I swear I've read other books, but let me explain what I like about LotR. The fantasy and elves and stuff is not actually the most important part: what I love about it is the great writing, the epic but also deeply emotional plot, the (relative) optimism of the story, and the attention to detail. What I mean by this last point is that even if it's not spelled out explicitly, you can see that Tolkien went to great lengths to make everything make sense. His world is consistent and detailed; you just know that he made sure to check dates and distances, so that when the story splits into multiple PoVs you can know exactly where everyone is at any given time.
And finally, it's a single (long) book. I suppose epic fantasy is what I'm looking for, but I haven't really dared to get into the long series like Malazan or Wheel of Time because they're just so long, and I don't want to read four books before it starts to get good. Ideally this would be either a single book, or a series where you can just read the first book and still get a complete package.
by Gwinbar
2 Comments
Try Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. There are other stories in the universe but they also stand alone. I love her writing.
So there were many shameless ripoffs in the 80s which weren’t bad and some were actually quite good.
Sword of Shannara
The first couple books in the Riftwar series by Feist
Also Janny Wurtz and Feist’s Daughter of the Empire trilogy is so, so good.
My personal favorite Tolkien ripoff: Dennis Mckiernan’s Dark Tide trilogy