I’m new to the fantasy community, but I’m glad to see it here on Lemmy as well! I would say my favorite novel/series so far has been Mistborn, but it’s kind of the only one I’ve read so far (although it was fantastic). I’d like to gauge all of your responses too!
Some of my favourites are the farseer series by Robin Hobb, Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, the magic series by Mercedes lackey and the accidental mage books by Karen Miller.
Edited to add: war for the oaks by Emma Bull, which probably is my favourite urban fantasy
Robin Hobb is top-tier. I also enjoyed a lot of Karen Miller’s works–it’s too bad life stuff got in her way and sort of arrested some of her career momentum a few years back.
Mercedes Lackey…I feel they work best if you encounter them at a young age.
There’s lots of awesome books like everything Cosmere, ASOIF or Dune, but I’ll give a more underrated response: The Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett.
Deeply character-driven story, great worldbuilding and exploration of themes such as imperialism, religious oppression and family. Each book follows a different perspective, but the trilogy weaves them together masterfully for a really emotional finale. IMO, it’s one of the GOAT series now.
The Powder Mage trilogy by Bryan McClellan. Its world is set in the middle of an industrial revolution where you have some more traditional mages running around, but also a new breed of mages that consume gunpowder to do all sorts of interesting things. It’s not a very “deep” story but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks has a very good hard magic system. It explores themes of identity, the problems of adhering to dogma, and has a likeable main character.
The Gentleman Bastard series by Scott Lynch is a kind of swashbuckling adventure style story. Its world is very well developed (for the few locations the story takes place in) and have some of the most memorable characters I’ve ever read. This is one of those books that made me laugh out loud at some of the situations.
The Demon Cycle series by Peter V. Brett also has a great world setting. The world used to be very technologically advanced before demons started to invade from the underworld and nearly wiped out humanity. The world regressed to a more medieval style society with small cities and villages surviving only by the use of runes along their perimeter to keep the demons away.
The Wheel of Time and Mistborn (I have only read the first trilogy so far) are definitely up there for me.
I always come back to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, they are an eternal favourite. I love all Robin McKinley’s books, and Garth Nix’s Abhorsen novels are up there, too.
In terms of a more recent (and shorter) series, I very much enjoyed Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy, NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, and so far I’ve liked Freya Marske’s first two books in her The Last Binding series. Honourable mentions for the Dresden Files and Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London (which are just fun).
I have read Mistborn, but a while ago, and to be honest it didn’t really stick with me. I’ve also started the first Malazan (edit, fecking autocorrect) book a few times and just couldn’t get into it.
Malazan! But dear god don’t start it when you’re new. Other favourites I haven’t seen mentioned here yet include The Dying Earth by Jack Vance and Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser by Fritz Leiber. Also Discworld!
Currently about 20% of the way through Toll the Hounds. I have been read Malazan for, I kid you not, the last two years. I get most of my reading in little chunks of 20-40 min before I fall asleep, so it’s been very slow going. But MAN has it been awesome.
I sympathise, I’m a slow reader and broke the series up with an unrelated book between each entry. Took a few attempts before I really got into the series too.
Felt like it went on forever but it was only about 3 years. I’d been trying on and off to get into it properly since my teens though, so 3 years was my last attempt, but overall it’s closer to 20 since my first read of Gardens.
It really is an incredible experience. And Toll the Hounds is one of my favourites. Enjoy! I was so keen to get through them all, but now that I’m all done, I really miss it.
Read all of the First Law series last year and man… Its good stuff. I think Logan Nine-Fingers is one of my favorite characters ever.
Its definitely more dark and grimey than a lot of the fantasy I’ve read, but I think the characters are more interesting because of it.
Love to see some First Law praise here!
I don’t think I’ve read an Abercrombie book that I haven’t loved, his characters jump off the page and his style of writing is visceral and hilarious. People criticise the worldbuilding (or lack thereof) but that’s because the Circle of the World isn’t a character in these books, it’s the backdrop. Besides, if you’ve read all the books, you’ll realise that there’s actually a shit ton of worldbuilding in there!
Also, Abercrombie is extremely fortunate that he has Steven Pacey narrating his audiobooks. The literal GOAT of audiobook narration (Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge aside).
I just finished The Blade Itself last week. I really liked it! Going to dive into the rest of the trilogy (and the other books after) soon.
Logen is a fun character. One thing I noticed that I feel Abercrombie does particularly well is the reading tone, style, and just general flow changes by a fair amount depending on who the POV character is. It made me think about it in other books and I concluded it’s something I haven’t given other authors enough credit for doing too… Abercrombie did a particularly good job at it.
It’s almost certainly just a case of me not being far enough into the books yet, but I only really felt like Glotka and his surrounding details was particularly dark.
Think it might end up my favorite series of the year, at least.
Abercrombie is definitely very good at this. Most if the time I could tell from a couple of sentences who’s perspective we were following just from the vibe change. Other writers definitely do this as well, but in this series each character has their own distinctive flavor that is so well defined that he makes it seemless.
You’ve got a way to go, but man is the ride is wild.
Dragonlance Chronicles was my favourite growing up. Then it was the Riftwar Cycle by Raymond E Feist.
Wheel of Time is by far my favorite book series.
Since the series takes place over so many books, character growth is fantastically more organic than typical. Characters change as people and grow (or shrink) in power and it just works so much better than in a shorter series. The foreshadowing the best done in any story I’ve experienced yet: there’s so many little details hidden away, little winks or nods to people that know are just buried everywhere. It’s the only book series that I liked more on a re-read than on my first read; I liked read #3 more than the one before it, and the 4th (and most recent) was my favorite yet…
It’s not without it’s flaws, many of which I (and most fans) will acknowledge. But damn if it’s not my favorite by a mile.
I don’t know what your “reading stamina” is but if you can handle a lot of books and a lot of words, it’s not a bad series for newer readers. The early books take care to ease the reader into the setting and even fantasy books in general. Book 1 in particular is written to intentionally evocative of LOTR before letting the series fully become it’s own thing shortly afterwards. Sanderson was heavily influenced by WoT as well, and Mistborn is the book that got him the job of finishing WoT after RJ’s premature death.
The first Mistborn trilogy is probably my favourite. I wasnt too much a fan of the second era stuff.
If you like longer stuff then Stormlight Archive is really good. Also obligatory WoT insert… there was a bit of a slump somewhere in the middle, for me, but overall Id always recommend sticking to it!
And then Stuff not related to Sanderson… Im currently on the Black Company and im digging it so far, although it might not be everyones cup of tea.
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
I’ll go ahead and plug the Cradle series by Will Wight. Great series that just released the final book.
FYI, looks like your comment got accidentally spammed.
Newer series:
- The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson.
- This series is considered “hard fantasy” by some (compare with “hard sci-fi”) because the political/economic/science (or pseudo-science) institutions of the universe Dickinson creates are rooted in our reality much more than fantasy usually is. The story itself is about a brilliant young woman from an island peoples who were colonized by a harsh empire, and she tries to join the system in order to break the system, but instead ends up dancing with a LOT of sociopaths. The series is not done yet, so I’m not entirely sure yet how much of a villain Baru is, or if she is eventually redeemed.
- One thing to beware is that some of the accepted science in this world mimics old, OUTDATED and disproven theories from our world (because, you know, this fantasy world is behind us in tech), and I guess some people don’t get Dickinson is trying to show how even very intelligent people do things based on bad science, and these readers instead nod along with the bad science. So take “scientific” reasoning in this world with a grain of salt, some is wrong on purpose, and if you don’t have a background in those sciences you might not catch the author is refering to historical, disproven theories from our world
- Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
- This is sort of a “science fantasy”. There’s necromancers, but also space ships. It’s probably one of the most unique fantasy univeses I’ve seen in years, and the writing is tons of fun.
- Although I very much rec this series, for me the grimdark, sardonic behavior of the characters started to grate after a while, but the 3rd book in the series follows a different character and sort of reassured me the author was able to write a softer, more hopeful outlook while not losing the mystery/complexity of the world
- The series as a whole is very confusing at parts–but that’s not you, it’s intentional. People say they don’t fully have everything fall into place until the 2nd or 3rd read, and that was true for me too. Basically, it’s a series for people who like to dig into mysteries and theorize on things and such.
- Akata Witch, by Nnedi Okorafor
- This is about an albino girl from Nigeria who learns she has magical powers. And while the story is about a magical school for kids, and those kids go on adventures, it is so informed by African culture and thought and mythology that beyond the idea of “school for magic kids” there’s nearly 0 resemblence to other “magical kids in school” books. Either way, the series is very fun, and I wish I had been a kid myself when I encountered it b/c I think it would have had a much greater impact on me if I had.
I was going to rec some older series too–but honestly, I’m sure you’ll hear of them.
The Black Company
Farseer series
LightBringer
Below, ser mentioned Dragonlance Chronicles and Riftwar Cycle, and I have to second those. They are older, and while I feel they’ve aged with a certain amount of grace, there are certainly standout newer series that have raised the bar, but I still enjoy them. Riftwar in particular had an interesting take on magic and gods that made it fascinating for me.
I also think, however overhyped it may be, that the first two trilogies about Drizzt Do’urden are solid reads. The first trilogy of Homeland, Soujourn, and Exile is some of the best worldbuilding I’ve seen in fantasy of its time, and Icewind Dale is a great adventure as well. The later books do tend to suffer a lot from power creep and the series runs far too long for my tastes, but the first two trilogies are solid.
I’d also recommend anything by Robin Hobb, who has a deep and fascinating fantasy world and an excellent mind for characterization. Also pretty good at twisting the knife on her readers from time to time. She has a lot of trilogies/series that take place in the same world, and any of which would be a reasonable place to start, so skim through and pick one that seems like it might be appealing.
For historical fantasy, there’s a lot, but to name one I loved, S.A. Chakraborty writes some truly fascinating and exciting adventurous escapades through the world of middle eastern mythology. Her recent Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi is both a really fun adventurous romp across the 12th century Indian Ocean, and a thoughtful insight into motherhood, and the ways in which it changes you and leaves you the same.
Or, if you like a historical war fantasy, R.F. Kuang wrote the trilogy The Poppy War that takes place in what is essentially an alternate world fantasy-China that starts off a little Harry Potter, but very quickly becomes a long, drawn out story of war, rebellion, and the many wrongs that happen along the way. You may wish to consider reading trigger warnings on these books.
Or, if you want some urban/contemporary fantasy (meaning fantasy stories that take place here in our modern real-world Earth, except there’s magic), Jim Butcher has a very gritty urban series called Dresden Files about being a noir-style detective investigating crimes involving magic that is extremely popular.
On the opposite urban fantasy mood, I’ve recently stumbled into Annette Marie’s series The Guild Codex: Spellbound, wherein a human woman desperate for work accidentally stumbles into the magical world when she applies for a bartending position at what turns out to be a guild of mythics (people with magical powers), which she survives through sheer force of personality, no small amount of sass, and expert aim with a margarita. It hooks with its premise, but really the character growth and world development in this series has had me addicted lately.
And to suggest something a little off the beaten path, Jim C. Hines wrote a series of novels beginning with The Stepsister Scheme which asks, “What if those fairy tale Disney princesses were actually badasses?” The main characters (not actually based on their Disney versions of course, as these stories existed long before Disney) have a lot of depth that gets revealed over the course of the story. There is some very dark backstory here, so consider checking trigger warnings if that’s a concern. Mostly though this is a Charlie’s Angels style (minus Charlie) more action-focused series.
