I finished the first book of the Black Company, and Glen Cook's one of the most unique voices I've read.

It's terse. Major events that you think would be explored are cut away, and even minor events like the actions of giving and taking something are skipped over. Never read anything quite like it.

I suspect a lot of that is due to the POV being an annalist, where in history, small details are often cut, and even big events are frequently relegated to a paragraph or two. It's all intentional.

Terry Pratchett has a very unique style. Below is a quote from Guards! Guards!

"Even shorn of her layers of protective clothing, Lady Sybil Ramkin was still toweringly big. Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra’d, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. When she spoke, every word was like a hearty slap on the back and clanged with the aristocratic self-assurance of the totally well-bred. The vowel sounds alone would have cut teak. Vimes’s ragged forebears were used to voices like that, usually from heavily-armoured people on the back of a war charger telling them why it would be a jolly good idea, don’tcherknow, to charge the enemy and hit them for six. His legs wanted to stand to attention. Prehistoric men would have worshipped her, and in fact had amazingly managed to carve lifelike statues of her thousands of years ago."

Surprised not to see anyone mention Abercrombie yet. How well he gets into his characters’ heads through grounded writing and techniques like repetition really stands out to me.

I’ve only finished A Memory Called Empire, but Arkady Martine’s usage of sentence fragments stands out to me as a breaking of traditional rules to tell a more dynamic story (imo “the man runs” gives just as much information as “the running man”, so, if stylistically beneficial, you might as well use the latter as a full sentence). It’s something I have long thought should be done, but Martine’s the first time I’ve really seen it.

And I’m going to mention Rothfuss’s poetic prose (with an honorable mention to Ursula K LeGuin) as being the most beautiful to read (especially in The Slow Regard of Silent Things, which practically reads a blank verse).

I’d nominate Roger Zelazny. 

He started with poetry but moved to prose to pay the bills. The poetry background gave him a love of the words themselves and how they flow.  

But he also loved noir detective pulps. So Nine Princes in Amber was like what if Chandler wrote poetry? And also weird fantasy.  

Tamsyn Muir stands out as the most unique author I read in 2025, and i think it's largely to do with the jarring tonal shifts between visceral, gooey gothic prose and the often extremely contemporary dialogue, memes, and humor. And then all of this prose knits together what at first appears to be a confusing amalgam of disparate parts, but all comes together at the end of the book in a cohesive tapestry of plot.

Note that this is not a critique. I understand why it'd be very polarizing, but I thought it worked really well, especially because there's in-setting justification for all of these dialogue choices/tones.

Will post some quotes later once I have access to my print books.

Jack Vance, the Dying Earth series:

Day and far into the opalescent Embelyon night [Turjan of Miir] worked under Pandelume's unseen tutelage. He learned the secret of renewed youth, many spells of the ancients, and a strange abstract lore that Pandelume termed 'Mathematics.' "Within this instrument," said Pandelume, "resides the Universe. Passive in itself and not of sorcery, it elucidates every problem, each phase of existence, all the secrets of time and space. Your spells and runes are built upon its power and codified according to a great underlying mosaic of magic. The design of this mosaic we cannot surmise; our knowledge is didactic, empirical, arbitrary. Phandaal glimpsed the pattern and so was able to formulate many of the spells which bear his name. I have endeavored through the ages to break the clouded glass, but so far my research has failed. He who discovers the pattern will know all of sorcery and be a man powerful beyond comprehension.

The voice he uses for these novels is a mix of pomposity and bathos that has a hilariousness to it, I often laughed out loud while reading his books. He heavily influenced Gary Gygax, the author of Dungeons and Dragons, who in turn influenced many other fantasy authors.

Tanith Lee, the Tales From The Flat Earth series:

At this point in the story, a child interrupted from the crowd, asking fearfully and loudly if the gods were terrible to behold. The storytellers smiled, and bowed to the philosophers. One of these, a venerable elderly man, spoke gravely to the child. “No, indeed. The gods are beautiful, and just. Those who reverence and obey them need fear nothing from the gods. The gods reward those who adhere to them. Those who stray, they punish. Then they are terrible, terrible in their perfection and magnificence.” “But,” said the child anxiously, “what do they look like?” The philosopher was done, however, and the storytellers proceeded with their tale. “Hush!” said the child’s nurse sharply. “But,” said the child, “if I cannot tell them from their looks, how am I to know them and beware of offending them?” Then a voice spoke to the child, a voice which brushed the insides of the child’s ears, wonderfully unexpected, like the sound of the sea inside a shell. “The gods are colorless as crystal for they have no blood in their veins. Neither do they possess breasts or genitals. Their eyes are cold as their country where everything is tinted by frost. But you will probably never meet them; they have no liking for the world.” “Oh,” said the child, and looked up and saw the pale face of a man bending over it, a face so astonishing it dazzled the eyes of the child like the moon. Then the child, dazzled, blinked, and in the little interval of that blink, the man was gone.

She has an equally poetic style, but taken seriously and without pomposity. Her writing is beautiful. In particular if a reader is looking for an author to replace Neil Gaiman, she is the one - he has taken so many of her ideas uncredited.

I really disagree that Tolkien doesn't feel original. His prose feels very unique, which is why all the ripoffs feel so...wrong. There is a sort of authenticity to Tolkien that few fantasy authors can match. From the names of characters and places, to the poems, to the history of his world. On the surface, a book like Lord of the Rings contains things we know well nowadays. A dark lord. Elves. Dwarves. An unlikely hero. But Tolkien's voice is singular.

O slender as a willow-wand!

O clearer than clear water!

O reed by the living pool! Fair River-daughter!

O spring-time and summer-time, and spring again after!

O wind on the waterfall, and the leaves' laughter!

I really enjoy Premee Mohammed’s prose, and of course - Sir pTerry Pratchett’s writing voice lives in my head rent free.

Some great answers here already, but I'll go with Bujold. Her level of characterization is superb, and you feel like you fully understand the inner workings of the people you're reading about. With the exception of maybe Robin Hobb, I don't know who else nails character as well as Bujold does (and with a lot less misery than Hobb, to boot!)

Terry Pratchett's voice is unique, of course. One of his most unique things I think is to write jokes into the narrative and dialogue without completely derailing the actual plot of the book or jerking the pacing to a halt to insert the joke.

Clark Ashton Smith's voice is unique. Of the Big Three of the Weird Tales era, he's the best at the actual craft of writing, imo. His writing is extremely lush and description heavy, without turning purple or getting bogged down in metaphor for metaphor's sake.

Marlon James' voice is very unique, I think. The way he blends foreign (at least to me) creatures and ideas with a very grounded and and visceral world and brutal action.

E. R. Eddison's voice is super unique, just for accurate use of Elizabethean English. It still felt very readable (to me), but also not ways I'd ever construct a sentence, beyond just vocabulary. It fit very well with the ancient legendary Epic feeling of The Worm Ouroboros too.

Patricia McKillip plays games with metaphor and magic like no one else. Here's a prose sample, the opening of Song for the Basilisk:

Within the charred, silent husk of Tormalyne Palace, ash opened eyes deep in a vast fireplace, stared back at the moon in the shattered window. The marble walls of the chamber, once white as the moon and bright with tapestries, were smoke-blackened and bare as bone. Beyond the walls, the city was soundless, as if even words had burned. The ash, born out of fire and left behind it, watched the pale light glide inch by inch over the dead on the floor, reveal the glitter in an unblinking eye, a gold ring, a jewel in the collar of what had been the dog. When moonlight reached the small burned body beside the dog, the ash in the hearth kept watch over it with senseless, mindless intensity. But nothing moved except the moon.

Later, as quiet as the dead, the ash watched the living enter the chamber again: three men with grimy, battered faces. Except for the dog’s collar, there was nothing left for them to take. They carried fire, though there was nothing left to burn. They moved soundlessly, as if the dead might hear. When their fire found the man with no eyes on the floor, words came out of them: sharp, tight, jagged. The tall man with white hair and a seamed, scarred face began to weep.

The ash crawled out of the hearth.

They all wept when they saw him. Words flurried out of them, meaningless as bird cries. They touched him, raising clouds of ash, sculpting a face, hair, hands. They made insistent, repeated noises at him that meant nothing. They argued with one another; he gazed at the small body holding the dog on the floor and understood that he was dead. Drifting cinders of words caught fire now and then, blazed to a brief illumination in his mind. Provinces, he understood. North. Hinterlands. Basilisk.

He saw the Basilisk’s eyes then, searching for him, and he turned back into ash.

Marlon James Black Star trilogy is the most unique I've read in a long time.

Guy Gavriel Kay has some of the best prose in fantasy.

Adrian Tchaikovsky has always stood out to me, in terms of ambitious ideas and storytelling. His dry humour, delivery of science and politics make him pretty unique in my mind’s eye.

None of these things are efficient or logical. I wish to report an error in the way that everything works.

Adrian Tchaikovsky, Service Model

Although I do believe it has changed somewhat over the years, China Miéville has a very recognizable, maximalist voice that is simultaneously both playful and pretentious.

“Why does everything have to be put into boxes?” they say. & fair enough, up to a point. But this vigorous drive to divide, subdivide & label has been rather maligned. Such conceptual shuffling is inevitable, & a reasonable defence against what would otherwise face us as thoroughgoing chaos.”

-Railsea

“Its substance was known to me. The crawling infinity of colours, the chaos of textures that went into each strand of that eternally complex tapestry…each one resonated under the step of the dancing mad god, vibrating and sending little echoes of bravery, or hunger, or architecture, or argument, or cabbage or murder or concrete across the aether. The weft of starlings’ motivations connected to the thick, sticky strand of a young thief’s laugh. The fibres stretched taut and glued themselves solidly to a third line, its silk made from the angles of seven flying buttresses to a cathedral roof. The plait disappeared into the enormity of possible spaces.”

-Perdido Street Station

“A promise fulfilled may be a classic moment, but prophecies mean anticlimax. How much more awesome was an unexpected salvation?”

-Embassytown

“A bridge wants to not be. If it could choose its shape, a bridge would be no shape, an unspace to link One-place-town to Another-place-town over a river or a road or a tangle of railway tracks or a quarry, or to attach an island to another island or to the continent from which it strains. The dream of a bridge is of a woman standing at one side of a gorge and stepping out as if her job is to die, but when her foot falls it meets the ground right on the other side. A bridge is just better than no bridge but its horizon is gaplessness, and the fact of itself should still shame it.”

-This Census-Taker

While not totally unique, Brust's high fantasy pastiches of Dumas, have a unique voice in fantasy where he has fun leaning into digressions and not using two words when instead he could have two sentences and another two sentences about not using those two words.

That of course reminds me of Terry Pratchett, and his many many footnotes. Humor is hard, and Pratchett had an amazing run once he really found his voice. He had a great mix of insights, and a willingness to embrace the absurd, and take it seriously in its context, and take the serious to the absurd.

Okay, here's a name I haven't seen mentioned - Michael Chabon. His Summerland is absolutely fantasy and a weird, unique blend of baseball and Norse mythology (including a Loki/trickster character) and many of his other novels are fantastical. Fine, characterful writing. Likewise Neil Gaiman has a distinct voice. Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett obviously. In a quieter way, Lois McMaster Bujold has a distinctive voice. I'd say T. Kingfisher and Naomi Novik too. And the classics like Lewis Carroll, Tolkien, or T. H. White's The Once and Future King.

For me, Harlan Ellison is still tops. Just love his stories and prose. As Benny Goodman said about the liner notes Ellison wrote for him: "The kid can write"

I bring up KJ Parker a decent amount, his works are a great ride for me personally, but I really do feel that Parker's voice is a unique one in at least one major way. Any time any of his characters are doing something technical we get to go on this fun little journey as the craftsman, engineer, or whatever subject matter expert engages with the activity. I just think its neat, and it isn't something that seems to happen very frequently in other works.

And nobody has mentioned Susanna Clarke? Ok, I'll do it. Susanna Clarke!!

Obviously there's the pseudo-historical voice she uses, of course, and she does that impeccably. But she also has a wry wit and a lyrical style that makes her prose more than imitative.

The 2 that immediately spring to mind for me are Pratchett for the obvious reasons that anyone who has read him would be able to recognise and Robert Rankin.

I know a lot of people won't think of things like the Brentford Trilogy as fantasy, but they are definitely fantastical in elements of the story telling.

Khadija Abdalla Bajaber has a pretty unique voice. Her only book out is The House of Rust, but it has a very distinctive prose. Her style is very influenced by poetry (she's also a poet). The tone of the book is a mix of polite, playful, and defiant and also feels very influenced by Bajaber's background of being Kenyan, Hadhrami, Mombasan etc. (which makes sense, there's not a lot of authors that I'm aware of that have Bajaber's background), and she totally uses that to bring the setting to life. It does feels like the prose has a bit of a Swahili accent to it (and the audiobook has a Kenyan narrator also really adds to that).

E. Nesbit's classic children's fantasy lit has always felt very unique to me. Edward Eager even tried to pay tribute to her and her style with his own children's fantasy series.

I have to say that Brandon Sanderson was great for me until I started noticing the word "bemused." Once you see it, you will catch it every time. I then read another series whose author cited him as an inspiration and, sure enough, bemused.

While fantasy-adjacent, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Christopher Moore have a good voice.

Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl is my current "You have to read this" series. Voice, plotting, action, fun.

I know this isn't' exactly an uncommon, rare, or hot take anywhere - especially not here - but I have yet to read anything quite like how Martin is able to make his perspectives feel so different in so many, often subtle, ways.

I've read lots of great multiple-pov books, of course. But absolutely nothing can compare in my mind. Each character's chapters feel so distinct in voice from one another in such effective and brilliant ways that I don't necessarily know how to explain, but I can definitely feel it.

I know the glaze here is insane but I truly do love his writing more than anyone else I've ever read.