If only I hadn't heard of Lev Grossman's the magician's before reading it. It would so be on my list it's an amazing book as is the sequel.

Two words for you.

Tentacle Sodomy.

Wow that went somewhere I wasn't thinking it would kids and tentacle rape whoa there sir whoa there. Maybe it the proposed pc's were adults then all bets are off.

But kids your acting like this is Stephen Kings IT

They suffer somewhat from being Week's debut novels, mostly the ending (which feels somewhat... rushed) and a higher-than-usual number of spelling / grammatical mistakes but they are a great read nevertheless - especially considering I just grabbed them in the bookstore without my usual study of the back cover.

The Black Prism I liked even better - except for "superviolet"; that neologism is just so... jarringly wrong. And I say this as a non-native English speaker.

The first series that comes to mind would be Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century books (Boneshaker, Clementine, Dreadnought and Ganymede with The Inexplicables due later this year).

Loved boneshaker haen't had the pleasure I reading the others yet.

While discovering new stuff on my own used to be a regular thing, since the growth of the internet it just doesn't happen much to me any more. Also, I spend so much time keeping up with authors I already know that I can't count them. But there's a couple of interesting exceptions.

1: Harry Dresden: Jim Butcher Picked these up because the description sort of reminded me of Glen Cook's excellent Garret Files. I wasn't wrong.

2: Destroyermen, Taylor Anderson Picked up because I'm a sucker for both military SF/Fantasy and dimensional displacement. Reminded me a bit of Forstchen's Lost Regiment but more modern and with a naval twist. Another fine comparison, right down to both series really qualifying more as slightly guilty pleasures than stellar writing.

3: John Ringo: Everything Ringo.

I have never heard of the Garret files, I'm going to have to look into them.

I agree the Internet both rules because it points is consistently in the direction of things we should enjoy, but sucks because it takes away the hound discovery and the awesome bragging rights when you'd inform all of your friends of your awesome finds.

The Bean Quartet by Orson Scott Card. If you've read the Ender series, this is 4 books about Bean. And without trying to spoil too much, Card is writing a book which joins the two series at the end of each.

The Jack Ryan series by Tom Clancy. Best political and military series out there.

Red Mars / Green Mars / Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Now, I've heard negative feedback that the series is dull and drags on, but I personally like it. Most realitic view I can find about the colonization and terraforming of Mars (and eventually other planets/moons when you hit book 3)

The Saxon Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell; stumbled upon it while on holiday in central Australia. The series is about anglo-saxons in the dark ages, an era not comprehensively recorded (hence the name), and it's violent protaganist's involvements and interactions with the few known historical figures of the British Isles at the time. A lot of that boils down to cracking good swordfights and the vividly described brutality of man in a nigh to lawless era. I've been quick to buy books from ol' Bernard ever since... but i'd not recommend it for reading to your children.

Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb, bumbled into in my uncle's library some years ago. An enjoyable read at the time which i'd recommend for teenagers particularly, it gave a different take on men and magic to most fantasy novels.

The Black Company by Glen Cook, a gritty and modern-influence fantasy series which can feel amateur at first, until you realize the prose is deliberately of such a nature as the warrior-scribe protagonist would use in his chronicles. It feels like a soldier talking around a campfire, feeling his oats after a drink; unevenly educated, mixing with a tough bunch of malcontents, handling problems very personally. I'm not sure what experiences Glen called upon to write it but the stories have a distinctive and edgy feel in the telling.

I would have said Starship Troopers by Robert E. Heinlein, but I've a suspicion someone recommended it to me (can't rightly say). A pity, because it's an awesome read; comprehensive and highly influential to the scifi genre. Perhaps appropriately, that one started me on science fiction.