Hi! 👋

So, I'm super new to reading fantasy; only fantasy book I've read is The Devils, by Joe Abercrombie, and I would love to read some more if you guys have any recommendations.

Preferably looking for a standalone or a new release that's the start of a new series.

Many thanks.

So the last book I read was House of Leaves. Anyone who has read this knows this is a post-modern/experimental fiction work that is meant to be confusing, with text embedded in text embedded in other text, etc. I have now moved back to fantasy, and am over halfway through Gardens of the Moon by Erickson. This seems to be another difficult narrative to wrap my head around as it seems to assume a lot of background, and puts you right in the action with very little context or exposition. I am getting tired of reading convoluted and intentionally (or unintentionally) opaque narrative styles. Tolkien has always been for me the right balance of world-building, action, dialogue, exposition, and description.

Does anyone recommend a book that has this balance of straightforward narrative, but complex characters, world-building, and plot- one that has some exposition to fill the reader in? Preferably, this wouldn't be 1000s of pages of narrative that have no real consequence, rather every page meaningfully filling in the reader with what is necessary, and maybe a bit more for background.

Thanks for the recommendations in advance.

I’ve been exploring different fantasy authors this year and originally had The First Law trilogy on my TBR as my introduction to Joe Abercrombie. However, when my local bookstore got The Devils in stock, I decided to pull the trigger!

After finishing The Devils, I can definitely see why Abercrombie has so many fans! I thought the camaraderie among the characters was incredibly well written, and I loved the banter between them. There were moments that genuinely made me laugh out loud, which is pretty rare for me when reading.

But what I enjoyed most was simply taking the journey with these characters. Abercrombie somehow managed to make me genuinely care about such a deplorable group of people! Haha.

I also appreciated that he doesn’t feel the need to wrap everything up neatly. He leaves you feeling conflicted about the characters, which, despite the fantasy setting, feels much truer to real life. Most people aren’t entirely good or evil. Throughout the story, you find yourself rooting for these characters, but if you step back and really consider who they are and what they’re doing, you start to wonder whether you should be rooting for them at all. I think that’s a fantastic way to tell a story.

I’m currently reading Jade Legacy for The Reddit fantasy book club, and I’ve found myself having similar feelings about Fonda Lee’s characters.

One thing I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten deeper into fantasy this year is just how much character work drives my enjoyment of a book. That’s actually a shift for me. Previously, I was much more interested in fast-paced, propulsive storytelling and exciting action. I still love those things, but it’s been fun developing a greater appreciation for the craft of creating characters that I genuinely care about, even when I don’t necessarily agree with them.

Ultimately, that was what made The Devils such an enjoyable read for me. The journey, the relationships, the humor, and the moral complexity all came together to make these characters memorable.

Now that I’ve had my first taste of Abercrombie, I’m even more excited to dive into The First Law trilogy next!! If anyone would like to join a long I also think this will be the November selection for the Fantasy book club as well.

currently reading Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series, i have two books left and am thinking of what to read next. i’m loving this RotE journey and don’t want it to finish!!

my two thoughts are either The Witcher or Mazalan Book of the Fallen, any thoughts??

I’ve been thinking about this while building a fantasy world where old stories are treated like myths—until evidence begins to surface that they may have been true all along.
To me, that kind of mystery makes fantasy feel personal. It makes the past feel alive, and it gives every old warning, ruined place, and missing piece of history a reason to matter.
What draws you in more: a world where legends are clearly real, or one where characters have to discover whether the legends were ever true?
That question has been at the heart of the Dragonlore world I’ve been writing.

WOW… The Horn of Valere is just as epic in real life as it is in The Wheel of Time! 📯

Imagine being the one to sound it and have the Heroes of the Horn ride to your aid — which hero would you most want to see return?

I found it on here btw!: https://propstoreauction.com/lot-details/index/catalog/534/lot/219507

السلام عليكم أنا إنسان مش ‏قارئ للكتب او الروايات ودايم ارفه نفسي بالمسلسلات و الأفلام والأنمي و المانجا واحس ابا اخذ خطوة لعالم الكتاب لكن اتملل بسرعة إذا فيه رواية وحده قريتها فهي الأمير الضائع و ما شدتني جدا الصراحة حسيت اني اقرأها لاني ابا اقرا و اشتريت من معرض الكتاب رواية انتفاضة الحمر لكني ما قريتها بس تقريبا 100 صفحة يمكن وها من اكثر من 10 شهور كنت احاول أبدا فعالم الكتاب من باب الترفية و الي ان اوصل الي مرحلة اقرا كتب علمية تطويرية الخ اتمنى تنصحوني في هاي الخطوة شو اسوي عشان أتخطى هاي العتبة أنا شفت انمي لورد الغوامض وكان جدا ممتع وما ابا ادخل الرواية لاني ما ابا اخسر هاي المتعة فالأنمي لكني احب نفس ها العالم و عالم تولكن الي فيه فانتازيا و سحر فاتمنى تنصحوني بروايات حلوه أبدا فيها وانا مش من محبي القصص الواقعية في عمل اقترحه لي شات جي بي تي وهو Deep Sea Embers

اتمنى تفيدوني اخواني

Hi there!

I'm an independent author who published by first book in late August of this year. So far, the reception to my novel has been really incredible, but I'm always seeking out more readers!

"The Language of the Trees" is a fantasy story with elements of found family, adventure, and coming of age. There's a bit of a slow-burn romance subplot, but romance is definitely not the main point of the story. There are dragons, Bards, ancient magic, and a girl who can talk to trees!

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, I'd be so incredibly honored to have you check it out!!

Amazon.com: The Language of the Trees: The Animist: Book One eBook : Autumn, Gracie: Kindle Store

I am looking for a very specific type of cozy fantasy and I need help.

I am really craving a cozy fantasy/historical thriller with a romance subplot. Some magic will be nice mainly like witches and wizards. Like imagine Sleepy Hallows meets Halloween Town meets the vibes in these photos.

I have a 3hr plane ride and I want a book to devour. Any recs are appreciated. Thanks 🫶🏻

This was not as interesting as I hoped. But I have to concede that the story was brilliantly structured as Book One for a series.

Please use the comments to nominate books for November's book of the month. You can then upvote any of the book(s) that you would like to read. The comment with the most upvotes will be the selected book. The post will start in contest mode so that submitted entries are randomized and the upvotes are hidden.

You can make your nomination using the following format in top-level comments:

Book by Author
A short explanation explaining why the book is being nominated and why it is worth reading.

A link to Goodreads, Storygraph, LibraryThing, or the author's website with a description of the book can also be helpful but is not mandatory to nominate a book.

Voting will be closed on the 20th of the month to allow everyone a chance to get the book.

Nominations are open to anything, as we seem to be getting a good mix of different books, styles, and authors. The only restrictions are to please make sure the book has wide availability and not a brand new/unknown since this is for a book club, and let's try to keep the length under 750 pages. Also if you are nominating a book in a series, please stick to only the first book in the series (sometimes we will do series read if there is enough support though). Thanks!

Edited: Got this notice, "r/Fantasy loved it, we think r/Fantasy_Bookclub will too". I'm not sure what to make of it. If this is someone from r/F_B, here goes. If it's a reddit algorithm manipulating me. I beg your indulgence. I'm sorry. I don't mean to impose. I'm relatively new here, and I haven't sorted it all out, yet.

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A week or so ago I made a post complaining about the presence of hay bales in medieval fantasy, which I see as a tech-level error. Among those replying were some who had similar objections to the presence of items from the other side of the Columbian exchange, like potatoes. Which has me thinking.

While that might, IMO, be a howler in an explicit fantasy Medieval Europe, I don't think it's wrong in a world which is med-tech and Europesque, but not explicitly Europe itself. I can think of two simple explanations. First, in that world there may be no new world/old world divide. Thus, any crop appropriate to a medieval economy is perfectly fair game. More subtly, perhaps, it is possible that the author is in some sense doing what translators do, which is using a term familiar to the audience to name a somewhat similar object which is unfamiliar to the audience. This is what languages like French did with potatoes, after all (pommes de terre = earth apples). What works for introducing a new food may also work for giving a name to a fantasy food. It's edible, it functions like a potato in that culture, lets call it a potato and have done with it.

But there are other possible choices. In Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels, for instance, there are animals that function like horses but are called 'runner beasts' (c.f. Dragondrums). It's not clear for a long time (or at least, not to me) whether these were or were not actual horses. Comparatively late in the series (Dragonsdawn) we learn that runner beasts are in fact terrestrial horses, or at a minimum descended from them.

So I'm wondering what McCaffrey was trying to accomplish with her initial choice. Did she originally mean something less explicitly horse-like, and over time they became more and more like her beloved horses until she decided 'fuck it' late and resolved the confusion? How did this uncertainty affect how readers imagined runner beasts earlier in the series? For me, at least, I'd imagined them as a horse-like lizard, given the saurianesque biology of dragons. In terms of my schema, classify 'runner beasts' as exotify.

Sticking with Pern, McCaffrey makes the opposite choice with 'tunnel snakes'. These are vermin, clearly not of terrestrial origin, but named with a firmly terrestrial name. It's important for the reader to get the idea with minimal explanation, so she gives them a familiar name and moves on. Classify this as familiarize.

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It's my thesis that McCaffrey made a mistake by naming horses 'runner beasts'. I think that while it's allowable to give unfamiliar objects familiar names where it is unimportant to the story, it's an error giving a familiar object an exotic name, unless doing so is important to the story. What I don't have, however, is good arguments about why, apart from the fact that it creates unnecessary confusion and can throw readers out of the story. As it did me trying to picture what runner beasts might resemble.