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Comment by therealdrag0 | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a bummer that all the popular fantasy is not the best writing. (I do quite enjoy GRRM and Abercrombie.)

Are there any, may lesser known, fantasy that is more literary?

Yeah, this is a common problem in genre fiction unfortunately. The best one I've read is "The Magicians" series by Lev Grossman. The writing is clean, concise, everything is shown and nothing told. The series is a great deconstruction of a lot of classic YA fantasy tropes and has a solid magic system. Can't recommend this series highly enough, both my literary and scifi/fantasy fan friends have all really enjoyed it.

I'd also recommend Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, very close to literary fiction.

It steps a little outside of the bounds of what we think of as "fantasy", but the magical realism genre has a lot of amazing pieces, and the genre is based around fantastical elements. My favorite example of this is "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. "Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino is another good one.

I adore "The Magicians", and have added "The Buried Giant" to my stack based on your recommendation.

Gene Wolfe (Book of the New Sun) is great and a common recommendation along these lines.

Ishiguro's The Buried Giant from last year asks to be described as Literary Fiction with a fantasy setting.

But chasing down "If you liked Gene Wolfe you might like.." recommendations online would probably be fruitful.

I loved "Remains of the Day" and "Never Let Me Go", but didn't finish "The Buried Giant." The first two aren't fantasy, but IMHO they're much better Ishiguro.

As for "literature-y" fantasy, I'd agree with others here to look at magical realism, e.g. "One Hundred Years of Solitude." But my opinion is probably crap -- some of my fantasy favorites are Tolkien's "Silmarillion" and "Lost Tales," which probably don't qualify as "great literature," but show some amazingly thorough and vivid world-building.

Check out Guy Gavriel Kay. He's go a bit of a poet's background and writes utterly heart wrenching prose.

Can start most anywhere with him, but I'd recommend Tigana, Lions of al'Rassan, or Under Heaven as great starting points.

The canonical examples are J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) and C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia).

See Fantasy Classics at Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/318.Fantasy_Classics

It's historical (medieval) fiction, not fantasy, but Hild (http://www.amazon.com/Hild-Novel-Nicola-Griffith/dp/12500560...) is one of the best written books I've read.

edit: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is up there http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Strange-Mr-Norrell-Novel/dp/0...

I find J G Keely's judgement aligned to my own: http://starsbeetlesandfools.blogspot.com/2012/06/suggested-r...

I second the Gene Wolf recommendation.

Huge fan of China Mieville, but that's closer to "new weird" than "fantasy". Mieville's books are complex and gripping.

Cool. Listening to the Audible clip of "Perdido Street Station". Sounds the nicest of the suggestions so far :)

Pratchett was a genius when it came to knowing just the right phrase to conjure up an image, although reading all the Discworld novels in one go as I am at the moment reveals he's not quite so good at the storytelling side, often dragging on a few chapters too long.

Check out Robert E. Howard's Conan short stories. These are very well written and are in public domain.

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