Fantasy recommendations please

[Sadeness]

Thanks for all the recommendations.
I must admit I prefer fantasy with older times feel to it but I'll try the urban fantasy anyway.
I had the sword-dancer on my to read list but never got round to it; now I'm looking forward to reading it even more.

[anjirlly]

The Paladin by C.J. Cherryh has a strong female protagonist at odds with her older male mentor in a world modeled on the Tang Dynasty (according to Wikipedia). No magic, but appreciation of the supernatural for myth making.

[kyrilson]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

I'm a huge Hobb fan so I have to second this. Farseer + Liveships. You could go straight to Liveships if you want but you'd be missing some awesomely good fantasy.

Recommend C.S. Friedman's Magister trilogy, comes to mind right away. Strong female character grappling with a lot of male pro-and-antagonists that she can't trust.

Recommend also The Witches of Eileanan series. IIRC there's a few points of view but the main one is an apprentice witch.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Witches-Ei.../dp/0451456890

I remember reading the Farseer trilogy as a young teenager and loving the books. I tried to reread it recently and I was annoyed by how whiny and angsty the main protagonist is in the first book of the series. I decided not to continue. Is this issue prevalent in the Liveship series?

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

I remember reading the Farseer trilogy as a young teenager and loving the books. I tried to reread it recently and I was annoyed by how whiny and angsty the main protagonist is in the first book of the series. I decided not to continue. Is this issue prevalent in the Liveship series?

Just remember that Fitz is a teenager, and an orphan at that (he's got issues). He makes decisions like a teenager, and he's selfish/narrow viewpoint at times which makes you want to smack him sometimes, but IMO that's a very accurate representation of a teen.

I was the opposite, I liked them OK as a kid but didn't really like the ending, but loved them much more as an adult.

Althea's not nearly as woe-as-me as Fitz - I'd say she's a stronger character.

[mewmartigan]

Another point to make about the Liveship books is that you get POV from several characters whereas in Farseer you were stuck with Fitz.

I didn't mind Fitz's whining because the other characters always called him out on it, haha.

[mgbino]

Have you read a A Trial of Blood and Steel by Joel Shepherd? It pretty much ticks all your boxes- female lead, antagonistic romantic plot...

The first book is Sasha.

Shepherd is a criminally under read fantasy/sci-fi author.

[samhy]

Two books come to mind but I can't tell if they'll meet all the requests

And All the Stars by Andrea K. Höst

Come for the apocalypse. Stay for cupcakes. Die for love. Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfect subject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pin him down for the sittings. None of her plans factored in the Spires: featureless, impossible, spearing into the hearts of cities across the world - and spraying clouds of sparkling dust into the wind. Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare? They are questions everyone on Earth would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem. At Ground Zero of the Sydney Spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of St James Station, she must make it to the surface before she can hope to find out if the world is ending.

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor (also)

A story of history, time travel, love, friendship and tea. Meet the disaster-magnets at the St Mary's Institute of Historical Research as they ricochet around history, observing, documenting, drinking tea and, if possible, not dying. Follow the catastrophe-curve from eleventh-century London to World War I, and from the Cretaceous Period to the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. Discover History – The New Sex

This one may be more Science-Fiction than Fantasy, though. A fun read, the second one is in my TBR since this morning.

[crossi]

Not Fantasy but science fiction but have you read the Teltzy and Trigger books by James Schmitz? Or Demon Breed by the same author?

[Sadeness]

Thanks for the other novels you recommended. I didn't know about any of them.
Some are quite old and written by men, so I'm wondering if I'll enjoy their female protagonist as much...