I have not read all the annoying epic fantasy series.

[snarp]

I'm trying to educate myself culturally. What are the classic annoying fantasy series that I need to have read, as a nerd?

Notice that I'm talking about annoying fantasy series - like, stuff where every single book has the same plot, or the cast of characters grows by six or seven people every book and every book gets longer because they all need to have stuff to do, or the last eight books have pretty much just been about the author's hat bondage fetish, or whatever.

I have read Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books and Raymond Feist's Magician books.

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh, one more I forgot earlier, if we're including "looks like fantasy at first but is technically SF because all the *MAGIC* is really just non-supernaturally-explained psionic stuff, also we have spaceships and computers": Christopher Stasheff's various "Warlock" series, which I gave up on at some point in the 1980s for getting too dull and repetitive, and a quick glance on Wikipedia says he's STILL cranking them out. o_O

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

"looks like fantasy at first but is technically SF because all the *MAGIC* is really just non-supernaturally-explained psionic stuff"

Also in this category: When True Night Falls. The magic is just a natural scientific alien phenomena!