I read Donaldson a long, long time ago. Might be interesting to revisit it as an adult.

The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind bears some mention. I read the first book and was underwhelmed, it was a Dick-and-Jane verison of the Hero cycle, and I was unimpressed. My dad encouraged me to read the next book, and I read them all after that.

If you can make it through the first book, the rest of the books are a completely subversive assault on statism, political correctness and the network of interlaced and contradictory silliness that is progressive political thought. It’s almost as if Goodkind read the paper on a given day, picked out some bit of liberal foolishness then utterly destroyed it over the next few months and got paid to do it. Goodkind fullfills the other function of SF/Fantasy besides escapism, which is to comment mercilessly on current events and do so in a way that allows the reader to escape preconceptions based on familiar surroundings.

There’s more than a little Objectivism over the course of the series, though the overt (and honestly, unnecessary, unless he was writing a love letter to the long-dead Ms. Rand) anti-religion parts only come out in the last 20 pages or so of the last book. It’s rare to read a fantasy series that has such a strong libertarian-conservative political message.

The “Legend of the Seeker” TV series that is currently in syndication is more Xena than Atlas Shrugged, but as syndicated TV goes it’s still pretty good.