What Next To Read . . .?

Originally Posted by radagastly

There is, of course, the thread over in Novices and Newcomers, called What other Fantasy books do YOU read?:

http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=1338

It has many, many pages of people's recommendations. I enjoyed Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber series, which has some fairly good characterization, but does not, alas, have quite the literary breadth of Middle Earth. That's my favorite lately. Some of the older fantasies, written before Tolkien's popularity, are less bound by the archetypes he created. The Worm Ouroboros by (I believe his name was) Ellison (not Harlan Ellison, but someone much earlier), and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. If I were you, I'd check out the thread I linked. There must be something there that catches your attention.

The thread you speak of, What other Fantasy books do YOU read, just talks about fantasy novels people like. It does not distinguish between those novels which can genuinely be likened to the LOTR in terms of characters, literacy, intellect etc. This thread demands these to a far higher order.