So I grew up very sheltered and isolated from society and as a result missed out on a lot of pop culture and other common things. I love to read, and I really enjoy fantasy and DnD and those types of things and I’m trying to find and catch up on the great fantasy books/series that every fantasy lover/nerd should know. I’m not as interested in sci-fi, but I’m willing to read the “great” ones too. What would you recommend?
Series I’ve read: The Lord of the Rings The Witcher The Dark Tower The Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Dungeon Crawler Karl
Update to add also read: Wheel of Time Most of the Stormlight Archive The Hobbit
I’m just starting my first Discworld book.
Edit: Thanks everyone! Keep them coming, I’m going to make a list with all the suggestions and start working through them.
Kingkiller chronicles so everyone can peer pressure rothfuss into finishing the fucking thing
We’re never getting the last book. And my theory is that he just outgrew it. Or at least I hope that’s true, because the whole Denna storyline was just a bunch of incel bullshit.
I like the books, superficially there are a treat, the prose is brilliant, the words feel nice on my brain.
But reading just a little bit deeper than that, you start to realise the story is pretty empty. The characters are hollow. The first two books are pretty much the same story loop over and over again. The characters making the same mistakes and learning the same lessons over and over again.
The way the author writes female characters makes you seriously worry about the authors relationship with women, and if he even knows any women.
I read the first book because I’d heard praise for it. It was either during that one, or the next book what I thought:
…fucking hell. I’m reading a retelling of fucking Harry Potter!
Yeah. It’s full of really common pop-fiction tropes. But the writing is so beautiful you don’t notice it.
It really jumped the shark when in the second book the guy who is a virgin and can’t talk to girls suddenly became the god of sex and literally out-sexed the sex nymph who had been sexing men to death for years.
Did it? I think one of the points is that the narrator isn’t particularly trustworthy.
Yes but also is that just Rothfuss’ excuse when fans call him out about plot inconsistencies? Because that’s how I heard that “explanation” came about.
I think Rothfuss/Martin and others are pressured too much. No matter what they produce, it will never be good enough to satisfy the hordes of loudmouths.
Now, I agree that we have no right to demand anything from them.
But… their output rate has been genuinely abysmal. If we had a right to demand anything at all from them (we don’t), then it would be quite reasonable to ask them to at least finish one book every 10 years…
I mean, Rothfuss has produced a couple novellas, and Martin has some projects. I get it, but at the same time i wouldn’t blame either of them if they didn’t feel comfortable releasing another of their mainline series.
I want them to, and ten years is a long ass time, but nothing they produce will live up to the hype so that probably causes a lot of anxiety.
But maybe im projecting here. Idk. I feel like the same thing is the reason we don’t have a Half-Life 3 video game. The first two made such a huge impact in terms of tech and gameplay that nothing is going to live up to the hype. So you can either kill yourself trying to achieve unachievable levels of amazing, or go do something you want to do.
We just want the next book to be about the same as the previous books. There is not “hype” here?
He won’t. Just toss him as a lost cause like George RR Martin and Scott Lynch and move on. You’ll feel a lot better when you finish a different series that took way less time than what Rothfuss did writing his only 2 novels in the series.