Some of these books are true must reads, but several are just okay and a couple are downright bad.
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Which ones would you leave off?
Patrick Rothfuss because he's never finishing it. Not that he doesn't deserve it based on merit, but it's irresponsible to recommend him. Authors take time and most will eventually finish one day but it's pretty clear he's not.
Here's the list from the article:
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien
A Song of Ice and Fire Series by George R.R Martin
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Mistborn Series by Brandon Sanderson
The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Night Angel by Brent Weeks
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
The First Law series by Joe Abercrombie
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Discworld by Terry Pratchett
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1 by Patrick Rothfuss
Temeraire by Naomi Novik
For me a lot of these are solid, but some are pretty questionable. I regret the time I spent with Night Angel, for example, and found Hunger Games to be entertaining, but not substantial enough to get past the first book.
Hunger games also isn't fantasy, it's Sci-Fi.
The fact that it's on the list and not something like Spellmonger tells me the person who made this article isn't really all that passionate about fantasy books and likely based their research off various google results for "popular fantasy series".
These lists are so subjective. For example, The Dresden Files have been around for a while, but I wouldn't consider them to be the top of the fantasy genre. Also, no Robin Hobb?
I don't dislike Dresden Files but I'm liking it less as it veers further & further from its initial premise. Book 1 and book...er, 16? the latest one...are so tonally different. Power creep, yeah, is part of it, but also it went from "fun noir throwback starring Detective Hard-Boiled" solving things cleverly (and without spellslinging ALL the time) to "what if a Jedi with the power of God and pop culture references on his side fought Irish folklore kaijus while Bigfoot was watching".
Like... I'm strapped in for the ride and enjoying it besides but the series seems to have gotten a lot less intellectually stimulating and than before and is now "big powers do a fighting".
Just me?
I agree on this. I'm enjoying it none the less and I like the direction its going in. To me, it's like going to see a movie like "Nobody"
You know what you're getting into. You know you'll be entertained. You know it won't be too long. And you know it'll never make a list as one of the greats or win any awards.
The "oh so nerdy" references weren't quite so ubiquitous earlier in, were they? The question popped into my head the other day but I don't feel like going back to check.