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.
Loads of great suggestions in this thread, but I feel it’s missing some lighter, easy to read and fun fantasy. So, let me suggest two series:
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The Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist. Enough books to last you a year. Can get a bit dark at times, but the prose is really fast flowing, the books are focused on high adventure, and the characters are really likeable. The series contains a trilogy that starts with Daughter of the Empire, which features a far higher quality prose, but it’s tonally so different from the other books that you may want to skip it if you liked the first trilogy (or tetralogy, depending which edition you pick up).
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The Elenium trilogy by David Eddings, followed by the Tamuli trilogy. Eddings is best known for his Belgariad, but this trilogy is such a lightearted fun that I re-read it every couple of years.
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For sci-fi check out The Interdependency Series by John Scalzi. It’s about an interstellar empire that can only navigate through wormholes that are now closing up. The last emperor foresaw this and is trying to save as many humans as possible while fending off political rivals and assassins.
For a similar series check out Foundation from Isaac Asimov. It’s more of an anthology of stories over the course of a millennium but Asimov has a brilliant way of piercing the story together through the vast gaps in time.
I haven’t seen anyone recommend The Expanse here so I’ll go ahead and do it. The show is a faithful adaptation given the complications that came from having to change networks and deal with some… Problematic aspects of some of its actors. The book series however goes into greater detail and goes beyond the 6th season to some of the best parts of the story in books 7 through 9.
My current fantasy fix is the Cradle series by Will Wight. He’s not as well known as Sanderson but he’s a diligent writer and has some interesting world building and magic concepts. If you want to start off light with him you might want to check out his Traveler’s Gate series, it’s only three books long but has great pacing.
The Powder Mage series is a very decent military grimdark fantasy that features a world with 17th century technology and some interesting magic systems. The story’s decently written but it’s the battles that caught my attention the most. It’s always interesting to read about how some mage soldiers do a line of gunpowder like they’re sniffing coke to make bullets travel unfathomable distances and snipe out enemy generals on the battlefield.
+1 for Cradle. His current series “The Last Horizon” is great too, a fun trope filled science-fantasy.
I was looking for a mention of The Powder Mage. I’ve recommended that series to a handful of friends and they’ve all really enjoyed it. A rare 100% approval response.
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Just give a little warning. It’s ‘superpowers’ written in a serial format that brings the brutality of a series like invincible, but while invincible sort of still plays it off in a comic appropriate way, it’s never ‘fixed’ or back to the status quo in worm. While a lot of the brutality is glossed over except when the author is hitting that anvil, and even then more is able to be overlooked because the action and character interactions are just written so alluringly and you’ll be speeding through it, taking a moment to step back and think about what just happened ‘in universe’ can be shocking.
It’s good, but even Wildbow themselves says it could use a thorough edit - which will likely never happen. Not to say you shouldn’t read it. It’s fantastic.
I dunno, I’m holding out that an animated adaptation will happen one day on the worm series. Maybe it’ll get the invicible treatment and get some edits then.
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 would say Dune. It is sci-fantasy but I think it is ok.
I’m gonna lean into the series part here, and point at some web series:
Pale is an urban fantasy story (modern day with a magical hidden world) by Wildbow. The premise for this story is it’s a murder mystery where none of the suspects is able to lie; and three girls are inducted into the magical world to solve it. This is actually the second web series of his in this world, after Pact. Wildbow is an extremely popular online author, and all his works are available online for free - his superhero stories (Worm and Ward) have influenced most of the online superhero fiction (and even some print publications) I’ve read since.
The Gods Are Bastards by D. D. Webb is a “high fantasy western”. It follows a class of 9 students going through the premier adventuring school in the empire; about a century after magitech advances have made that unfashionable. This series is entirely free online, as are most of his other works. Book 1 of 17 has been printed and is available under the same name. This series is on hiatus partway through his final book; he’s working on getting the mental space to complete it. If you read it online he’s very open about his process and issues as he goes; and if you find you enjoy it, he has a few other series getting updates in the meantime!
A Practical Guide to Evil is a fantasy series where story tropes are as strong as physical laws - the Law of Threes, for example, states that if a Hero is trounced by a Villain, and then is narrowly defeated in their second encounter, they will absolutely defeat the Villain the next time they meet. It follows the adventures of Catherine Foundling, an orphan who turns Villain to carve out a better life for her people. The first book is up on Amazon, the rest of the series is still available online.
All three of these have amazing, unique characters, extensive and fascinating world building, and go long - 15+ books worth apiece, so if any grab you, pace yourself! Also, they’re almost entirely available for free online!
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.
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!
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?
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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.
Red Rising by Pierce Brown is really popular. I’m only just started the 4th book so nobody spoil it for me. So far so good.
Seems like most of the big ones were mentioned. The glaring omission is The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. Read the first one, and you’ll find yourself finishing the story.
I started the first book a week or so ago. Now I’m am almost done with the third. Sooo good!
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.
