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

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There's a perennial argument about whether Pern is SF or fantasy. (Personally, I think SF, but I'm not sufficiently interested in the argument to get bothered by people who call it fantasy.)

It seems like everyone is mentioning Eddings, so I will too. He certainly qualifies. However, he writes engagingly enough that he's still fun to read, at least until his various tics pass from "amusing" to "meh" to "irritating" to "if ONE MORE CHARACTER makes a dry quip I will KILL SOMEONE."

I have only read a couple of Mercedes Lackey books, but I think that some of her serieses are old enough and popular enough they could arguably be called "classics." And I found certain aspects of them quite annoying, but of course YMMV.

Um... Elric of Melnibone, one of the early incarnations of the Eternal Angsty Whiner?

Oz? Narnia? H. P. Lovecraft? All classics, all old enough to have bits that grate on modern sensitivities, depending on how much allowance one gives to people writing back in the day.