You finished ASOIAF but Martin didn't...
While it's so far stand alone, Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell is a pretty rich work. The Miles Vorkosigan series and The Queens Thief both have protagonists who are kind of reminiscent of Tyrion in terms of their gift for pulling off schemes and combination of snarkiness and angst (Gen in the latter is sort of like Tyrion if he was as good of a fighter as Jaime. He even gets his hand chopped off like Jaime does). Also, The Queens Thief setting kind of makes me think of a better done version of the Essos portion of ASOIAF.
edited 7th Dec '11 2:50:56 PM by Jordan
HodorThe Malazan Book Of The Fallen. Every bit as good, if completely different in tone/focus/world, as ASoIaF.
"You want to see how a human dies? At ramming speed." - Emily Wong.The Wheel Of Time. A good long series with a well-planned continuity, dynamic characters that go through a lot of (and most of the time, very satisfying) Character Development and a well-crafted world.
Join us in our quest to play all RPG video games! Moving on to disc 2 of Grandia!Seconding Wheel of Time if you like very long, somewhat dark/appocalyptic fantasy series. Warning: Wheel of Time moves quite slowly in the middle. But the early books, and the last couple, are quite entertaining.
Regarding some of the books you mentioned in the OP:
The Lord of the Rings is something everyone should read. Its a classic of English literature, plain and simple.
Foundation is worth a read too, although its sci-fi, not fantasy.
edited 7th Dec '11 3:10:47 PM by Pulsar
Gonna second the Vorkosigan Saga. As far as I'm concerned, it's the only Space Opera series (that I've come across) outside Anne Mc Caffrey's works that have decent characterization, much less amazing characterization. I adore the series.
The Wheel Of Time is good as well, though if you know your epic fantasy it may seem a bit familiar. Basically what Tolkein didn't come up with, Jordan pretty much did. Still it's head and shoulders above just about any fantasy epic out there and deserves it's reputation.
edited 7th Dec '11 9:26:36 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)Go read Brandon Sanderson. The Mistborn trilogy is definitely his meatiest work to date, but The Stormlight Archive (of which the only first of ten planned novels has been released so far) promises to be even more so.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Yeah, Brandon Sanderson's awesome. Warbreaker was my favorite, though I haven't read Way of Kings yet.
Edit: Also, Warbreaker is apparently a free e-book on Sanderson's website!
edited 7th Dec '11 8:20:25 PM by Firebert
Support Gravitaz on Kickstarter!I personally find Brandon Sanderson really overrated, but that's me.
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)It depends on what you read. Elantris and Warbreaker are okay-but-not-great, as is Alloy Of Law (which you really need to read Mistborn to make any sense of anyway). Mistborn and The Way Of Kings really do live up to the hype, though (at least, assuming he can keep up the quality for The Way Of Kings' sequels).
Mistborn is seriously the best novel series I've ever read, hands down.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.The Discworld series has about 40 books, so should keep you entertained for a while. Then again, Discworld is a bit more of a comic fantasy (especially earlier on), so it might not be to your tastes, and first three or so books in the series are a bit odd.
edited 8th Dec '11 12:21:50 PM by MangaManiac
i've read about 8 of the Discworld sereis, but find it to get a litle repetitive if i read more than 3 in a row and dont read an equel number of books in betwen. i guess i'll try to read some of Bradon Sanderson's books now.
I See The Fear You Have Inside You Can Run But Never Hide I Will Hunt You Down And Tear You Limb From LimbHaven't read The Way Of Kings, but I'm going to disagree with you and say, no Mistborn didn't live up to the hype for me. It was good, it was not amazing. There are many, many books I would rank higher, pretty much any of The Wheel Of Time books among them. It managed to dodge some of the things that tend to piss me off about epic fantasy, such as the fact that it didn't have ridiculously long info dumps or descriptions and was pretty fast paced without a lot of boring downtime, as well as having a good main character who doesn't whine and mope, but it failed on a lot of other levels as well. It's one of those books that's basically 'stuff happens' there isn't much emotional intensity, a lot of the relationships are incredibly superficially written, such as Eland, who just struck me as a bad character all around and an obvious Author Avatar, as well as the Oppression message itself feeling heavy-handed and unrealistically portrayed. The fight scenes were also really boring and often way too long, and lacked intensity IMO. The first book ended in a way that seemed very final, so the second book just started off in a weird place. I don't think the trilogy was actually mapped out as well as it could have been. All the characters just act so Genre Savvy it's unrealistic, as well.
I mean, I wouldn't say the book is a complete waste of time, but like I said, it's overrated.
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)I honestly find it hilarious that you say you liked Mistborn because it was fast paced, and then turn around and say Wheel Of Time was better.
edited 12th Dec '11 3:31:16 PM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.I'd read The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings if you haven't already. That should take up a month or more.
Also, to answer your question, The Lord Of The Rings is pretty timeless. There are a few scenes that can be a bit dull (my advice is to skip the songs, and somehow just get through the first three chapters of The Hobbit. The book is boring until the barrow-wights show up, unfortunately, but picks up from there), but I managed to stay interested even though I was in highschool and normally couldn't give a flip about books, so there's hope for anybody!
Then I'd read Codex Alera, if you haven't already.
edited 12th Dec '11 4:30:54 PM by MyGodItsFullofStars
Joe Abercrombie's The First Law trilogy is the same kind of dark, profane, modernized fantasy, but a bit less epic and more about fun characters in that gritty setting. I don't know if I'd read it before Lord of the Rings, because it's just so much fun to imagine the characters as the Fellowship of the Ring if they were all sociopathic assholes.
How about Memory Sorrow And Thorn? Very good epic fantasy with great characters and a good pace. Or by the same author, Otherland, which is four Doorstoppers of virtual reality cyberpunk.
Most of the previous suggestions are good, too.
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The Wheel Of Time has better characterization, drama, ideas, presentation and a better crafted world, as well as not feeling so much like its epic fantasy just for the sake of being epic fantasy. Basically the only thing I dislike about The Wheel Of Time is that it's slow and in parts it's a little repetitive, and it's pretty depressing in places, but all in all it evens out the be better than Mistborn IMO.
It also kind of pisses me off that Mistborn has a grand total of one female main character, whereas The Wheel Of Time is practically split fifty-fifty.
edited 12th Dec '11 9:01:15 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)She wasn't even originally going to be female either, Sanderson made her female at the last minute because he thought it made more sense based on the character's actions and thoughts.
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)"I finished ASO Ia F, what do i do now?"
Maybe you can graduate to real books now?
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Yeah, I know, I haven't read any of the new Wheel of Times, because I need to go back and reread, and also because I'm...a bit afraid to see what he's done with it.
I'll give Sanderson one thing, he is head and shoulders above that hack Brent Weeks.
edited 13th Dec '11 9:33:47 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)In my opinion, the Sanderson books are the best in the series (no offence intended to Jordan). Some of the credit still goes to Jordan, of course, since Sanderson based it off his notes. But it really worked out rather well. The Gathering Storm and Towers of Midnight both have a lot of character development, a lot of major developments in the story, and some truly epic battles. The Sanderson books aren't perfect, of course, and I don't want to raise your expectations too much and make the actual books a let down, but I really did like them, and if you liked the earlier books you should at least give the Sanderson ones a chance.
I do intend to, I just haven't had time to reread the entire series yet, because I've forgotten a lot and most of the books are pushing 1000 pages which even for me is pretty difficult to get through when you read them back to back to back. I'll do it before the last book comes out, that's my goal.
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)

I spent about 2 months reading nothing but ASO Iaf, and now nothing seems to fill the hole those books used to take up. No books seem to have the same amount of continuity, character deveelopment, creativity, and plain oild good writing.
I have not read L Ot R, the foundation series, or really any other famous series of novels, will any of them still satisfy?
I See The Fear You Have Inside You Can Run But Never Hide I Will Hunt You Down And Tear You Limb From Limb