Sci Fi horror & Fantasy if that is alright with you?

If yes, I highly recommend

Dark Sun Rising by Celia S friedman

It the first part of the Cold fire trology, the 'fae'(some type of magic) overflows imagination everywhere and make fears real. I breezed through all the books. And the best thing is the world building. Also, has one of the beest endings imo.

I'm in for game of my choosing.

Thank you for the very nice giveaway!

Now, my favourite fantasy novel of all time has already been mentioned in detail: Lord of the Rings. The same for my personal second place, The Witcher novels. And the Earthsea saga has also already been taken.

So, I go a totally different route and write something about a very cheesy and very funny novella instead of somethin epic:

Morningwood - Everyone loves large chests!

Yes, that story is about as cheesy as the title sounds. It's about a Mimic that gains self-awareness (he's still a moron though) and becomes an adventurer. Kind of. And is later joined by a succubus and a fiend. The entire story is written as a spoof of classical dungeon-romp roleplaying games and it is quite a funny read. So if you want a good laugh, go for it. :-)


Or if you prefer something really epic, there's one other series that everybody should have read:

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

It is the story of a leper living in our modern times who is drawn into another world. A fantasy world, where he isn't sick but is instead some kind of chosen hero. And he totally refuses to believe that all that world is real. He thinks that all is his own mind playing tricks on him. Some escape-delusion. That leads to a very grippingly written interplay between the inhabitants of that world who depend on him in their struggle against 'The Despiser' and himself, who really just wants to wake up. Even though the life he would wake up to isn't exactly desirable.

The author grew up in India where his father tended lepers. So he knows what he is writing about and manages a convincing portrayal of someone inflicted by that illness. Someone who can't trust the senses of his body. Someone who's survival depends on never letting his awareness of his surroundings falter (even minor injuries, even scratches, can be lethal). So his refusal to give in to delusion is as understandable as the desperation of the people in that other world. ... And are those people real? Will he take up the fight? Will he stay in that world or does he return to our reality where he is mortal sick? Well, you'll have to read the books to find out!


I am in for
Cosmic Star Heroine
game 01: Pillars of Eternity - The White March expansion pass (if that is admissible)
game 02: Thimbleweed park
game 03: Celestian Tales, Old North

Cheers and thank you again!

I'll be in for Echo.

The best novel series I've ever read is in this genre. I call it the Cirque Du Freak series (It's called the The Saga of Darren Shan officially]). I was introduced to it by my younger sister and although it's a kid's novel and I was a teenager when I read it and I loved it. Vampire lovers will definitely approve and it is a bit in the horror genre but for teenagers and onwards the scare factor is little. I loved it so much that I read the entire series in a few weeks. My head felt like jelly afterwards and I got little sleep but all of it was worth it. The story was very well written and the books are very underrated. Probably the best series I ever read and I do plan on reading it again. The story is rather mature for the reading level it is meant for so that was what surprised me the most. Overall, it was well-done right down to the end. Here's a short synopsis from the wikipedia page linked above:

The Saga of Darren Shan follows the story of Darren Shan, a normal human boy who is coerced by the vampire Larten Crepsley into becoming his assistant and a half-vampire.

Thank you for this giveaway and all the others. Great giveaways including this one. Appreciate it.

Would "only books" mean only single books, not series? Because in that case I don't have much, find it difficult to make decent fantasy in a single book, and admittedly based on that don't bother to look for single fantasy novels to see whether I'd be proven wrong... Unless I'd happen to snap one up for free, which was the case with Dragon of Ash & Stars. Quick review on blog, or Goodreads if you prefer. A friend was telling me recently that the author announced working on another "Dragon" book, but I don't see how she could go back to that world (and she also "liked" my review of that one, where I'm saying she shouldn't even have gone where she did with the very end of it, so hmm...). That really is a nice piece, beginning to end of the story, even the final lines from it are too much. But, yes, it just grows step by step along with the protagonist and once you get to the Night of Dragonsong and Fire... Gets me teary-eyed just remembering it. And then it goes even... higher after that.

Series, on the other hand... Witcher books were mentioned, so I'll just +1 to that, Kingkiller as well, so another +1 there... Song of Ice and Fire oddly weren't, except in the negative, but I will say they are great books, 2nd and 3rd especially, 4th and especially 5th mainly being great examples of worldbuilding. They are very low fantasy though, so not sure how much they fit I guess.
Lesser known series I enjoyed, The Black Jewels Trilogy (know it continued after that, but heard it turned rather into a fantasy soap opera and didn't bother, but found the original trilogy awesome, and original too, and it's available in a single volume too - quick review on blog and Goodreads) and Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone (great first two books, it's rare that praise printed in a book is accurate but "if you are sick to death of fantasy, read The Briar King. Remember why you used to love it." sure struck me as well put - not that I ever was sick of fantasy, but just that great feeling, in both it and Charnel Prince, Blood Knight is a bit weaker, but then Born Queen is... almost too much, author seems to have wanted to just finish the series and there's material for 2-3 books compressed in that one, and the end, at the time I described it as "a whirlwind of action, a chain nightmare, a series of fever dreams which has been building up all along and suddenly explodes in your face, leaving you gaping and grasping at it, trying, perhaps in vain, to come to terms with all that's going on. When it's all over, all too soon, you'll probably still be at least somewhat confused and perhaps, as Mery put it, "feel a better kind of sad"." - quick reviews on blog, 1, 2 (more here than on GR, but also some spoilers), 3, 4, or Goodreads, 1, 2, 3, 4).
On the other hand, there's a series written by a friend where what I want to recommend is the 2nd book (only 2 out so far), Heiress of Magic, and with very little direct connection between the two, it can be taken as a single book. Fantasy romance, definitely not something I'd normally read, but holy crap that just tears you apart and spits you out. In terms of emotional impact, one of the very best, if not the best, book I ever read... And at the same time, and for the same reasons, not something I want to read ever again. As I put it in the (full-sized) review (blog or Goodreads), "I truly don't know whether I can in good conscience recommend this book to anyone, definitely not because I have any misgivings about its quality or value, but just because of this tidal wave of emotion that will slam into you if you choose to read it, taking your breath away and tearing your heart from your body to smash it into jagged cliffs of agony. Because, while the good news is that it's not just about a love triangle, the truth is that it's about souls skinned alive and roasted on a spit. And yours will be too if you read it. You have been warned." Again getting teary eyed just remembering it now, for entirely different reasons than those of Dragon...
Then I don't know if these would fit, so not going into much detail, but back to Keyes, Age of Unreason (alternate history with fantasy elements... and one hell of an 100-page final battle scene, and another bittersweet but perhaps more bitter than sweet ending). And The Book of the Short Sun (available as single volume, science fantasy, part of Wolfe's Solar Cycle, best part of it imho, but is the one with more noticeable fantasy elements so of course I'd say so, ymmv).

As for the giveaway... Well, I just like recommending good fantasy :) But looking through my wishlist for games GOG identifies as indies that are under $20 and where no region pays more than base price, as I'd never cause one of those to be purchased (unless it already has been, I mean), there are two, Balrum and Celestian Tales: The Old North (3 if you add CT's Howl of the Ravager DLC). So I'd be in for CT, since I'll wait for the next sale to grab Howl and then likely actually play that in a reasonable amount of time, while I'm still wary of Balrum due to being written in Java, even if I gather it was updated soon after release to be self contained and not install it on the system, as it did at first. On that note, if I do end up winning, feel very much free to wait for the next sale, as CT is available 75% off with some regularity, and was just available like that during the "Japanese" sale now.

Thanks for this highly generous giveaway, BeatriceElysia.


The one awesome fantasy novel I read and loved was Ender's Game.

The plot is about a pre-teen boy called Ender who gets recruited in the military to fight and defend the Earth from hostile Alien invaders.
Ender and his team of kids along with his older sister must fight to survive and the fate of the universe rests in his tiny hands.

The best part of the novel was the character development, military politics, propaganda and the jaw-dropping twist ending that will turn your world upside down.

The novel was so famous it spanned many sequels and even a Hollywood movie starring Han Solo (Harrison Ford).

I will be in for discount indie game 01: Nex Machina

This would probably be quick giveaway, like most of mine. Tomorrow morning I will conclude this giveaway, so you have dozen hours left...

Thanks for such generous giveaway, BeatriceElysia.

I recently completed Baltasar and Blimunda (Portuguese: Memorial of the Convent). Excellent book for anyone who likes novels and fantasy.
Baltasar and Blimunda is a novel by the Nobel Prize winning author, José Saramago.
The book tells of a soldier (Baltasar) who lost his left hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young woman with visionary powers. He also talks about the dream of another character (Priest Bartolomeu Lourenço) to invent a flying machine. When the Crown and the Church collide, they do the impossible, not to mention the heretical dream of flying.

I'm in for game of my choose: Torchlight.

Well, I wont be very original here if I mention The Witcher saga, I liked a lot in this one, from the dark fantasy world to the detailed descriptions of the fights.
Also recently I started reading Japanese light novel called Overlord by Kugane Maruya, enjoy that one a lot even though it's simple so far. I like the setting and characters a lot. But I guess as former mmo player I have soft spot for that kind of stories.

And thx for the giveaway, if I can I would try my luck for game 01 - My Time At Portia.

Thanks for the generosity.

I'd like to point out A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Leguin. It's a great novel about a boy who becomes a wizard, with magic school and everything. It may feel truncated by fans of Harry Potter, the main character Ged spends relatively very little time in the said school, but it has an amazingly realized world and a very well thought magic system. Ged's coming of age story, the central theme of the story, is wonderfully realized as well.

I'd also recommend the imediate sequel, The Tombs of Atuan. While I felt it to be not as impressive as the original, it struck a nerve on me due to Leguin's comments on the novel: that you can't simply write a girl being a hero exactly as a boy hero, that you have to understand and play to a woman's strength and characteristics to write a true female hero.

I'm yet to read the third novel in the series, but I'm eager to do so, as soon as it gets published here in Brazil.

If graced with an indie game, I'd like Grandia II (I'm not entirely sure it classifies as an indie, though. If it doesn't, then I'd like Iconoclasts).

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Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are my favorite fantasy books. Yes, they are satire, but they are fantasy nonetheless.

There are so many, and the best are Jingo, The Hogfather, Soul Music, and Going Postal.

But the very best is Small Gods. I was once in a band named from a passage in this book. The passage goes like this:

"Fear mostly produces obedience which grows like corn, orderly and in neat rows. But sometimes it produces the potatoes of defiance, which grows underground and are hard to root out."

Our band was called The Potatoes Of Defiance.

I will be in for game 02, please.

Not in.

I thought I would throw my suggestion into the bucket anyway.

Tithe a Modern Fairy Tale by Holly Black

I think it does a very good job blending traditional fairy tales and folklore with the modern world.

Oh, wonderful, yes. I have a collection of her short stories by me bed.

Oh, I forgot one. If modern fantasy counts:

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

An awesome pulp-noir-detective-magic mashup about a wizard who works as PI in modern day Chicago. It's witty and charming and dark and exciting. Well developed characters and interesting plot development. One of my favourite novel series!

Still in for the same games as above, :-)

A wonderfully generous giveaway! And a super-neat thread of book recommendations!

My favourite fantasy books of all time right now is The Shades of Magic series by V.E. Schwab. It's just such a fantastic and compelling series with such incredibly written and endearing characters set in several fascinating versions of our own world. I can't recommend it enough. It's all just so good!

I'm in for a reasonably priced indie game of my choice.