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.
Ringworld is solid. Just about everything written by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is good. When they work together, you get some solid stuff.
And books by Andy Weir are all very good. But you can cheat and watch the movies.
Babel it’s a fantasy historical account of oxford. It’s beautiful and wonderful. The author also has a series Poppy Wars which is good but it’s dark. But Babel is best.
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The fantasy/SF line is pretty blurry. You can have dragons and robots at the same time. Others have mentioned Tad Williams and Zelazny already. I’ll add Melanie Rawn for dragons and magic, Charles de Lint for Faries in the modern world, and Christopher Stasheef for witches and terrible puns. And Tim Powers for a bit of everything!
Dragons? Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series is worthwhile!
I count those as SF. Romance heavy SF but still.
I thought they were fantasy for the longest time! I remember reading a later Pern book (can’t recall the title anymore, sadly) where there was a computer system that got uncovered after like 600 years - surprise! SF!
I would recommend Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series as well as his Lyonesse Trilogy.
Ok so since you’re doing sci-fi as well, Hyperion/Hyperion series.
I just finished the Cantos this week. I think Hyperion is one of the best sci-fi setups ever conceived. The Canterbury Tales in Space is so hype, and so well executed. I could read it ten times and love it every time.
The rest of the series is ambitious, but never quite lived up to the first book. There are incredibly interesting ideas, and some excellent parts… but I can’t give the whole thing a 10/10.
Book four light spoilers
Aenea spends so much time talking at the reader, and her set up as the savior of humanity pins her character in a corner.
The discussion on how “humans stopped evolving” was an incredible turn on my view of the Ousters, and helped recontextualize the series as a radical, conservationist epic instead of just an anti-authoritarian one was also A+.
Since I just read this, I’ve been thinking a lot about how a television adaptation would work. Season one would be just the first book… one pilgrim’s tale per episode. But then I feel like the next three books would need a comprehensive overhaul to streamline the narrative and pick a clearer focus.
I started the second book shortly after reading the first, and I didn’t finish it. I think I prefer to remember Hyperion as a standalone story as it’s so perfect
Yeah, I put Hyperion/Hyperion series since the series is not for everyone.
I personally enjoyed the Endymion books, some people enjoy Fall of Hyperion and leave it at that.
I really enjoyed The Legend of Eli Monpress series, though it’s not pop culture.
If you fancy a small change over to comic/graphic novels, I can highly recommend the Alan Moore run of Swamp Thing. Two years ago I would have also included Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, but it seems that he’s a piece of shit, so if you do want to read his stuff, please pirate it to avoid giving him any money.
Recently I’ve been thinking one of the best things Alan Moore has written is the original 12-issue series Top 10. It just has certain characters and events that stuck in my mind.
When Women Were Dragons a great standalone book reimaging the 1950 based on women spontaneously turning into dragons. It’s a concept book where a sociality issue is examined by fantasy tropes which are fun. Worth reading if you haven’t done a female perspective novel or concept novel in a while.
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.
I’ll second NK Jemisin’s Broken Earth series. At a dinner a friend mentioned he had just finished the second book and the dinner immediately turned into talking about how amazing the series is. Highly recommend.
Three Body Problem is hard science sci-fi with amazing storytelling. The last book sort or rushes some parts, but I think that story of works for it in the context of a story of humanity rushing at dealing with possible destruction.
I didn’t see it mentioned, but the Hyperion Cantos books are more classic SciFi/fantasy but it still hit. I cried at the ending, I’m not sue I ever have before at a book.
I actually liked A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) but, obviously, an incomplete series. Still.
Very much agreed on the Broken Earth series
Great recs all around! Hyperion cantos is awesome. It’s the caterburry tales…iIn space!
Last time I recommend Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series, I got crucified over it. Imma do it again. It was a formative work to me, and I frequently quote the wizards’ rules. Content warning though: some scenes are quite disturbing, and some of Terry’s political opinions leak into the text and are questionable at best.
Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar series is another of my favorites, and I think I can recommend it without content warnings but it’s been a long time since I read it so I don’t really remember.
Louis McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga is also very good. Scifi instead of fantasy, but how often do I get the chance to recommend books?
Valdemar deals with some serious stuff, but glosses over the worst of it. The torture of one main character, and the brutal burning of another, as two examples, are handled pretty well. I would still go back and read them if I didn’t just remember them all so well because they’re awesome. There is definitely the fantasy trope of orphan/unwanted kids getting their fantasy though, but it’s appropriate for the blue fantasy genre.
…also, you should get crucified for sword of truth :P
Gah, sword of truth. I read that, ok, so there’s a hero’s journey thing going on, I can dig it - suddenly BDSM fanfic!
Nope, Goodkind ain’t for me. It was SO jarring!
Still, you also recommended Bujold. My fav! I’ll have to check out Valdemar.
I’m more of an SF person, but I really enjoyed the Raksura series, by Martha Wells, about a guy who can shape shift into a sort of dragon. I’m also currently rereading the Amber Chronicles, by Roger Zelazny, and it’s very good.
In case it helps any, I made a post with a giant number of spoiler-free short reviews of SF and fantasy books I’ve read over the last few years, and many of the books mentioned here are in them.
Series?
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Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy
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Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain
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Discworld, especially the Night Watch books
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Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series
Individual Books:
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Robin McKinley, The Hero and the Crown, or anything else she wrote
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Diana Wynne Jones, Fire and Hemlock and Howl’s Moving Castle, or anything else she wrote
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Philip K. Dick, “Galactic Pot-Healer” (Dick straddles the line between science fiction and science fantasy, but this one’s firmly the latter)
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Madeline L’Engle, Many Waters
I’m sure I’ll think of more but my break is up.
Wait wait. You’re starting with Engel’s “Many Waters?” Isn’t it book 4 in a series where book 1 (“A Wrinkle in Time”) is considered a classic?
It’s been a long time but I remember liking book 2 a whole lot. I never did get book 5, though I think there is one?
I came here to say Chronicles of Prydain. I read them over and over as a child and they are so magical and well written, it’s a shame they aren’t more well known!
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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:
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
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.
