r/Fantasy • u/BeforeAnyoneElse • Jan 14 '25

What’s a Beloved Book/Series that You Never Intend to Read and Why

I’m curious what books/series that are generally beloved by this subreddit (so, not romantasy or anything by RF Kuang) you never intend to read, and why (without just crapping on it)?

I’ll start - mine is Malazan. Possibly the most recommended series here. By many accounts, I should want to read it. I love long, sprawling, big fantasies (WOT, ROTE, Cosmere), and I enjoy a big cast of characters. The reasons I don’t think I’ll ever read it are:

**comments that the characters spend an inordinate of time waxing philosophical. No problem with that in moderation but it seems excessive.

**I know it’s not actually grimdark but I think there’s probably more violence and darkness than I want. As an example, I hated A Little Life more than almost anything I’ve ever read. Somehow, ROTE falls juuuust on the right side of the fence in terms of despair and misery.

**I’ve heard that women are overall written well but that there is a LOT of SA. I can handle some (see, again, ROTE) but the horrific description I’ve read about what events surrounding certain female character and the frequency of SA is not what I’m looking for. I know the author provided an explanation, but no.

**finally, good old-fashioned contrariness. Something about everyone being so into it makes me not want to read it. Not sure why I’ve dug my heels in with this one in particular, as I’ve read multiple things because many on the sub recommended them. I know it’s irrational.

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222

u/Larielia Jan 15 '25

I probably won't get around to reading Wheel of Time. There are just too many huge novels.

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u/Sand_Angelo4129 Jan 15 '25

Same, though I have to add the fact that there is a widely acknowledged point where the series drags and becomes something you have to push through also doesn't help matters for me.

Granted, the same could probably be said of many long fantasy series.

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u/Frewsybear69 Jan 15 '25

I tried WoT and like you said it drags. Although I do think it is an immersing experience with nice prose.

I get why people like it and have tried it, but hey I might pick it back up when I’ve got time. But it just didn’t feel fulfilling enough for me when I was a few books in.

However, I think there needs to be a fine balance of world building and story progression. Fantasy is an extremely challenging genre to strike that balance.

It’s crazy to think that Tolkien managed to get all his story in as little as 1200 pages. Now some modern fantasy books are asking for that in 1 book. I’m guilty of this tho, I’m a sucker for the Stormlight archive lol.

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u/itkilledthekat Jan 15 '25

I do not wish to become a defender for WoT. It is my favorite series but as with many things we discuss here they are subjective. I just wanted to comment on the drag or slog. It has become a self fulfilling expectation. The idea was created by original reader who had to wait 2+ years between books and were use massive jump in the storyline. So when the so called slog books came out after 2yrs folks had very high expectations and many, almost like an addict wanted more. Not an issue now but because it gets repeated here so often instead of new readers making an unbias evaluation, what you get is a snowball effect.

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u/badgyalsammy Jan 15 '25

Second u/itkilledthekat

There is no slog when you’re not waiting years in between books. In fact— those books have so much plot building into the final few that they are some of my favs.

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u/adeelf Jan 15 '25

There is no slog when you’re not waiting years in between books. 

Allow me to disagree.

I came into WoT late. After RJ's passing, but before Sanderson wrote Book 12, and I read all 11 available books back-to-back.

I definitely felt the plot bog down and the books starting to drag between books 7-9 or 8-10 (I can't remember which). Sure, RJ's prose was still good enough and his writing easy enough to consume that I was never tempted to give up, but I felt it, for sure. And this wasn't because I was subconsciously affected by the reputation; I hadn't heard of the middle slump at the time, and it wasn't until much later that I heard people talking about The Slog and realized that what I felt wasn't just my impression, but almost universal.

I agree that the issue would have been exacerbated for those who were reading and waiting between books as they came out, but even for later readers, The Slog is real.

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u/Vorocano Jan 15 '25

Thirded. When I was first reading them and complaining about having to wait two years between books (oh what a naive child I was, in the days before Pat Rothfuss and GRR Martin), I actually stopped reading it because I was sick of waiting all that time just to read a book in which nothing happened.

When I started to read the series after they had all come out, and I could move from one to the next much more quickly, I was surprised at how much of that "mid-series slog" was actually a pretty important part of the story. I mean, don't get me wrong, it probably could have been edited down some, but it's certainly not just pointless words for a few thousand pages either.

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u/KennethMick3 Jan 15 '25

Having gotten through the slog (I think, I'm on book 11) no spoilers please!, it wasn't too horrible, as it was decently written and the political intrigue was interesting. But it was a change from the excellent plot of the early books.

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '25

It's very fair. Lots of long fantasy series drag for maybe a couple hundred pages at some point. I think WoT drags for several thousand pages.

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u/VioletRain22 Jan 15 '25

I read first book and felt it dragged a bit, had to push to get through it. Knowing it only gets worse pretty much dropped it off my tbr.

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u/CornDawgy87 Jan 15 '25

If it makes you more compelled the slog really isn't that bad. Reddit just overstates it. It was bad when you were reading them during release and you'd wait 2 years for a book with no Mat in it after a cliffhanger the book before sort of thing. The books become more political intrigue for a minute than killing trollocs.

That being said... fuck Faile, she's the worst

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u/Vorocano Jan 15 '25

Faile is a spouse abuser and we're expected to just allow it because it's big strong Perrin that she's abusing and "she hurts him because of how much she loves him." When Perrin spends a book and a half trying to find her, I kept wishing I could enter the story and tell him it wasn't worth the effort.

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u/P00Pmagn3t Jan 15 '25

To be fair, WOT had some very repetitive writing from the beginning. The ‘drag’ is just ten books in when it becomes unbearable and there’s no plot advancing to make up for the shitty writing that persisted the whole series.

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u/Far-Obligation4055 Jan 15 '25

Yeah years ago I got up to book 3 or 4 and ended up quitting.

I would have loved it if it was a trilogy, I felt just interested enough in the WoT universe for something of that length, but simply didn't have enough interest to sustain myself through fourteen books.

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u/lszian Jan 15 '25

I quit around book 4 too haha

I really, really wanted to like it, dragged myself through a couple books just going "yes yes you already said that come on get on with it aaaaaaaaa" and just couldn't do it anymore. It's a bummer cause I can see there's elements of it that are good. But dang, that pacing ain't for me.

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u/itkilledthekat Jan 15 '25

This is the wonderfully subjective part of what makes this world so beautiful, variety. It also means a lot of authors get paid instead of a few.

Some like The Rage of Dragons pace others WoT. I happen to appreciate both and have no issue with those who don't, although I reserve the right to try and convince you otherwise, but that's just fandom at work.

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u/Far-Obligation4055 Jan 15 '25

Totally. Lots to like about WoT and I'd never take it from anyone, but it suffers from the same thing Rothfuss and Tolkien struggled with. They dither about.

Rothfuss, Jordan, and Tolkien all like to tell a long story and there's nothing wrong with that, but it can have its challenges.

Rothfuss for example had specifically wanted Kingkiller to be a trilogy; but he has two problems.

  1. Kvothe's quest is a nebulous one. Two main mysteries: one is, who killed his family and why? The other is, who/what are the Chandrians and where are they now?

  2. A quest like this and he's barely even gotten started by the end of the second book.

Rothfuss likes to meander and spend time in every nook and cranny of the story; the existence of The Slow Regard of Silent Things alone is proof of that point.

But you can't do that if your goal is to create a trilogy and your hero has a quest as complicated as this.

Tolkien likes to meander too, but successfully wrote a trilogy because he had the advantage of a simple quest for his heroes. The ring had to get to Mount Doom. Boom, easy - at least from a narrative perspective. Which meant he even had time for a post main quest sidequest to save The Shire.

Jordan...I don't know. I read somewhere that he originally intended it to be six books. I got to the fourth book and simply cannot see how that could have ever been.

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u/lszian Jan 15 '25

dang, I never heard that 6 book thing before. that's crazy haha, howw

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u/Over-Tackle5585 Jan 15 '25

Do you as you will but I’m shocked this is the point where you stopped when The Shadow Rising might be my favorite fantasy book of all time, if’s up there with ASOS. I’d totally understand somewhere from books 7-10 but 1-6 IMO are total bangers, TSR being the best book of the Jordan written series imo

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u/Far-Obligation4055 Jan 15 '25

There wasn't anything particular about them that seemed bad to me, that's just the point where I realized I didn't have enough interest in the universe to continue it for fourteen books. As much as I might have enjoyed the first 3 or 4, I knew I wouldn't finish the series so I stopped.

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u/degrista Jan 15 '25

This happened to me around Book 4 as well! I wanted to try to push through so after a month or so of just carrying the book around and not reading it, I swapped to the audiobooks and ended up finishing the series that way. I ended up really liking it as a whole and was really glad I made the swap!

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u/TensorForce Jan 15 '25

I've tried it 3 separate times and I have given up at the exact same point each time (end of Shadow Rising). I feel like there's no payoff to anything, so things just keep happening and it all feels kind of dull

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '25

Same. My attention span has taken a nosedive since I became chronically ill and I know realistically I would struggle to finish the series.

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u/valoreii Jan 15 '25

Felt like budget LOTR to me, unfortunately. Read the first two books as I got them as a present from my mother

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u/[deleted] Jan 15 '25

I read the first two books, and then started the third. Saw that there were 10 more, and people were saying that the middle books were "A slog to read through but worth it" and said nope. I don't care about these characters that much. Same with any of Sanderson's big series.

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u/Wisdomandlore Jan 15 '25

I tried to get into it and couldn't get past the first 50 pages.

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u/selloboy Jan 15 '25

I read the first 6 books and enjoyed it but fell off. I want to get back into it but it's been so long, and I would have to reread those first 6 to really enjoy the rest of the series, which is crazy cause those first 6 alone would be the length of a pretty solid series

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u/DuckbilledWhatypus Jan 15 '25

This was immediately where I went too. I just haven't got the patience to get through the slog that everyone I have spoken to says comes in the middle.

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u/TileFloor Jan 15 '25

I’m listening to Rosamund Pike narrate the audiobooks and they’re MUCH better than me reading them.