Suggestions for a new author / series of books for me to read?

I suggestThe Long Price Quartetby Daniel Abraham. Fantasy with an original take on magic and a very subtle and clever plot. It's in 4 volumes too, so it's not like a gigantic commitment.

I also must recommend a short read (both in size and because it's impossible to drop the book once you start reading):The Carpet Makers. Do yourself a favor and read nothing about it to avoid spoilers, just know that it is mindblowingly awesome. It's Sci-Fi, though science does not have much to do with the plot, it's more about the scale of the events at hand.

Well, if you read all of Wheel of Time and liked it, why not try Sanderson's other works?

I wouldn't recommend Malazan to anyone who sticks with main-stream fiction writers. Erikson is just too scattered.

The Takeshi Kovacs novels by Richard K. Morgan for Sci-fi were great.

Sanderson if you want to read more fantasy, the mistborn books were really good. His recent Steelheart was a nice change of pace with a different take on "superheros".

The Black Company.

For something fantasy related, I'd recommend theAcacia Trilogyby David Anthony Durham. I really feel it's one of the most unique fantasy series to come out in recent years, but it's sadly not gotten the recognition it deserves. It also has the advantage of being a finished series, so you don't have to sit around and wait for the next book to come out.

For something more along the lines Stephen King, I'd suggest checking out Dean Koontz. He considers himself a "thriller" author more than "horror", but most of his books straddle that line. However, I'd suggest starting with his earlier books and avoid anything written after 2005 as he's seemed to have lost some steam in recent years (particularly with his obsession over Odd Thomas).

Larry Correia's series Monster hunter and The Grimnoir chronicles. Monster hunter series is about modern day groups of monster hunters taking on mythical beast and such, the Grimnoir is more about the 30's and magic being prevalent for world war 1, pretty good series, both of them.

The Black Company.

This damn thread makes me want to reread The Black Company. Fuckers.

Dresden Files, get up on it.

Skimming my goodreads from this year:

Dresden files. The first few books are much less interesting and pretty short, but it gets better and better.
American gods: Pretty cool story I think you would like.
Wool: Pretty good series if you like the character dynamics of a lot of king books

Malazan is cool, but it can be hard to get into, and you're basically locked into the long haul of 10+ books because you won't even get marginal closure from the first one, and it will throw about a hundred characters at you who have minimal face time right off the bat. I waited a year or so between books and I was just like, "what the fuck am I reading, I don't remember any of these dudes." and felt like I needed to go back and read the first one again before even attempting it again. It's the kind of thing I think you need to marathon.

(Was out of town so I'm late here)

If you need some more stuff I'd recommend Robin Hobb's trilogies (there's a few), those are among my favourite fantasy series.

Try Nelson Demille. General's Daughter and the such have been made into films. Some of them are a bit similar to Crichton. They're generally suspense/mystery.

If you want to try some fairly decent historical fiction - Bernard Cornwell -Sharpes Riflesseries orSaxon Tales.

Sharpes Rifles was also made into a TV series with Sean Bean and Pete Postlethwaite "eh Sharpy"

If you like, for want of a better phrase, "literary fantasy", try out Guy Gavriel Kay. He writes trilogies and standalones, often paralleling aspects of real history (eg Italian-style city states, Viking era). The best intro is the standalone Tigana, which I consider one of the best single fantasy books out there. I'm having trouble describing the style. He deals with plenty of adult themes, and it's not "cheesy fantasy" like Ann McCaffrey or whatever, but it's less gritty than GRRM. Fantastic prose and world building, though.

I would describe the style of Tigana as,for me, "overrated and random without enough depth".

I agree with the prose and (most of the)world building being great, I just wasn't drawn in to the characters(except for the main bad guy) and the pacing. It's standalone as mentioned and that's part of the problem I guess. There's not enough pages to explain everything going on so you are expected to take a lot on faith, something I have problems with in fantasy. I don't need Sanderson level details in my fantasy magic etc, but I like a token effort at explaining things. Something more than "Lord Pink magicked at King Blue, but Blue magic'd more harder!".

I hate how down I sound on it, it's worth a read. Just temper your expectations. I went in having heard time and again how amazing the book was and it just couldn't live up to that for me. Itisa very satisfying complete story. And the bad guy is one of my favorite ones I can remember reading.

Seriously though,