So I grew up very sheltered and isolated from society and as a result missed out on a lot of pop culture and other common things. I love to read, and I really enjoy fantasy and DnD and those types of things and I’m trying to find and catch up on the great fantasy books/series that every fantasy lover/nerd should know. I’m not as interested in sci-fi, but I’m willing to read the “great” ones too. What would you recommend?
Series I’ve read: The Lord of the Rings The Witcher The Dark Tower The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Dungeon Crawler Karl
Update to add also read: Wheel of Time Most of the Stormlight Archive The Hobbit
I’m just starting my first Discworld book.
Edit: Thanks everyone! Keep them coming, I’m going to make a list with all the suggestions and start working through them.
DISCWORLD
Honestly, probably the most enjoyable series of novels ever. The jokes are so layered and absurd while being witty well setup. It’s been a few years since I’ve read them, may be time to start over…
And there is, quite literally, something for everyone. From absurdist to noir to scifi to swords and sandals to philosophy…it’s a big universe
Most of the classics have been well covered at this point. One of the best books (and authors) I’ve read lately and would argue is a modern classic already is M.L. Wang’s Sword of Kaigen. It is a stand alone fantasy novel set in a world similar to Avatar (the last airbender) where magic is elemental and controlled nationally. It covers the story of a young man and his mother and father, defending their village against overwhelming invading forces.
Wang’s strength is in her character building: everyone is highly complex, multifaceted, and nuanced. Despite the tropey premise, the story manages to completely subvert the standard clichés and covers themes of nationalism, propaganda, grief, forgiveness, patriarchy, and identity. It also has literally the best redemption arc of any book I’ve ever read. Please go read it if you haven’t already!
Discworld (Terry Pratchett), no question.
Very much Discworld. I shouldn’t have had to scroll this far down to find this shame on all y’all. The Night Watch series and The Witches series are my favourites and I do recommend reading series’s in order to but you can start practically anywhere if you want. Just remember the very first two books aren’t anyone’s favourites but are still good.
I mean, they mentioned they’re already reading Discworld…
I found this reading order quite helpful:
Edit, better version:
It’s my turn to ask this question, it seems, but if this image low resolution and very compressed?
I found a better version, updated.
Wtff… I remember the colour of magic being fun and knew there was more but that’s wild
The Colour of Magic was published in 1983, The Shepherd’s Crown was posthumously published in 2015 with up to three books published in some years. It’s an incredible life’s work.
If you liked The Colour of Magic, I’d strongly recommend continuing reading, it’s usually considered one of the weakest novels in the discworld, being the first book he wrote while still having a day job.
The good thing is, there are these sub series as you can see in the picture following specific characters with some cameos from the other series, so no need to read all of them (although recommended, because they’re great). Even within these series, every book is basically a standalone story with minimal spoilers if you read them out of order and zero confusion if you don’t remember what happened in the last book.
I’m a really fast reader and I had a slowish day at work yesterday. I read The Colour of Magic start to finish yesterday morning and really enjoyed it. I’m almost finished with The Light Fantastic now.
They get better
Chronicles of the Black Company
If you’re into early 20th century pulp fantasy, I highly recommend Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars and Robert E. Howard’s Conan.
There is an unfortunate lack of female authors in this thread so I will post two recommendations:
- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
- The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
I’m not familiar with Jacqueline Harpman, but Left Hand of Darkness is quite fun. Not at all what I expected going in.
I’ll add Lois McMaster Bujold and her Curse of Chalion to the list. Great book.
Earthsea.
Earthsea is beautiful. There aren’t very many books, and they were written across 50ish years. They evolved with the genre, allowing readers a clear window into how we got to the modern works of Jordan, Sanderson, etc.
There are six, which, by modern standards isn’t much. The first three came out in a four year time span and was an attempt to answer the question, “What was Gandalf’s youth like?” This was before Tolkien answered these questions publicly.
Twenty some odd years later, she wrote Tehanu. It was, from what I remember, an attempt to answer her critiques who said she had written a series where magic was not accessible to women. Then ten years after that she finished with two more books. The first of the two was a bunch of short stories that fill in some corners of the stories prior.
Robin hobb farseer books are great
the rainwild chronicles were my favourite
Yeah I think me as well, it’s a slow start but really gets good. Fantastic character development
Oglaf 😆
Excellent suggestion.
I need an Oglaf omnibus.
insert joker laugh
Here are some series I can’t recommend enough:
Cradle by Will Wight — A young man born too weak to matter in a world where martial artists can shatter mountains and walk on air decides that’s not good enough. Starts small and intimate, then escalates into genuinely insane power fantasy. The progression system is crack cocaine. 12 books, all out, binge-worthy.
The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan — A slum girl accidentally discovers she has magic, which is very illegal if you’re not from the right family. Gets accepted into the Magicians’ Guild under suspicious circumstances and slowly uncovers something rotten at its core. Cozy, character-driven, and surprisingly political.
The Lightbringer Series by Brent Weeks — Magic is literally made of light and color, and drafters slowly go mad from using it. Packed with political scheming, morally grey characters, and one of the best slow-burn mystery plots in fantasy. Weeks hid twists in plain sight for five books and sticks the landing.
The Licanius Trilogy by James Islington — Time travel, prophecy, and a magic system where using power costs you years off your life. Dense and intricate in the best way, the kind of series where you flip back to chapter one after finishing it and realize how much you missed. Islington clearly planned every page from the start.
All are fantastic series, happy reading! 📚
Thanks. Haven’t read any of these and you make em all sound pretty rad.
I’ll add that I hated the Lightbringer series. It starts out alright, gets progressively worse, and ends with a big fat literal deus ex machina. Weeks is a flaming Mormon, and if you know anything about the faith, you can see its stink everywhere.
I did like his Night Angel trilogy.
Cradle is pretty amazing.
Can you tell me more? I’m not religious and don’t know much about Mormonism. I’ve heard similar things about other authors like Sanderson. I gotta say, the comments are a bit underwhelming since no one explains the actual problem.
There’s a lot of religion in the books. People are always praying for this and that. Biblical names. Some thinly veiled biblical references. Any character who expresses agnosticism or atheism is eventually proved bad or wrong in some manner. There are some very angelic-like beings that pop up later. Some fallen ones as well. Every single woman character pines over the guys at some point and really just wants to settle down and pop out kids. Oh, and everything is wrapped up neatly in the last book when the very obvious Jesus figure confronts God on top of a tower, sacrifices himself, is subsequently resurrected, and they fly in on a literal airplane and save everyone in the 11th hour. It’s trite and disaffecting and pretty much assured I won’t be reading anything from Weeks ever again.
While I understand your perspective, I believe we hold differing interpretations of the series. I am not seeking an argument, as I consider this to be a fantastic piece of literature, and I believe Weeks effectively portrays religious piety. Additionally, it features remarkably strong female characters. It is quite interesting how we can read the same words on a page and arrive at such different interpretations. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
The hobbit is great. I loved every page of it. Just don’t base your opinion of the movies if you’ve seen them, and not read the book. How the fuck did they shit out a 3.5 hour long turd from a 15 page chapter in the battle of the five armies. Holy shit.
Yes. You may have seen the movies but the books are works of art. I still don’t think I’ve read a better written book in my life. The hobbit is especially fun to read.
I read Tolkien growing up and it kind of set an unrealistic expectation for the quality of literature I would encounter later in life. I was constantly disappointed after that.
Earthsea, as someone else has already mentioned, was one of the few series that measured up.
Howl’s Moving Castle was fun, as long as you don’t take it too seriously. It’s not meant to be serious.
I’m reading Wheel of Time now, and it’s just okay. It’s good as far as these things go, and I’m invested in the plot, so I’m gonna finish the series, but it’s just not a masterpiece in my opinion.
Some of the characters are well done, some of them are kinda cringey, and only some of those are cringey on purpose. Some of the running jokes are funny, but some just sound like what an old british guy in the 90s would think is funny. Some of it didn’t age well.
Some of it gets really repetitive, too. Like, I swear, if he says someone looks like a bird again, I’m gonna lose my mind. It’s always someone from the brown ajah, too. And I think he overuses the ta’veren device to rationalize some kinda stretched plot points.
It probably sounds like I hate it. I don’t. Well only a little. It’s a bit love-hate ever since my favorite character died (won’t say who but it was near the end of book five).
Character analysis (avoiding spoilers):
Some of the character development is pretty good though. Rand kinda turns into an asshole, but it makes sense because he’s under so much pressure. I hope the author uses that device to bring it full circle so he corrects himself. If he’s just an asshole for the rest of the series then that would be lame.
I really appreciate the flawed characters (namely, Nynaeve and Mat), both for the comic relief and their occasional redeeming moments. And how they’re always projecting whenever they criticize others really cracks me up, especially when the two interact with each other. Cause you know that deep down, as much as they can’t stand each other, either one would risk their life for the other in a heartbeat.
I started out liking Perrin, but I think the author dropped the ball on his development. He has some outdated ideas about chivalry, and at the same time Faile (as much as I want to like Faile, but she’s just kinda one-dimensional) she encourages some really toxic and even abusive traits. It might be deliberate on the author’s part, but I just think it’s poorly done. Perrin is one of the few characters who isn’t constantly lying to himself though, and I still like that about him.
Egwene’s character development is really good. She starts off kinda bland and tokeny, but around book four she really starts coming into her own, and I can’t spoil anything but I’m past halfway through the series now and her plot arc is probably the one I’m most interested in at this point. I’m legitimately so proud of her, and I think that part of the story is being handled well. It’s not just like some “magic solution on a silver platter” that’s the hallmark of bad writing. She still has challenges, but she meets them squarely, and her inner monologue is just so honest with herself. She’s probably the most relatable character in the series in my opinion.
And Elayne’s plot arc is fun because it’s usually lighthearted due to her innocence and naïvete, but she makes some really intelligent decisions on things that are within her wheelhouse, and she’s usually pretty honest with herself (usually). She’s a strong character though, even leaving aside the obvious nepotism, and sometimes her strength and intelligence clashes with her innocence and naïvete in some really interesting ways.
I don’t know who else I can talk about without spoiling things. I’m looking forward to Elaida’s downfall (so clearly forshadowed by her hubris), which she’ll deserve every bit of.
Some new characters have been introduced recently, and some old characters reintroduced, but I’m not gonna give anything away and honestly I still need to wait to form any opinions about them.
I will say, though, that there’s a lot that could be done with some of the different groups that are coming together (and clashing), but that’s another point where I think the author drops the ball. Some of them are just unrealistically hotheaded and arrogant, and it turns into this sorta clusterfuck where everyone’s trying to teach the others to respect them by asserting their dominance. It’s just really immature for the people who are supposed to be the wise leaders of their respective societies.
I mean, the machiavellian stuff makes sense within some contexts, like within the politics of the different nations, but that was always tangential or adjacent to the plot at most. Now it’s just starting to seem like the groups that are supposed to be the main good guys are just as foolish as the meddlesome side characters running most of the governments…
Anyway, that’s probably enough critique for now. I just don’t really have anyone in real life to talk about this stuff with so I’ve been keeping it all bottled up inside my head (and occasionally rehearsing my critiques in my inner
dialoguemonologue…)Yup. The movies are an abomination. I saw them once and I’ll never watch them again. But I’ve read the book more than a few times
I still can’t get over how they stretched that short of a book over that long of a trilogy of movies and still managed to not show enough of Beorn. All of the party arriving at Beorn’s house is one of my favorite chapters and it’s just… not there. The. Fuck.
Don’t even get me started on tauriel. I’m all for diversity, but she was entirely unneeded. A love triangle? Really?
I have read the Hobbit! I was so excited for the movies and when the first one came out I almost cried in the theater. I made myself watch the second one but never did watch the third one. The book is good enough.
Some of my best memories are of my grandfather reading me the hobbit at bedtime when I stayed with him for a summer.
i read that, but i dint quite grasp it at the time.
There are several ‘edits’ you can put together online that are actually way better than the movies. They cut out a lot of the nonsense and trim around excess to provide a 2-ish hour movie that feels choppy but good.
His dark materials aka the Northern Lights series. I read it as a young teen and again as an adult. Really good.
Whenever I see someone asking for book recommendations, I always seek out comments like yours or make one if I don’t find it.
His Dark Materials aka Northern Lights (Golden Compass in US) is a really good one. I was 12 when I read the first one. It’s such a good story and I remember anxiously waiting for the 2nd and 3rd books to be published. When my friends started reading HP #1, I was already 2 books deep into HDM and was fully engulfed in Lyra’s story. HDM is a superior series that I think all children should read.
I read it again as an adult and realized how much those books really shaped my world view. Philip Pullman is an amazing storyteller.
‘I always seek out comments like yours or make one if I don’t find it.’
Same here! They were so eye opening as a young kid
Just a note to add that if OP does dig in to HDM, bear in mind that there are only three books. There are three more books masquerading as a continuation of Lyra’s story, but they can be safely disregarded as they are a nonsense.
Terry Brooks, Shannara series (wiki/goodreads)
It’s a rather extensive fantasy series and covers a prolific amount of time instead of focusing on a few characters and events (over 40 books and thousands of years basically).
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books. Hyperion (first 2 are best buy i love all 4 in the series). Read some of the classics like Philip k dick “do androids dream of electric sheep” and robert heinland’s “stranger in a strange land” isaac asimov’s “i robot” books and foundation series are excellent too.
Earthsea.
