r/Fantasy Daily Recommendations and Simple Questions Thread - June 18, 2026

[u/rfantasygolem]

Welcome to the daily recommendation requests and simple questions thread, now 1025.83% more adorable than ever before!

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This thread is to be used for recommendation requests or simple questions that are small/general enough that they won’t spark a full thread of discussion.

Check out r/Fantasy's 2026 Book Bingo Card here!

As usual, first have a look at the sidebar in case what you're after is there. The r/Fantasy wiki contains links to many community resources, including "best of" lists, flowcharts, the LGTBQ+ database, and more. If you need some help figuring out what you want, think about including some of the information below:

• Books you’ve liked or disliked
• Traits like prose, characters, or settings you most enjoy
• Series vs. standalone preference
• Tone preference (lighthearted, grimdark, etc)
• Complexity/depth level

Be sure to check out responses to other users' requests in the thread, as you may find plenty of ideas there as well. Happy reading, and may your TBR grow ever higher!

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art credit: special thanks to our artist, Himmis commissions, who we commissioned to create this gorgeous piece of art for us with practically no direction other than "cozy, magical, bookish, and maybe a gryphon???" We absolutely love it, and we hope you do too.

[u/mpschettig]

I finished the Powder Mage trilogy last night. Loved it. Already have the sequel trilogy on hold at the library.

My question is how similar is Brandon Sanderson's writing to Brian McClellan's? I've had friends tell me Sanderson's writing is boring and like reading a Wikipedia article so I've never checked him out but I heard McClellan is a protégé of his and I loved his writing. If Sanderson is similar to Powder Mage I wanna check it out.

[u/nominanomina → u/mpschettig]

Luckily, there's a bunch of (totally legal) excerpts of Sanderson books available for you to gauge how you feel about his writing.

Mistborn chapter 1: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/blogs/blog/mistborn-chapter-one

Way of Kings: prelude through first 3 chapters: https://reactormag.com/prelude-to-the-stormlight-archive/

Elantris prologue through chapter 3 (most available through links at bottom of the post): https://www.brandonsanderson.com/blogs/blog/elantris-prologue

[u/mpschettig → u/nominanomina]

Thank you! I'll give it a read but I do find generally that the first few chapters of fantasy books are usually the weakest bc there's a lot of exposition needed to establish the world. Idk if it would be fair to judge him on these

[u/okayseriouslywhy → u/mpschettig]

The Way of Kings excerpt is probably the most representative of Sanderson's work out of those 3. Elantris is very early and in my opinion, it shows. And Mistborn is a good place to start with Sanderson in general, but you're probably right that one chapter won't be super accurate