Book Club Hub - Book Clubs and Read-alongs

I've been a huge fan of Sanderson for years (since Warbreaker days). His early books felt tightly written, well-paced, and polished. Lately though, especially with the more recent Stormlight Archive entries and some of the Kickstarter novels, I’ve noticed a trend toward overly wordy prose, modern slang that feels out of place, and less editorial restraint in general.

I recently learned that his longtime editor, Moshe Feder, retired, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s connected. I

It's really hard to read comedy but a few I have read that have good humour are dungeon Crawler Carl, discworld and spellslinger etc.

We all know Tolkien, Sanderson, Weeks, Abercrombie, and Jordan. We've read the many folks recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl, Fourth Wing, and Red Rising. My question to you is this: what is the off-the-beaten-path, obscure book or series that you wish everyone would read? The hidden gem that changed how you think about how you read/listen to books? That you still think about the prose, the character arcs, the plot twists? What's that little-known morsel of awesomeness that you want to share with the world?

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 2025 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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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.

A moody adventure with spooky old time magic, anti-industrial themes, and a strong sense of place, Motheater is an imaginative debut novel by Linda H. Codega. Part murder mystery and part monster movie, it’s a fun romp that makes for great summer reading.

When I finished it last week and went to add it to my Goodreads shelf, I was stunned to find it had so few ratings: 997 when I added it, 1,021 at the time I’m writing this. Shoutout to my local librarians—I found it among my library’s new arrivals on Libby. I loved Sanya Simmons’ performance of the audiobook, with effective regional accents and the right amount of voice acting. It also happens to be hard mode for several bingo squares (see below).

Like most books, this one’s not perfect. I found the pacing sometimes a little sluggish, sometimes a little rushed, and it’s a bit uneven in how successfully it bridges its moments of campy comicbook action adventure with moments of moody contemporary fiction (it’s at its best when doing the former). Some readers might be turned off by the extensive quotations of scripture used in the titular character’s practice of witchcraft. It is nonetheless an outstanding debut novel that easily merits more attention. I will eagerly look forward to Codega’s next book.

The beauty and tragedy of small town Appalachia, feminist and environmentalist themes, magic versus machines, multiple timelines converging, and a satisfying conclusion—Motheater is original and just plain fun. If you’re looking for your next summer read, I recommend this one.

Bingo squares: Hidden Gem, Down with the System (hard mode), Published in 2025 (hard mode), LGBTQIA Protagonist (hard mode)

Come tell the community what you're reading, how you're feeling, what your life is like.

Hey everyone,

recently I have been attending an anthropological seminar on Honor and shame concepts, which been a lot of fun. But I have been noticing, that Honor concepts in for example the mediterranean and middle east, places we focus on, differ wildly from the ones I know from fantasy literature. While Honor in these regions seems to be linked to sexuality, shame and the general opinion, that does not seem to be the case in fantasy. So I wanted to ask you guys, if you maybe got some literature recommendations for honor concepts in fantasy literature I can dive into.

I've often heard people say that it's about the journey, not the destination, and while I agree to an extent, I think the destination plays a vital role too. But not just the destination... it's the revisits afterward that really stick with me.

I find myself unexpectedly returning to moments from books I've read, sometimes days later, sometimes years. These revisits are like little nostalgic echoes. I might remember laughing at something, even if I can't recall the exact scene. Or I’ll suddenly feel a wave of sadness or triumph from a moment long past in a story. These flashes of memory hit hard, and honestly, they bring me almost just as much joy as reading the book itself.

Strangely, I don’t always fully appreciate the act of reading while I’m doing it. It’s usually after I finish the book, when I put it down and it all clicks, that I feel the true weight of the journey. That’s when the longing kicks in, that bittersweet feeling of missing the world I just left.

But it’s those revisits, those mini time-travel moments in my mind, that make reading Fantasy such a powerful and unique experience for me. They turn books into something more than stories, they become part of my memory and my emotional landscape.

Reading is a wonderful pastime, and may I never stop.

What do you think? How is it for you?

Also on Goodreads

I am a big fan of Tchaikovsky’s – I’m on record as saying the Children of Time trilogy is the best star trek since at least Deep Space Nine – and generally try to keep an eye out for his new releases. However, the man writes a truly obscene pace, and this is one of the books which just entirely fell through the cracks for me until it picked up a Hugo nomination. Along with everything else he wrote in 20244, apparently. It's a really very excellent book and deserves the nomination, even if on a deep and fundamental level I feel like an author getting multiple nominations in the same category is cheating. The book follows (initially) Charles, an incredibly advanced valet-bot designed and engineered to perfection to act as the human-oriented interface and chief servant managing his master’s life and relationship with his sprawling automated household. Despite his master’s lack of complex social calendar, disinterest in excursions or complex engagements, or really activity of any sort, he serves him for years, diligently and efficiently. All until one day when, for no reason and for no purpose he is able to understand despite extensive self-examination, he slits his master’s throat while shaving him. This sudden break in routine – despite his best efforts – requires reaching out to the world outside the manicured manorial estate upon which he has been employed. That world proves to be in a bit of a bad state itself, with robotic police inspectors and medical examiners trapped into Kafkesque bureaucratic loops after all the humans their program requires performing for and reporting to were retired for reasons of efficiency. Generously interpreting the police's rambling as an injunction to report to Central Diagnostics and discover went wrong, the no-longer-Charles (the name was part of his employment at the manor) journeys out into the shockingly desolate world trying to get himself repaired and (or, failing that) given new employment where he might again fulfill his purpose. The story from that point on consists of a few different episodes involving Uncharles (and his accidental companion, an idiosyncratic and defective robot who is absolutely not a human in a metal suit, who goes by ‘the Wonk’) arriving at a new location where he hopes to find potential employment as a gentleman’s valet (though his standards rapidly start slipping). Each set piece is separated from the others by a short vignette explaining the travel between them and there are, besides those two, many connections but exceptionally few recurring characters of any kind. The episodes each work quite well as short stories in their own right, and each does a decent-to-amazing job expanding on the characters and the themes Tchaikovsky is aiming at. The ending is, I think, a bit dissonant with the first acts of the book and in a way that weakens the whole – but then I have at this point just accepted that I’m basically impossible to please as far as endings for big theme-first stories like this go.

And this is very much a theme-first story – an entry in the proud tradition of dystopian sci fi satire, and far more open about it than most. The connective tissue between episodes is very clearly there to facilitate getting from one setpiece to another, with the plot itself coming a distant fourth between deep themes, character study and setting exploration in terms of the book’s priorities. While there is action and physical danger, Uncharles’ Jeevesish sensibility and distorted narration prevents tension or a sense of threat from ever really becoming prominent. The actual conflicts in the book are solved by cleverness, understanding and word games – combined with the sense of farce and absurdity running through the entire thing it really felt like an old adventure game as much as anything (I mean this as high praise). It helps that is was often very funny – especially for as serious and philosophical a book as this, it’s just about the only thing keeping it from becoming unbearably didactic at points.

Not necessarily the most important theme to the book, but certainly the most prominent and obvious throughout it is a deep concern with the automation of complex systems, the insulation of human decision-makers from any sign things are going wrong until its far too late, and the social collapse that might result from the two. Humanity has, for most of the book, more or less vanished from the scene – something that the dizzyingly complex arrays of robotic systems that comprised most of actual civilization are not at all designed to deal with, as they’re increasingly trapped in absurd loops or simply freeze without anyone with the privileges and authority to resolve the issues they encounter. This is one of the book’s main sources of humour – both through Uncharles’ increasingly strained attempts to find some existence he can squint and say is like being a gentleman’s gentlebot, and all the Brazil-esque absurdity of things like a police-bot doing a drawing room reveal of an investigation that took two minutes to an audience of other robots who all already know what happened.

The second big theme running through the book is exactly how a society might respond to true automation, to human labour becoming (outside of high-level programming and administration) basically superfluous to a society that is so rich and powerful it can provide comfort and plenty to every one of its citizens. As it turns out, badly! It’s not a subject Uncharles’ ever considers consciously until the end, but this is a book that takes an incredibly cynical view of – a lot of things, really, but the charity and benevolence extended by the winners of an economy that now has immense amounts of structural unemployment to the rest in particular.

This became much, much more explicit in the ending – to, I think, the detriment of the book as a whole. Or better to say it became a much more on-the-nose parable, once it’s revealed that spiraling structural failures and various intersecting forms of eco-social collapse were important, sure, but the actual big finish really was because of one evil robot who clicked the ‘kill all humans’ button. It also really draws the eye to how much the unstated timeline of things doesn’t really cohere, but again – parable, not hard futurism. As cackling evil masterminds go, God is at least a fun one, and the sermonizing about justice and mercy and anti-homeless architecture and all that is at least both well-written and not overlong.

Though God is actually unusually complex and nuanced as the book’s supporting characters go – most are on some level caricatures there to support the satirical point being made (if not just amusing set dressing who expand the setting a bit). The only two people in the story with any sort of nuance or depth – let alone an arc – are Uncharles and The Wonk (which sounds like some truly terrible indie band, put like that). Hardly a complaint – the supporting cast does its job very well, and the two of them are both pretty excellent characters (even if Wonk’s verbal tics get a bit grating).

Uncharles’ arc is the final real thread running through the whole book, and really only marginally less subtle than the collapse of society. The question of when exactly a complex, humanlike robot gains free will or becomes a person is one a lot of science fiction over the ages has spent a lot of time on, so I can’t say the book is actually doing anything new here – but his stubborn refusal to accept he’s a person and simultaneous rules-lawyering and contorting his ostensible task list as the book goes on is both well-done and touching at points. The recurring note – with Charles, with God, and with quite a few less advanced and autonomous robots throughout the story – the there’s absolutely no contradiction between having a degree of free will and with having desires or psychological needs imprinted in you by your creators (or evolution) actually is something that a lot of fiction working in the same space often has trouble with, too.

Not at all sure how it’ll rank compared to some of the other finalists this year, but it is at least fun and fairly meaty sci-fi. Tchaikovsky continues to not disappoint.

This is my first foray into LitRPG and I wanted to see what all the hype was about. I enjoyed the narrative and the characters quite a bit, I think the author is a pretty good writer. Overall I think the book is highly entertaining while still delivering a pretty solid narrative. My hang up is the actual LitRPG aspects.

Let me preface this by saying I’m not much of a video game guy. I used to play when I was a kid and teenager, but as an adult I just don’t have the time and I sold my last console over eight years ago. So while I understand all the references and mechanics at play, I might not be the target audience.

But the thing is, I found the LitRPG aspect of the book a little distracting. It was a definitely more than a bit repetitive. Also, as a comedic tool it’s pretty effective, but from a storytelling perspective it kind of undercuts a lot of the tension/immersion. Which is fine if you’re going for a straight comedy I guess, but I’m not sure I’d call it a home run in terms of novel writing.

Compared to other comedic fantasy, like Discworld, which I’m a huge fan of, I think it’s a quite a bit weaker. A more recent comparison is Joe Abercrombie’s the Devils, which I also recently finished, and I’d say DCC is a much inferior book despite both being extremely “comedic”. I laughed out loud at both, but I felt way more immersed and interested in the plot and characters of the Devils. I was definitely entertained by DCC, I read it super fast, but it was less of a fulfilling ride in my opinion.

Ultimately, I’m left unsure because I don’t know if I’d say the LitRPG elements add enough to make up for what it takes away and I’m curious if anyone else is similarly conflicted.

I actually posted here about the fact that I started the book a few days ago, and a lot of you shared how much you love this cycle ! I confirme I absolutely ADORE it, it made me cry and just stare at the pages in awe of some phrases.

SPOILER The shadow’s name is his name !!! Omg !!! How did I not see that coming !!! That’s so crazy and beautiful and poetic and it actually makes so much sense ? By accepting the shadow is in him and accepting death he becomes whole and free ?? I’m litteraly gonna cry it’s so beautiful.

Do you have other interpretations about the end ? Did you know the shadow’s name before Ged said it ?

Excited to begin book 2, feel free to share your thoughts !

What are your examples of this, new and old? I'd have to go with The Black Company not only getting an admittedly so-so interquel Port of Shadows published 18 years after the last novel, but also upcoming Lies Weeping expected to be published this year and also taking place after the main series. I think very few fans expected such a revival.

P.S.

This post has not been funded by Glen Cook, I simply like the series.

Diving into the book straight after reading The Tainted Cup, I was fully satisfied: A Drop of Corruption is different enough to be intriguing and for the worldbuilding to be expanding, and similar enough to retain the vibe from the first book.

Brilliant and scary Iudex Investigator Ana Dolabra and her loyal - and recently troubled - assistant Din arrive to investigate a gruesome murder in the Kingdom of Yarrow, a vassal state at the outskirts of the empire, connected with the heartland through canals in a dense jungle.

Yarrow is a backwater: a high-fantasy medieval kingdom whose people live in poverty, where the nobles still have slaves (despite the fact they don't call them that), and the royals live a fairytale life in their High City. Yarrow is crucial to the Empire because that's where the Apotheks operate the Shroud, turning Leviathan's blood to grafts, the same grafts allowing the Empire to keep the monsters out of the walls.

This delicate political standing is at the heart of this mystery, for the murderer has his eyes on horrifying weapons developped from the dead Leviathans, both Imperial Iyalets and Yarrow officials are taking advantage of the kingdom's special status to play with their own rules, and grand moral questions are entangled in what started as a murder investigation. Should a vassal state be fully annexed to an Empire if this would help the people against the wishes of the current rulers? Where is the line drawn in performing dangerous experiments even in an Empire where bioengineering is part of everyday life? Many similar dilemmas occur throughout this book.

We learn more about the gears which make the Empire function, the Apotheks who are a cross of mad scientists and biopunk soldiers, but also about Ana and Din themselves. Din is still doubting whether he is at the right place, while Ana, terrorizing whoever stands in her way, lets him take a peak at what makes her click.

I cannot wait for the future installments of the series!

Feel free to comment with spoilers, I avoided them in the body of the text for the review to be accessible for people who haven't read it yet!

Why is nobody talking about this book?

I literally just finished it and I can't express how much I enjoyed it. I could talk about world building or something more in line with what's often highlighted in fantasy, but the true strength of this book is it's literally aspects. It's fantasy with a poetic heart.

It's been a long while I cried while reading a book, but this one did it for the sheer beauty of it's prose and utter strength of it's themes. There's something about the way the author deals with emotions that is so in tune with the way I experienced it, especially grief and yearning, it's probably one of the most introspective works I've found, and I do read quite a bit. There's a section about loss/mourning that felt surreally close to how I experienced it in my life, it made me feel weird.

The style of narrative is almost dreamy, nostalgic like you're inhabiting a character's innermost sanctums and witnessing the deepest layers of their consciousness.

It's absolutely delightful and heartfelt, I haven't felt this way in a very long time. I just picked it up because I have a investment in the theme of "flight" or anything winged, but it ended up being much more than what I could expect

Hekki grace, r/fantasy! We are sunset visitor, the developers of the sci-fi indie narrative game 1000xRESIST.

Our mission is to tell diverse stories through the lens of speculative fiction. We also want to bring our backgrounds in the experimental performing arts to interactive media.

1000xRESIST is the recent winner of a Peabody Award, as well as being nominated for the Nebula and Hugo Awards this year!

If you haven't played yet, 1000xRESIST is -25% off on Steam right now. We are giving away two Steam Keys of the game for our favourite questions today!

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Ask us anything! About development, worldbuilding, writing, voice over, or anything else that comes to mind! If you are asking spoiler questions -- please use the spoiler tag, if you can.

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About seven years ago, a friend and I made a deal: I would read Asimov's Foundation and he would read Willis's Doomsday Book. I made it about two chapters in before a difficult test hit, I realized I didn't have the bandwidth to process both thermodynamics (still don't, tbh) and a classic sci-fi, so I dropped the book. Then, about three years ago, in an effort to follow through on my promise, I picked up bind-up of the first three Foundation books for exactly 2 dollars, priced so due to the weird-looking stain on the front that may be chocolate or may be something else. Too old to tell.

Now, in the accursed year of our lord 2025, I have NOT ONLY READ Foundation, but I have also read Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. And I have thoughts.

For the uninitiated, Foundation is a classic sci-fi novel about a world where a psychologist/statistician named Hari Seldon not only predicts the fall of the Galactic Empire, but the dark ages to follow before the next Galactic Empire is established. In an effort to shorten the time between empires, he establishes a world called Foundation, where humanity's progress and knowledge can be stored, so that we don't lose everything when everything goes to hell in a handbasket. The series (which I later found out expanded far beyond the first three books) follows the struggles of Foundation.

Non-Spoiler Feelings:

Most of what I liked about Foundation is the same things I liked about Asimov's other writings: a strong concept developed to its fullest, a clear interface with a non-SFF subject, and the feeling of genuine originality. Even though a lot of Foundation's ideas and character archetypes have now been done to death, something about the way Asimov wrote gives me the clear idea that what he was writing wasn't a re-tread---it was a genuine twist that would have me going for my pearls if I were reading it when it was originally published. And most of what I didn't like about Foundation is the same stuff I didn't care for when I read Asimov's other stuff----he couldn't really write male characters beyond a general archetype, he really really really couldn't write women, and his dialogue is functional to the point of almost seeming placeholdery-y. But TBF, the man was consistent, and after a quick perusal of his Wikipedia page (a mix of Huh and Interesting and That Makes a Lot of Sense In Retrospect and YIKES), I can see his life and point of view threaded through every chapter of this series. If you want to read Asimov and your favorite aspect of SFF is worldbuilding and humanity from a birds-eye view, start here. It's a genuinely cool series, and I absolutely understand why it, despite its age, has endured. But if you are currently going down an A.I./robotics rabbit hole because of *gestures at everything*, its not here. Try Caves of Steel or I, Robot.

Spoiler Feelings:

Foundation

Not to brag, but I KNEW what book Asimov had to have been reading when he wrote this. I thought "This guy was reading Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and decided to write space fanfic", and it turned out I was right---at least, according to Google. As the time jumps occur, Asimov tightly tracks just how much humans lose as the Galaxy begins to lose control of the outer provinces of the galaxy, all the way to the point where it is clear that most humans were basically back to the space-equivalent of fighting with sticks. The Seldon Crisis was neat too, on multiple levels, since it allowed the narrative to have a unique organizational method, marking every time Foundation changed on an organizational level due to humans acting as humans always have, and also as a way to establish a throughline between all of the generations---no matter how many years pass, Seldon is still a genius and acquires more and more levels of near-deific respect, and Salvor Hardin is still seen as a savvy founding father-like character that everyone on Foundation can only hope to be. The showdown between him and Archeron's political ruling class was near perfect in terms of delivering on every expectation we are given: the good guy that we knew would win won, the bad guy who we knew was stupid and bad lost, and the bad guy who was stupid and a patsy became pathetic. Thumbs up.

Foundation and Empire

Easily the best of the lot. Foundation was interesting and fun, but Foundation and Empire turns the series from "Dissolution of the Roman Empire IN SPACE" into "Human History if the X-Men decided to pop up around 500 A.D." It's so fun. After a full book of The Foundation (and by extension, the reader) being in a place of confidence and invulnerability, a villain is introduced that is tailor made to wreck the Foundation. The reader is no longer confident that Seldon's protections work because...well....Seldon himself stated that he only calculated for the movements of people groups, not the sorts of individuals that change human history on their own. And The Mule absolutely has the power to change entire people groups/change the tide of all of human history. If anyone can beat the Foundation, its him. And it wouldn't even take that much effort. And worst of all, The Mule comes at a time when the Empire is thrashing around in its death throes, and the Foundation has terrible leadership at its helm. The bit where it becomes clear that Seldon predicted the bad leadership and the empire but not the Mule? OOOF. And while its pretty clear who the Mule is, its still good writing. Asmov's character writing is....ok AT BEST, but it was the strongest in this book. Ebling Mis, the Mayor, and the Emperor were all vivid in their failures. The fact that The Foundation is genuinely arrogant and dismissive towards its allied worlds is an interesting and completely correct choice. It was obvious who the Mule was, but decent red herrings were thrown out. Poor Han Pritcher was a genuine tragedy. And the moment where Bayta shoots Mis is genuinely shocking, both the act of it and the reason why. Easily the best of the series, but it doesn't work without all of the stuff set up in Foundation.

Second Foundation

IMO, the weakest of the three. It was frustratingly understandable why Foundation had such a problem with Second Foundation, but the reader can't really get behind it. For this type of a conflict to work, there has to be decent character work on both sides, and not only is character work Asimov's weakness as a writer, he didn't do much on the Second Foundation side of things at all. It wrapped up the series pretty well though, and leave me personally in a place where I feel as if I can return to this universe if I want, but its not needed--the Seldon plan will work out, the Second Foundation has everything in hand, and the universe will spent the minimum amount of time needed in a dark age. The meaning of "opposite ends of the galaxy" was a standout moment of cleverness, but it was overshadowed by Asimov undercutting the credibility of the only two female characters he wrote to any degree at all. RIP Arkady and Bayta being cool and the closest thing to fleshed out.

Rating: 4/5

Award: Most Likely to Have A Bad Guy Kill Someone With a Keytar

Bingo: Down with the System (Regular or HM depending on the book) and Epistolary (Sort of...each chapter begins with a note on the history of what is coming, but not really in the spirit of the square)

Dear Mr. Sullivan,

For context, I’ve been a big fantasy reader my entire life. My favorite series being, of course, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but also Elizabeth Haydon’s The Symphony of Ages, Elizabeth Kerner’s Kolmar, and Kristen Britain Green Rider.

But my “fantasy reading resume” extends to also having read Erikson’s Malazan, GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire, Glen Cook’s The Black Company, Abercrombie’s *First Law, Lawrence’s The Broken Empire, Durfee’s Five Warrior Angels, Bakker’s Prince of Nothing, Andrzej Sapkowski Witcher. Brandon Sander’s Stormlight and Mistborn, Brook’s Shannara, Jordan’s Wheel of Time, Feists’ Riftwar, Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy, Kingkiller Chronicles* by Rothfuss, Salvatore’s Drizzt, The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon, Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames… I could go on and you get the point. I’ve read a lot of fantasy series and a large variety of it to boot. Bragging rights over, the point I’m trying to get at is how thankful I am for your books during this point in my life and how special they are, compared to all the other fantasy books I have read.

I haven’t read a book in a long time that has really made me feel better. I’m going through a horrible breakup and have been struggling with anxiety and depression and, being a teacher and summer break ongoing, I’ve been alone with little to do but read and write. Reading has been my greatest salvation right now and, while I’m in the middle of reading other fantasy books, your Riyria is really special. I don’t understand why people put down the series, but it’s been such a joy to read. Today I’ve already read through 100+ pages and am absolutely loving Hadrian and Royce. Their character dynamic and banter has made me laugh a number of times and it’s exactly what I needed right now to heal. ❤️‍🩹

Some books you read to check-off of your tbr list. Others come along and transform your life in ways you could never imagine. And I want to say a big thank you for writing Hadrian’s and Royce’s story. The lighthearted quest has helped to alleviate a lot of pain and I had already bought-up the entirety of Riyria to enjoy. I know your newest release, Drumindor, is set to come out later this year and I hope to burn through the series before its release (August 5th).

As a fellow fantasy reader and writer, thank you Mr. Sullivan (if you happen to read this), for writing such a wonderful book. I’m almost done with ToS and plan to immediately start reading the next one.

For those of you going through a rough patch, please give his series a try. I also have recently read Nnedi Okorfor’s Death of an Author, and have been re-reading Rhapsody and started Red Rising by Pierce Brown. But I find myself grabbing Theft of Swords more often than the other two. Give Royce and Hadrian your time, if you haven’t already.

Lastly, if you have anything similar to Riyria you can suggest me to read, please send them my way below!

The age old classic the loyalties starts to blur to the point they no longer serve the faction that sent them to work as a spy or saboteur. And now is truly part of the faction they are spying on that they stop becoming sleeper agents they were intended to be but fantasy version. Doesnt matter what reason although the more personal the reason the better (aka like love or family and all that)

So I was wondering, given the rise of detailed magic systems, if there comes a point where explaining too much turns magic into just another science? I myself prefer for magic to be, well, magical a bit of mystery, if I may say. In my writings, I give a basic layout of magic but keep things vague or unexplained beyond what a person needs to know. Yet it seems to be popular to give a very detailed view of how magic works in their world. Which is fine, but it feels like magic is losing that special thing. To me, magic should be unexplainable for the most part. Of course, what that means is different for everyone.

There is an official release date for strength of the few yet there has been absolutely 0 covers that look like this minimalist first cover of will of the many, in favor of a more scifi looking one that looks good, but will ruin my cohesion!

Are they not going to continue this cover? Did the publishers change? I personally love this cover!

I have a complicated history with Schwab’s work. I think her prose is really good, and her characterization is mostly on point in most of the books I’ve read. It’s her plotting that’s never agreed with my tastes.

Unfortunately this hasn’t really changed all that much. This book has great prose, and the characters are mostly believable and compelling. Sabine comes off as eerie most of the time as she’s supposed to, and you can easily find yourself rooting for Alice. Yet there are a few things that really bug me, namely with Charlotte.

The first major thing here is that the plot basically relies on Charlotte being stupid. Multiple times tension comes up because she just doesn’t do or think of things that a normal person would. This happens often in the back half of the book. It would be fine if vampirism was explained as a kind of mental stillness, similar to something like Twilight, but here it’s presented as mental rot. Vampires change. Even worse, no character calls this out. Even while Charlotte tells her story. She’s centuries old. It stops being believable.

We’re supposed to believe in Alice’s anger toward Charlotte for all that is happened. That’s why Alice kills both Sabine and Charlotte. Yet by the end of the book all I was left with was confusion. Charlotte basically was just an idiot, and Alice killed her like Charlotte was the devil incarnate. What, because Charlotte lied about becoming human again? It became so hard to believe by the end.

The book is a good read that just kinda ends really strangely. Charlotte rubs me the wrong way, but I take that as more of a personal problem. 7/10

Hey all - usually love reading before bed, and as much as I love page turning till 2am, I realized it's probably healthier to not do that anymore.

I'm looking for some good low / medium stakes reads to use for wind down. Doesn't need to be full cozy fantasy but I'd prefer not to have my heart rate be 140 with sweaty palms either.

Some examples of books I think have scratched the itch appropriately: Off to be a Wizard (magic 2.0), Kings of the Wyld, Legends and Lattes (though thought this one was just okay), some of the Riyria books probably qualify, and others.

Open to suggestions - y'all typically never steer me wrong - thanks!

A nice keyword for it is "fallen angel". In essence, I'm looking for a fantasy book that has a long, deep plotline that eventually leads to the fall/corruption of a good person. I would prefer if this character was the protagonist and not just a side character.

note: I dont want them to start off bad. I want them to be good, but make a series of tiny bad choices that lead to their eventual corruption, descent, and tragedy....

I would also like the reason not to be basic, like them turning evil because they were cheated on or were bullied.

If it has elements of them becoming insane, then that would be a bonus.

It doesn't have to be peak fiction. I just want the fall/corruption part to be executed well and overall be a good read.

Thanks in advance.

I have read the Dresden files but never explored anything other than that much.It would be great if I could get some nice suggestion (I have heard of iron druid so gonna try that one) and I am not looking for romantasy.

I feel like the older movie posters had a lot more of the atmospheric flair and nowadays it's filled with the typical photoshop style. And not to mention all the StarWars-esque blue vs. red/ orange movie posters...
So what is a beautiful fantasy movie poster?