Looking for some book recommendations

Second the Robin Hobb recommendation.

You might also check out Goodkind's WIZARD'S FIRST RULE (first in the Sword of Truth series) and Jordan's EYE OF THE WORLD (first in the Wheel of Time series).

I'll ponder it and see if I can think up any others for you.

Have you read any Sean Russell? I know his initial series are older (early 90s) but I really enjoyed The Initiate Brother & Gatherer of Clouds, which are a pair, and World Without End & Sea Without a Shore.

hey Patrick! I'm big into reading fantasy lately, I have a ton of recs.

1. Mortal Instruments Series (City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, City of Fallen Angels, and City of Lost Souls). I'm up to City of Glass, it's a great series.
2. Ender's Game Series (it's a FANTASTIC scifi. Really made me look at the genre in a different light. I never really read much scifi.) there's also a companion series called Ender's Shadow.
3. Another Orson Scott Card series I LOVE is Pathfinder, and the second one came out recently called Ruins.

This should get you started. I also agree with the other recs. The Game of Throwns I hear is great, for me it's too intense. Wizards First Rule is also a great rec. Hope this helps

I would recommend Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. (Only one of his books that I've read so far)

Seconding Brandon Sanderson. His Mistborn trilogy (first book: Mistborn) is a very different fantasy world. I'm also enjoying The Way of Kings (so far - only 300 pages in, and it's a brick of a book.) I also enjoyed his YA title Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians; not the deepest plot, but it's a kick and a half to read. (The second in the series is currently in my to-be-read pile.)

Robin Hobb's not a bad choice, either. My favorite is her Liveship Traders trilogy (first book: Ship of Magic), which is in the Farseer universe (her overall universe for many of her series, starting with Assassin's Apprentice), but can be read as a standalone. Some of her other stuff starts to drag, though... I was disappointed in her latest offering, the Rain Wilds Chronicles.

Frank Herbert's Dune is a sci-fi classic, but I personally read it as more of an epic fantasy. It has most of the same elements as epic fantasy, only in an interstellar far future. I haven't gotten to the sequels yet; I hear they deteriorate significantly.

I've probably read more that fit your criteria, but I'm drawing a blank right now. (I love Tad Williams's epic fantasies - the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy and his Shadowmarch quartet - but they tend to have elvish/faerie races and such in them.)

Another book came to mind this morning. THE RUNELORDS. I haven't read the other books in the series, but this one was quite good, and had a very interesting fuedal and magic system.

Our own Jim Melvin's Death Wizard Chronicles, a six-book epic fantasy series, has everything you might be looking for--not cute, but adventurous and violent, with warriors and magic.

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Mitsborn was pretty awesome.

If you like dark stuff then Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself and sequels are good.

I don't read fantasy much anymore (I read it a lot when I was a kid) but two of the last sci-fi/fantasy books I really liked were "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman (which is imaginative and very funny) and "Kindred" by Octavia Butler (which is much darker, and involves a modern black woman who is inexplicably sent back in time to the era of slavery.) I found both these books to be page turners, I think they're both definitely worth checking out!

You may enjoy the six novels of the first and second Thomas Covenant Chronicles by Stephen R Donaldson (I haven't read the more recent trilogy). They were written a few decades ago, but they are my favourite fantasy series ever.

For epic fantasy I'd recommend the riftwar saga by Raymond E Feist and Malice (the first in a series that I can't remember the name of) by John Gwynne. Both are very big and heavy epic fantasy like ASOIAF.

I'm just going to throw out The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman.

It's amazing. Absolutely mind blowing.

Just a thought!