What kinds of fantasy/sci-fi book storylines do you enjoy the most? Or does it depend on your mood at any one time?

You have the epic storyline where the characters are saviors of the world/Galaxy/Universe like Lord of the Rings or DragonLance.

You have the "adventure" types of stories where the characters are just characters in a world like Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser in Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar setting or Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue setting or even McCaffrey's Pern series. The Dragon riders do save Pern quite often, but it does not have the "feel" of the usual epic tale.

Some books start as "adventure" and end up being epic stories as they progress, like Feist's Midkemia series where Pug and Thomas start out as just boys having adventures to saving Midkemia AND other rift worlds or Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series.

Do you enjoy high fantasy more than low fantasy? Is there a "medium fantasy"? A mix of sci-fi thrown in with magic or magic thrown in with sci-fi?

I'm more of a sci-fi reader, but also very picky about it. I like my scifi and fantasy based in more of a realistic setting. Example, I like Game of Thrones but mostly for the politics and characters and less for the fantasy elements. My favorite sci-fi books are either dystopian or scientific and less aliens and crazy worlds.

I want to say the common thread between the ones I like is that there is a strong character focus with lots of internal dialogue and problem solving.

How about you?

I prefer the ones where you watch MC grow.

Pretty much the only fantasy type stories I read are Xianxi. I recommend I Shall Seal the Heavens or Coiling Dragon.... Battle Through the Heavens if you like Medicinal Alchemy

I think http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00PMGUG9C/ref=series_rw_dp_labfs was good for this as Scifi.

High Fantasy for the most part, lots of different races, some involvement from the gods, lots of magic(and different types).

I do like a lot of the more mundane stuff in them though, like politics and what not, that was one of my favorite things about the Codex Alera series was how much of an emphasis it put on the political realm.

Don't care quite as much about "Main Characters", I like a series to be large enough to incorporate multiple "MC" viewpoints(Like, Forgotten Realms has many different MC's). If a series is smaller and can't have more then one MC, I at least prefer there to be several major side characters that can be built off of to enhance the story.

I really enjoy the inkheart books I even enjoyed the movie with brendan fraser

I like the settings in the Forgotten Realms. Not sure what level fantasy that is considered to be.

i always liked the adventures in Terry Brooks Shannara series.. each Trilogy is its own separate adventure(s), but linked together by word lore, magical artifacts and certain recurring characters..

i always thought he handled them pretty well

FR is definitely High fantasy, it has multiple different races(I own nearly 300 FR books, and I doubt I could name even half of them over-all), gods meddling in mortal affairs, high-powered magic, etc. Low-Fantasy is stuff that basically has 2-4 races(Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs are the most common choices), very little magic(a half-dozen major wizards if you're lucky, and another dozen that fancy themselves great, but are really just minor practitioners) and usually revolves around swordplay/armies to get events going. Gods will be there, but more as abstract entities that people mutter an oath to or pray to, but that's about it.

FR is my favorite setting as well, but it's usually just considered a gateway into the more "well-written" fantasy(I put that in quotations because I don't necessarily agree with that viewpoint). Oddly enough while it's my favorite setting, it does not have my favorite character/book in it. That would belong to Codex Alera with book 3 for favorite book, and Symphony of Ages with Achmed for favorite character.

Interesting replies! Cool

Yes! The books I like best are the ones with a lot "internal dialogue" showing me how characters think and look at things. This is a death-knell, though, for those books becoming movies. This internal dialogue is nigh impossible to portray well on-screen

Example: from Tinker by Wen Spencer: (paraphrased) When something catastrophic happens, people will say, "You pulled a Tinker!" Great...

I wanted to touch on this statement. I thoroughly enjoy reading how the characters grow in books. There quite a few series that this happens and after awhile, the "growing" kind of noticeably lessens and I seem to lose interest in the series.

Examples:

https://www.goodreads.com/series/40895-firekeeper-saga by Jane Lindskold. I enjoy reading the first 2 books in the 6 book series. The main character, Firekeeper, grows from a girl raised by wolves and then brought back into civilization. The third book on, she has done most of her "major growing."

https://www.goodreads.com/series/40398-acorna by Anne McCaffrey. Like Firekeeper, Acorna does most of her "growing" in the first 3 books of this 7 book series. There are also 3 more books base around Acorna's children

https://www.goodreads.com/series/49642-riftwar-cycle by Raymond Feist. Luckily, this series has many more characters than just Thomas and Pug. I enjoy reading about Thomas and Pug growing into their full measures, but once there, they are kind of shuffled into the background and the focus shifts to other characters in the world. This was handled well, thanks to the other characters in Feist's world