Don't get too excited.  My research hasn't shown anything further than a proof of concept poster.
Still--I'm hoping for an Amazon Prime series.  IMHO, Wizard and Glass was the masterpiece of the DT series.

Dresden Files. Adult Harry Potter in Chicago that is absurdly good. I fought jumping into this for so long and I loved it immediately.

Oh damn, I just saw 2020 on it and some reviews and thought it was out already. Agreed, I loved all the first 4 but Wizard and Glass was just...that perfect book that completely consumed me while I was reading it.
As you may have guessed, I had just finished reading it when I created my account here 21 years ago lol.

What? It was originally six books. They reduced it down to 3 volumes. His original intent was to create a parallel world with its own myths and legends. That is mainly shown through the Silmarillion. LOTR was a story he put together to answer the many questions that arose from the Hobbit.

first 3 or 4 dies the fire would make a great hbo/netflix series. it does go sideways later on.

Not fantasy, but you could read the Bible.
It contains the following;
God the Father, Jesus the Son, The Holy Spirit
Spiritual beings that fall and want to usurp the reign of God and take over Heaven, their leader is Halal Ben Shakur, better know as Satan, the adversary
Physical mankind that God created after the spiritual family fell
There are Giants also, similar to Greek mythology, where the fallen spiritual beings mated with the women of God's physical family creating Nephilim or Giants that are utterly evil
There is judgement for the evil of both the spiritual family and the physical family
Both families come together again after judgement to try and unite against God but He confuses their languages and spreads the out upon the earth giving leadership to the different Nations to the fallen ones, that is all but one.  God reserves one Nation for His own.
This Nations struggle to obey and follow God is full of wars, isolation, judgement, slavery, Giants, and prophets proclaiming God's Word showing how things will come to pass
God sends a Savior to pay for mankind's sins against God, if they will only repent and follow God rather than the adversary
The Savior pays the price that mankind cannot pay and at the end all those that follow will spend eternity with God
The whole book can be described by 7 C's
Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, Consummation

There was a time in my life when I believed that Terry Goodkind was a nom de plume of Robert Jordan's.  I thought they were the same author.

I had the same reaction to it.  So did my wife.  It is by far the best of the series.

the cost would be high yes. they could be made into movies perhaps. after seeing the CGI in the guardians of the galaxy, avengers infinity war and end-game, and the harry potter series the tech is capable of making the shows.

Apologies if this was suggested already...

Destroyer Men by Taylor Anderson

I think there are.  When choosing books and reading the reviews there are always a lot of women in there.  Just for giggles after I read this I went to goodreads and randomly picked an epic fantasy novel (made sure it was a male author because I'm sure there is a lot of bias towards female authors by women readers) and 11 out of the first 15 reviews are women.  

I certainly don't need sex written into stories but you're right that there's a balance between gratuitous, unnuanced use of it and just avoiding it altogether.  At some point you begin to question the connection/real relationship between whatever characters if they're supposed to be a couple but all the interactions are so platonic.  

I think the above connection struck me as I was reading one novel by a man (can't remember which----likely blocked it out) and the way we knew bro was having sex was because we were told things like, "We fucked before we got out of bed and I showered while she made omelets" and "We fell asleep immediately after we fucked because we knew we had a long day ahead of us."  I swear almost every chapter had something along those lines and it was so bizarre that it's literally all I can remember about the book.

Then we have the opposite end of the spectrum.  I thoroughly enjoyed Fourth Wing and Iron Flame (I understand the criticisms around them as well and agree with some of it but I like what I like) but lawd did she go overboard with the sex scenes, both in number and description.  It's more jarring than anything to be reading along, enjoying the sexual tension and build up, then stumble into a 2 page (or more!!!) long sex scene with way too much detail about every position change and exactly how he performs cunnilingus.  Not to mention all the dialog I enjoyed throughout the rest of the books came to a screeching halt during those scenes and the cringe talk took over.  But once we understand the sexual relationship has been established, we don't need a play-by-play every single time they engage.  Alluding to it being a regular thing will suffice, thanks.  

For sure. If the author uses the word "turgid" or "moist" safe to say it's more information than I really need.

But you need more than just, "We fucked," right?  

Eh...for me? Not really, it's fine if there's more but it doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the book if it's like "they retired to their chambers" or whatever lol.

W

Women want the romance, not the dirty nasty part.

I will admit in the Dresden series, I was waiting to see if he would ever knock boots with Karen, I did not expect to see him do it with Mab though.

Oh no, THAT'S fine.  Like I said, the alluding to it is a-ok by me.  

I was just referring to my previous post where over and over it was written like, "Woke up, fucked, had breakfast, car wouldn't start", etc.  

The car didn't start?

That's...not what I need, anyway.  "We fucked" isn't...well, it feels cheap.  A good story--something that has dragged me into its world--is one where the writer captures the essence of what is going on, and successfully gains my interest.  That "we fucked" isn't going to do it.  I need to be kept in the story.  I don't need gratuitous detail, but by golly--if the hero spent the last four books falling in love, I want to see THAT fantasy realized.  Don't sell me on a slowly building love story for five fucking books and culminate it in "...as the doors to their chamber shut gently behind them, the cares of the day were immediately forgotten as the two lovers discovered--finally--each other's true selves."


...and speaking of sex in books.  Wanna hear a neat (well, maybe neat is the wrong word) story?  Confession: I was taught to read before I entered kindergarten.  Long story, lifelong bad habit.  Anyway--when I was 12 or so, Jean Auel's book "The Clan of the Cave Bear" was hugely popular, and since I was a Boy Scout and an outdoor kid, my parents bought it for me, as it had much to do with a young girl learning to survive a harsh wilderness environment in an indigenous sort of situation: Robinson Crusoe/Swiss Family Robinson sort of stuff.  Great book, loved it, talked it up with my parents (who didn't read but fully supported my bad habit).

When the next book came out...I think it was The Valley of Horses, or something like that?  90% of the survival stuff was gone, replaced with this young, now teenaged girl entering adulthood, and by chance rescuing an injured, extremely well-endowed warrior, who she heals back to health, and then has ridiculously detailed sex with--over and over.  In between hunts and taming sabre-toothed tigers.  My parents bought me this book--they never read it.  They also bought me the next two or three extremely graphic sequel novels, trying to keep my interest in reading fed, while not knowing what they were giving me.  Much of those details were of great use to a young, teenaged Sixtigers.

Funny addendum to that: After I joined the Navy and left home, my father went through a reading period where he read extensively for a year or two.  He raided my library and read the Jean Auel books.  After the third one, he stopped reading.  "I couldn't take any more descriptions of Jondalar's extreme manhood--I can't believe you read this shit!"  

Buy Robert E Howard. He has a ton of material. Start with Conan and move on from there.

https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/robert-e-howard/

I take it you haven't read many romance novels.    

Like I said, a balance is nice and the way it's written has to fit with the story and the characters or it's jarring.

Ah yeah. I love Pandora's Star for example but jesus the sex scenes were so uncomfortable in that. They were necessary to the story, but the gratuitous details were NOT lol.

Dune is really only two novels.
Dune and Dune Messiah tell Paul's story as the wild Kwisatz Haderach who sees what even the Bene Gesserit cannot.
Children of Dune and God Emperor of Dune tell the life of Leto ll, and the terrible purpose behind why he deliberately chooses to become the greatest scourge of Mankind in history, the God Emperor.

Not the unified masterpiece that LOTR is, but it is a wildly ambitious swing for the fences that connects...and almost gets there.

Side note: the Fremen are primarily based on 3 historical groups. The Bedouin, the Apache and the mid 19th century Chechen resistance against the Czar in the book "The Sabers of Paradise" that describes a Jihad raised by a minor noble turned Madhi against the Russians and the war to the knife that ensued against the Harkonnen-like Cossacks.

Hey guys..I'm not made of money here.

I used to read everything my daughter was going to read before she read it, to make sure it was kosher.  She was heavy into what is now called Young Adult, or YA.  YA is basically fantasy lite, usually involving vampires or other supernatural creatures in high school.  All of that Mormon woman's stuff that was so popular, and then a dozen or so different versions of what I just started calling Vampire Academy Drama, and eventually I stopped reading her shit because it was all just high-school, teenaged drama in a safe-ish, PG-13 setting.

Then she started reading Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels.  She read them a LOT.  Had one under her bed, even.  So, yeah--I thought I should probably give those a try, and holy shit--now I know why she kept them under her bed.  Women can get really, really descriptive in their sex scenes.  Even more graphic with supernatural creatures, LOL.  So yeah--no more Anita Blake in our house until after she moved out.

I'm injoying "The Wondering Inn" I'm listening to the audiobooks and they are 40 plus hours each.

https://wanderinginn.com/book/the-wandering-inn/

I made to book 9 or 10 and had to tap out. It seemed like he was introducing new characters/story arcs every couple of pages by then and hadn't made any moves to wrap any of the previous ones up. I decided I was no longer getting an acceptable return on my investment and moved on.

Yes, to all of it.  

My similar experience was with VC Andrews books.  Someone gave a bunch to my completely straight-laced, puritan mother who never had time to read and, not knowing what they were, just stashed them in the living room book case.  

She'd have a heart attack if she knew what she inadvertently gave me access to.

Don't know about the others, but I always assumed the pg13 sex scenes in the belgariad and WoT were because they were written for a teenaged audience and the authors weren't trying to be too graphic for that market (or for that market's parents, at least). But my perception may be skewed by the fact I was a teenager while reading them and just assumed they were written for me.

Ugh, no!

Based on the abomination their Wheel of Woke turned out to be, HBO? Sure. Amazon series? No thanks.

Maybe. OTOH there's some great Amazon series, so we'll see how it goes. "So you're saying there's a chance"

You mentioned rereading the first 4. Do you have the whole series, or just the first four?

I reread them every so often (read The Gunslinger oh, so long ago. Dang, it took a looong time to get closure. Have 1st edition hardcovers of the later books, as they were released, but nowadays, I prefer reading on the Kindle app, either on my phone, or the Paperwhite for outdoor/sunlight).

Second the recommendation for Deed of Paksenarrion.  Probably the most "realism-centric" take on a D&D Paladin in literature.



However, slight caveat.  Elizabeth Moon is(was?) a fervent member of the Episcopal Church (which is no surprise, considering the Fellowship of Gird in her books), on the Liberal side.  When the ECUSA melted down, this past decade, she didn't take it well, and the emotional trauma she dealt with gets played out in the follow-on series (Paladin's Legacy, in which Paksenarrion is more of a guest star), with the "conservatives" as the bad guys.

YMMV, there.


That drama is totally absent from the original series, which was written in the 80s.

Put me here.

Lots of the folks in this thread don’t know why “high fantasy” means

Wheel of time is popular, but sucks.

Song of ice and fire is excellent - treat it as a trilogy  - quality drops off sharply after book 3

Saga of the forgotten warrior - Larry Correa. Fun read but unfinished

Codex Alera has been mentioned - solid

Storm light Archive - Sanderson. Also solid.

Probably writers venturing outside the Women’s/Romance (pseudo porn) genres (ala 50 Shades of Grey)

I have the whole series, I only re-read the first 4 though. Like you I bought the 1st Edition hardcovers when they came out too- in fact I have #7 signed by Michael Whelan which is pretty cool.
I also pretty much only real on my Kindle.

Figures.

I don’t know about that. They have sex drives and like to fantasize just as much as men do. Our society just isn’t as open about it.

There’s a reason Romance-porn novels have always been sellers.

One of the best stories I've ever read, and I've read it multiple times.  The ending actually hugely surprised me, and completely satisfied me.

Ugh.  I'm not sure that even tits could have saved that one.

Sanderson is the master of the satisfying book ending.

HA I win!

If you like those, give Fire From the Sky - N.C. Reed   a try.

Cool.  I've actually read some of his other stuff.  Waiting on the next release on one now to continue a series.