+1 Chaqa and HR on Discworld. That series is incredibly well written and it has the added benefit of being able to jump into almost any book without having read the preceding ones and the plotline is still easily understandable.

RIP Sir Terry.

Douglas Adams series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. He's dead, but that hasn't stopped his unpublished works from still getting printed.

But seriously what he wrote was fantasy and not science fiction. Sure it starts in Great Britain, but even they aren't that polite enough to not drag Arthur Dent out of the way of a bulldozer.

Incarnations of Immortality is a fun read in all its complexity. Also, I've read the first book of Dark Tower and thought it was rather good. I would like to read the others, but I've not had the opportunity. What exactly do you mean by a "sprawling series," though?

Ursula Le Guin, Earthsea Series.
Sheri S. Tepper, Mavin the Manyshaped and several sequels.

His Dark Materials was a fantastic trilogy - bit of a combination of fantasy and steampunk - but I've never been as moved by a book as I was by The Amber Spyglass, the third installment. Absolutely tremendous books.

The Memory Sorrow and Thorn by Tad Williams was by far the best fantasy series I ever read. Book 1 was a little slow at the beginning but it has some really well written storylines.
http://www.tadwilliams.com/books/series/mst/

I am reading the three trilogies written by Robin Hobb which is good.

Try "Another Fine Myth" Robert L. Asprin has an entire tongue-in-cheek series of adventures centered around an apprentice magician and a demon who team up with an ever increasing bunch of misfit buddies. A couple of things:

Demon just means dimension traveler (and yes, you're just a scary and ugly to their kids),
Imps are snappy dressers but watch out for the heat seeking crossbow bolts,
If you make a deal with a Deveel, count you fingers and toes (and you relatives),
Gargoyles make drinks that look like swamp muck but taste really good,
Dragon language is way too subtle for humans to understand "Gleep!".

Asprin totally did for fantasy what Adams did forSci-Fi.

A plus, if you are pressed for time you can usually read a book in a day, they are all very short.

If you don't laugh out loud at least once in the first five pages put it down, this series is not for you.

Raymond R. Feist's Riftwar saga was always an particular favorite of mine, especially "The Daughter of the Empire" sequel trilogy. Lady Mara is an absolutely beautiful calculating heroine. Intelligent and totally underestimated in her tradition bound and male dominated society.

Shoot, CA. Did you stop reading fantasy in 1990? :)

Strong agreement for First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie.

I'm currently enjoying the Path of Daggers by Daniel Abraham (also wrote the Long Price Quartet).

I liked the Prince of Nothing series by R. Scott Bakker, although the end of the third book was a bit rushed and unsatisfying. I'm giving him benefit of the doubt because he's writing a follow up trilogy, so the end of the third book wasn't really the end.

That reminds me of the Assassin trilogy by Robin Hobb, which also had an unsatisfying, rushed ending to the third book -- but then was followed up by the Fool trilogy.

Old School: Amber series by Roger Zelazny. Good stuff.

krellin clearly doesn't understand PROPORTIONAL REACTION.

The list thus far:

Mistborn (excellent! read it)

Wheel of Time (couldn't finish; Jordan got wayyy toooo wordy; it dragged on for so long; now I can't remember enough to resume)

Discworld (isn't this an ongoing series?)

Stormlight Archive (not yet but it's unfinished, no?)

Malazan Book of the Fallen (excellent, long but great)

The First Law trilogy (say one thing for zultar, he's a +1 whore; I enjoyed this series; my wife and I made a lot of "say one thing" for a long time after reading this series)

The Dark Tower (not yet; it's not a sprawling series, is it? I don't like those)

Shadows of the Apt by Adrian Tchaikovski (not yet)

The R. A. Salvatore Forgotten Realm collected works (read most of them)

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley (read already; great book)

The Witcher (I am going to get the 3rd game soon; do the books link up much with the games?)

Bonds stuff (probably not)

Codex Alera (very good series; better when the main character used his scientific knowledge more than just inherited magic powers)

Paksenarrion (haven't head of this)

Dresden (have read all of them; easy read; also very forgettable)

Hitchhiker's guide (one of my wife's and mine's favorites)

Incarnations of Immortality (very good series; I have read it twice)

Earthsea (this series never got off the ground for me; too boring? not sure)

Mavin the Manyshape (haven't heard of it)

Dark Materials (haven't heard of it; but have read a few steampunk books)

The Memory Sorrow and Thorn (haven't read it)

"Another Fine Myth" Robert L. Asprin (haven't heard of it)

Riftwar Saga (the first few series were great but man, Feist was milking this franchise in the last few books; they got really boring and really predictable; it was a big let down the last six books)

The Daughter of the Empire series (one of my absolute favorites; have read it twice)

Prince of Nothing (absolutely enjoyed this series; the second trilogy -incomplete- isn't as anywhere as good as the first two books)

Amber (very good series; nice easy read)


Man, listing things out like this is starting to make me realize how much I've read over the years and this is only the good stuff, not the crappy stuff. There is also some good sci-fi series I've read but let's not go there.

Some of us try very hard to tolerate the arcane form of "self-moderation" the forum presents and would rather not mute people collaterally, but aren't afraid to do so if certain people don't utilize it themselves.

Back on topic...
The Dragon Riders of Pern series is great, although I can only speak for those originally written by Anne McCaffrey and not her son.

If you haven't read anything by L. E. Modesitt Jr. You could always pick up his Imager Portfolio. It's got two completed sub-series right now and a one-off novel all set within the same universe. If you have read anything by him though, all of his series have thematic similarities, so you wouldn't have to read more than one to know if you like his work. A couple of his earlier series have been recently re-released on Audible due to the popularity of the Imager books, so that's something.

Last I checked, the Mavin Manyshaped books were out of print and going for about $40 apiece on eBay. They are a good read, but in my opinion not as good as Tepper's later True Game series (set in the same world), which is available as an all-in-one compendium reprint.

Aspirin's Mythadventures series is entertaining. I think the quality declined as he ran out of ideas and mostly repeated the same jokes. It's not high caliber writing, but it is humorous and fast paced. I might liken it to Piers Anthony's Xanth series -- I started reading both series as a preteen and enjoyed them, but don't see myself ever going back to reread them. I met Aspirin and his then-wife Lynn Abbey (the coeditors of the Thieves World series) once, long ago at a convention.

I neglected to suggest the Black Company series by Glen Cook. Strong recommendation there.

Joel Rosenberg had a fun, fast-moving series about a group of college RPGers who get transported into a fantasy world. Sounds tired, but it was well done and at the time was fairly novel (Andre Norton's Quag Keep being perhaps the only predecessor).

The Deverry cycle by Katherine Kerr is pretty good. Same with the Fey series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Randall Garrett's Gandalara Cycle also is good.

Oops, I just noticed the requirement of "fairly new" in the OP. Oh well, some of my suggestions are so old they have fallen out of circulation (and in some instances, print) so they might as well be fairly new. :)

Ah, what the heck. Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust and damn near anything by Guy Gavriel Kay (Longest Road series and Tigana in particular).

Legend

pretty good book, hunger games esque, but I did really love it

Oh, I just remembered some from when I was younger that I thought were pretty good:
The Heir Chronicles by Cinda Williams Chima
Skullduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy
Gregor the Overlander series by Suzzane Collins (I would personally say it's better than her Hunger Games trilogy, which is rather overrated)

I once had a collection of about 6K paperbacks, mainly SF and Fantasy. If I had to recommend a couple of series I'd recommend C J Cherryh's Foreigner series - there's a genuinely alien feel to the aliens and the characters are actually characters! Rare in the genre... The other series is a loose start but moves through to the Uplift War. David Brin's series starts with Sundiver, thence to Startide Rising and on to the Uplift War. For otherworldliness try Holdstock's series that starts with Mythago Wood; spooky stuff...

By the by, failing eyesight means my 5 books a week habit is now a year! However, I still follow the Cherryh series and every 5th year read LotR.

@Chumbles, have you tried audio books? I know some people who swear by them, while i have never gotten into one... So just a thought.

lets see, hated the end of 'His dark materials' trilogy, mostly because i didn't want propoganda in my fantasy.

Really like some Tad Williams, but he can drag things out.

Terry Pratchett is dead, so Disceorld series is not ongoing. Though they are also several different series, i especially recommend the Witches series, and the Guards series, also some of the stand-alone novels - Small Gods being my favourite.

Oh, and the DEATH series, gotta love Death

The Earthsea quartet is interesting, fourth book kinda changes theme from the rest, but overall i recommend them.

And, i can't remember what else i've read lately, most Iain (M) Banks, thrillers and sci-fi. So i will not list them here...

I quite like audiobooks, but the price of them is horrible; I used to be on the road a lot (64K miles one year) so used to buy tapes of stuff (LotR - the BBC radio adaptation - great stuff; nearly drove off the road at one point, even though I knew what was coming!) but the price, sheesh! And ditto re the two Pratchett mini-series - you have to love Vimes!

Hell... missed one of my favourite ever trilogies - genuinely had me in tears (difficult to do with me, unless I'm writing cheques!) ... The Fionavar Tapestry. Also Julian May's Plasticine tetralogy - awesome nonsense with huge scope

+1 for Incarnations of Immortality. Or the Robot Adept series. But best of all...Nine Princes in Amber.

@audiobooks - my friend has offered a book club which included reading/listening to free audiobooks. So i don't know how much they cost. Downloads are often free, right?

Audio books are wicked expensive if you don't have a subscription like audible.

Agreed with orathaic on 'His Dark Materials'. I wasn't sure whether I'd accidentally started reading the Bible by the end of it. The first one was pretty good, though the film version (The Golden Compass) wasn't that great. The second book was OK but nothing more, and the third was CS Lewis level religious overtones.

Glen Cook's Garrett, P. I. series has a Sam Spade detective in a fantasy world. So he can get hired by a sorceress and have to worry more about getting it by lightning than not getting paid.

Rick Cook's Wizardry series has computer programmer transported into a world using spells. More fun if you know the computer references.

Thanks everybody for your suggestions. I think I have enough to go on now. I will start with the His Dark Materials series as it sounds interesting (ok, this is only the official version, the real reason is that the mod team threatened to quit if I don't read this series first, but please don't tell them that I share that here).