. Probably one of my favourite recent fantasy authors. He has a way with words that make me swoon.

How do you feel about strong female characters and female perspectives? :p Marion Zimmer Bradley is pretty solid. The Mists of Avalon is largely told from Morgainne (a.k.a. Morgan LeFay)'s perspective and is a retelling of King Arthur as well as examining the tensions between the paganism of Avalon and the introduction of Christianity to the Isle. Quite a good read with strong characters. Another book by Bradley that I really enjoyed was Firebrand which is a retelling of the Trojan War (at the end at least) from the perspective of Cassandra of Troy. Really good. Bradley really does a lot of research for her novels, so there is a basis in historical/literary sources (though the paganism of Avalon is more based on Gardinian Wicca, than old Celtic traditions :p).

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Originally Posted by Ouch!

I think if I started enforcing standards for prose, I'd miss out on a lot of good stories that are more concerned about telling said stories than being a work of art.

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Except that in my case, I *do* read those not-amazingly-written fantasy books. I read everything. The only books that I legit give up on are the ones where it's just really really bad. I typically finish about 4-5 books a month, if not more. So I don't feel like I'm missing out too much.

There are sooooo many, countless wonderfully written non-fiction/contemporary/YA/science-fiction books out there, but the literary quality of fantasy books (high fantasy to be more precise) seems to fall short. And I don't know why. Of course the story is important and the world building and the characters, but that's tied in with the quality of the writing.

And to clarify something, I think that when the story is good enough and engaging enough, you don't *have* to have the best prose or dialogue. And I can happily read those books and just enjoy the story. But after reading a string of badly written fantasy books, I wanted to see if there were works out there more in line with Tolkien or Ursula Le Guin. Where you have the whole package. A great story, great characters, and also great prose and descriptions and dialogue. Why does that seem to be slim pickings for medieval style fantasies? I mean, there are plenty of historical fiction that are well written.

That one part of Mistborn I picked was part of a larger problem I had with the book. It wasn't the only section I didn't like. Here are a few more issues I had with Mistborn:

The characters felt shallow and unbelievable. The only character who I felt came alive in a natural and unforced way was Sazed. Vin started off great and then increasingly became cringeworthy, blathering on about the shininess of her dresses.

"Relationship" between Vin and Elend was ridiculous. Elend particularly was such a stiff and boring character.

I know that moral ambiguity can be complex and great (Tigana actually did a surprisingly great job with this) but in Mistborn it was just... stupid. It infuriated me how the book was constantly peppered with dialogue and self-doubt about whether or not it's ACTUALLY evil to keep people enslaved. I understand that the author was trying to make his band of heroes more complex by questioning their actions, or maybe he was trying to show how centuries of being oppressed made it difficult for people to truly accept the idea of a rebellion. But for me, it felt shoe horned in. And it made me want to smack the characters in the face.

A lot of the book either felt vague or underdeveloped and some things were so implausible.

I will say that I LOVED the magic system in the book. It was fantastic.

So yeah, it's not like I read Mistborn and thought, "OH HOLY CRAP THE DIALOGUE IS BAAAAARF" and dismissed it altogether. It was the silly writing on top of all the other stuff that makes me give it thumbs down.

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Originally Posted by The Summoner of Leviathan

How do you feel about strong female characters and female perspectives? :p Marion Zimmer Bradley is pretty solid. The Mists of Avalon is largely told from Morgainne (a.k.a. Morgan LeFay)'s perspective and is a retelling of King Arthur as well as examining the tensions between the paganism of Avalon and the introduction of Christianity to the Isle. Quite a good read with strong characters.

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I read and enjoyed The Mists of Avalon. I LOVE strong female characters. :)

I recall you saying you read Song of Achilles, then you will enjoy Firebrand since it is also written in the spirit of The Mists of Avalon and is set in Ancient Greece. I kinda like it more than Mists.

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Originally Posted by Miriel

I will say that I LOVED the magic system in the book. It was fantastic.

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To be fair, his habit for developing strong magic systems is probably the best reason to read any Sanderson book.

The only perspective I can offer about what makes high fantasy so different is that--except for maybe a few outlying examples--the story, world-building, and characters are most certainly not directly tied to the quality of the writing. They're often a separate endeavor entirely, particularly the world-building. If you want evidence of that, go check out r/worldbuilding and see how many of those people create worlds but aren't writers. A great deal of creative effort goes into creating these worlds. Some people are good at creating worlds. Some people are good at writing. Doing both very well is rare.