[woadwarrior]

For fantasy I recommend David Eddings' "The Belgariad" & "The Mallorean"

My problem with Eddings is that one trilogy reads nearly the same as any of his others. Read one of them, you'll have the plot and story line of the others.  He seems to follow a tight script with all his series. I read The Belgariad 1st, thought it was good and got The Mallorean. Was disappointed. Read the first book of The Rose, and it was like reading the 1st book in the other 2 trilogies.

To me this is the problem with fantasy in general. And why I quit reading the genre.

I'll admit there are some authors in the genre that are like David Eddings & Stephen R Donaldson that tend to be "formula" writers, there are plenty that aren't. Some of the authors I mentioned in my 1st post are amongst the best fantasy authors around (the others are primarily scifi) and are quite good at coming up with new story lines. Even for their longer series. It does seem though to be more difficult to find good fantasy authors as opposed to good scifi authors of which there are many.

[SiameseMoose]

There is a ton of free stuff available, although often for a limited time. I subscribe ($0.99 per month) to a daily blog (Free Kindle Books, by Michael Gallagher) from Amazon that lists the new books available for free that day. While the biggest category would be business books, SF would probably be the second. I got Charlie Bamforth's "Beer is Proof..." book free this way. I've probably downloaded nearly 100 books in the six months I subscribed to this blog.

Another source is Phoenix Publishing, http://www.phoenixpick.com/catalogue/PPickings.htm. They have a lot of great authors in their lineup. Once a month they make a title available for free, though you have to subscribe to their mail list to get it (they send out one message a month - to tell you what's free!). This month it's Radix, by A. A. Attanasio. The code to get it is 9991421.

Other sources include:
Manybooks, http://www.manybooks.net//, everything is free.
Smashwords, http://www.smashwords.com/
Baen, http://www.baen.com
Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/, for older stuff

[tschmidlin]

Awesome stuff, thanks Rob.

[euge]

Thanks Rob! Already downloaded a few choice titles. For freeeeeee.....

[euge]

Tom (everybody) I'm almost finished with Reamde by Neal Stephenson. Excellent! A must read. Kindle version is 57% priced off versus the hardback.

[tschmidlin]

Awesome, thanks.  I've still working through the free ones I've downloaded, nothing has been awesome but I just bought a pre-release version of something, but i haven't been able to download it yet so I forgot what it was.

Here it is:  Tau Ceti, Kevin J. Anderson, $2.99 and there is a 15% off discount code if you sign up for their newsletter.
http://www.phoenixpick.com/catalogue/PPickings.htm

[james]

Tom (everybody) I'm almost finished with Reamde by Neal Stephenson. Excellent! A must read. Kindle version is 57% priced off versus the hardback.

Agreed on that one.  Excellent book.

[SiameseMoose]

The Phoenix free book this month is The Engines of Dawn, by Paul Cook. The website is http://www.phoenixpick.com/catalogue/PPickings.htm, the code to get it is 9991522.

[morticaixavier]

Tom (everybody) I'm almost finished with Reamde by Neal Stephenson. Excellent! A must read. Kindle version is 57% priced off versus the hardback.

This one is on my wish list on audible. been digging Stephenson's stuff of late. Just finished listening to The King of Vagabonds. Disturbing but interesting. The Big U was bizarre and entertaining.

But my fav or his is still the first on I read which was The Diamond Age.

[tschmidlin]

I thought it was worth bumping this one back up . . . promo for weekly free kindle versions of some sci-fi books.  The initial secondary promo seems good too, I think I'll be stocking up.

http://www.phoenixpick.com/KPromo.htm