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!
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 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.
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).
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.
