Reddit mentions of The Blade Itself (The First Law Trilogy (1))

You should expect most answers on the official subreddit for the series to be pretty biased. Most people who hated AFFC of ADWD aren't here because they've dropped off by now, even if they were big fans and waiting for TWOW

Here are the problems with the last 2 books, and you can use this very rough and short list to determine if you wanna keep reading:

• No resolution to anything of great importance.
  
• No establishment of a compelling new story arc for any of the remaining characters
  
• Without a particular compelling story, most of the characters (even the ones you like) are just kinda sitting around. Very slice-of-life style writing.
  
• Some of your favorite characters are basically nothing like they were when you fell in love with them. Biggest offender is Tyrion, who goes from an enterprising and creative young player in the game of thrones to a wandering traveler who has flashbacks to the death of his father and the loss of Tysha so often it stops being poetic and starts being comical. That would be a great premise for a character arc... but it never goes anywhere. He just remains sad and mostly unfun.
  
• The world building is extremely clumsy. Super fucking intensely clumsy. I think the example that made me laugh was a scene where Tyrion leaves his private quarters to go on the deck of a ship, where he finds a young man being tutored in the history of Westeros. The tutor asks him to recite the story of some historical event, and the young man literally gives an unbroken wall of exposition text that sounds like it was ripped straight form a wikipedia page. Expect lots of that.
  
  For some people, that stuff sounds appealing--those people are telling you in the comments right now that AFFC is their favorite in the series. For some, that stuff is super duper boring. Parts of season 4 and all of season 5 cover the important bits though, so if that sounds painful just watch those episodes. The show characters are very different from the book characters, so expect to be disoriented.
  
  Book recommendations would be The First Law trilogy for fantasy, and Welcome to the Multiverse for scifi.

Here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Blade-Itself-First-Law-Trilogy/dp/0316387312

I’m basically a book pusher where these are concerned.

Swan Song - Robert McCammon Of the books I read last year this was my favorite.

Old Man's War - John Scazi - It's a pretty fun Military Sci-fi series

Leviathan Wakes - S. A. Corey - Near space, space opera.

Mistborn - Brandon Sanderson - Epic Fantasy with an interesting magic system, good place to start with a popular author

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie - "Grimm Dark" fantasy, he does an interesting thing by playing with a LotR style quest.

The Black Prism - Brent Weeks - Interesting Magic system, one of my favorite ongoing fantasy series. Much better than his first trilogy IMHO

Midnight Riot - Ben Aaronovitch - Funny urban fantasy series that takes place in London

His Majesty's Dragon - Namoi Novik - Napoleonic* war + dragon's, fun quick reads.

Sevenes - Neal Stephenson - Stand Alone sci-fi novel about human's trying to survive in space as the world ends.

I can suggest more if you want, and I assume you've probably read at least some of these. Hope you enjoy some of them at least though.

It definitely does, and Sanderson's work on the final 3 books was pretty inspired to say the least.

Also, check out

https://www.amazon.com/Lies-Locke-Lamora-Gentleman-Bastards-ebook/dp/B000JMKNJ2

https://www.amazon.com/Way-Kings-Brandon-Sanderson/dp/0765365278/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=KRSFJE42GMR8VFGZGC72

https://www.amazon.com/Blade-Itself-First-Law/dp/0316387312

https://www.amazon.com/Prince-Thorns-Broken-Empire-Lawrence/dp/1937007685/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492715571&sr=1-1&keywords=prince+of+thorns

Say no more fam.

Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. Here's the amazon link. My suggestion is to go for a fun as hell book first. This one is a Modern Fantasy, so modern setting with a flare into the fantastic. This author is writing to entertain you by blowing the shit out of monsters (the bad ones), so he's not going to Saturday-morning-cartoon spoon feed you a moral message with a side of action. None of that "But what does the author realllly mean? No, oh no, this guy's going to give you elder vampires that tank direct mortar fire and sustained belt fed .50 cal's and C4 detonations and have them square off with a werewolf afterwords. Fun. As. Hell.

If you're feeling a blood and guts, swords and axes kinda book try The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie This guy is dark and grimy with his action, and once again, this guy is writing to entertain you, not give you something to talk about with friends that watch Oprah. This is more like John Wick movies smashed together with Braveheart and a smidge of Lord of the Rings.

All of Joe Abercrombie's novels, starting with The Blade Itself.

Mark Lawrence's books, starting with Prince of Thorns.

Read this: https://www.amazon.com/Blade-Itself-First-Law/dp/0316387312