Looking to read a Tolkien pastiche

[Grudd]

Specifically one I haven't read before. I'm currently reading Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series and not really enjoying it. In the past I've read Vance and Feist. I'm looking for something with all the fantasy cliches but that isn't too painful to read so no Eragorn or Forgotten Realms.

Thanks in advance.

[ShannonA]

Terry Brooks is often considered the greatest (or perhaps, just the first) Tolkien pasticher. The Sword of Shannara is the first book. I can't tell you how good or bad the writing is because it's been 25 years since I read it, but I've more recently read some of his more recent stuff, and it's average to good.

The Belgariad by David Eddings isn't quite Tolkien pastiche, but it's definitely high fantasy. The first book is Pawn of Prophecy, though it may be in some collected volume nowadays. Again, I'll offer the 25-years-ago caveat, though I really enjoyed this when I first read it.

[Grudd]

I mistakenly typed Vance when I meant Brooks in my original Post. I read the first Shannara Trilogy about the same time as you. I read Eddings about that time as well. I tried reading some of Brooks newer work a few years ago and had to give up. Terrible!

[ShannonA]

I mistakenly typed Vance when I meant Brooks in my original Post. I read the first Shannara Trilogy about the same time as you. I read Eddings about that time as well. I tried reading some of Brooks newer work a few years ago and had to give up. Terrible!

I was wondering what Vance had written that was Tolkienesque. All I could come up with is the Lyonesse trilogy, which is magnificent fantasy, but not in the Tolkien vein.

The Brooks that I recently read was his three-book Word & the Void book, which I thought was quite good, then the three-book Genesis of Shannara trilogy, which I thought was OK. The Word & The Void is really modern fantasy realism, but particularly the first is one of Brooks' strongest works of the ~dozen I've read. I'm planning to give The Sword of Shannara a reread next, to see how it holds up.

If you want to look at the other modern fantasies that aren't Tolkienesque, but are some of the best out there and which do tend to be pretty epic, you should look at: Erikson's 10-book Malazan sequence; and George R.R. Martin's 4-book (but incomplete) Song of Ice & Fire. Many people would add Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, but I thought it dragged even in book 2.

[Accaris]

The original Dragonlance chronicles. Yes, they're based on Dungeons & Dragons, and the occasional annoying anachronism will pop up. But the characters make the saga highly entertaining. Certainly better than Forgotten Realms, I'd wager.

[replicant2]

If you really want to go all the way, full-on Tolkien rip-off, nothing, and I mean nothing, compares to Dennis McKiernan's Iron Tower trilogy. I'm talking 1:1 stand-ins for Hobbits (Warrows), dwarves, elves, dwarven mines with demons and tentacled monsters guarding their gates, a dark lord named Mordu... on and on.