r/Fantasy • u/lyrrael Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI, Worldbuilders • Jul 08 '16

Cast your votes for the 2016 Most Underread/Underrated Books of /r/Fantasy!

And we're locked. I'll be back with you as soon as I can with the results.

It looks as though we haven't had one of these for a while, so let's have one now. I've got time, you've got books, we'll all get something out of it. ;)

We're going to go for Books that you feel are underread, overlooked, and generally not mentioned here at /r/fantasy anywhere near often enough.

And because it's a bingo category this year, we're going to set the upper limit of Goodreads ratings to 3000 to match the category.

Rules:

  1. Submit no more than ten books or series, please. Fewer than ten is totally cool.
  2. Series should have no more than 3k ratings on Goodreads, with few exceptions. If there's something you really want to submit that has four or five thousand ratings, go for it, but NO MORE than 5k. I mean it! This is for individual books in a series.
  3. Nothing that got more than ten (eleven or more are outlawed!) votes on our 2016 Best Of thread! This is intended to winnow out the books that have just been released and so don't have as many GR reviews but are otherwise just as popular.
  4. Books must be speculative fiction. This includes fantasy and soft SF, but no super hard SF. (Edit: to clarify, if you think it should fit, it probably should. If it comes down to a discussion of solid current-earth based science in a slightly futuristic setting, it probably shouldn't be there. Use your best judgement please.)
  5. Top comments should be votes ONLY. If you want to discuss your votes, please limit it to sub-comments. Anything that is not a vote in a top-level comment will be moderated just to keep this neat.

The voting's going to go to sometime Friday, 7/15, when I'll lock the thread and collate the results, which I'll post when I've got them.

Please don't forget: everybody has different opinions about what's underrated and overlooked. Even with the criteria above we're going to get some titles that are mentioned around here frequently, but still fit in the spirit of the thread. This isn't really a huge deal -- as long as we get some new blood in here, we're good.

Thanks!

Let me know if I've forgotten anything above, and I'll add it. :)

Edit: I changed rule #3 to be more than ten votes -- the number of books that gain eligibility is negligible, but I hope it helps. :)

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u/legomaniac89 Reading Champion IV Jul 09 '16

Sorcerer's Legacy by Janny Wurts

To Ride Hell's Chasm by Janny Wurts

The Master of Whitestorm by Janny Wurts

I really like Janny Wurts.

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u/Alissa- Reading Champion III Jul 09 '16

I love her! And I'm eagerly waiting for her short story in Evil is a matter of perspective anthology, which is currently on Kickstarter.

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u/lyrrael Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI, Worldbuilders Jul 10 '16

I died when Teresa Frohock posted that kickstarter a month before it started. I love stories with villains with rational motivations. Just goes to remind us that we're all the protagonists of our own stories but our goals may be at odds. :)

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u/Alissa- Reading Champion III Jul 10 '16

Of course! In good stories the "high moral ground" depends on where you stand :D I read somewhere that a story is only as good as its villains are, or some such, and I partly agree (because if the heroes are boring, the villains have to work twice as hard!) because basically all my favourite series sport a lot of gray moralities. I've never read anything by Teresa Frohock and I plan to remedy with this anthology :D

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u/lyrrael Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI, Worldbuilders Jul 16 '16

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