Fantasy: reliable content

[Bookstore Guy]

guessingo: Joe Abercrombe. Richard Morgan.

R Scott Bakker. 

China Miéville.

Erikson in the violence dept, but he handles it much better than most. 

Scott Lynch in the language dept. 

Barclay can be fairly explicit in terms of sex and violence, but normally he sticks with a few choice swear-words here and there and lots and lots of violence. 

Mark Chadbourn, depending on the series can be explicit. 

A large majority of Urban Fantasy/Urban SF contains lots of language, violence and sex.  There's a reason I call it vamperotica.

[mtbikemom]

   I think Hobb is full of sex, but since it is from a woman's perspective and not over-romanticized (and includes consequences), I guess it doesn't offend me as much as it probably should.

    My latest favorite author of fantasy, J.V. Jones, is more my cup of tea.  Very realistic without slipping into the explicit.  I wouldn't recommend Hobb to a teenager who is trying to live according to biblical standards.  Thanks, all, for the helpful list for this thread for "what to avoid."  From the viewership, as I'd hoped, this has been a resource for more than a few on the subject of reliable content.

   I've got to go on a bit about A Cavern of Black Ice by Jones.  That book was awesome.  So glad there are two more to enjoy.  Original world, beautiful use of language (she is British-born), great pacing, sensible magic system (so far) and complex characters that ring true and change/grow.  It is bleak and dark, but not without joy.  Don't let the awful cover art dissuade.  Tor. . . .

   I would not have discovered Jones were it not for http://elitistbookreviews.blogspot.com/   Check them out if you have not already.  I start at the bottom of the review for "content" to be sure the review is worth my time.  Unless it's one of their famous flames, which are too much fun.

   I'm actually on Robin Hobb's Golden Fool right now.  Liveship Traders, her second trilogy, was very violent and sometimes bordered on the ridiculous, but I read it and mostly enjoyed it.  I love it that there is a character that ties the three trilogies together and that I figured it out before it was too, too obvious.  Never mind exactly when.  As good as Hobb is (was), I doubt I'll be back for a re-read.  Thankful that my library stocks all of her books that are worth reading.  Here's hoping she gets back on track, too.

   I also read Carol Berg's newest, since I love her, called Spirit Lens.  If you have to have an action scene or some kind of blood-letting every few chapters, skip this one.  I hung on through about 250 pages of nothing-much because I know she always delivers and, for me, the end was worth the effort.  Carol is a great writer, but this book is not her best.  Having said that, I am eager for the next installment.  The characters might have taken time to grow on me, but they are under my skin now and there they will stay.

   She and Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss are the only authors I plan to pre-order through Amazon this year and next.  And Jones, probably, if I get that far.

[douglas]

You haven't gone back to the Miles Vorkosigan series to actually read about the title character?

Not that Hobb is bad, but I personally think Bujold is better.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Wow. I love Shards of Honor. I do also love the Miles books, but Shards of Honor does an emotional number on me, especially the end (not counting the sidestory). And Barrayar is such a rollercoaster, culminating in that fantastic "shopping in the capital" line.

I understand different people have different experiences reading books, but Bujold is my favorite writer.

[Pink Bunkadoo]

I'd say The Warrior's Apprentice (the first Miles book) isn't as  strong (I think it was written before Shards of Honor, even?)  There were things about it that I didn't really get the first time through ("Why are they doing this, again?")

Memory is my very favorite, though that comes much later in the series.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Her first 3 books were Shards of Honor, Warrior's Apprentice, and Ethan of Athos. They're sequential, yet with different main characters; she wrote them so that any one of them could get picked up on its own by a publisher. All 3 were written before the first one got picked up, so Baen released them (mass market paperback originals) in fairly rapid succession.

[KhyEllie]

Sadly I'd have to drop into the younger age-level books to find things I'd be totally comfortable with (of course, just because they're simpler reads doesn't mean they're any less of a good story)
-FableHaven
-Percy Jackson and the Olympians
-Ranger's Apprentice
-Narnia
-Brandon Sanderson stuff (minus WarBreaker, probably)
and of course religious fiction is always fun (Recommended: The Kingdom and the Crown for christians)

[mtbikemom]

   Thanks Peter, KhyEllie and others.  I haven't checked this thread for a while.

    I promise I will read lots of Bujold, Peter and douglas, eventually.   Brandon is not your favorite author?  I'm shocked and dismayed!  Treason!

   I have not read much Christian fiction that does not reduce me to at least occasional eye-rolling, KhyEllie, but I will try your suggestion.  Besides C.S. Lewis's Narnia and Screwtape Letters and a few others, of course.  I will suspend my high standards quite a bit for good Christian allegory or fantasy.  Romance . . . no, thanks.   Historic fiction . . . absolutely!  (I'm reading a beautiful book called Singing Through the Night by Anneke Companjen about the power of music in the lives of persecuted believers.  I try to read good missionary stories as often as possible.)   

   Also reading Tom Lloyd's The Stormcaller.  Some flawed writing, but engaging with great action sequences.  Elitist says it's reliable, but there is some scattered strong language.  It would be wrong to write scenes of military life without the occasional profane outburst.  Nothing gratuitous so far.  And the elves are evil!  If ya gotta have elves, make 'em creepy, I say.