http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Eye

For individual books, Scar & The Book of the New Sun respectively.

I didn’t like Perdido so much, but it is mostly required reading to learn more about the world in following novels. But Scar is utter brilliance. And of course (in my opinion) for thing to be brilliant, it has to be somehow flawed at the same time. Which Scar is.

Yeah, I haven’t actually read Perdido St Station, but it comes highly recommended, even if I might be tempted to agree with you about its writer. At least from what I’ve seen. His face is eminently punchable, his prose has terribly pathetic romance stylings, and some of his comments are stupidly provocative. But still, he’s highly acclaimed, so he can’t be all bad. M John Harrison is one of my favourite authors and even I wouldn’t agree with China’s declaration “That M. John Harrison is not a Nobel Laureate proves the bankruptcy of the literary establishment“.

Still, M John Harrison’s Viriconium is another excellent “alternative” fantasy setting, and a book that seeks to subvert the fantasy tropes and, eventually, itself. It’s not for everyone, and some might see the knowing post-modern tinkering and the bombastic prose as pretentious. Also, Gene Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer is an absolutely brilliant, gradual mindfuck. Those two books are both part of the dying earth subgenre, which somewhat straddles the line between fantasy and sci-fi, though. Which reminds me Jack Vance’s picaresque tales in Tales of a Dying Earth paints an interesting picture of a world where civilisation has fallen into ruin, leaving it a sort of glittering, decadent mess. Not generic, despite having a hell of a lot of wizards in it, and even having inspired the magic system of D&D.

I think that kind of shows that there’s a huge variety of interesting fantasy mindscapes out there.

onkellou,

Morrowind’s a great setting that doesn’t feel generic! I’m a huge fan and I’m hitting myself for not thinking of it. Arcanum I thought of but didn’t mention, because steampunk, though not generic, is hella derivative, as any subgenre based around an aesthetic would be.

Don’t know if you are referring to me, but I have played Drakensang.

For what it’s worth, I am judging the game on its own – I don’t really care about its p&p roots. Like I said, there might have gone a lot of detail in the worldbuilding, but that’s not really relevant here for me.

Of course The Witcher, or the Gothic series, are not terribly original as well, but they managed to convey more of a unique atmosphere than Drakensang does for me – with both of them feeling more like a “real” fantasy/medieval European than the Forgotten Realms Disneyland version.

Planescape was already mentioned (yeah, I know it’s also D&D) for being really quite different, and I’d also mention Arcanum (even if the Steampunk setting isn’t that rare anymore, either) or even Morrowind, which at least had some unique architecture and landscapes (a real step back in Oblivion, which only showed some originality in the Shivering Isles expansion).

KG

Epic fantasy does tend to be generic, but fantasy in general isn’t. You’ll find very little that’s really generic in something like the World Fantasy Award. And there are movements aiming for more variation in fantasy, like New Weird.

There’s a few non-generic fantasy books that I’ve been meaning to try. Ricardo Pinto’s no-magic novel, The Chosen, which has a lovely website. K.J Bishop’s The Etched City. Felix Gilman’s Thunderer. China Mieville’s Perdido St Station. Try amazon and one good book points to another.

Or buy Tekumel source books. It’s worth it for the neat art alone, as well as the encyclopedic worldbuilding.

But a hell of a lot less generic than most trad-fantasy MMOs, even revisionist ones like the Witcher.

KG