Magician: Apprentice was my first foray into fantasy and the subsequent series made me a huge fan of the whole genre. It’s definitely on my list to reread.
Nah, Martin still has a place. He’s written a ton beyond A Song of Ice and Fire. The Wildcards series has been going on for over 30 years.
Rothfuss wrote 2 books (I refuse to call whatever the hell is novellas were “books”) and has spent the time since going to conventions, playing board games, and raising bees. Which isn’t a problem, seems like a pretty chill lifestyle. What is a problem is his continued promises that he’s working on the book, getting angry at fans when they ask him about it, and his insistence that he’s a modern author despite not putting out a real book for over 15 years now.
I’m always sad to see Codex Alera not get the respect it deserves. Granted, considering its origin, it doesn’t deserve much respect, but the end product is just so good imo.
Also never see Embers of Illeniel make the list either. Mageborn is an alright fantasy romp but the Embers prequel series really steps into interesting territory for me. It’s that perfect level of fantasy setting meets Sci fi concepts. Like ye Olde battlefield earth.
Codex Alera started as a drunken bet between Jim and another party that he couldn’t write a series on just two wildly disparate concepts. They were “pokemon” and “the lost Roman legion” lmao idk about your feelings but book series founded on foolish drunken bets probably don’t deserve much respect. This is a wondrous exception to that rule.
There’s actually 6 books (book 5 is a short story collection that’s really useful before book 6). I just learned it wasn’t a trilogy this year and enjoyed the last few. Definitely a tonal shift though as she’s matured in her preferences.
Yeah! There’s been more released since then! They’re enjoyable. And I’d argue they retain the same audience from back then, discussing and contemplating more advanced ideas, not that the others didn’t.
These lists are so subjective. For example, The Dresden Files have been around for a while, but I wouldn’t consider them to be the top of the fantasy genre. Also, no Robin Hobb?
I don’t dislike Dresden Files but I’m liking it less as it veers further & further from its initial premise. Book 1 and book…er, 16? the latest one…are so tonally different. Power creep, yeah, is part of it, but also it went from “fun noir throwback starring Detective Hard-Boiled” solving things cleverly (and without spellslinging ALL the time) to “what if a Jedi with the power of God and pop culture references on his side fought Irish folklore kaijus while Bigfoot was watching”.
Like… I’m strapped in for the ride and enjoying it besides but the series seems to have gotten a lot less intellectually stimulating and than before and is now “big powers do a fighting”.
I agree on this. I’m enjoying it none the less and I like the direction its going in. To me, it’s like going to see a movie like “Nobody”
You know what you’re getting into. You know you’ll be entertained. You know it won’t be too long. And you know it’ll never make a list as one of the greats or win any awards.
The “oh so nerdy” references weren’t quite so ubiquitous earlier in, were they? The question popped into my head the other day but I don’t feel like going back to check.
You could probably make the Wheel of Time series 20% shorter if you removed the fashion descriptions and all instances of people conveying moderate annoyance through body language.
I was told books 1-4 and then the last few were amazing. I wasn’t enraptured by the first few, so I put it down as well. I didn’t want to slog through 5 more books in the hopes I’d potentially enjoy 4 more.
Só did I. Two stars for book one, couldn’t even rate book 2, DNF book 3 and never touched it again. It actually made me second guess other books. “If you like TWoT you’ll love X” always make me think twice about reading something
I’d love to see Brandon Sanderson versions of the earlier novels. Sure, he did end up turning what was supposed to be one more book into 3 more that are each thicker than the rest, but I suspect Jordan himself would have made more than 3.
I didn’t stop reading over this, but I was annoyed when one book ends in (big event that can be felt over the entire world) and then the next book doesn’t really advance time at all, but just describes what pretty much every single other character was doing at that moment. Fine, it was kinda cool to see that, but I really just wanted to see the results of that big event instead of having to wait some more years for the next book to come out.
I consider Jordan kinda like Tolkien. Amazing world and story building combined with ok writing. Not bad (way better than I could do) but not amazing either.
Though I do still need to do another read through as an adult, since I read like half of them as a teen and probably missed a lot. Maybe I’ll enjoy the lengthy descriptions of tapestry patterns second time around.
It’s all good. It’s really crazy and most of the chapters are free on their website.
And the author makes a metric fucknton of updates per month. At one point I thought there might be ghost writers…but the author streams for patreon which is wild. So yeah no funny business.
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Her big there are The Left Hand of Darkenss (about gender), The Disposed ( capitalism vs anarchism), The Lathe of Heaven (Dreams alter reality).
They are all good but I wouldn’t describe them as easy or fun reads. I didn’t enjoy any of them but after reading them I a lot of depth of thought on the topic.
I recently read and really enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness. It’s crazy that she wrote such a book back then. Now I’m longing for more books like this.
Today, I’m on (a rare) vacation (yay!). I’m reading through her Earthsea books. When they ended sooner than I expected, I realized they were intended as young adult books. It’s not as in depth as other fantasy, but I’ve enjoyed them nonetheless.
If you were only going to read one or two, then sure, go for The Left Hand of Darkness (for sci-fi) or A Wizard of Earthsea (for fantasy), though there are some loose sequels to each of those you might end up wanting to pursue. But personally I’ve always been most fond of Always Coming Home.
LeGuin is one of my favorite authors. I’ve read a lot, but not all of LeGuin’s novels. She has 2 main multibook series that I’ve read, the Earthsea books and the Hainish cycle.
Earthsea is sort of YA fantasy, but grows up throughout the series. The first 3 are a self contained trilogy, and my favorite is Tombs of Atuan which is book 2, I think would be okay as a standalone title. My other favorite is Tales from Earthsea which is book 5, and is a collection of short stories set in the setting. You’d be missing a little context only reading Tales, but this could also be a standalone.
The Hainish cycle is scifi, and are only loosely connected by the setting and don’t have a too firmly established chronology, or any shared main characters. My favorite from the Hainish Cycle is The Left Hand of Darkness and my 2nd favorite is The Dispossessed.
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