The Belgariad

Currently I am reading all five volumes of the Belgariad epic by David Eddings. As of now I am in the middle of the second book ("Queen of Sorcery"), but as of now I am not too impressed by the books. I am not very fond of several aspects like:

• the story is from an adolescent's point of view, who is mostly ignorant of the major background story. No cute robots, or little children, please!
• there are a lot of Deus-Ex-Machinas in the story.
• the races described in the book are often quite stereotypical.

But on the other hand the adult characters are quite enjoyable, so I will stick to reading it a little bit longer ..

Chalion

The last few years I have a hard time finding interesting, non-cliche-ridden Fantasy novels. The only exception was George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. But since the author takes his time to finish the individual books rather slow (I'll grant him that: "Throughness before speed" I say), I'll have to look elsewhere for new reading material.

A couple of months ago while checking the Hugo/Nebula/.. awards lists for interesting books, I stumbled across the works of Lois McMaster Bujold. And behold, not a triology/triad/something-with-3 series, but rather standalone novels. So I started reading her Fantasy books, and I was not disappointed. Currently there are three books set in the "Chalion"-world.

• "The Curse of Chalion"
• "Paladin of Souls" (not yet finished)
• "The Hallowed Hunt" (yet to read)

So this list may look like a triology, I can assure you it is not. The two first books are loosely coupled and share a few common characters, but the stories are self-contained. The last book seems to be a prequel of the other two and non-related to them.

McMaster Bujold has a website containing information about the world of Chalion as well as sample chapters from the novels listed above.