Quote Originally Posted by Ouch! View Post
The love for ASoIaF makes me exceptionally happy. Unfortunately, that series and its awesomeness has just about ruined every other fantasy novel. For someone who writes fantasy, I tend to hate just about every series I read. xD
I agree with everything you just said. I find it nearly impossible to be affected by the "usual" fantasy novel shocker after the jarring events in A Storm of Swords. It's kind of hard to beat the tragedy that is the Stark family. Unfortunately, after A Feast for Crows, I worry that even GRRM will have difficulty topping that in the future.

Quote Originally Posted by Kes View Post
I like about half of Robin Hobb's stuff. Her first and third trilogies, but not so much with her second and latest. The Fool was just a really great character.
Oh dear, I'm almost the complete opposite. The Liveship Traders completely floored me, and remains one of my all-time favorite set of books along with ASoIaF. Her latest trilogy was pretty slow moving but won me over with the last book. On the other hand, I found The Tawny Man trilogy to be underwhelming in comparison, though the final book was pretty much amazing. But yes: Fool > all, and even at her lowest, I find Robin Hobb to be far more readable than a majority of the competition.

I've taken a bit of a break from fantasy in my reading, but I'm looking forward to the next couple of books on my shelf: The Book of Joby, by Mark J Ferrari, and The Blade Itself, by Joe Abercrombie. I've heard great things about both, so I hope they don't disappoint. The Name of the Wind is another one I keep hearing about, but I've been suspicious of it since hearing that the main character is a bit of a Mary Sue.