Giants

[Mithfanion]

I'm looking for a good book that featuress giants, plain and simple. Possibly the truly giant and brutal kind, but anything of quality will do.
I know they are a real genre cliche and really belong to what you think of as basic Fantasy elements, but I found that 90% of the books I read really do not have giants of some sort in them, and I was hard pressed to name giants in a Fantasy book other than in Donaldson's Covenant series.
Any ideas?

 

[Thadlerian]

I don't know if giants are actually a Fantasy cliché. I think they belong more in the world of fairy tales.

Anyway, there are giants in the SF book Shikasta by Doris Lessing; high quality, though not necessarily the kind you're looking for.

 

[paranoid marvin]

There are giants in the Harry Potter books , and they are mentioned occasionaly in LOTR

It seems that nearly always they are evil creatures , which is a shame really , and there's no real need for them to be

 

[Rane Longfox]

Hmm, they are actually fairly rare. The only ones I can think of would be in Tad William's Otherland, but that's sci-fi rather than fanatsy...

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I would agree that giants are more likely to turn up in fairy tales (or mythology) than they are in fantasy novels.

When they do turn up in fantasy, it's likely to be a brief appearance.

They play a minor role in the first two volumes of my current trilogy. I think that role is probably going to expand a little in the third volume. But I'm not presenting them as either good or evil. They're an ancient race with a different language and a different culture than humans, with whom they have no common kinship; and my protagonists don't know how to communicate with them to discover their motives. All they know is that the giants are allied with their enemies.

They're ice giants, and I hope they come across as more like a force of nature than anything that might be understood in strictly human terms.

In addition to their appearance in Otherland Tad Williams has giants (briefly) in Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, which is fantasy.

 

[elvet]

There is a race of giants (the Paraiko) in Fionavar Tapestry. They play a prominent role in one of the subplots.
Giants are also mentioned in A Song of Ice and Fire, but more as an aside.

 

[GOLLUM]

Well Giants feature fairly heavily as part of the Thomas Covenant chronicles but not all the way through. For a story revolving around giants check ut Roald Dahl's The Big Friendly Giant.