Favourite Standalone Fantasy

[nightwalker]

Aussie author K J Bishop's The Etched City is a great read. I'd highly recommend that book.

 

[Ainulindale]

I'm busy reading City of Saints and Madmen, and I'm loving it! It is one of the strangest books I've ever read, with such dry wit from the author.

I especially enjoyed the 'study of the King squid' that included a bibliogropy of 25 pages at the end of the 40 page essay by the estimeed 'squidologist'. As well as 'The strange case of X', I never saw it coming!

The author must be very warped or have way too much time on his hands, either way I am having great fun with this book.

I would like to know, what are his other books like?

More of the same - which as it should be, is not the same at all! City of Saints and Madmen employ stories in the Anbergis setting (one of the best setting in fantastic fiction IMHO), and Jeff has a full length novel coming out called Shriek: an Afterword at the beginning of 2006, that is also in the setting (I will have a early review of this as soon as I get my advanced copy - and have an interview set up with Jeff for the begininng of 2006.). He also has an equally terrific novel, the aforementioned Veniss Underground, I prefer City of Saints and Madmen slightly but many absolutely think Veniss Underground is superior (and it's brilliant no doubt). He has another and more recent collection, Secret Life which has a number of new works, and a collects some of his previous work, which may be in fact his most complete release thus far. It's all inventive, all written by a quality and more than capable writer, it's all wonderfully imaginative

This is one of those authors who I can't recommend enough. He just writes damn good fiction. A personal favorite of mine, and one of the contemporay masters of fanatstic fiction in my mind.

Aussie author K J Bishop's The Etched City is a great read. I'd highly recommend that book.

Kirsten's debut is almost unbelievablly well done - I'm hoping her second effort she is working on is even half as good - as it would denote an excellent novel.

 

[Zenn]

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende of course!

I'm glad I read it when I was 12, I re-read at least twice every year. It's just so enchanting..

 

[shanemckiness]

Tg

Terry Goodkind : Wizard's First Rule. The greatest book ever written!

 

[dojo]

Perdido Street Station by China Mieville is standalone, despite other novels being set in the same world. Personally, I thought it was tripe but the fantasy purists (their problem, not mine) seem to think that it's even better than sliced bread.

i was wondering about this book. i started on it but after i ran into the whole human with bug headed alien girlfriend thing in the first few pages i was turned off to it. that sort of thing weirds me out. is it worth pushing through my xenophobia to finish the book? being particularly partial to humans i'm usually not very keen on "unnatural" relationships, but if it's not overbearing, is the story worth a little discomfort?

 

[Kookamoor]

Terry Goodkind : Wizard's First Rule. The greatest book ever written!

That's part of a multi-book series, though. And it's not finished yet!

 

[manatherindrell]

I really liked Enchantment by Orson Scott Card and
Firebird by Mercedes Lackey.

 

[Brys]

The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce
The Light Ages by Ian R Macleod (there is a sequel, but not in more than a sense than the Scar is a sequel to Perdido Street Station) - and this has been justly compared as an equal achievement to Mieville's PSS.
The Onion Girl by Charles de Lint

As for a short, influential sword and sorcery:
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson

And for something very literary (but with only the mildest elements of fantasy):
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

 

[mrkgnao]

Considering this thread, I realized I have a lot of standalones to recommend:

Fantasy:
War for the oaks by Emma Bull - rock'n'roll and Faerie, but beware the descriptions of 80’s fashion!
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke – Alternative history regarding the history and practice of English magic
Wolf moon by Charles de Lint – werewolf romance
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke – ever wished a book was for real? Be careful…
American gods and Anansi boys by Neil Gaiman – related standalones or a series? Well, they’re great anyway. Oh, and then there’s Stardust, of course.
The princess bride by William Goldman – true love and high adventure!
The barbed coil by JV Jones – strong heroine and a hero to die (well, sigh, anyway) for
Thomas the rhymer by Ellen Kushner – Faerie story based on a folk tale (or song?)
Good omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – funniest Armageddon you’ll ever read
Not before sundown (UK title)/ Troll: A love story (US title) – a man finds a troll baby on the streets of Helsinki…
The war of the flowers by Tad Williams – rock’n’roll and Faerie, again

And, more horror than fantasy:
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood - about the end of the world, and what comes after
Sunshine by Robin McKinley - great vampire story
The historian by Elizabeth Kostova – historians search for the truth of that good old count Vlad Tepes.
Lost souls and Drawing blood by Poppy Z Brite - related standalones or a series? Well, they’re great anyway. But not for those of delicate senses

*mrkgnao*

 

[pink shadow]

Mrkgnao mentioned it above, but I just want to give special attention to The Barbed Coil by J.V. Jones. She's a wonderful author who's not afraid to make the bad guys bad, and her protagonists human. Also mentioned above: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Buy it, read it, love it!

 

[Sitaram]

Ursula LeGuinn

The Left Hand of Darkness
The Lathe of Heaven

by Ursula LeGuinn


She has written other things which are more fantasy than sci-fi, but I have not read those.

 

[DanielTC]

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton.

Awesome book. It is about a program that sends up scoopsats into space, trying to collect extraterrestrial parasites and the like. One of the scoopsats crashed near a very small city; two people looking for the scoopsat goes into the town, basically a ghost town now, everybody seems to have just fallen dead outside their homes. But two people are still alive, an old man and a baby. Project Wildfire is called in to deal with the bacteria that was carried in the scoopsat.

 

[PSYCO]

New Author

"The Elder Staves" by Steven Oliverez was stand alone, as far as I know. It wasn't bad either, especially for his first novel. Interesting ideas: check it out on Amazon.