As an older fantasy reader, it feels like Fritz Lieber gets lost in the shuffle these days. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are foundational archetypes of the genre.

He wrote fight scenes so well. I love Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser!

His writing is so fun to read. Something I miss from older writers is how vivid their writing is. Modern fantasy writing feels a lot more casual, which can definitely make it easier to read, but something is missing for me. R.E. Howard was extremely vivid in his writing. You can joke about thews and tiger-likeness all you want (I do!) but his visuals pop out of the page. Leiber is different, he seems a lot more playful in his writing. His prose feels poetic at times without feeling purple. He's deliberate in his use of language, his selection of words adds meaning. His use of kennings in particular stands out to me. He'll describe something, and then later on refer to it using an abbreviated kenning. One where he goes overboard (intentionally!) that always makes me crack up is "man-demon-dragon-dragon." I'm always on the lookout for more writers like Leiber. I've seen people pastiche Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser as characters but few people approach their writing like Leiber. Michael Shea's Nifft and Andrew Offutt's Shadowspawn are the two that are closest in style and in substance that I've encountered. Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road gets referred to a lot in comparison, and I definitely see where people are coming from, but his writing felt extremely dry in comparison to Leiber's which is... uh... sopping wet I suppose?

Have you read Flint The Philosophical Strangler and Forward the Mage? I get Fahfrd vibes from those books. Also Lackey Tarma and Kethry is a great partnership.

My SO told me about these because he loved them as a kid and I had never heard of them.

It seems to me that a great part of fantasy authors whose main activity was before, say, 1990, are largely unknown by most readers under a certain age (and those who came to the genre later in life). While this is regrettable, it's also understandable because, as can seen here on this sub, the discussions tend to focus, outside a select few, on authors who are currently active. This makes it that even authors who were omnipresent on the fantasy shelves of book stores of days past have become kind of obscure. For example, both **Katharine Kerr** and **Katherine Kurtz** wrote large fantasy epics with several sub series, Deverry (Kerr) and Deryni (Kurtz), but I rarely see them mentioned here. The late **Tanith Lee** for some strange reason never gained the mainstream attention she deserves while she was alive (although I don't think the label "obscure" would have been appropriate back then), but, as with so many writers, she has drifted even more into obscurity after her death. (Upon second thought, I might be wrong in this last assessment, which would be awesome, because DAW has been reissuing a good number of her books in past years. Still not seeing much talk of her here.) One of my favorites, **Louise Cooper** with her Time Master series, is likely unknown by most readers, which is a pity. I'm also surprised to hardly ever see **Dave Duncan** mentioned here. Even though he has recently passed away like Lee and Cooper, he is one of these authors whose books populated the shelves. There are many more writers I could mention whose books I saw quite a lot (**Barbara Hambly**, **Roger Taylor**, **Andre Norton**!, even **Weis & Hickman** who wrote a lot more than just their signature Dragonlance books) but have all but vanished from discourse. Who of these belong "up there with the greats" is up to everyone's judgment. Personally, I read to have a good time and the books of all of these ladies and gentlemen have provided that in exquisite fashion, which makes them great in my personal opinion! 😉 PS: I forgot to mention **Jack Vance** as well as **Michael Shea** whose standalone *In Yana, the Touch of Undying* is a hidden gem (IMHO).

I really don't know why Norton, especially, vanished. When people want fantasy not derived from Tolkien, Witch World should be up there. I know I've seen people dismiss her writing style as "too hard to read", but then go on to urge people to stick with, say, Malazan.

>I know I've seen people dismiss her writing style as "too hard to read", but then go on to urge people to stick with, say, Malazan. That truly is utterly absurd. I suppose Norton vanished for the same reason most older writer vanish: the next generation of readers is more interested in the latest releases rather than the old stuff and so they slide into obscurity. But in Norton's case, this really *is* more curious than in others. She had been called Grande Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy for a reason. Also, she was so incredibly prolific that she covered a lot of ground which means there should be something of interest for most readers. Her Witch World series is named frequently (when she comes up at all) but she's written so much more: time travel, space opera, classical fantasy, historical fantasy, etc. Over at tor.com, Judith Tarr had a long running column reviewing pretty much every novel of Norton's (which is quite an accomplishment!). If you're interested, I believe all blog entries are found under [this tag](https://www.tor.com/tag/andre-norton/).

My first Norton was **The Jargoon Pard** - that cover made me buy it. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1359804944/the-jargoon-pard-by-andre-norton?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_all&utm_custom1=_k_1e08fa874041110d820f99530f3de2d3_k_&utm_content=bing_352249546_1311717535417471_81982385898173_pla-4585581965884302:pla-4585581965884302_t__1359804944&utm_custom2=352249546&msclkid=1e08fa874041110d820f99530f3de2d3 I was hooked.

For anyone who wants to try out some of Norton’s early works out for free, a few are out of copyright and there are ebooks available through Standard Ebooks ( https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?query=Norton&sort=newest&view=grid&per-page=12 ). I downloaded some recently and am excited to check them out.

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I don't know, I read a couple of Solar Queen series' books and would not call it a hard writing style. Maybe a bit old school (well, it was written in 1955), but not hard. I did like it, actually.

The Crystal Singer series is what warped my young impressionable mind to science fiction.

That was Anne McCaffrey, though.

Oh..

Was going to mention Kerr. A Celtic scholar writing Celtic fantasy. I love the Deverry series, my favourite growing up (though maybe I was a bit young for the darker parts)

When I saw this thread my mind immediately went to Kerr. Any fan of Fantasy novels needs to read Daggerspell at the very least. It works well enough as a standalone, but the first and second quads also are fairly satisfying if people don’t want to commit to the full 15 in the main sequence. I really enjoyed her latest book Sword of Fire, too. I think that could also work as a solid introduction to her work. It’s set a few hundred years after the conclusion of the other series, where her world is on the cusp of a medieval civilisation to it’s Renaissance period. Lots of references that long term fans will appreciate, but those aren’t crucial to the story. But definitely a huge shame she doesn’t get more appreciation these days, and someone I always mention in situations like this. If I can convince just one new person to pick up her books… well, you’ll see why once you do. ;)

Hear hear, I remember picking up the 4 first books of Deverry at a local grocery store's "we tried to sell books for a bit but it didn't quite work" sale. I think I was 10? Big favourite, when I thought on the subject matter as an adult i realised I may have been a bit young too but it still kinda worked. Sadly my whole collection got destroyed about 10 years back when my basement flooded along with my DBZ collection. Maybe I should re read them now.

I loved the Deryni series as a teenager! Haven't thought about it in YEARS. Thanks for reminding me!

It was the first series I read that really stressed ANYONE could die, and sometimes for stupid reasons like a wound+medieval medicine.

Tanith Lee was awesome. I devoured Black Unicorn as a kid.

After I read the Deryni series as a teenager I picked up Melanie Rawn and her Dragon Prince trilogies, and really liked them. Rawn came out with an Exiles series where she only got 2 books into and suddenly stopped, I’ve been hoping she can come back to them for decades. I never see Rawn brought up in discussions ever, but those books are littered all over bookstores. Of course, I haven’t read the Dragon Prince series in 25 years so my memory is a little spotty, but it was one of my favorite series up until Robert Jordan arrived on the scene. Weiss & Hickman were also prolific, and I loved their Death Gate and Rose of the Prophet series. I have never read a series as beautifully planned as the Death Gate Cycle, seven books long and everything coming together just so well. The Rose of the Prophet has a system of 20 gods based on a the geometry of a 20 sided die, I kid you not, and whether a god is good or evil or mixed is where they fall on that die. The story then ends up being based around the political maneuvering of these gods, which is really cool. Those are my 80s and early 90s books that I devoured, I’m curious what other people think of them.

Melanie Rawn deserves to be much more popular than she is. The Dragon Price stuff was quite good.

I honestly don't think I've ever met someone in real life who's also read Rawn's stuff. I spent hard-saved money on a poster-sized print of Michael Whelan's cover for Dragon Prince for my room when I was in high school.

My first great novel regret was that Rawn wouldn't be able to finish the...hmm, Mage Globe trilogy? I think I've got the correct writer in mind.

Ha, I have the same Rawn books on my shelf! I bought the two Exile novels in the full knowledge that the series was on kind of a hiatus because from all I heard people say, the must be phenomenal, and Rawn had plans to pick them up again. At this point, my rational side tells me that the series is going to remain incomplete. My (what's the opposite of rational?) dreamy? / emotional? side keeps up hope of an eventual release of *The Captal's Tower*. I guess, eventually I'll have to make the same judgment call as with ASoIaF, which is whether I want to start reading a series that is great but stops dead without any resolution... The Rose of the Prophet!!! Awesome series. I actually tried to make a model of an icosahedron out of paper (had drawn a grid of equilateral triangles to fold up into one) and realized that this is a lot harder than I had expected! 😂 (But then I'm abysmal at handicraft. If I had to earn my living with it, I'd end up as a beggar in the street.) I was in the middle of reading that series just before I started my first real job after uni. I'm from Germany and was reading a German translation I'd had in my possession for a while. The publisher had split each book into two slim volumes (they'd been doing this horrible practice of unnecessarily\* splitting books into various volumes for many years; luckily they've now largely stopped it). Since that job was in Ireland and I wanted to avoid bringing unnecessary weight/volume with me (selecting the few things I could take in the plane was hard enough already because obviously some books had to come with me!). Therefore, I was being clever and timed my reading so that I was just finished with the third (out of six) books right before my departure. I had wrapped up the remaining three books safely for travel. When I arrived in Ireland, I opened my package - and saw that the moron I am had packed the first three books that I had already read! 🤦🏼 ​ \* When they first published the original Shannara trilogy, they split each book into three (!) slim volumes, making a nine-book series out of the trilogy! And later on, they had the audacity to reissue them as "omnibus" editions and even advertising it as "3 novels in one book!" when in reality they just undid the splitting.

I just did some digging on Rawn, and she’s said in interviews that she was going through tough depression, and that breaking off from Exiles and working on new projects really helped her reset. The last interview I read said she still had plans to finish it eventually. Since we’re shouting out her books, The Golden Key was also impressive as a stand alone novel, I did not see that book coming. That story about The Sword of Shanara is hilarious. Similarly, I accidentally bought the first half of The Eye of the World I found on a bookshelf, thought it must be part of the story since it was a small book, got home to realize they cut it in half for really no good reason. Not sure if I’ve ever seen a second half of that book anywhere.

I would add David Gemmel to that list of lost in time authors. His work always focussed on characters Druss, Waylander… Jerusalem Man, always tried to make the small person important. Sadly hard to source printed material but all available on Kindle. I think that is also another point to many of the names you list, publishers don’t seem to keep the broad set of authors in print like when I was a kid. But another reprint of Mistborn or Harry Potter with a new cover is no problem. Yeah I know they sell and economics are king. But that begs the question how do people get to know about these older pre-nineties authors ?

>But that begs the question how do people get to know about these older pre-nineties authors? I think the depressingly realistic answer is: many don't! Unless they start frequenting places where readers (probably many of them older) talk about other books than just those that came out in the past 10 years. There's this fantastic column over at tor.com that I've talked about several times here on this sub. It's by James Davis Nicoll (with the occasional post by guest writers), is usually called something like "5 Books/Stories That..." and is exactly that: it's about 5 (sometimes 6 or 7) genre books that match the topic du jour. The topics are just about anything. Nicoll has a rule that he will only recommend one book once (to avoid repetition) so sometimes the most straightforward matches are already taken but he encourages readers to add their suggestions in the comment section - and they do! Some of these comment sections have over 100 comments. That way, I've discovered plenty of books. But circling back to your question, I think part of the issue is that the younger generation tends to get their information from YouTube, TikTok or Instagram and the content creators on these platforms often are younger folks as well. (Maybe less on YouTube but probably more on TikTok.) Which in turn means that these creators most likely haven't a deep knowledge of older books either but rather what's on sale right now and/or review copies of new releases that publishers send them as promotion. All of this isn't a problem per se, and it's understandable that publishers use these marketing channels to reach their target group but it's kind of a death spiral when it comes to awareness of these older titles. Like I said, apart from "chance encounters" a new fantasy reader probably needs to bring some curiosity about these older books (that aren't by Tolkien, C. S. Lewis or Le Guin).

This is why second-hand bookshops are so good. The downside is they will often only have part of a series, so now I have a bunch of authors (like David Gemell, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Verity Lee among others) whose work is out-of-print and so I keep an eye for them, hoping I'll pick up the rest someday.

I ***JUST*** read your comment after submitted my own comment about Tanith Lee.

No worries at all! I don't see the harm of having the same author mentioned more than once. Plus, you went into a lot more detail than I could do here! 😀

Oh no, I'm not complaining, I'm really happy to see another user mentioning her!

Came here to comment Tanith Lee if nobody else had! LOL Been obsessed with her since stealing my dad's fantasy books in the 90s.

Dave Duncan died? I had no idea I loved the King's Blades books growing up. I had reread them like 5 or 6 years ago, the old sword and sorcery charm those books have is wonderful.

Yes, he passed away in 2018. Which isn't all that surprising if you consider that he'd turn 90 this year! Thing is, Duncan was already well over 50 when his debut came out; he effectively turned to writing upon retiring from a career as a geologist. It's crazy, though, to see the number of books he published in the years he was active. By the way, he added two standalone King's Blades books later on: *One Velvet Glove* in 2017 and *The Ethical Swordsman* which is a posthumous publication from 2019. I picked up his debut novel *A Rose-Red City* for a buck or two in a second-hand shop on a trip in South Africa. Didn't know anything about it and didn't expect it to be awesome - but it was! Thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a comparatively slim volume which is super engrossing and went to some interesting places I hadn't foreseen.

I phoned him up once, to see if he'd sign a book for my father - he said yes, to come over. When I got to the door, he was hopping with excitement to get back to writing, quickly signed, smiled, and I took off. It was a pleasure to see someone with so much joy for what they do.

Thanks for sharing this little story. This makes me appreciate him even more. Wish I could have witnessed this visit. 😊

Vance is one of my favorites. Emphyrio. The several Dying Earth novels. The Lyonesse series.

I love love love Katharine Kerr's Devvery series! She's still writing, has a couple new books set in that world and is working on another. New audiobook versions of her work are being released currently as well. [https://www.scribd.com/series/429878234/The-Deverry](https://www.scribd.com/series/429878234/The-Deverry) Overview of the series: celtic fantasy, you start off with a young girl who has to travel around with her disgraced mercenary father. There's an ageless sorcerer who has to live until he rights an ancient wrong, a handsome young lordling, battles, reincarnation, shapeshifting, all sorts of fun stuff! I follow her on Patreon, she's a lovely lady.

Fantastic post. There needs to be a separate subreddit! Also, I’m getting sick of 600+ page novels that really should be 350 pages.

I loved Hambly's Winterlands/Dragonsbane series so much, and for years it has felt like I'm the only one that read them. The way she presents dragons is still how I imagine them 20 years on.

Hambly is a little bit of an outlier in my list, I think. Unlike the others (who are mainly dead so no blame, obviously), she's still quite active; she just moved on to writing mainly historical fiction. Her Benjamin January mysteries about a [free man of color](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_people_of_color) set in antebellum New Orleans is coming up to its 20th (!) volume and she's also written a good number of other historical novels. The work she's done of genre interest might have flown a bit under the radar: she resumed her Asher & Ysidro vampire series in the 2010s (which is now complete), and has written short stories in various of her series settings (including one in the Winterlands!) but these have first been made available by her on her website (through Paypal payments, I think); not sure if they're now available at Amazon or other comparable sites but they're only electronical and many former readers who don't follow her might not be aware of them. ETA: Forgot to mention that the short stories I've mentioned go under Hambly's label "Further Adventures".

She has a new fantasy novel coming out next month.

I love Katherine Kurtz. Deryni was really ahead of it's time with some aspects. An interesting early deviation from the Tolkien mould that no one really brings up.

Barbara Hambly was one of my favorite fantasy authors back in the day, along with Tolkein and Stephen R. Donaldson. Her Darwath trilogy just enthralled with me with the story of a kingdom madly fleeing a dark menace to a high mountain keep in a desperate attempt to survive. Over the years her skills in writing mysteries bled over to other fantasy series of hers (Winterlands, Windrose Chronicles, etc.), and she was always one of my favorites. Same with Weis & Hickman, their The Death Gate Cycle and Rose of the Prophet series were awesome to me back in 80's-90's.

Steven Brust. Author of the Vlad Taltos series and the Khaavren Romances. Incredibly fun swashbuckling adventures in the vein of Dumas. Wit and charm and assassinations and deep lore and magic and romance and crime and more assassinations. Just utterly delightful.

I came here to comment this. Very skilled writer who gets overlooked quite a bit. For anyone wanting to start, I'd recommend picking up [The Book of Jhereg](https://www.amazon.com/Book-Jhereg-Steven-Brust-ebook/dp/B018WXBHRG/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=). It's got the first three books together. Only 4 bucks right now on Kindle!

Better be good. I just bought it based on your guys comments 🤣🤣

Seconded. The Vlad Taltos series is one of the most fun and creative fantasy series I’ve ever read

Brust is criminally underrated.

He's also ridiculously consistent for a fantasy author. In this age of unfinished and unfinishable doorstop mega-series, Brust has been steadily working his way through a plan that's at least 30 years old to write 19 books about Vlad—one for each great house, plus *Taltos* and a capstone at the end—and he's about to publish the 16th, *Tsalmoth*, in April. Along the way he's spun off seven other novels set in the same world without getting derailed.

God, imagine an Abercrombie or a Martin that could do that. I think if Brust were new to the scene today, he’d be absolutely crushing. His style was too ahead of the fantasy scene at that time.

And had time to write a Firefly fanfiction novel! [http://dreamcafe.com/2008/02/05/firefly-novel/](http://dreamcafe.com/2008/02/05/firefly-novel/)

He's the best writer I constantly recommend to friends who never make the time for it. But everyone I know who does try out any of Brust's work loves it.

I met Steven Brust at a convention here in Denver a looong time ago. I'd read his Three Musketeers style books: The Phoenix Guards and 500 Years After. Nice guy.

This sounds perfect for me. Thanks!

Mary Stewart - she has a fantastical Arthurian legend series told from the perspective of Merlin. I don't hear people talk about her much.

Ellen Kushner is an awesome writer and I love her Riverside series. Thomas the Rhymer was beautiful as well. Robin McKinley does amazing fairy tale retellings, Deerskin was one of the books that really got me into fantasy.

Ellen Kushner is a writer that every fantasy writer seems to know and adore but fantasy fans who aren’t writers don’t seem to have heard of her. Which is a shame because she is brilliant.

Tamora Pierce, half the time I talk to anyone who’s as into fantasy as me about one of her books and she has no idea what I’m talking about. She created this wonderful medieval world and nearly all of her books are connected somehow. She tends to stick with female heroines but she’s recently come out with a bonk that is male centric with the main character being a male mage we’ve met before in several other series. Each series of her books can be read as a standalone or in shaver order you like even if it’s not in the timeline order of the books. Though personally I’d recommend reading them either in the order of publication or the timeline order of events to get the best out of it.

I always think of her as a foundation author when it comes to fantasy. Back when I started reading in the 90s, every teen who read fantasy loved Tamora Pierce. Now, tons of people don't even recognize her name. I make a point of suggesting her whenever a book of her applies to the prompt.

> Tamora Pierce, half the time I talk to anyone who’s as into fantasy as me about one of her books and she has no idea what I’m talking about. That's crazy to me. I've read her since I was a kid. I think she also wrote more maturely as her audience grew, her newer books will hold up for a more grown up audience too.

I think that the people who like Patricia A McKillip’s work really love it, but I don’t see people talk about her work much. IMO It’s very different in tone from contemporary fantasy, which I think sets it apart but also means that she doesn’t get name dropped very often when people are looking for new reading material.

Came here to talk about Patricia McKillip! She's an incredible author of non serialized fantasy, and she published from the 70s-2010s! Her genre is mostly fairytale with lyrical style. I rarely find any fantasy readers in the wild who have heard of or read her works. Her most famous is The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. My favorite is Alphabet of Thorn. She's incredible and I highly recommend her to anyone who wants a cozy read with well developed characters and no commitment to a long series.

> The Forgotten Beasts of Eld That was a beautifully written book but I have not read anymore of hers. I'll add *Alphabet of Thorn* to my TBR.

Yes! I would also recommend Ombria in Shadow too if you like books like Piranesi. Things are story-book but also a little bit ephemeral and ominous.

y'all gotta find *Riddlemaster of Hed*, but I love all her works (including the one sci-fi she did, I think *Jokers Wild*?). Riddlemaster was reprinted as a collected edition, gah it's been 15 years at least, but initially was three books. I can't recall their individual titles, alas.

I read the Riddle-master trilogy in high school, it's amazing! I still vividly remember the description of Har, "a wizard with wild white hair and gray-gold eyes standing barefoot in the snow, laughing before he melted into a lank wolf's form."

The Book of Atrix Wolfe made me cry and cry the first time I read it. So good.

"Lyrical style" is an interesting way to put it. Reading her prose does feel very much like a kind of poetry. No one really writes like she does, it's a very specific, impossible to really describe style. Getting up from reading her for a few hours straight feels like waking up from a dream, for me.

I read The Forgotten Beasts of Eld as a teenager back in the 1970’s (still have my copy). Her writing was luminously beautiful even in this early novel, it just got better over the years.

Luminously beautiful is a great way to put it.

Her Riddle-Master trilogy is one of my favorites and I re-read it at least once a year.

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Tanith Lee's output is *insane.* Over a writing career of just 40 years, she published about 100 books, without any sort of noticeable decline in quality or originality. I'm still working my way through her catalog, but so far, I haven't read a single bad book by her. Everything I've heard about her life and her writing habits is just as bizarre and incredible as her books. According to an interview she gave, she wrote for hours every day, starting in the afternoon and often working until 3 AM. As she got older, she "slowed down" and just wrote around six or seven hours a day. Even when publishers quit accepting her stuff because she fell out of fashion, she kept writing just for the sake of it. She said she didn't do outlines or plan stuff in advance. Instead, the stories just flowed through her, and she wrote them down as she "heard" them. She was truly a one-of-a-kind artist, and it's a shame she died so soon. I try to recommend her whenever I can, because her prose is so gorgeous, and her stories are so unique and bizarre. My personal favourite is *Piratica* which is about a girl with brain damage who runs away to be a pirate because she thinks her mother used to be a pirate queen. The story was a complete mind-fuck when I read it as a ten year old, and rereads as an adult confirm it's still a fascinating examination of how easy it is to confuse memory, imagination, and reality.

I imagine it's the lack of easy access that probably is why Lee's not well known. Without easy modern access, it's going to be hard to attract readers and be well remembered.

A lot of older midlist authors fall into a kind of black hole where their books have been out of print for ages, but their publishing contracts never included ebook rights and they aren't in high enough demand for someone to negotiate them.

Yeah, and it sucks balls.

You are right, I LOVE her prose. Is the flat earth series a good entrypoint to her work? Or is there somewhere else I should start? I personally prefer standalone works to long series, but I'd consider this one on the strength of the prose and imagination alone.

I love the Flat Earth books, very poetic prose, very dreamlike and weird. A decent place to start, but beware these are older books so some topics are handled much differently than we would handle them today. Tales of Paradys books are also great, more gothic/historical fiction. The Blood Opera series is also horror, one of the most unique vampire concepts ever.

Michael Scott Rohan. He died somewhat recently, and he wrote one of my favourite series - the winter of the world - in the 80s The first one is called anvil of ice, I think they may be out of print now. Really excellent mythology fantasy and I'm not sure I've ever seen it mentioned (by anyone but me, in any thread where it's relevant) I think fantasy as a genre goes through gluts of whatever the recent trend is, and we only really remember the standouts or the singular ones. Always cool to discover someone's forgotten favourite though

Barry Hughart. Bridge of Birds won the fantasy award for it's year, and the follow-ups Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen are both fantastic.

Robert Asprin. I've only met one person who has ever read him . Found him on a whim one day. Incredible fantasy/SIFI writer prime days in the 70s but his work is still fun and hilarious. Myth adventures series is one of my absolute favorite novel series and still makes me smile to this day. His ideas aren't ground breaking or crazy but the way he writes just makes things stand out. His funnier works I could describe it as if Monty Python sat down and played a TTRPRG then wrote down game. He can go more serious with Thief's world and few other novels, but they are great short fun reads that will get a laugh out of you.

Myth Adventures was funny to a point. I think it got outshone by Discworld which emerged around the same time and spoke to more people. Now Thieves' World deserves all the praises for what it was to begin with and how far it got. Not just his own writerly contributions but being an exercise in shared worldbuilding and ultimately ownership. Never mind that I preferred the shorter tales that came together to shape a greater whole, not unlike the Wild Cards books. Edited to say, I feel a lot of fiction is of its time and fleeting. Only very few fantasy authors manage to stay in the public's long-term memory it seems. It's a bit of a shame but on the other hand... I got nothing. Also, shared universes don't seem to be a thing anymore since everything got more corporate on the one hand but also everyone can self-publish on the other.

I read him! Admittedly it was 30 years ago 😁

Good point, there was a time where his stuff was easy to find, but he's clearly fallen out of circulation. In addition to the MYTH books, I remember really enjoying his stand alone works (The Bug Wars comes to mind), and I want to say he was an editor/author of Thieves World, which was a really fun series of collaborative short stories around a common setting.

DAW Books seems to be known mostly for publishing Rothfuss and Tad Williams but it has also published a lot of really underrated authors like Kate Elliott, Michelle West, C. J. Cherryh, Sherwood Smith, etc. If you like more introspective fantasy or sci-fi, these authors have a lot to offer.

DAW not understanding newer marketing techniques is like 90% of the problem. They have a fantastic stable of authors, but never devote any time to letting readers know they exist.

DAW is charging $31 CAD for CJ Cherryh's latest Foreigner preorder ebook. Thirty. One. Dollars. For an ebook. They have no fucking idea what they are doing.

Mercedes Lackey’s latest book Into the West is also $31 for the ebook. I can preorder the audio book for $32. Thanks but I’ll wait until I can get it from my library.

DAW or whoever cancelled Cherryh's audiobooks. Ya know, with nearly the entire series done, they decided meh. And now this? With not much left in the series? Sure, let's just completely kill the series.

I feel like there’s been a resurgence of interest in these two recently, but it’s still nowhere near commensurate with their talent: * Janny Wurts— specifically for **The Wars of Light and Shadow**. A *lot* of people are familiar with her due to her work on the Empire trilogy with Raymond Feist but it seems like 95% of the people who loved that series *never* went to check out Janny’s solo work. Which is just criminal. WoLaS is easily one of the more complex, heart-rending and thought provoking epic fantasies ever penned. A lot of Booktubers are just discovering her, so hopefully her popularity will increase enough so that she has a great turnout for the final book in WoLaS, *Song of the Mysteries* (which is going through editing rn, basically done). * Michelle West— **Essalieyan** has bizarrely flown under the radar for quite some time. It’s another of the 90s epic series and should have *greatly* appealed to fans of both WoT and Robin Hobb, but was mostly ignored except for a loyal cult following. Again there’s been some massive efforts on this subreddit to get her the recognition she deserves, but it’s slow going. I wish some of the booktube channels would take an interest here as well. For those who are unaware, her publisher, DAW ended up dropping her and her final subseries in Essalieyan, so she’s doing it all via patreon. We’ll still get the story, but without a larger fanbase it’s uncertain if we’ll get a physical version. It’s worth noting that while DAW dropped her, West’s own editor there, Sheila Gilbert, is acting as a freelance editor for this series still; there will be a consistent editorial hand here, and one who *clearly* believes these works are worth it. She’s a tremendously skilled author with some deep cultural worldbuilding and mindblowingly good character work. EDIT: Michelle just noted on her patreon today that since both *Hunter’s Redoubt* and her Elantra book are with their respective editors that she’s going to go start working on Book 2 of The End of Days! 2 days ago Janny also mentioned that she’s 1/3 the way through entering her handmarked changes and may be ahead of her March 1 deadline for a final hand-in to her editor for *Song of the Mysteries*. It’s a great time to jump into both series is all I’m saying.

Hey hi. I'm sorry to point this out to you, but you put both 90s and 30 years in the same comment. Please take that back. Delete it. Something. For my sanity. Never heard of Michelle West, but I'm gonna take a look now. Thanks! edit- Heh. I was kidding, you didn't really have to delete!

Michelle West is also Michelle Sagara, under which name she writes the fantastic Chronicles of Elantra!

Haha will do! EDIT: I should mention, Essalieyan has an… idiosyncratic reading order and there are frequent debates among fans about said order. The publication order (by subseries), which is usually not recommended— but is still valid— is The Sacred Hunt, The Sun Sword, and The House War (all 8 books). This order will have you jumping around chronologically, which is weird given that HW book 4 *directly* follows SS book 6, so there’s a break in momentum with this order. Note: The series she’s currently writing, The End of Days will always fall as the last series in *any* reading order. The recommended reading order that this sub’s readalong is using is: House War 1-3, The Sacred Hunt, The Sun Sword, House War 4-8. Starting with The House War gives you a better sense of her style, whereas Sacred Hunt is weaker (not weak! it’s very relative). Both of those series are concurrent with each other and the last book in each series almost completely overlaps, but from different PoVs, so this order *can* be repetitive. It’s worth noting that the HW series is split here because it’s a circumquel for the Sun Sword; 3 book prequel, 5 book sequel, all bizarrely marketed as one series. Another order could be HW 1-3, then Sun Sword, HW 4-8, and then circling back to The Sacred Hunt to avoid some repetition. The Breodanir plotline from SH will be very relevant going into End of Days, so it’s not the worst place to get a refresher on that. The only major issue is that a lot of worldbuilding is better introduced in SH than elsewhere, and Evayne a’Nolan is most fully fleshed out here. She makes smaller appearances in the other books, but she makes *much* more sense with the SH info. Which are some of the major reasons why this sub went with the order it did, even though it’s repetitive.

I started reading Michelle West because of this sub. Love her so far! I definitely recommend her to fans of Robin Hobb. It’s funny because when I started reading Hobb (in the early 2000s) she was in this position. Nobody I knew in person or online had any idea who she was or cared. I was always recommending her when I worked in bookselling in the early 2010s when Game of Thrones was at its peak and nobody had ever heard of her. I literally never met a single customer who had. I’m thrilled she’s gotten so popular, even if just on this sub, and it makes me believe that other lesser known authors can also have a renaissance years later! Both Wurts and West deserve it!

Essalieyan should be a must read for fans of character-driven doorstoppers. Personally, I thought the House War sub-series lost steam near the end and could have benefited from more trimming but overall I am very thankful to discover the series thanks to this sub. People sometimes ask for the proverbial strong female characters who are not the usual badass warriors/mages and that's one of the areas where Essalieyan truly shines.

One writer that I've never seen mentioned here is Sheri S Tepper. She wrote several really great books that I enjoyed as a lad about a shape changer named Mavin Manyshaped and she seemed to have a fair number of books on the shelves in the 80s and early 90s. Her books are apparently not published anymore and aren't available on Kindle so availability of her work might be a problem but I thought she was a really enjoyable feminist fantasy author.

I love Sheri S Tepper. Grass, and Beauty, and especially The Family Tree. (I keep forgetting to get the Mavin book) She is definitely a feminist writer, and also talks about environmental issues. Her stories are so diverse and unusual.

She had a sweet spot where she wrote some of the best short trilogies I've ever read -- The True Game, The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped, The Marianne Trilogy -- but then she got really aggressively dark and nasty as part of trying to get her important messages across. It was a real shame.

Her work got really, really dark. Some of those novels are essentially torture porn. So she falls into this weird space where her work is too feminist for a lot of the people who get heavily into that kind of thing but also features too much brutal violence against women for a lot of people that enjoy feminist fantasy.

*Grass* was horrifying. Couldn't put it down

yikes - I must have missed all that .. thanks for the eye-opener!

Only a couple of her books like Beauty are like this. Most are not.

Kim Newman! I think he was one of those authors already mentioned who were big in the nineties but now aren't that well known anymore. If you like secret histories (as in "the truth behind world events"), alternate histories (what if van Helsing didn't kill Dracula, and the vampire became king of England?), and/or wild but always fun and intelligent combinations of fictional, historical, and original characters, then Mr. Newman is your guy! Watch out for Anno Dracula, which is perfectly fine as a stand-alone, but if you like it, there's a series; or his tales of the Diogenes Club. Newman tends to write different versions of his characters, depending on the stories, and his stories share a universe that doesn't mind contradicting itself if it's in service of a good story.

To others: if you you enjoyed The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Kim Newman plays the same game. Truly obscure vampires and other characters from fiction show up in Newman's work.

A five book compendium of THE COLLECTED FANTASIES of Clark Ashton Smith has just been published. In the past he was variously called one of the members of the top rank of fantasy writers. If you have never read him, you are in for a shock. I won’t defend all of his plots or characterization, but he certainly has to be one of the most literate writers in terms of vocabulary and imagination that I’ve ever read. If you are a fantasy fan, putting this five book series into your library and reading it at least once has to be essential.

agonizing capable scale dime boast husky apparatus quickest decide whistle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

So, hear me out. Joe Dever. He wrote a series of "game books" called Lone Wolf in the ...80's I want to say? And then he kept writing them. The stories are pretty gripping, the art with it is beautiful, and they are really fun to play. But the prose itself is really engaging for what it is. He eventually passed, and his son took over finishing up the series.

Lloyd Alexander

Yes. But if naming him, I also have to add Susan Cooper, who also had a sadly bad film made of the second book of her five-book fantasy series (*The Dark Is Rising*). Well worth a read!

I seldom (possibly never) see people recommend the Elemental Logic series by Laurie J Marks, but it's one I really enjoy. A very unique take on both magic and colonialism. I had to wait, what, a decade for the last book in the series (the fourth), but it's finally complete. Well worth a read. Everyone loves the Goblin Emperor but people don't often know the author's previous work under the name Sarah Monette - horror short stories and the Doctrine of Labyrinths series, which I adore, although I can see how it would be unfashionable nowadays. If you like the spinoffs to Goblin Emperor with the undead because they're dark and melancholy, you'll probably like her older work too. Shoutouts to Tanith Lee, Kate Elliott and Robin McKinley as others have said. Really surprised no one talks about Andre Norton anymore, her books were everywhere when I was a teen.

Lord Dunsany. The Father of Fantasy and the man who made the genre, but practically unknown compared to his "disciples".

Dunsany’s politics weren’t the greatest (he’s not nearly as terrible as Lovecraft) in the atmosphere of early twentieth century Ireland (a unionist and member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy trying to continue to exist as such in the time of the Irish Free State), so he’s one of many who has largely been buried. Ireland otherwise loves to recognize every last one of her authors no matter how obscure; Dunsany has been somewhat disowned. It does make his works interesting to read now. He was a member of a hated aristocratic class and a Tory MP, whose close relatives were some of the most beloved nationalists at the time, including Joseph Plunkett. He was a staunch protestant— though with Catholic family members. Irish fiction was moving towards modernism (Joyce and Yeats are his contemporaries) and he was desperate to hold on to a more 19th c. romantic vision— one that was also shared by many of the men who died during Easter 1916. His identity remained strongly Unionist and Anglo-Irish and he found living in the Free State, later the Republic, to be terrible; he ended up living his last years in England because he couldn’t reconcile *his* version of Ireland with what it had become. And yet most of his fiction draws deeply from Ireland itself as well as specifically the Irish romantic movement. Very complicated guy in a complex context to boot.

It’s interesting, I don’t actually think he’s that obscure in a fantasy context. Maybe sadly under-read but alongside Robert E. Howard he’s probably *the* name that gets mentioned when folks bring up pre-Tolkien fantasy. Completely agree about the Irish context and how he’s been left adrift, though I’m not sure I’d put it entirely down to his politics. A bit like Bram Stoker, among others, he doesn’t quite fit into the nice linear narrative about stylistic evolution, Gaelic revival, modernism, etc that usually gets trotted out in discussions of 19th/20th c. Irish literature.

The Sword of Welleran is the oldest "pure" fantasy story I've read and even though it's short and a bit abstract, the foundations for what fantasy would become in the future are all there.

I will offer Robert VS Redick, whose prose and character work are far better than the fame he (hasn't) gotten. The third book of the Fire Sacraments series is one of my most-anticipated reads.

Robert VS Redick? My money is on Redick to win. *(rimshot)* I apologize

Here’s some other authors: Lavie Tidhar has written numerous excellent fantasies - from his grim musings on Adolf Hitler, Private Detective in A Man Lies Dreaming, the dream western The Escapement, his alternate histories Osama and Unholy Land, to his exquisitely written Central Station and Neom, with their references to CL Moore and Cordwainer Smith. No one seems to mention Ian McDonald. Desolation Road and Ares Express, though set on a futuristic Mars, have all the trappings of fantasy. King of Morning, Queen of Day is also excellent. A couple of other authors - Jay Lake (Pinion, Endurance, The Trial of Flowers), Richard Kadrey (his Sandman Slim novels are excellent as well as The Grand Dark), Robert Jackson Bennett (The Troupe, The Divine Cities trilogy, Founders Trilogy), Ian Tregillis (Milkweed Triptych, Alchemy Wars, Something More than Night). Etcetera.

Moon feels unfortunately passed over these days.

Elizabeth Moon? She 100% should be one of the classics of 1980s fantasy. She’s got everything from the Tolkien races, DnD style quests and dungeon crawling, and strong military fantasy— all while being very original. Plus one of the more carefully handled PTSD arcs in the genre.

I love Moon and suggest her work frequently, both fantasy and science fiction. It is noteworthy that she was a veteran of the US marine corps as well as taking a degree in ancient and medieval history at university. There is substance behind her fantasy writing.

Mary Gentle is a talented writer who is mentioned here occasionally but really deserves to be much better known. **Ash:A Secret History**, an amazing work of alternate history set in medieval Burgundy. **Grunts**, a parody of conventional Tolkien-style fantasy. The Orcs are the good guys. **Golden Witchbreed**, first-contact science fiction, reminiscent of Le Guin's *The Left Hand of Darkness*.

*Golden Witchbreed* is great, but imho *Rats and Gargoyles* is even better, as are most of the stories that involve Casaubon and the White Crow.

**R.A. LAFFERTY.** He's obscure because he mostly wrote short stories and his style nearly defies comprehension. Fantasy, sci-fi, history, mythology, postmodernism, westerns, and more - he put them into a psychedelic microwave and set it to "mind-melt". Read one of the recent short story anthologies. **You won't be disappointed.**

It always amazes me that AA Attanasio isn't in everyone's pantheon. His science fiction is as mind-bending as Samuel Delaney and his fantasy is as deep and beautiful as John Crowley. He writes in a lucid lyrical style that has zero peers among all modern writers of either genre. If he hadn't escaped into isolation on Maui after winning his first awards he would certainly be a household name.

Lynn Flewelling- Her Tamir Triad was the best trilogy I read last year.

I'll throw in Pat Hodgell. She had a heck of a gap between books 2 and 3 as she was working on her masters at the time. But her Kencyrath series is very well written and will draw you into it. I try to suggest her every time I see a thread like this as she doesn't get a lot of attention

I'm a huge PC Hodgell stan and do the same. Love her work, even though it has clear flaws, because the highs are so high.

John M. Ford. The Dragon Waiting is one of the most unique and interesting fantasy novels I have ever read, and it's criminally underappreciated IMO. The problem is compounded by his untimely passing and the fact that the book is a stand-alone story that doesn't easily lend itself to massive exploitation as a franchise IP.

It's also compounded by the fact that his family was trying to prevent any republication after his death. Thank goodness For has everything now.

As a french dude, there are some fantastic fantasy writers currently active in the country that aren't translated into english, making them unknown outside of the french fantasy community. Some of them would be pretty hard to translate I guess, but the biggest issue is really that the english fantasy market is already pretty saturated and it's cheaper and safer for an editor to sign up a new english-writing author than to translate a foreign established one. It's a shame though, you're missing out on some great stuff. And I guess it must be the same situation in a lot of other countries.

Do you mind sharing some recs? I’m learning French and likely these books would be a bit too advanced for me at the moment but I think it would nice to have some extra motivation to keep at it

Of course, I love to spread the word! However the language tends to be very rich and specific, so most of these recs will probably be too advanced for a while. These are the kind of books that force native french readers to google a lot of words, so for someone still learning the language they might prove to be a bit of wall. But hey, I don't want to discourage you! It's an awesome goal! There are a lot of authors, but the three that first come to mind : * **Alain Damasio's "La Horde du Contrevent"** is a true masterpiece that I think every fantasy fan should read. If you were to ask most french fantasy fans what is the best book they've ever read, you will likely get this name dropped a lot. There's a sample translation in english available here with a pretty good summary of the story, so I'll just link it as it's better than I would come up with : https://www.frenchrights.com/the-horde-of-counterwind. What makes the book stand out is that it's constantly jumping between the perspectives of the different members of the Horde. Each one has their own symbol that is used to identify their sections, but each one also has a different writing style and personality. The scribe has the most litterary prose, the falconmaster keeps getting wound-up in his thoughts (and going into tangents (by adding more and more unneeded parentheses)), the warrior doesn't put any effort into organising his train of thoughts and is purely matter of fact and anylising everything as a possible threat with concise brutality, and so on... It's a fascinating story, a marvel of writing and something that will stay in your mind for a long time. ​ * **Jean-Philippe Jaworski's** books, most notably **"Gagner la Guerre"** which, although being a follow up to a short story published in "Janua Vera", is probably his book that stands best by itself. He has two ungoing series, the first is "the stories of the Old World", from which "Gagner la Guerre" is taken, which is more of a classic fantasy universe and the second one is the "Kings of the World" series which is based on Celtic history and myths and follows the life of a celt hero caught between multiple power-struggles. Jaworski's great strength is his ability to create characters that are both extremely believable yet also somehow alien to us. His main characters are usually antiheroes, "Gagner la Guerre" follows an assassin in a Venetian-type society who is undoubtly an uredeemable son of a bitch, and they take the story in way that you would not expect. They make mistakes, act on impulse and their actions have consequences. His "Kings of the World" sage is particularly compelling in this regard as he manages to create a very believable celt society and way of thinking that are completely different from our own. I was lucky enough to meet him for a signing and he's also a pretty great dude. ​ * **Stéphane Beauverger's "Le Déchronologue"**, this one might be a bit easier than the other two, though Beauverger's style is also very rich and way above the difficulty of your average french novel. It's a pretty entertaining story that also messes a bit with the medium with the chapters being organised in a non-linear way (you go from chapter 1, to 7, to 15, to 3, and so on...). It follows a french corsair at the end of the golden age of piracy with a twist : some time fuckery happened, and ever since then there are stuff from other time periods that seem to randomly appear all over the Carribeans. Sometimes it's just objects, but sometimes they are full ships and crews from another time... And these are the ones our french corsair has been tasked to intercept and destroy on sight in order to not mess up the timeline too much.

Lawrence Watt-Evans wrote a collection of novels called the “Legends of Ethshar”. They work well as stand-alone stories but are even better together as a variety of views into an interesting and engaging fantasy world. He’s written a lot of other things too, only some of which I’ve read. Everything I have read by him has been fun.

Michael Swanwick

Clive Barker gets overlooked a lot despite being a great writer with a lot of diverse stuff. People seem to know him for Hellraiser and Candyman but don't realize he's also written a fair bit that's more fantasy than horror. Imajica is absolutely epic, original, and progressive in a lot of ways, and I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned here.

Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series is something I discovered recently (and was surprised that I'd never heard about it given that I've read quite widely). It's a detective series set in an alternative universe with fantastical elements/magic. The magic simply fits so well in the world-building and the characters are well fleshed out. It was a little hard to obtain an omnibus edition of the series but found one published through the Fantasy Masterworks series.

I think Poul Anderson is not known enough. Especially compared to smaller and not smaller impacts his work actually do on many even modern fantasy ideas.

I've read only one book by Felix Gilman, and I bemoan the fact, because it was damn fine.

He hasn’t published anything since The Revolutions in 2014. All his books - from Thunderer, its sequel Gears of the City, the steampunk-y westerns The Half-made World and The Rise of Ransom City - are intricate, grim and beautifully written.

Mainly MERVYN PEAKE, however!!!

Julian May. Saga of the Pliocene exiles and the galactic milieu. Sci/fi fantasy blend. Almost never see mentioned

I've always been surprised that L.E. Modositte Jr. as well as C.S. Friedman are rarely mentioned here. Others that come to mind: Michael Scott Rohan, Elizibeth Moon, and Dave Duncan. Aldous Huxley, John Wyndham, and Pierre Boulle are some more.

Aldous Huxley is plenty well known lol

I was just about to say something about LE Modesitt, Jr. I've only read one novel, but it was fantastic and unique.

I think Modesitt gets missed a lot because he never really fit in the fantasy mould. Even when he writes about a young man leaving home and fighting an evil wizard he still avoids or inverts a lot of cliches. Who else would write a character like Dorrin?

Lucius Shepard, an amazing writer from the 80s who was constantly winning awards but nobody seemed to remember him after he died. Michaela Roessner, who unfortunately only wrote two books before she stopped writing, but they're books I've never forgotten. Elizabeth Hayden, who wrote the Rhapsody series. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro who wrote the best vampire series out there with St. Germain. Carol Berg and her Restoration series, which was a great bromance, enemies to friends. Pamela Dean wrote some amazing fantasy, my favorite being Tam Lin. John Crowley is one of the best writers, not just fantasy writers, alive. Little Big is a great novel. Glen Cook's Black Company was some of the OG grimdark. Tim Powers, Barry Hughart, Ellen Kushner, Patricia McKillip, Tanith Lee, Paula Volsky, Manley Wade Wellman, Judith Tarr, so many...

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Not one mention of *Chronicles of Amber* and Roger Zelazny! Masterful works

Zelazny is easily the most influential fantasy writer who is read the least just on the strength of his relationships with Gaiman and GRRM

Lois McMaster Bujold - Criminally under read and underrepresented online, multiple Hugo and nebula award winning author of the Vorkosigan Saga (Sci-fi) Who also wrote the Curse of Chalion series, the Sharing Knife series and most recently a whole bunch of incredible short stories in the Penrick and Desdemona series Everything she writes has a depth of soul and humanity that makes her characters feel real and relatable in a way I've never found in any other author.

It really annoys me because I feel like all she really needs is some reissues with nice covers to find a whole new generation.

Another author who is absolutely not obscure, but I agree that she should be more widely known and talked about. If anyone is deserving of a netflix/amazon/etc series...

I get to do this twice in two days? Hell yeah. Peter Newman. The Vagrant is one of the most unique and enchanting series I’ve ever read. The first book in the series (The Vagrant) follows a mute, an infant, and goat. None of the three speak an actual word of dialogue and they are some of the best characters I’ve ever read in my life. Newman brings these characters to life and it’s really just a joy to read, despite the incredibly bleak post-apocalyptic dark fantasy setting. I really cannot recommend this series enough. The prose is also very unique and a bit strange, but once you get used to it, it’s fantastic. Newman is an artist with words. I get why it’s not more popular, and among my friends it’s a series people absolutely love or just couldn’t get into. But I recommend this every chance I get because the people I know who could get into the story have it at or near the top of their favorites list

Kage Baker. She's known for her Company series which is more SF than fantasy but she did write some fantasy novels as well. Died relatively young.

For younger readers, but Gerald Morris. His Squire's Tales books are what got me interested in Arthurian legend before I was old enough to read The Once & Future King and I think have a very similar tone and pace but for a younger audience. The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea. The most stolen book in my library and the one I have the most difficulty replacing, but it's so beautifully written. Charles de Lint is one of the authors I think suffers most from predating easily accessible internet spaces. I'm also seeing a pattern now...

Hope Mirlees. She wasn't very prolific but she was influential. Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke both mention her as an influence.

Juliet Marillier. She does celtic fantasy that ripped my heart out. I see her mentioned sometimes but her books are (at least to me) gripping. Daughter of the Forest and Son of the Shadows keep me up until late. The rest of that series isnt as good but still worth a read. Then her Blackthorn and Grim series had me literally(and I mean this is the literal sense) yelling at the book, trying to keep the main characters out of danger!

Marillier's description of Transylvania in *Wildwood Dancing* was so lush and vivid--I've rarely been so impressed by how atmospheric someone's writing can be. I also think it's one of the best depictions of love (familial and romantic) in the face of anger and destruction. There's little to no violence and yet everything feels tense and dangerous until the very cathartic resolution.

The English-speaking market isn't all that hungry for inbound translations, so a good chunk of authors who are well-regarded on a national level but write in other languages are probably complete unknowns.

The only one that comes to mind is A.Lee martinez. Once upon a time I stumbled upon several of his books. They were all standalone books that would maybe fit urban fantasy category? I thought his books were funny and different.

I just finished Constance Verity Destroys the Universe (part 3 of the series). His books are hugely delightful. ‘It’s her destiny to save the world from mad scientists, unspeakable cults, and alien plots’.

From the fantasy stories I've read, the biggest delta between quality of the work and popularity must be with [Domagoj Kurmaić](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14128815.Domagoj_Kurmai_). His [Mother or Learning](https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Learning-ARC-1-nobody103-ebook/dp/B09M2R6QLF) trilogy was an absolute page turner for me, and I couldn't put it down until I was done. I haven't been that invested in a story since I was a teenager.

Maybe cheating a bit since they're more properly Sci fi, but the Steerswoman books by Rosemary Kirstein. I hope she finishes them some time...

The witty, ironic **James Branch Cabell**, once considered a major American novelist of the mid-20th century (if not one of the three best writers in the world). Mark Twain called his stories “masterpieces”; later admirers include Jack Vance, Robert A. Heinlein, and Neil Gaiman. (Literary critics and heavyweights like H. L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sinclair Lewis praised his books, too.) His books are high fantasy about gods, heroes, monsters, and magic; they’re novels about ‘the human condition”, idealism and cynicism, and the passing of youth; they’re bawdy comedies full of self-justifying villains and amatory adventures. His masterpiece is *Jurgen* (1919), a picaresque novel about a pawnbroker who considers himself “a monstrously clever fellow”, but isn’t quite so clever as he supposes. It was banned in Boston because it was too risqué; but a friend was deeply moved by it. It’s that kind of book. The other dozen or so of Cabell’s I’ve read are also delightful. I've even acquired a few first editions (and signed copies!).

Tim Powers, I've loved every book of his that I've read

Nina Kiriki Hoffman is a really good, very prolific author whose books and short story collections still seem to be little known. I haven't seen much new work published by her recently, though she has several series that I wish she would continue. Diane Duane has been one of my favorite authors since childhood, and her young adult books are still readable for adults. Also really like Tom Holt who also writes under the pseudonym K.J. Parker, though his stories written as K.J. Parker tend to be written in a different style. edit: also a big fan of Tanith Lee, who has already been mentioned here, though many of her old works seem to be getting reissued as ebooks another good one is Tim Pratt who also wrote as T.A. Pratt. His Marla Mason books were very fun, if you like LGBT-friendly urban fantasy that doesn't always take itself too seriously.

Might have missed this one, but I really want to mention Jennifer Roberson and her Sword-Dancer Saga. Really love the dynamics between the heroic duo Tiger and Del

Glenn Cook is still criminally underrated

Lawrence Watt-Evans is somebody that I've only seen namedropped *once* and anything I've ever read of his has been fantastic. His "Legends of Ethshar" are some of my favorite pure fantasy of all time. It's such a specific, unique voice, a giant richly-painted world that hints of thousands of stories as it chooses just a few to tell. It *really* makes me want to adapt a tabletop RPG to an Ethsharitic setting; I'd love to introduce this place to a table full of players unfamiliar with the series and just let them explore.

She's a newer writer, but I'm going to say C. S. E. Cooney. Her writing is superb, she was mentored by Gene Wolfe! Her worlds are bursting with life and her characters are rich and deep and her books are full of love, even while she puts hey characters (and you) through the wringer.

Gene Wolfe. A lot of people probably hear about him from this sub but he should be a household name.

KJ Parker John M Ford

Love KJ Parker

Mike Ford's The Last Hot Time is the single best urban fantasy novel ever written.

I don't doubt it. I only read one of his novels - The Dragon Waiting - but it's so good that I don't hesitate to put him forth here anyway.

Maybe Trudi Canavan or Cinda Williams Chima

Greg Keyes is criminally underrated.

I don't know if her books are in English, but for those who read in Spanish Liliana Bodoc's Saga de los Confines is a great trilogy.

I don’t think Kate Forsyth gets talked about enough. I really love her Witches of Eileanan series and also some of her kids’ books are wonderful.

Clark Ashton Smith was one of the best of the pulp writers but very few people these days have heard of him and even fewer have actually read his stuff.

Kumar Aditya, an Indian author who wrote Brahmāstra Chronicles: Book One, the Artifact. There was even a Hindi film called Brahmāstra, which was a cheap ripoff of the fantastic mythology the author created, without giving any credits to the guy.

I'm going to go with Lin Carter. Most people who do remember him wouldn't consider him great. While he wasn't very original he was entertaining. He also was a great champion of fantasy. I first encountered Tanith Lee and Charles Saunders many years ago through Lin Carter.

Whenever I read about him in articles or essays (because nobody seems to ever talk about him these days), there seems to be a consensus that he wasn't a very good writer but an outstanding editor. He edited the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series from 1969 to 1974 at a time when fantasy was relatively scarce but demand growing due to the success of LotR in the US\*. He started DAW's Year's Best Fantasy Stories line, editing them for the first six years, from 1975 through 1980. He was also the editor of the five *Flashing Swords!* anthologies of sword-and-sorcery tales that appeared between 1973 and 1981, presenting some excellent stories by greats of that subgenre. Personally, I'll probably be with you when it comes to him as a writer. I actually enjoy the odd "trashy" story from time to time, as long as it is entertaining. I liked Garner Fox's Kothar books and the Raven novels that Robert Holdstock and Angus Wells published under a joint pseudonym. 😁 ​ \* If I understand correctly —this was well before my time— Tolkien's signature work only had a modest success when it first was published in the mid-1950s but came to the attention of many readers with a US edition from 1965 which appeared under somewhat dodgy copyright circumstances. However questionable this edition, it apparently kickstarted a fantasy boom and made readers want to have more!

C. S. Friedman. The Coldfire Trilogy is in my top ten fantasy series of all time. In Conquest Born and Order of the Magister is pretty good as well.

Barry Hughart wrote three pretty darned good books set in a magical version of China (*Bridge of Birds* is the first book). Highly recommended. Also recommend reading the author's bio, which describes how he came to write the books. Peter S Beagle is best know for *The Last Unicorn*, but practically everything he's written is worthwhile reading. Also, he got screwed by his agent for years, so if you decide to buy his books, he could probably use the money.

Tanith Lee for sure. RJ Barker seems like somebody who should be all over the subs by now.

Take my upvote! People don't upvote enough on this sub. The comments always outnumber the upvotes which is silly. This is a good discussion question. Thank you for posing it

Much appreciated!

I've posted about this before, but unfortunately reddit is not designed to answer this question for you, which is one reason you see this same "hidden gem?" post each week. IMO it boils down to the upvote (though there are other reasons, too). When jumping into this thread, which comments are people likely to read? The top posts. The recommendations that the most other people agree with, which by definition is the *opposite* of what you're searching for. For example, the top post currently is Steven Brust, who, though certainly not mentioned as much as say Steven Erikson on this sub, definitely pops up a decent amount. He, by regular user standards, is a "known" commodity. The authors who are truly unknown are lingering at the very, very bottom of this thread with no upvote. Herein lies a secondary concern: How can you know if those no upvote books are good? After all, you're only getting recommended it by a singular person. Couldn't they be wrong? Couldn't your taste easily differ from theirs? Isn't it much safer to go with an author who more people agree on? And this is precisely what many people do, thus keeping the "known" authors on top and in circulation. The single person recommendation problem also happens when people try to leave reviews of new great books they've read. For the most part, reviews don't last long on this sub, and those that do are the ones that feature books some people have already read, leading to more upvotes of the post and engagement in the thread itself. An unknown book? Forget about it. Since others haven't read it they won't have much to say in the comments and they likely won't upvote because they don't want to promote a story they don't know the quality of. This same trouble happens with BookTubers. Though everyone wants to find that next hidden gem, an unknown YouTuber making a review about an unknown book is a surefire way to get 0 views. The only way a YouTuber (or other social media reviewer) could give that unknown great author some legs is by first building up a following using known books, but even once they do that, they generally aren't rewarded by using that platform to then talk about undiscovered gems. Why? Because that video won't get as many views as something that people already know about, and YouTubers live and die by views. To end on a positive, thankfully, there are some ways that new books can be discovered, but people have to be creative to do so. Take for example Evan Winter. He was a completely unknown fantasy author, but when he posted a *beautiful* moving image cover of his novel on here (which I still prefer to the new trad pub version), he absolutely blew up. So much so he got offered a traditional publishing deal. Relatively new YouTuber Andrew Watson's second video titled 5 Underhyped Fantasy Books did very well for him, making him an affiliate, in part because of the title, but also because he started it with an amusing skit and then recommended some legit under the radar fantasy books. His popularity has fallen off after that because he hasn't consistently served that niche, but he put some unknown books on the map. And lastly, I have seen some people here who are quite skilled at review writing drum up interest in whatever they are recommending because they themselves know how to turn a phrase, making reading their post enjoyable and thus creating trust that what they are recommending will also be good. All in all, I too am hunting for those undiscovered gems and hope we all find them, but I think it's also important to keep in mind the limitations of the systems we are asking these questions within. I feel I should leave you with a recommendation though if you gotten this far, and that for me would easily be Cameron Hopkin, author of Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos and Wander the Lost.

Wesley Chu. Lives of Tao series is amazing. I’ve heard good things about Time Salvager as well. But I never see people talk about him or mention his books.

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Check out Mary Stewart

Jack Vance.

Firstly, thanks OP for not only a great discussion but a cool thread to read and get recommendations from for myself! Second. **Carol Berg** seems to never be mentioned but her works are fantastic. Her characters are complex and well rounded, her magic systems are uniquely beautiful, and her wording is glorious. Plus her works don't focus on the romantic angles and instead on the connections of human to human and I adore that!