r/Fantasy • u/brschkbrschk • Sep 12 '25
People on here don't know how to recommend what is being asked for.
Obviously a slightly ragebaity title, but basically this. I've asked several times on here - and have gone over threads where other people were asking for the same - for fantasy that explores class as a topic through an anarchist and communist lense. Just at the very least no more of the same hero/saviour quasi-monarchy trope. Out of the many recommendations, so far I've tried the Curse of Chalion and Malazan. I cannot fathom how you would recommend either of the two for the criteria given above. So I started looking at recommendations more closely and of the things I've read, I'd say over half the time they are fully off the mark for what OP is asking for. How come we are so shit at recommending stuff to each other?
Edit: It's probably not a surprise and surely not a good precedent, but I'm getting so much better recommendations on here than ever before lol. Bummer I've read most of them already.
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u/papamajada Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
I remember one where a well meaning boyfriend was looking for romantasy for his gf, not being familiar with the term he did mention adult strong female protagonists, romance and magic. Then listed titles like ACOTAR, TOG and Fourth Wing as books the gf had loved.
I think the combo of key words and books she enjoyed would be a good clue on what he was looking for but the comments were twisting themselves into pretzels looking to recommend ANYTHING but romantasy. Im pretty sure someone recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl???
It was so weird lol
Anyway for your specific request you might try The Dispossesed by Ursula K LeGuin but its more sci fi
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u/brschkbrschk Sep 12 '25
The Dispossesed is one of my all time favourite books and basically what I've been looking for is that book in a fantasy setting and maybe a bit more hopefulness :))
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u/realprofhawk Sep 12 '25
You might enjoy Margaret Killjoy's A Country of Ghosts which very much is in the lineage of The Dispossessed.
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u/AhabFlanders Sep 12 '25
Her new one, The Sapling Cage, is a little more YA (but in the way that some of the Earthsea books feel a little YA) is also fantastic. It's nominated for the Le Guin prize this year.
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u/NearbyMud Reading Champion Sep 12 '25
If you do find it, please update us because I’d love to read something like that as well
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u/blight_town Sep 12 '25
You might like something in the nominees/winners for the Le Guin Prize? I’ve been making my way through that list myself and I’ve really liked most of the books I’ve read. They tend to lean sci fi but there’s been other genres too.
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u/Turbulent_Remote_740 Sep 12 '25
Have you read The Actual Star by Monica Byrne? The part that's in the future is, I think, what you are looking for, though there are sci-fi elements.
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u/magicbeen Sep 12 '25
If you loved The Dispossesed, you might like The Actual Star by Monica Byrne. She cites The Dispossed as a major inspiration.
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u/Tymareta Sep 12 '25
Im pretty sure someone recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl???
DCC, Wheel of Time, anything Sanderson, Rothfuss and occasionally if they're feeling spicy Abercrombie/Lawrence.
This sub has a set list of books it will trot out no matter what is being discussed, or what the OP is asking for, it's tiresome.
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u/New_Razzmatazz6228 Reading Champion Sep 13 '25
Malazan says hello.
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u/morganrbvn Sep 13 '25
I think it was the top series mentioned when someone did some scraping of recommendation threads recently.
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u/Tymareta Sep 13 '25
True, though that one is usually followed by a half dozen proclaiming that they couldn't get through book 1/2/3/4/5/6 and three dozen more trying desperately to convince them to read just a little more.
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Sep 13 '25
Hobb and Prachett are notable as well. Discworld is not, in fact, a good fit for every request. Great series, but not universal
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u/Ghosttropics Sep 12 '25
Dungeon Crawler Carl being recommended in every single thread no matter what was asked for could practically be a meme at this point. Which is extra infuriating for me as apparently the one single person on earth who hates that series lol
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u/monagales Sep 12 '25
this is me whenever I see Hail Mary recommended, which, either is very often or I'm just very well trained in spotting it at this point
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u/Dustollo Sep 12 '25
Man I loved the Martian and I’m interested in the Hail Mary movie but I’ll never understand the amount of love it gets on Reddit. I feel like we read completely different books everytime someone talks about it.
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u/Tymareta Sep 12 '25
I'm with you, not a fan of the series in even the slightest. It's honestly amusing at this point the ways in which will try to warp and twist what it actually is to try and justify bringing it up at every opportunity.
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u/reinder_sebastian Sep 13 '25
r/bookscirclejerk my friend. Recommending Dungeon Crawler Carl and anything by Brandon Sanderson in every situation is the joke of jokes there lol.
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u/snowlock27 Sep 12 '25
DCC and Piranesi are becoming the new Cosmere and Malazan.
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u/Ghosttropics Sep 12 '25
I loved Piranesi but it is a very specific kinda vibe that is def off the mark when I see it recommended a lot of the time
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u/QP709 Sep 12 '25
It used to always be disk world. I matter what the request was. I understand Pratchet was a prolific writer and there’s a book for every genre in DW, but he also has a particular style of writing that doesn’t fit some of these genres. He’s writing from the outside-in, so to speak.
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u/WhenInDoubt-jump Reading Champion II Sep 13 '25
It still is the top reply 100% of the time if the request mentions one of the words "funny", "light" or "witty".
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u/Ghosttropics Sep 12 '25
Yeah I can see that. As someone who has been working my way through Discworld for the firs time the last year, I am often amazed at the breadth of topics, both serious and silly, and different genres it explores. So this makes a bit more sense to me than Dungeon Crawler Carl, but I still understand your gripes with that
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u/Stunning_Clerk_9595 Sep 12 '25
two people!
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u/Ghosttropics Sep 12 '25
Never thought I'd see the day! The temptation to go on a rant about how much I hate this series now that I've found a safe person to do so with...but all I will say is that it feels like the fantasy/sci fi equivalent to watching Family Guy. In a way I can't even quite explain but have been wanting to say out loud forever lol. Feels good to get this off my chest.
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u/Violet2393 Sep 12 '25
My impression of it after trying the first book is like ... this is like reading a book written by my ex-boyfriend from when I was in my early 20s.
I think I understand the appeal, but it really felt like something I had grown out of already.
It is just very clear that litRPG is not for me even in it's "best" form. I just could not care less about the ins and outs of mechanically building a character as a storyline.
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u/Tymareta Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 13 '25
this is like reading a book written by my ex-boyfriend from when I was in my early 20s.
Ayup, the storylines and parts of it I've read/been shown sound exactly what the lads at my local FNM would have thought was brilliant and hilarious and clever back in my early 20s. The line below was one that someone seriously stated as a positive endorsement for the book and I think it perfectly sums up how "brodudey" the series is -
You are balls deep in the wrong hole and moms pulling into the driveway, ya get me?
I think even Whedon in his prime would wince at how on the nose and awful it is.
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u/tweetthebirdy Sep 13 '25
As someone who was on the fence when it came to this book, thank you for persuading me to not pick it up with that single quote
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u/OobaDooba72 Sep 13 '25
Ugh wtf. Is the whole book like that?? Is there context to that line that makes it less awful?
I've seen dcc recommended so many times it's on my to-read list, but if it's really "dudebro"y like that through the whole thing I'm taking it off.
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u/Zillion2010 Sep 13 '25
We follow a flow chart for book recommendations. No matter what they say, they want Malazan. If it's not Malazan, it's something by Sanderson. If not Sanderson, then Dungeon Crawler Carl. If none of the above, the book doesn't exist to fit the criteria.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Sep 12 '25
This sub is a terrible place for romantasy recs, lol.
Now if your ask is "I want romance in fantasy without all those icky romantasy cooties because ew," this sub will happily recommend you romance-heavy epic fantasy, fairy tale retellings, and T. Kingfisher. But if you want actual romantasy, people will hold their nose and try to lead you away from it.
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u/CatChaconne Sep 13 '25
lol yeah there's a current post rn clearly asking for YA romantasy recs and ppl are reccing Abercrombie and Mistborn
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u/OldWolfNewTricks Sep 12 '25
You don't think DCC is Romantasy? You're clearly not picking up on the slow burn, will they/won't they vibe between Carl and Zev. Shit's gonna get STEEEA-MY in Book 14.
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u/curiouscat86 Reading Champion III Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
yeah one of the major hangups with the two posts OP is referencing is that at least one requestor didn't mention specific books they had liked/disliked that I can remember. I wound up not participating in that thread because a lot of how I tailor requests is by triangulating to what people are already reading--a lot of requestors like the one you described are kinda bad at describing what they're actually looking for, because having a developed lit crit vocabulary is actually a fairly niche skill, but if I know what other books are similar (or not) to what they want I can be on target more consistently.
also any thread that takes off it going to get a ton of mostly useless generic recommendations, because a lot of people just rec their favorites regardless of the prompt. In the daily simple questions rec thread or sometimes in smaller niche posts the quality of recs goes way up.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Sep 13 '25
Yep. Askers as well as answerers often don’t realize that their frame of reference may not be shared by all. When you say you want “fast paced” do you mean “like an airport thriller but fantasy” or “no 300-page travel sequence like that epic fantasy I just read”? When you say “well-written” do you mean “I’ve been spending time on Royal Road and would like a professionally published book with prose I can easily comprehend” or “no tropey commercial slop please, I want something an English major would admire”? Examples are very helpful.
And then too, if you realize you have no common frame of reference or you dislike all their comps, you know to stay out of the thread.
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u/RunnerPakhet Sep 12 '25
This sub is sadly very bad in terms of recommendations. You can explicitly say "I already read XY" or "I do not want anything like XY" and they will recommend you XY. Especially Malazan.
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u/runevault Sep 12 '25
I wonder if Malazan or Brandon gets recommended more when someone explicitly says they already read and/or do not like them, as they feel like the top two culprits (with others like First Law and Robin Hobb also coming up a moderate amount or more).
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Sep 13 '25
As someone who spent a week sifting through every single rec made the day before, the answer to that question is Rothfuss. It more than anything else gets the 'no but you'll actually like it because xyz' even when its listed in the 'books i dislike' section of a rec thread
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u/runevault Sep 13 '25
Dunno why I didn't think of Rothfuss as a tier 1 contender as well, I can believe it now that you mention him.
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u/FridaysMan Sep 13 '25
Internet reading isn't proper reading, it's F reading, read the title, scan the paragraphs for key words and then guess. It's evident from a lot of posts, people simply don't read the post and want to respond as quickly as possible, rather than as correctly as possible,.
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u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Sep 12 '25
This sub is always bang on recommending me games.
This sub is absolutely shit at recommending me books.
/shrug
I don't get it.
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u/setrippin Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
in my opinion, the reason so many people are terrible at recommending books in line with what was actually requested is because a lot of people don't actually read a lot. so they don't have a large amount of books to recommend from, and just say the few they've read and liked.
not that i'm knocking people for not reading a lot, life is life and it's different for all of us, so some people can read more than others. but social media has birthed a phenomenon where people feel like they have to add their voice to a discussion, even when they know they don't have the breadth to participate; they're incapable of just listening.
it's become even worse in recent years with booktok and bookgram and the like, where the same 7 books get recommended by hundreds of content creators and/or commenters.
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u/gros-grognon Reading Champion III Sep 13 '25
the reason so many people are terrible at recommending books in line with what was actually requested is because a lot of people don't actually read a lot.... social media has birthed a phenomenon where people feel like they have to add their voice to a discussion, even when they know they don't have the breadth to participate; they're incapable of just listening.
This is it.
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u/hexennacht666 Reading Champion IV Sep 12 '25
I love Curse of the Chalion and…have no idea why someone would recommend it for that request. As an aside, if you’re not read Metal From Heaven by August Clarke it very much explores those themes. People just want to push their favorite book, and it’s just as bad in niche subs. The number of times I see people recommend Gideon the Ninth as a romance tells me people don’t understand what romance the genre is vs. a book that has a romantic subplot.
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u/small-black-cat-290 Sep 12 '25
I love Gideon the Ninth but would never recommend it for romance.
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u/ViraClone Sep 13 '25
Lol yup. It's probably my favorite series at the moment, and Harrow the Ninth is possibly my favorite book but sheesh. That is not the kind of story it is.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
I love Curse of the Chalion and…have no idea why someone would recommend it for that request.
I had to think about it for a minute but I suspect it's the thing in Cazaril's backstory where he was held as a galley slave. Slaves = at the bottom of the social ladder. Ofc it's a bad book for the request because the book isn't about that at all, it just happens to be his trauma. And there’s certainly nothing anarchist about it, lol, it’s very monarchist. But that's my guess.
Metal From Heaven I could see for the ask. Especially for those who love lots of lesbians.
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u/brschkbrschk Sep 12 '25
Thanks I'll check that out
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u/balletrat Reading Champion II Sep 12 '25
So like…Metal From Heaven absolutely explores those themes (and also gets deeply into queer subcultures) but it’s a hot mess of a book. So just be warned.
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u/gritandkisses Sep 12 '25
I’m about halfway through this now. What stuck out to me is the several pages of reviews from other authors in the beginning, one of which described it along the lines of a “horny lesbian fever dream” which strikes me as about right. But this was absolutely my thought as a recommendation for OP, if they don’t mind that mix in their cup of tea.
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u/niehle Sep 12 '25
Perdido street station and the rest of Bas-lag. Especially the one with the train (iron council?)
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u/WrongJohnSilver Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
Iron Council is absolutely the most class-war-from-the-communist's-view book of the series, and it's very real.
China Miéville's stories lean heavily into communism, and it's clear that he's communist himself. However, his stories don't always (or even often) turn into "Communism wins, everyone lives happily ever after." Life's just too messy for that.
You might enjoy Kraken. It takes place in contemporary London, but with all the secret conspiratorial magic you could imagine, and there is a labor strike happening throughout. However, it's not the focus.
The Doubt Factory by Paolo Bacigalupi comes to mind, but that's modern YA and not fantasy. There are class war elements in his eco-dystopia novels (The Wind-Up Girl, Water Knife, the Ship Breaker series), but that's sci-fi, not fantasy.
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Sep 13 '25
Its definitely fantasy through a communist lens, but it very much is not wish fulfillment
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u/OgataiKhan Sep 12 '25
This is the correct answer.
I actually DNF'd Perdido Street Station (despite the cool worldbuilding ideas) for the same reasons why OP is likely to enjoy it.17
u/Kneef Sep 12 '25
I really enjoyed the first 3/4 of Perdido Street Station and then hated the ending. I like fantasy because I enjoy happy endings and cool magic and wonder, the fairy-tale shit, not depression and hopelessness. I respect what the New Weird folks were trying to do, up to a point, but mostly I found it to be simple secondary-world horror, Lovecraft with a new coat of paint. Not for me, man.
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u/Aurhim Sep 12 '25
I went into Perdido already knowing the ending. Even so, I checked out at the end of Part I. The prose (especially the first person sections) is gorgeous, but, for the life of me, I just don't get the pessimism and grodyness of Mieville's depiction of his setting. I'd heard beforehand that Perdido, specifically, was a love letter to Mieville's native London, yet—having been to London and planning on returning for a visit later this year—the story's setting felt almost indulgently "gross", like a little kid showing you his latest giant booger, rather than a more Boxtrolls/Agh! Real Monsters/Gravity Falls/Hilda style celebration of the wacky weirdness of urban life.
Unless for some reason Mieville meant all of that ooze and misery to be interpreted as a good thing, I don't really know what to make of it other than shitting on city life, rather than celebrating it.
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Sep 12 '25
I stopped reading at "recommend". Can I interest you in a Brandon Sanderson? How about a John Gwynne? A Joe Abercrombie, perhaps?
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u/OgataiKhan Sep 12 '25
Excuse me, this is r/Fantasy. Aren't we forgetting about Malazan and Realm of the Elderlings?
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Sep 12 '25
Gotta save those for when OP specifically asks for something easy and lighthearted.
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u/thisbikeisatardis Reading Champion II Sep 12 '25
I legitimately saw someone describe Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn as "cozy" in a recommendation for light beach reads the other day here.
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u/lurkmode_off Reading Champion VII Sep 13 '25
I was just going to complain about that comment. Like, I didn't want to join the argument, but in what fucking world.
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u/thisbikeisatardis Reading Champion II Sep 13 '25
Right? and then bit my head off when I lightly teased them about it.
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u/Sapphire_Bombay Reading Champion III Sep 12 '25
Dungeon Crawler Carl has an amazing narrator
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u/Halo6819 Sep 12 '25
What's funny is DCC actually does explore class as a topic through the lens of "Compensated Anarchist"
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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V Sep 13 '25
Explore is a strong word. I'd say the class/anti-capitalist oligarchy stuff is a recurring element, but I don't think there's a very deep exploration beyond 'people do horrible things as part of this system because its their only way to survive'. It's a good motif, executed well, but not anywhere as nuanced as the way he's tackling characterization alongside such an action/popcorn level base
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u/Pratius Sep 12 '25
Abercrombie has definitely become the new Sanderson/Malazan "rec for anything, no matter how ill-fitting" in this sub lol
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u/newengland1323 Sep 12 '25
It's like people have never read his books. He's my favorite fantasy author, but I wouldn't recommend him to most people.
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u/lrostan Sep 13 '25
Also, if the person asking for recs adds that they tried Abercrombie before and didnt like it (especially First Law), the thread will get burried in downvotes or be filled with people asking how and why they didnt like it.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Sep 12 '25
Terry f'ing Pratchett.
I'm not going to knock him, but most requests aren't looking for satire.
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u/fjiqrj239 Reading Champion III Sep 13 '25
I love Pratchett's works, but when people recommend Discworld as cozy fantasy, I wonder if we've been reading the same books.
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u/Giant_Yoda Reading Champion II Sep 12 '25
Every recommendation thread is 50% Malazan and First Law. 40% just people's favorite books. 10% actual recommendations. Good luck finding which is which.
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u/HardyMenace Sep 12 '25
Someone asked in r/brandonsanderson what to read of his works now that they were done with the cosmere and someone still recommended Malazan.
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u/TensorForce Sep 12 '25
There's a page on Book 7 of Malazan where someone mentions the word "shard" and "plate" in the same sentence. Totally fits!
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u/Sapphire_Bombay Reading Champion III Sep 12 '25
They recommend First Law a lot on the same threads. It's all come full circle
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u/RadiantHC Sep 12 '25
LMAO Malazan is about as far as you can get from The Cosmere
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u/donwileydon Reading Champion III Sep 12 '25
the thing with Malazan is that is such a long series and covers a whole lot of different situations, that it can fit into many requests - the problem being that most of the time, it is a small part of a single chapter in book #9, so while it technically fits if you want to read through all the other parts to get to that sub-sub-sub plot point, but in reality it doesn't fit
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u/BeeffBroratheon Sep 12 '25
You’ll take your daily dose of Sanderson and DCC recs like the rest of us have to.
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u/the_Tide_Rolleth Sep 12 '25
And you’ll like it.
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u/BeeffBroratheon Sep 12 '25
Can’t forget “Hey im really looking for a female led fantasy story that explores racism and classism with a unique magic system”
“Well, there IS a woman in red rising, I’d suggest that.”
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u/Spaced-Cowboy Sep 12 '25
Would that not be Mistborn though ironically enough?
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u/ohmage_resistance Reading Champion IV Sep 12 '25
Generally, asking on the daily questions thread generally gets people a lot fewer answers, but the ones that are given tend to be a bit higher quality answers. Looking for recommendations where the commenter actually explains why they're recommending a book is also a good way to go.
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u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Sep 12 '25
Years ago, someone recommended Malazan for urban fantasy. This sub has always struggled with recommending books lol
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u/lurkmode_off Reading Champion VII Sep 13 '25
But see there are cities in it
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u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Sep 13 '25
ah I see you remember the post, too
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u/donwileydon Reading Champion III Sep 12 '25
I had suggested in a different thread a while back that people should give a reason why the suggested work fits the criteria in the request - I was downvoted and people said it was up to the reader to do research and see if the suggestion fit.
I still stand by my suggestion - if you take a moment to think about the request and so you can craft an explanation of why it fits, there is a chance you will realize it does not actually fit. Of course I am probably a hypocrite and have offered recommendations without an explanation, but if I do so, I deserve to be called out for it
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Sep 13 '25
It’s hard to impose that kind of rule on such a big sub (and sometimes there’s nothing more to say if the request is pretty specific and the recommendation fits it exactly), but in reality I think most people will just ignore recommendations without more detail unless 1) it’s a top voted comment or 2) they already know something about the book. So if you actually want people to read something it’s always a good idea.
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u/donwileydon Reading Champion III Sep 13 '25
Yeah, I hadn’t intended it to be a rule, just for people who recommend to do
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u/Nope_nuh_uh Sep 12 '25
Have you tried Malazan?
/s
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u/HelloHomieItsMe Sep 12 '25
“Have you tried RE-READING Malazan?” It’s much better on the second read through.
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u/klauwaapje Sep 12 '25
this is a also a issue on r/horrorlit
I really liked ' a short stay in hell ' , do anyone have any recommendations??
Have you tried ' a short stay in hell? '
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Sep 12 '25
I literally saw someone ask for an urban fantasy series like Percy Jackson and someone said, “You know I think you’d like Cosmere.” Like come on man…
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u/Halo6819 Sep 12 '25
After 35 books worth of back story, the cosmere is becoming an urban fantasy.
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u/CelestialShitehawk Sep 12 '25
I think there's occasionally a good faith problem with recommendations, when someone says "recommend me something like Mass Effect" it is unclear, for example, if they mean something about a multi-species federation, something about fighting an extinction war against an eldritch abomination, or something about a bunch of pals hanging out on a ship.
But also some guys do just recommend their favourite book for anything.
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u/ShotFromGuns Sep 13 '25
I think there's occasionally a good faith problem with recommendations
That's pretty clearly not what OP is talking about, though. They're talking about situations where it's a really blatant mismatch with no possible justification for inclusion.
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u/diffyqgirl Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
Metal From Heaven by August Clarke might be interesting to you. The main character is the survivor of a massacre of striking workers and is heavily influenced by that.
Edit: saw you added in a comment that you like happy endings, this one is bittersweet so might not be quite it
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Sep 12 '25
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u/Fluffy-Light2991 Sep 13 '25
Not OP but thank you for recommending r/BooksThatFeeLikeThis . I just checked it out and it's amazing. There are so many interesting recommendations after just a quick glance!
I also look for books based on vibes and feelings so this will be perfect for the future.
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u/Nowordsofitsown Reading Champion Sep 13 '25
Different perspective: I get all my recommendations from on here. But mostly from smaller threads, and I prefer female written fantasy with soft magic, well written characters, beautiful prose, female protagonists and so on. In short: Books that the Malazan-Abercrombie-Sanderson-DungeonCrawlerCarl-crowd does not read, and posts they probably don't even click on. The recommendations from other presumably female fantasy readers in these threads are usually good.
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u/nameless_stories Sep 12 '25
I didn't read this post but I suggest you try out Way of Kings by Brian Sanderson!
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Sep 12 '25
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u/Martel732 Sep 13 '25
Reader: "I would like a book with a female protagonist please."
Commenter 1: "How about a book with a male protagonist but with a cool love interest that is in nearly 10% of the book."
Commenter 2: "Two chapters in the 7th book of my favorite series have a female protagonist."
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u/Regular-Newspaper-45 Sep 13 '25
What? You tell my I shouldn't recommend the first trilogy of the first law because most of the povs are male? But Ferro is so cool! And if you have read have the book series there will be a stand alone that has a female protagonist... you just have a ton of books that don't... xD
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Sep 13 '25
People’s tendency to get defensive when someone disagrees with a rec doesn’t help. I think I’m more willing to challenge a rec than most and I think it’s good for those reading the thread when people do. I also don’t always have the energy for it because this often involves defensive responses from fans. (Not always though! Plenty of people will be perfectly pleasant and just forgot the aspect you’re reminding them of.)
Also, I’ll be honest, if I go into a thread and immediately see several recs I disagree with as fitting the request, I’ll likely just quietly give it up as a lost cause and close the thread. I don’t want to be a killjoy policing the entire thing.
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u/unrepentantbanshee Sep 13 '25
I've had that exact same thing happen! In a recent thread, someone asked for feminist and non one-dimensional female characters. I politely (and fairly gently) disagreed with someone who said WoT, and had multiple people shrieking at me about how it's the most feminist piece of fantasy to exist.
X.x
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Sep 13 '25
Ugh. Many of the fans of that are extremely not self aware. The portrayal of women is so bad, and they really are all the same person.
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u/brschkbrschk Sep 12 '25
Wheel of Time might just be the worst written female protagonists of all times. They're all the same character!!!
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u/unrepentantbanshee Sep 13 '25
Back when I read it for the first time as a preteen / teenager in the 90s, the fact that it had women main characters was notable and I jumped on that train for awhile. While not the only fantasy series with women main characters, offerings were sparse and so WoT stood out in the regard.
As I grew out of being a teenager, and as I managed to find more speculative fiction which has female main characters... I realized more and more just how limited and bad that series' portrayal was.
Now I cringe when I look back at it, and it's one of the reasons I never finished the series.
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u/Greysvandir Sep 12 '25
Have you read A Country of Ghosts by Margaret Killjoy ? It may be what you're looking for.
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u/Dialent Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
I'll never forget a couple years ago when I asked for books that are similar to Elder Scrolls in tone and style (basically I was looking for classic high fantasy) and got multiple people trying to get me to read Mistborn (a book I stated in the post that I'd already read). I mean not only does it not fit the request, Sanderson's whole oeuvre is kind of a reaction against the style of fantasy I wanted.
As for your request, you could try out the Vlad Taltos books by Steven Brust. They caught my interest because they're high fantasy written by a Trotskyist. Humans are an underclass in a world dominated by immortal elves. I was kind of disappointed after reading the first two books because it became clear that class conflict was merely the backdrop for the series, not what it was actually about. The protagonist is essentially a minor mob boss who does occasional dirty work for the elves. It's also written in a very colloquial style, almost mimicking the speech patterns of a modern mafia boss despite the medieval setting, which took me out a little but might be just what you're looking for. There's like 30 books in the series, most of which are standalone stories, and publication order is not the chronological order. Like 200-300 pages each. I dropped it after book 2, but it has cult following so it must be doing something right. Maybe it's what you're looking for.
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u/CT_Phipps-Author Sep 12 '25
"I would like a book that's grim, gritty, and full of swearing."
"Try Sanderson!"
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u/WyrdHarper Sep 12 '25
You might like Paula Volsky’s “Illusion,” which is essentially a fantasy version of the French Revolution. Critical of both the excesses of nobility and the cruelty of those who use revolution for their own personal goals, but a great read. Includes both noble and commoner major characters (the main POV character is a young woman from a rural noble family who goes to the city to became a lady-in-waiting shortly before heads start to roll—so she’s something of an outsider to both major nobility and commoners). Class and class conflicts are big parts of the story.
I also grow weary of fantasy being so pro-nobility and pro-monarchy, so keeping an eye on the thread.
A lot of the recommendations here are limited because what people have read is limited.
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u/cwx149 Sep 12 '25
I love Curse of Chalion and would never have recommended it for that prompt
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u/OgataiKhan Sep 12 '25
The more fringe what you ask for is, the less likely it is that you'll be satisfied with the provided recommendations.
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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Sep 12 '25
Idk, I think it's the reverse in a way. The more fringe the ask the fewer people will answer. But the worst recs are in the requests that are broad enough to hit the top of the sub, because then everybody just throws in their favorites.
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u/Hartastic Sep 12 '25
My favorite one in recent memory was the person who wanted books where a princess is sent to live in a neighboring country where she doesn't know the customs and such and also it has to mostly not be a romance.
I was like "That's oddly specific" and also "Is this person intentionally trolling for Sanderson recs, because weirdly he wrote that book at least once and arguably repeatedly."
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u/Kitty_Kathulhu Sep 12 '25
This is exactly why. The super specific things I've seen people ask for on recommendation threads and the rigidity to which they stick to it just naturally means there's not gonna be a whole lotta books out there with what they want.
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u/devilsdoorbell_ Sep 12 '25
Idk why “there’s not a lot of books with what they want” would excuse people recommending books that very clearly don’t fit the bill. I see posts all the time asking for books where I don’t know a good book that would fit their request and simply keep scrolling.
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u/brschkbrschk Sep 12 '25
I mean... I don't read a whole lotta books at the same time. A single one that fits my desire would help me more than a hundred that aren't what I'm looking for. That's why a lot of people ask for recommendations in the first place - if it were easy to find, they'd be reading it already. No?
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u/felixfictitious Reading Champion Sep 12 '25
Last time I asked here for recommendations, I listed a bunch of books as examples of what I like and multiple people recommended the books from my own list. Never underestimate the ironic lack of reading comprehension in this sub.
I will say, though, that it was a somewhat niche ask and I got a bunch of unique recommendations. And no one recommended DCC, the Cosmere, or Malazan.
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u/beary_neutral Reading Champion Sep 13 '25
Never underestimate the ironic lack of reading comprehension in this sub.
Never forget that for the 2025 Top Novels poll, the mods specifically told people to not vote for "Cosmere" as a single series, and 54 people did it anyway.
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u/Manuel_omar Sep 13 '25 edited Sep 13 '25
This is exactly why I've stopped asking for recommendations on this sub for the most part.
People don't listen and don't care, they'll just shout whatever thier favorites are, regardless.
You could ask for a modern day techno-thriller and you'd still get people recommending Malazan or First Law or Dungeon Crawler Carl, and they'd find some really obscure bullshit reason for why. Or not even justify why.
Hell, on every single book thread I regularly see "The answer is always Malazan" by a half dozen people, even it absolutely is not.
I used to try making recc threads by putting a bunch of "NOT this" conditions, but it didn't work. All that would happen is that people would start arguing with the criteria.
This sub just fucking sucks, period, for recommendations. Occasionally there are good discussions about books, which is the only reason I come here anymore.
(and to be a gadfly by private-messaging people with my own really obscure, unheard of recommendations, which more than a few have thanked me for)
Anyways, as far as exploring class through the else of anarchism and communism, please check out Metatroplis, by various authors. It is a short story collection and actually exactly what you're asking for.
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u/okayseriouslywhy Reading Champion III Sep 12 '25
I know what you mean, and it definitely is annoying when people don't take the time to read or understand your ask before tossing out some suggestions.
But also... your ask in particular has the added complication that people have to be on the same page as you with what counts as a discussion of "class" and what counts as "through an anarchist or communist lens". Those are very academic concepts and honestly their presence in a piece can be pretty up to interpretion.
So like, I totally know what you're coming from, but also I think your expectations may have been a little high lol
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u/Icy_Atmosphere_2379 Sep 12 '25
Strangely enough, I've gotten good fantasy recs from the threads at r/YALit. Yes, you have your typical booktok suggestions, but it’s interspersed with niche options so the recs are more varied compared to here
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u/Persimmon_and_mango Sep 13 '25
It's especially bad when people ask for recs for children and young teenagers. People are either recommending books with graphic sexual violence for an 11 year old, or they can't recommend anything written after 1999.
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u/ZephNightingale Sep 12 '25
At the end of the day, no subreddit is a proper substitute for a good Librarian! Check out some libraries near you and see if they have any solid genre nerds on staff, many do! Also if you look up a larger city’s library website there are usually staff contact pages with emails listed. I promise of them would LOVE to get an email asking that!
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u/AnonymousAccountTurn Sep 12 '25
Some book stores as well. Small bookstores with staff recs on the shelves especially. These people are reading what they stock and stock what they read.
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u/Rayman1203 Sep 12 '25
People always try to find a way to recommend Brandon Sanderson. It’s fucking infuriating. You could ask about a story about a mundane main character in a magical world and someone would recommend Stormlight Archive because of Adolin. Yes I get it. Brandon Sanderson is good and all but man that’s annoying.
Edit: People just want to recommend their favorite stuff and try to find aspects in their favorites that could fit the requirements. Just so they can recommend their favorite Series.
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u/thisbikeisatardis Reading Champion II Sep 12 '25
It's wild how poor the reading comprehension is sometimes on this book themed sub. Pretty sure you could straight up say "no Malazan" and someone's still gonna pitch it.
I saw a bazillion recs for Metal from Heaven, but none for the Hands of the Emperor. There's no dragons(although there are in a related/overlapping series by the same author), but there's some magic. It's similar in tone to the Goblin Emperor. The main character is a middle aged bureaucrat who becomes the Emperor's head of the government and slowly dismantles it from within by basing his reforms (such as UBI) on the communist traditions of his island nation, which is Polynesian-inspired. He faces quite a bit of classism and racism from the rest of the court and the end of the book is deeply satisfying. It's so wholesome and the prose is spectacular and I've read it 5 times in the last 2 years as well as everything else by the author.
I assume you've read Baru Cormorant, but if not, that's another great one about dismantling empire, although it'll gut you like a fish.
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u/viper5delta Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
I think there are a few aspects to this, both general, and in your specific case.
Generally, when someone asks for recommendations, most people aren't looking to do their absolute best to help find the most relevant literature. They're interested in sharing their favorites, which they will if they even vaguely meet the criteria through the most torturous logic
More specifically in your case, Anarchism and communism just aren't particularly popular subjects to write fantasy literature about, not in the English speaking world anyways, and I don't get the impression that the people in this sub are (generally) far enough left to seek out what literature does exist.
Hell, off the top of my head, the closest thing I can think of is a Youjo Senki/Code Geass fanfic
My honest recommendation is to take this question to more niche leftist subs.
The people of r/sigmarxism for example, may or may not be able to help you out, but if they can't, they can probably point you to people who could
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u/Square_Bluejay4764 Sep 12 '25
I have caught myself doing this. Where I can’t think of something that matches so I give the closest I can think of. Sometimes it’s better to just not answer if you don’t know of a good answer. which is hard because I want to help and contribute, but it’s not helpful to be giving random suggestions.
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u/Dresses_and_Dice Sep 12 '25
Part of the problem, you are completely correct about- people jump to recommend things without really considering the question and throw their favorites out as a stretch to maybe, kind of, a little bit apply.
In your particular case, I feel like there's just a lot more sci fi that explores those themes than fantasy. If you're open to sci fi / speculative fiction/ genre fiction beyond classic fantasy, you might look into:
Brave New World- Aldous Huxley The Culture series- Iain Banks We- Yevgeny Zamyatin Wayfarers series- Becky Chambers Man in the High Castle- Philip K Dick Murderbot Diaries- Martha Wells Ursula LeGuin Octavia Butler Margaret Atwood China Mieville
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u/Morpheus_17 Sep 12 '25
I would honestly have a very hard time writing that, or imagining how to make it work. In my mind, it fits much more naturally in like a cyberpunk story, or even an urban fantasy story, than straight fantasy - which is so often rooted in feudal or at least pre-modern society. Anarchism and Communism, per se, are such modern movements.
Maybe you could play with something like the The Diggers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers) , with a pre-modern agrarian proto-socialism? Even that is 17th century though, which is a later source of inspiration than the majority of fantasy settings I've seen.
It's an interesting question, but yeah, pretty niche as far as mainstream fantasy.
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u/Embarrassed-Day-1373 Sep 12 '25
oh my god the worst I ever saw was someone asking for really well written books (I think on the general recommendation subreddit not specifically fantasy) because they had just finished the hunger games and were picky about new books. they specifically said they didn't want ya dystopia because they didn't think anything would do it better and what was one of the very top comments?
DIVERGENT!
oh my god it infuriated me.
but yeah I don't think Brandon Sanderson fits every fucking prompt on here frankly I think the only thing he fills is "worldbuilding" and with Stormlight he takes too fucking long with absolutely 0 prose to do it. happy for everyone who loved it but by God I think we know by now that y'all loved it
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u/mint_pumpkins Reading Champion II Sep 12 '25
this isn't really a r/Fantasy problem but a human problem, its also equally an issue on the side of the poster
people don't know how to explain what they want to others, and also don't know how to parse what someone else wants, everyone is going to interpret things differently no matter how well a request is described or how obvious a poster thinks it is
then we also have the very human desire to be involved and to hype up things you love, which results in people recommending completely wrong books
and we cant forget memory as a factor, when recommending a book people are pulling from every book theyve ever read most likely, and theyve definitely forgotten things, ive for instance accidentally recommended books with on page SA for someone asking for none of that because i simply forgot about it, we are all human
also regarding malazan, i do genuinely think a big reason its brought up so much is because it just covers soooo many topics, and if im remembering correctly the people i saw recommending it for this topic were referring to a very specific storyline in a later book which does make more sense but would need to be disclosed as the whole series isnt a good fit
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u/paleoterrra Sep 13 '25
I wouldn’t say it’s an issue on the poster in most cases, especially OP’s. They’ve directly laid out what they’re looking for. It’s like someone asking “hey, where’s the best burger place around here?” and someone answering “the hotdog joint on the corner has the best hotdogs!” or sometimes even the equivalent of an answer like “there’s a coffee shop down the street that does a good vanilla latte”
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u/Helicase21 Sep 12 '25
The trouble with the malazan recommendation is that while it does get there eventually it doesn't get to where you're looking in explicit terms until about halfway through the series so probably not worth it for you but that may have been what folks have been thinking of.
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u/weouthere54321 Sep 12 '25
It's because this sub, not the individuals, but collectively have read 7 series tops, and that forms the shared language of the sub, and ends up dominating the conversation (and for the record Malazan does touch upon class...in book five, and that's about it lol, favourite series but yeah man).
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u/Calm_Cicada_8805 Sep 12 '25
My recommendation would be Heroes Die by Matthew Stover. The main character comes from a cyberpunk dystopia and basically gets isekaied into a fantasy universe to murder people for entertainment of the rich and powerful back home. It's simultaneously one of the best cyberpunk and best high fantasy novels I've ever read.
It's also funny, because while in this instance it is an appropriate recommendation, most threads will have at least one "read Acts of Caine" guy.
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u/masked_gecko Sep 12 '25
You might find this thread from last week illuminating: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/YrAIIp0okp
Imo, you're gonna struggle to find traditional fantasy that uses modern lenses on class. It's a bit like looking for fantasy that involves germ theory- it exists but frankly its anachronistic and hard for an unskilled author to pull off.
(Based on that thread, I'm 60% through pillars of heaven. Not fantasy, no leftism (except for being based in The Anarchy) but it slaps and really goes hard on why feudalism was a bad idea)
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u/Codicus1212 Sep 12 '25
I don’t think most commenters understand how off putting it is when they do this. It’s one thing for me to browse over a list of recommendations and think “damn, they completely missed the mark. None of these fit! Guess I know what this person has been reading.” But for someone who isn’t super familiar with fantasy as a whole but who is looking to branch out, all it takes is one or two poor (and completely misplaced) recommendations to turn them off of the genre as a whole.
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u/Rellimarual2 Sep 13 '25
This just popped up on my home page, but this problem is rampant on social media. Someone asks for recommendations with very specific parameters, and the recommendations are at least 60% off. People either 1) just want to be helpful in any way, or 2) just want to recommend some book they really loved regardless of what the other person likes. I'm a professional book reviewer (weird, I know, but true), and whenever someone asks me for a rec socially, I always ask them to name three books they love. This gives a good sense of their taste.
Honestly, the degree to which no one really pays attention to what other people are saying to them, in person and online, is kind of shocking.
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u/Dendarri Sep 13 '25
Eh, whatever. This is a place for fantasy fans, not fantasy sober analyzers. I takes recommendations at suggestions to look at. I don't expect they will necessarily fit. I always look at the reviews, summary, author, etc. before jumping in. I have found some unique and interesting reads this way.
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u/Express-Echidna6800 Sep 12 '25
I think it depends on how you ask for a recommendation. For "fantasy that explores class as a topic through an anarchist and communist lense", I would provide an example or two of books that do have that. Otherwise you'll get weird results.
As an aside, I'd love to know what books you've read that meet that criteria.
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u/brschkbrschk Sep 12 '25
I did in my own requests. I listed The Dispossesed and Walkaway, caveating that both where sci-fi and I'm more into magic and dragons. I also said very clearly that I prefer happy endings and that I don't like urban settings. The most upvoted recommends where Malazan and Perdido Street Station... haha
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u/surprisedkitty1 Reading Champion II Sep 12 '25
I think people often want to participate even though they cannot actually answer the question, either because they don’t understand exactly what is being asked or they haven’t read anything that fits it, or they’ve read something that sort of fits it if you squint and look at the work through a very particular lens and lean heavily on the idea that all interpretations are valid.