Best Epic Fantasy?

For me, the Tolkien universe in general is my favorite.  Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series comes in second, with Stephen R. Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle rounding out my top three. 

My two favorites are listed already.

I've yet to actually read the Tolkien books, too boring.  The melodramatic movies that took forever didn't aid my views either.

I've only read the first three, but the Runelords series by David Farland were off to an excellent start.  Memory Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams is also first rate.  The Belgariad and Malloreon series by David Eddings are badass too, lots of good ones out there.

I'd have to go with WOT for top though.  There are very few minds that can keep track of so many characters and put that many twists into a plot without getting lost.

Dragonlance does count as epic as far as I know. The whole series spans many books and there is a lot of offshoots to dig throught hat are directly connected to the main story.

Has anyone read the Shannara series? I've only read one and it didn't make much sense to me. The Wheel of Time looks fun enough.

Does the Star Wars expanded universe count?

George R R Martin's Dragonbone chair series.

Of course, hardly anything comes close to the Leabhar Gabala (the Book of Conquests) and the Tain Bo Cualngé, the Eddas or the Mahabharata...

Elric of Melnibone is pretty cool, but All of Moorcock series are the same.  So if you read Elric don't bother with Corum, or any of the other 5 or 6.  His standalone stuff was good though.

I would have to say Tolkien is my favorite.

Aren`t these two different things? The Dragenbone chair series is from Tad Williams (His Shadowmarch series is good, too!) And George R.R.Martin is famous for his Song of Ice and Fire (Which is really awesome!!! My favourite!). HBO has the rights for Song of Ice and Fire  and is working on a pilot movie!!! Juhuuu!

Ursula Le Guinn's Earthsea Quintet.

 Though I guess my favourite would have to be Discworld

I'd second Earthsea and Discworld.

Wheel of Time I'm not so keen on: it has some interesting ideas, but repeated and padded out too much. Make too many characters, give each of them one personality trait, one annoying quirk or habit, and one special power. Run through all possible combination in which they might interact to fill 13 books of sodding Naieve tugging her stupid braid. Not epic, relentlessly mundane.

Discworld isn't really epic fantasy, is it?  Even though it's awesome.

Raymond E Feist, The Riftwars Saga. The strongest competitor for top position along with the Tolkien middle earth books.

Now there's no point in continuing this thread. (I'm joking ofcourse, but the fact of the Riftwars Saga remains )

The Legend of Zelda video game series.

Star Wars is Science Fiction.

Gotta say the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan is epic.

Do you have any idea if there is a published version of the Leabhar Gabala?

I haven't read a ton of epic fantasy series, but WOT definately is my favorite.  Definately looking forward to the completion of the series next year!

Technically speaking, although that's very theoretical, Star Wars is fantasy, albeit in a futuristic setting. Science Fiction would require a stronger focus on the pretense that the universe is science-driven instead of being, as it's presented, magic (force)-driven.Fantasy does not necessarily mean "medieval fantasy", imho.

But back to topic: I'd go with A Song of Ice and Fire on all counts.

For the wheel of Time series, i think if one looks at all the 11 books together as a whole, then it feels epic, but from one novel to another, no, the epicness doesn't come in.  I think after the 6th book, everything afterwareds just builts up towards the last book,which i think people can skip a lot of it and would nto lose much.

Let's ignore the massive invasion by the Seanchan, the whole good and evil thing, the bloody (literally more often than not) politics, the general mind-crushing despair that accompanies most characters. It has more than enough wholescale war, and the evolution of many of the characters. Infact, I don't know wtf your complaining about, because he writes from so many different PoVs that you almost never see each individual character, he went an entire book without writing anything from the main protagonist, etc.

Neg.

Farseer Trilogy for me...damn those 3 books are incredible. Though maybe more gritty than epic.

As for WOT...I'd have to say he completely lost the plot post Lord of Chaos. I'll never forget him starting book 9 with 4 new characters, nor the wholescale cut and paste of Dune that was book 4. People of the dragon...lol...People of the Kwisatz Haderach.

Hey man, calm down! He was just stating his oppinion and not attacking you... IMHO the beginning of WOT is very cool, the middle is very weak (even boring to me...) and the last published book is very good again. Looking forward to the conclusion although the author has died in the meantime... I think his son is finishing it, is that right?

Lord of the rings and The Darkover cycle from Marion Zimmer Bradley are way over the top me thinks.

Well I must confess I got bogged down at book 8 and eventually stopped. So, book 1 was good enough to make me want to attempt to read the series to it's conclusion, despite the blatant Lord of the Rings parallels. I obviously don't know if the conclusion is any good or not, but the bulk of the series is pretty dire. He does keep introducing new ideas, but spreads them too thin, in some cases embarrassingly repeating himself verbatim. The characters are also thin: they level up too fast, and, as I mentioned before, are distinguished by each having a special power and an annoying habit or catch phrase. */me smoothes clothing*

And yeah, the Dune thing, let's call it a reference. The Aes Sedai are to Wise Women as the Bene Gessariat are to Reverend Mothers.

Although I would argue that Dune is also a series that starts very well and degenerates into self-indulgent tosh.

I tried reading a bunch of the fantasy staples like Shanarra, Dragonlance, etc. but didn't get very far because they all seemed way to derivative.  I did get totally hooked by R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt serious, especially the Icewind Dale Trilogy.  I wound up reading a dozen Drizzt books before I tired of them, and I actually want to grab the last few books here soon.  You could probably say that the Drizzt books are derivative too, but they're really fun reads and less of an attempt to create some whole massive universe a la Toliken and more an attempt to play around in an established one.  Highly recommended!

Don't you mean 'BGs are to Honored Matres'?

I don't like rank-ordered lists, but I love hearing a few favorites named now and then. I've enjoyed many of the titles folks mentioned above, and a couple are on my list but not in my local library yet.

I'm kind of surprised no one's mentioned Zelazny's Amber novels yet. But then I hadn't thought about them in a good while myself. Back when the series was just the Corwin books, I saw a few different variations on a deck of Trumps for D&D-type games. I wonder how hard teleportation magic will be in Elemental, or if it'll even be possible.

My bad, I ment Martin's Song of ICe and Fire. Though I like the Dragonbone chair too.

I don't know. I read a (probably the) French translation in a library in Paris, so I'm not sure. There are two excellent books, 'The Book of conquests' and 'The Silver Arm' by Jim Fitzpatrick at Paper Tigers (first issued in 1981), which are not translations but very good and beautiful (particularly The Book of conquests).