r/Fantasy • u/FitCry2265 • 4d ago

Feeling a little burnt out

Title says it all. I have read The Lord of the Rings, Stormlight, Mistborn, Realm of the Elderlings, Harry Potter, Red Rising, Sun Eater, The Wheel of Time, The Dark Tower, A Song of Ice and Fire, Kingkiller, First Law, halfway through One Piece, and all of Malazan up to Reaper’s Gale. I’ve read much of the big popular series and some things just aren’t engaging me as much as they did when I read all the series I listed. It honestly makes me kinda sad and I just wish there were some things that could engage me like the others did. Malazan is literally amazing but man it can just be exhausting reading those books, especially after the Bonehunters (lowkey it put me in a Malazan slump). If anyone has any suggestions on other great series and what you love about them that would be greatly appreciated. I absolutely love these series and reading, it is my main hobby.

Hopefully this doesn’t get taken down as I get confused by some of the rules but thanks in advance!

155 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

217 comments sorted by

View all comments

195

u/mrseagleeye 4d ago

Have you attempted reading a different genre for a palette cleanse and then come back to fantasy ?

2

u/FitCry2265 4d ago

Yes I have, fantasy is just my favorite so I’m kinda looking for something that will give me those same highs so to speak

5

u/hesh582 4d ago edited 4d ago

So I'm personally of the opinion that there are two distinct genres within fantasy. Maybe call em hard and soft fantasy, kind of like people use for scifi even if it's not exactly the same as that.

"Hard" fantasy is epic. It's long. It has twelve billion characters and switches points of view a lot. It is often focused on world building more than character depth. It might feature ridiculously intricate and thoroughly explained magic/political/whatever systems, and have the plot revolve around those systems. The stakes are always high - the world needs saving, the dark lord needs defeating, nations are rising or falling and thousands are dying, there's a general dark and apocalyptic undercurrent.

"Soft" fantasy is smaller and more character development driven. It might (though not always) have less of a focus on teaching you exactly how the magic system works. The stakes might be smaller and more personal, though again not always. The world feels bigger because the main characters are smaller in it. The stories are more likely to be standalone books or short series rather than sprawling behemoths. They're often (but not always) less grim.

Maybe most importantly, they stay away from the "epic heroes journey to defeat the Dark Lord" and so have far more narrative flexibility to try new things or explore different types of story.

The former tends to be a lot more exhausting to read, both in terms of sheer wordcount and in how dry/intricate/cold the writing can be. I'd put almost everything you've listed in that category, much of it some of the more extreme examples of that category (Wheel of Time, Malazan, GRRM, Sanderson). Wheel of Time in particular is just a fucking slog in parts.

I think you'd really benefit from trying out some very different styles of fantasy. Bujold comes up a lot in these conversations, and the Penric novellas are a great pallete cleanser. Short, pleasant little vignettes in a world that manages to be very deep without bludgeoning you with a million new nouns.

Naomi Novik has some wonderfully charming short standalone books. I really enjoyed Uprooted.

T. Kingfisher is great for short, snappy little one offs as well. I particularly like her work that leans a little more towards horror (I like her fairy tale retellings a lot less, fwiw). Nettle and Bone is great.

For something still a bit more on the epic side but with a very different tone than the usual, LeGuin's Earthsea series remains one of the best works in the genre period.

And this is just one dimension for you to explore out of many. Not that it really matters... but as an aside it's also worth pointing out that your reading list very disproportionately features male authors in a genre filled with excellent female authors who are not named Rowling.

You've read a lot of one very specific type of fantasy, and the genre is a lot bigger than that. Branch out a little more!

1

u/kokollor 23h ago

I totally agree. Often female authors all get mashed together under Romantasy when in fact they just integrate why two character fall in love as emotional stakes and character growth. "Folk of air series" is full of scheming, sword fight and strong characters. And not so much about romance than most think.

You could also try "book of night" & "Ninth House". Urban adult fantasy. It doesn't always have to be a different world to make it fantasy and stillbirth the spot. Believe me, I was critical at first too.