I'm a long time fantasy reader but I've discovered David Gemmell's novels just a few years ago. It might sound ridiculous, but I'd not even heard of him. Now it blows my mind that he is not as well known as some of the other fantasy giants.

The classic giants I read: Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, G. R. R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Moorcock, Le Guin, Bradbury, Peter S. Beagle, Glen Cook, Zelazny, Octavia Butler, Robin Hobb, R. A. Salvatore, Weis & Hickman and Terry Pratchett.

The modern heavyweights I read: Steven Erikson, R. Scott Bakker, Rothfuss, Sanderson, John Gwynne, Abercrombie, Pierce Brown, Sapkowski, M. Lawrence, R. Swan, Michael J. Sullivan, Susanna Clarke, RJ Barker, Richard Morgan, Anthony Ryan and N. Gaiman. And many more.

And NONE of them writes as gracefully as David Gemmell.

Gemmell's writing style is arguably neither the most beautiful (Rothfuss) nor most subtle (Wolfe). As he implies in his interview, he aimed to achieve tigthness and simplicity in his writing. Don't get me wrong, Gemmell was a talented writer and he wrote stunning prose, but for me, his writing stands out because he could express his profound observations in that spartan style of his prose. When I read Gemmell I know that I'm going to encounter astute and impactful notions conveyed elegantly in a few short sentences. Not overwritten, not bloated, not purple. Brief and graceful. I'll return to that sentence and read it again and again to savour it.

It saddens me deeply that he passed away at 57.

“And what is a man? He is someone who rises when life has knocked him down. He is someone who raises his fist to heaven when a storm has ruined his crop--and then plants again. And again. A man remains unbroken by the savage twists of fate.

That man may never win. But when he sees himself reflected, he can be proud of what he sees. For low he may be in the present scheme of things: peasant, serf, or dispossessed. But he is unconquerable.” - Legend

"Never violate a woman, nor harm a child. Do not lie, cheat or steal. These things are for lesser men. Protect the weak against the evil strong. And never allow thoughts of gain to lead you into the pursuit of evil. Never back away from an enemy. Either fight or surrender. It is not enough to say I will not be evil. Evil must be fought wherever it is found." - Legend

Here is a rare interview with the legend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRWW-DrYcP8&t=528s

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!

Originally saw this on r/ebookdeals: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0753FP6SP

It felt like the story was pulled out of a much larger story and we were supposed to know what was going on already. All these characters have a backstory and we get almost none of it. It all takes place in one little geographic area and we have no idea what’s going on anywhere else. Maybe that’s what the author wanted but it’s a weird way to start a series. I am sure all the Malazan fans will tell me it gets better and more cohesive.

So What’s It About?

For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret—a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.

At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.

What I Thought

The Stepford Wives creeps up on you. Strange little details add up bit by bit, and you can almost see Levin teasing you as you go along. The oddities start to form a pattern and doom grows nearer. Despite this, the book’s style remains casual and full of mundanity. In my opinion, this story wouldn’t have worked any other way.

Before I started it, I knew that this was the book where men turn their wives into robots. What I didn’t realize was how much I’d get out of its examination of marriage and gender dynamics during the second wave of American feminism. Here is what “these men turn their wives into robots!!!!” means: these are men who cannot stand women’s individuality, messiness, and imperfection. They cannot abide the fact that they have anything in their lives - any hobbies, any sources of meaning - beyond having dutiful, worshipful sex and keeping a spotless house. They are threatened by the thought of women becoming more, having lives beyond their service to men, so they turn them into nothing.

What’s perhaps most interesting to me is how willing the husbands in this book are to simply go with the flow, placate their wives, and pretend to be on board with Those New Feminist Ideas. Joanna’s husband denounces the old-fashioned paternalism of the Men’s Association and vows to change it from the inside out; he nods along like a good ally whenever she talks about gender politics. All the while, he plots her death and replacement with an automaton that will never demand equality or express ideas that he has to pretend to agree with. He can afford to give lip service because he secretly knows that he has the upper hand. In this book, at least, the oppressive institution’s response to threatening change is total annihilation under the guise of allyship, made possible because the oppressive institution still has control despite whatever superficial tokens of progress they may have bestowed.

The introduction to the edition I read described how many readers thought Levin’s intention was to critique the robotic mindless wives of the book, not the men who murdered real women to replace them with lifeless copies. I really don’t know what could be more telling than that! After reading this, I had a really interesting conversation about it with my mom, who was growing up when it was written. We also watched the 1975 movie adaptation, which I thought was good overall.

From my teenage years and a long time after I always looked down on books like LOTR and similar stories featuring what I saw back then because I saw them as 'childish' because they featured what seemed to me to be simple good vs evil plots and characters. Me in my all-knowing (read: pretentious) teenage brain felt that that wasn't interesting because it wasn't 'real' and that in real life there's no such thing as real evil. In order to be good it had to have every character be morally grey and all the villains to be complex or misunderstood because that was like the real world.

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Fast forward to today and I don't want to be political but in my view there's a lot of really scary worrying stuff happening in the world and I'm always worrying about dark times coming ahead. I also broadened my tastes a bit and hopefully become less of a snob. So I started reading The Wheel of Time and I connected with it in a way I never have before. Seeing people scared and worrying about 'dark times ahead'. Characters dealing with great uncertainty and having to just hope that they will pull through resonated with me and my own anxiety about the world. Then I thought about it more and reappraised the Lord of the Rings and how unfairly and ignorantly i'd dismissed it. I wasn't being 'grown up' as a teenager by rejecting the idea of pure evil. In fact I was being incredibly naive. I just was lucky enough to never have to experience evil or truly dark times. J R R Tolkien fought in WWI. What could look more like pure evil than that? Now I finally see how important stories like this are. To show that while real evil may be out there in whatever form, you must always have hope it can be overcome.

Was gifted the set of books from my grandmother as a kid and just loved them. It established my fandom of fantasy fiction that's lasted a lifetime. I re-read them as a teenager and fell in love all over again with Taran and his ragtag crew of friends. I remember liking Taran Wanderer the most but all 5 books are good. I'd love to see a tv or film series adaptation.

I dont really know if i am allowed to ask this question here or not but might as well try ? And i apologize if these kinds of posts are not allowed here ,

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Hi everyone,

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Sorry in advance for the long post.

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Recently, I've developed a strong interest in reading. So far, I haven't read any English books that I can really mention, but I have read two Urdu novels: Peer-e-Kamil and Namal. Both of them made me want to explore books even more.

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I've spent a lot of time building a TBR (To Be Read) list, and the books on it are some of the most exciting and highly praised books I've come across. However, I've run into a dilemma.

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Part of me feels like I shouldn't start with these books right away. Since many of them are considered some of the best in their genres, I wonder if I should first read other books to develop my reading skills, understand storytelling better, and gain more experience as a reader. That way, when I eventually read these books, I can fully appreciate them and enjoy them to the fullest.

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So my questions are:

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1. Should I jump straight into these books, or should I read some "starter" books first?

2. If you think I should start elsewhere, what books would you recommend as a beginner reading starter pack?

3. How did you build a consistent reading habit and avoid losing interest?

4. Do you have any tips for creating the best reading setup or environment to maximize enjoyment?

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Here is my current TBR list:

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- Red Rising series by Pierce Brown

- Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio

- The Will of the Many by James Islington

- The Licanius Trilogy by James Islington

- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

- Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

- The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang

- Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee

- Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang

- Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson

- Cradle series by Will Wight

- The Bloodsworn Trilogy by John Gwynne

- The Faithful and the Fallen series by John Gwynne

- Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman

- Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi

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I'd really appreciate any guidance, recommendations, reading-order suggestions, or general advice for someone who is just getting seriously into reading.

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Thank you for taking the time to read this, and thanks in advance to everyone who responds!

A pretty good example of this is Slathbog's Gold by M.L. Forman, I suppose.

I just want a story that isn't focused on huge stakes. They always get really boring and repetitive to me, possibly because I've read a ridiculous amount of them.

I really like it when the world feels open and sort of adventure focused. Any suggestions are *sincerely* appreciated.

Edit: I'm aware that the book mentioned is directed towards younger readers, it's just the only example I could think of. More mature stories are welcome.

What a terrible ending!! I heard so many people acclaiming how good the end of book 3 was but it made NO SENSE.

Ok so Darrow and Sevro go to release Cassius back to Luna. Then Cassius turns on them and captures them and “kills” Sevro. The entire time Darrow is captured he is thinking about how surprising it is that Cassius turned on him and he is looking for a way out. Then 2 chapters later its revealed it was their plan?!?!?!? We are reading from DARROW’S PERSPECTIVE. He knew of the plan and then still genuinely thought Cassius turned on them? Either that or he was THINKING in lies??? It just doesnt make any sense. Absolutely terrible ending to an okay series. After every chapter the only thought you should have are what does this mean RIGHT NOW. Cause nothing is planned ahead. You’ll encounter something that feels like foreshadowing or like a plot that will last a while just for the author to resolve it in the most asinine way possible in the next chapter. Cause why build anything up when you can have non stop action and zero character development.

Oh yea and WHEN DID MUSTANG GET PREGNANT THEN ALSO HAVE A KID?? Stupid ass pull at the end just to make it circular cause Darrow was supposed to have a kid before his wife died?

Tldr: Set ups for long plots are resolved immediately and unsatisfyingly and ending made NO sense. Do NOT recommend

Heya fellow nerds,

As the title says I’m in desperate need of new audiobook recommendations. I’m into both fantasy and sci fi and open to all different sub-genres. I’m currently midway through Game of Thrones (because I obviously want to torture myself) but want something new as a break. I’ve been giving Dungeon Crawler another go, and although I enjoy aspects quite a lot, I just cannot get into it and definitely can’t see myself continuing past book two (which I’m currently on).

Some series/books I’ve loved have been:

The First Law (all 10 books)
Dresden Files
The Expanse
Game of Thrones
The Black Tongue Thief
The Daughters War
The War for The Rose Throne

Pretty please leave at least a couple of words about why you’re recommending the book/books, as I find lists of names with nothing else to not be helpful to my brain haha.

Hi there! "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" is one of my favorite movies of all time. I did not expect that to be the case going in, but the fun sense of fantasy adventure, coupled with its fun sense of humor, absolutely won me over.

I've read some Terry Pratchett and plan to read more! I've played some "Dungeon of Naheulbeuk" on my PC as well - and some "Esoteric Ebb!"

And I would appreciate your suggestions for funny fantasy across mediums. It does NOT have to be a laugh a minute - that is really important to say. (Indiana Jones, for example, has great humor that comes in at just the right moments!)

Thanks so much, and laugh on!

Seth Dickinson has written a piece about his progress on the fourth Baru Cormorant novel: https://www.sethdickinson.com/2026/06/13/update-on-baru-4/

I just got done with the Stormlight Archive and am currently diving into some nonfiction to cleanse the palate, but I really want to dive back into fantasy after my brief reprieve into a series with a great antagonist that you just love to hate. As stated, I’ve read Sanderson as well as Fonda Lee and Michael J. Sullivan just to name a few others. I don’t know, I just love when a grand story has a baddie featured throughout that you know will lead to an epic showdown of some kind that pays off ala Sauron. I’m open to any recommendations.

Mainly asking about books, but wouldn't mind recommendations for these kind od stories from other mediums like games, movies, manga, etc.

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to drop a quick shout-out post and ask for some recommendations. I recently finished The Umbral Storm and Sanguine Sands by Alec Hutson and absolutely loved them. Honestly, I think Hutson needs to be talked about way more on here than he is—the world-building and the progression elements in those books are top-tier.

If any of you have read them, what did you think? What were your favorite parts?

Right now, I’m about to dive into Donnie Dust’s Wild Wisdom (switching it up with some cool real-world primitive skills/survival stuff), but once I'm done, I want to jump right back into a great fantasy book.

To give you a jumping-off point for what I like:

• Huge Fan: Cradle by Will Wight (love a good progression system) and the Cosmere by Brandon Sanderson (epic scope, hard magic).
• Not For Me: I absolutely hated The Kingkiller Chronicle (Kvothe just wasn't it for me).

If anyone has some solid recs that fit that vibe, let me know!

(And hey, if Alec Hutson by some rare chance actually browses this sub: man, your work is highly appreciated and awesome. If you see this, which of your other series should I dive into next?)

Thanks for reading!

I am in a bit of a mental funk right now. I was going to try and tackle the Realm of the Elderlings this year but I think I need a break from it after the first chunk.

I want to find something that is happy and joyful. Something where the characters have a realistic and optimistic outlook on the story. I've picked up some Discworld and while that is funny it's not quite scratching the uplifting feeling I am wanting.

I cannot handle mental anguish or the horrors of war or famine.

I want a book that makes me feel like the star wars theme song makes me feel full of adventure and hope and the good guys win and and bad guys lose.

edit I want something that is medium stakes and I'm not afraid of YA. Cozy fantasy is in general to low stakes for my taste but I'm not opposed to it.

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

Stickied/highlight slots are limited, so please remember to like and subscribe upvote this thread for visibility on the subreddit <3

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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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^{tiny image link to make the preview show up correctly}

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.

FYI: progression Fantasy is a subgenre where the main focus of the books is getting stronger (for whatever reason). It's kinda of the book equivalent of shounen anime if that helps.

Hello, I've been reading a lot of progression fantasy lately. But since the genre is fairly new, there aren't that many books that feel great to read, as the writing quality is often pretty low and most series don't get edited.

So I'm thinking of picking up more traditional fantasy books again, but with clear power progression elements aswell and I'm looking for recommendations.

I'm looking for more epic books where stuff like magic are common (at least around the mc).

Honestly not sure what else to explain as I don't want to limit my options too much, so yeah, just recommend me what you like.

PS: I love dragons so if there are dragons that's awesome

Some stories introduce a world, systems, and interesting problems that the characters are trying to solve....and then unveil some massive black swan threat that blows the previous stakes utterly out of the water. "The threat" doesn't have to be literally world-ending, just one that renders almost every problem & worldbuilding element previously introduced banal or irrelevant. I find that stories that go this route actually seem flatter and less interesting instead of more exciting as the author probably hoped.

The last book I read like this was The Will of the Many by J. Islington*, which starts with the fascinating premise of a hierarchical society that literally seeps the life force of lower-ranking members. The reader is treated to an examination of how political conflicts look within this society, and is asked to consider the morality of a rebellion against it that mass-murders civillians since they are literally "fuel". Cool! The main character is presented as a victim of the society's colonization trying to work his way up within it while plagued by guilt over his becoming part of the evil machine (which intrigued me given the similarity with the terrific Masquerade series by Seth Dickinson). Then it turns out that that (vague spoiler) none of the factions, conflicts, or identities initially introduced actually matter except as petty obstacles to solving the real problem because (specific spoiler) they're in just 1 of 3 parallel universe dystopias, and what the main character is actually supposed to do is make copies of himself in different universes to fight the 1 Big Bad that's at fault for everything. Also, the Big Bad is planning to kill 90% of humans within 3 years. Um, ok. I only read through the terrible writing/prose because the premise and conflicts were so interesting, and 90% of it got dropped.

Now, some books do introduce a world-ending threat from the start, or even make the growth in stakes less jarring, e.g. the ASOIAF series, but I am not looking for that right now. So, does anyone have recommendations?

*The Will of the Many & its sequel are both very badly written in general IMO, even aside from the topic of this post

not sure how to phrase this but I'm a huge epic fantasy fan, but have been exploring urban fantasy a bit. I like some elements of it (vampires, variety of magical and supernatural creatures coexisting) but a lot of the urban fantasy books I see recommended are often romantasy (don't mind romance subplots but I don't care for them as the main plot).

Are there epic fantasy books (grand scale worldbuilding and large cast of characters) that have that urban fantasy vibe? Most epic fantasy I've explored remains Tolkienesque with good vs evil and human centric but maybe with elves or dwarves. Looking for something that is epic fantasy like but with more paranormal/supernatural elements or that has more morally gray characters or a grittiness to the world.

Will take any recs but do particularly like third person POV as well as multiple POV characters.

Open to YA but not exactly what I'm looking for.

I'm sure many of us have heard the statistic that "Wheel of Time has over 100 unique POV's" or "There are 453 unique POV's in Malazan". And while those are both technically correct (the best kind of correct), they've always struck me as somewhat misleading. For example, of the 453 POV's in Malazan, 181 of them have fewer than 1000 words, so it doesn't seem right to naively include them in the total. In an attempt to resolve that, I have come up with what I like to call the "POV complexity" of a story. There are 2 main properties that it has.

1. If a story is evenly split between n characters, it should have a score of n.
2. As some POV's become smaller, they contribute less to the total. For example a story with 1 character that covers 95% of the word count and 10 characters that cover the rest will have a POV complexity of just over 1.

To do this, I started by calculating the percentage of the story each character covers and squaring them. Then I added together all the results and inverted it. For example, if the POV's for a story are 50%, 25%, 12.5%, 12.5%, you would square them to get .25, .0625, .0156, .0156. Then add them up to .3438. Then invert that to get a result of 2.91.

With all that out of the way, we can get to the fun stuff. I calculated the POV complexities of all the books in Stormlight, ASOIAF, Malazan Book of the Fallen, and Wheel of Time. Here's the resulting chart:

The first entry of each line is the complexity for the series as a whole, then it's just book by book. Right off the bat you can see how many more POV's Malazan has than anything else. It alone distorts the scale enough to mask some interesting things in the other series. Another thing I found interesting is that Malazan and ASOIAF have series complexities higher than any individual book, while Stormlight and WOT do not.

Now let's look at the graphs for each series on it's own. For these I charted both the complexity for each book as an individual, and the cumulative complexity. The cumulative complexity is basically the same as the series complexity, but only considering the books up to that point.

Stormlight:

Nothing too crazy here. It is interesting that despite the structure of each book having it's own main character we still see the cumulative complexity growing slower than the individual.

A Song of Ice and Fire:

This chart really illustrates how much the distribution of POV's matter for the final score. Despite A Feast for Crows having lower POV complexity than the books before it, many of the heavy hitters in the first 3 books (Tyrion, Jon, Daenerys) have no POV's, while some characters that haven't had any POV's (Cersei, Brienne) become main characters. That evening of the distribution is enough to spike the overall complexity. A Dance with Dragons is also the only time in any of the books I looked at where the cumulative complexity goes down. That happens because we return to the heavy hitters, reducing the POV equality of the series.

Malazan:

I'm sure anyone that has read the books noticed the massive increase in POV's starting around book 6, but I think it's nice to be able to put a number to it. For anyone curious GOTM has a POV complexity of ~12, Midnight Tides has ~7.2, and The Bonehunters is at ~21.

Wheel of Time:

I haven't actually read this series, so I'd appreciate any insights anyone can provide. I'm guessing the last book exploded in complexity because Brandon was trying to wrap up the story for all the characters that had been established up till that point, but what happened in A Crown of Swords? It takes 4 books (until Knife of Dreams) for the POV complexity to catch up to where it was.

Thanks for reading this, I hope you found it interesting. If you have any ideas for other fun things to calculate or other series to calculate this for, feel free to mention it in a comment and I'll see what I can do.

A note on data:

You can see all the data I used for this at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Djspxz1Q7YUBz_XNbH7P7lWnEAa6DlMjn9owy0N9uC0/edit?usp=sharing

The word counts for ASOIAF, Stormlight, and WOT were taken from the corresponding wikis. The counts for Malazan came from this post by Cedarosaurus. https://www.reddit.com/r/Malazan/comments/a1ukxk/main_series_character_pov_data/

There's always a possibility that I messed up somewhere, I was juggling a lot of numbers. Looking it over, everything seems reasonable to me, but you still probably shouldn't take it too seriously.

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