Would have to say Stephen King is my favorite author, and with regrets to Rowling, because Harry Potter is amazing, I will say that the Dark Tower series is the best to me.

[QUOTE=Uncle Pony]George R.R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire. The best fantasy series I've read to date. As long as he stays on the same track I'll definately be buying the rest. Book #4 (A Feast For Crows) is out in October and you can preorder it now. He's supposed to finish it up with no more than seven books total.
QUOTE]

He really needs an editor to cut him down. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying he is rubbish. He's not. He writes good stories with some well done characters and decent descriptions. There are so many lesser players I just loose track even with the lists of names and descriptions of who they are.

That in itself tells you something about the books. Not their depth. Don't mistake length for depth. But after reading the first couple of hundred pages of one I read to the end and then thought shall I buy the next one???
the answer was yes and I still haven't read it (lying on the shelf for a year begging me to turn it's cute pages but I ain't being used like that) :D

You must have mistaken Martin for Jordan. :D

Seriously, I had no problems following Martin, but Jordan feels the need to introduce lesser characters in each of his novels. He's lost me a few times.

OK but warning.

Don't read Iain M Banks stories that I recommended.
Cos

SPOILER





The Communists are the heroes!! :)
you might burst a blood vessel or something reading them :p

Nice sense of humor. :D We may get along yet. :icare:

It really depends on what the book is about and how well it's written. I stopped at about 180 pages of Orwell's 1984 because it bored the shit out of me. I've never read Anne Raynd and probably never will because of the political messages in her work. I read to relax. If I want political messages I'll read Micheal Savage, Anne Coulter, or Al Franken. (BTW, I've never read them either.)

Cheers, I do have a sense of humour as well as a political side :)

1984 is a horribly sad story. Iain Banks is normally more upbeat. (not always!)
There are no political rants that I can recall. He's a writer and graduate of English not Politics. He might only mention Communism once in a novel.
It's a way off vision of Communism - wealth for all, drugs for all, no money, smart AI's ruling much, giant intelligent space ships. Violence is rarely fun in the stories and always has consequences

I agree Hyperion to Rise of Endymion are works of a near genuis for sure.
His horror is just as good as Stephen King but can't agree that everything else he does is at the same level of brilliance.

His detective story was average and his latest sci fi silly and not breaking any ground on his original series which remains a classic.