I’m somewhat of a newcomer to the fantasy realm, and have made my way through some of the big-name series that aren’t as big and daunting as WoT. I do want to give it a shot since it’s considered part of the Mount Rushmore of the genre but there are a couple of things holding me back:

- The sheer length of the series, especially what I hear about the infamous “slog” in the middle - is it as bad as people make it out to be?

- Brandon Sanderson writing the last few books. I tried a few of Sanderson’s own works and found them to be quite lacking when it comes to prose, dialogue and characters - does it impact the quality of WoT as a whole?

Otherwise though I really would love to give the series a shot, given all the great things I hear about the overall narrative, worldbuilding and character development. So far, of the series that I’ve read, the ones I’d consider S-tier are Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, Robin Hobbs’ …

I grew up in the VHS era, in a big family, where every day there was a squabble over what to put on the tv. One of the few movies that everyone loved was The Princess Bride. But I especially loved it because it was one of those rare movies that felt tailored to me. Got my nerdy fantasy loving side, my sense of humour, my optimism tinged with cynicism.

To think someone who gave considerable magic to my childhood should die in such an awful way really breaks my heart. RIP Rob and Michele Reiner.

What novels/movies implement the Chosen One trope the worst? Not which “chosen one” did the worst.

I’ll start. By no means do I think One piece is a bad story, rather I think it’s one of the best ever written. >!However it’s implementation of the Chosen one trope through Luffy and his Sun god Nika fruit/being joyboy incarnate I think was poorly done. !<

We’ve all been there: a series starts off strong, maybe even gets better along the way, but then the finale can’t quite stick the landing and ends up feeling disappointing.

There’s something especially satisfying about a series where the final book doesn’t just meet expectations, but completely knocks it out of the park. Looking back on everything I’ve read, only The Return of the King and The Hero of Ages really fit that bill for me.

So I’m hoping for recommendations of fantasy series where, in your opinion, the final book is the strongest in the entire series.

I don’t enjoy dark fantasy, sci-fi, or horror. Other fantasy subgenres are fair game, and I do enjoy romantic subplots as well. The Farseer trilogy and the Red Rising series are already on my TBR for next year, and I’m curious how they stack up on this front as well.

A lot of us were theorizing that it would center on “one”, but I never thought it would be justice! I thought something like “Burden” would be the word here. I like that it’s going from more—>less, i.e. “many,” “few,” “one.” What’s next? The [Noun] of None?

Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time full series available on Humble Bundle for just $18.

I’m not the first or the last here to say it, but perhaps the most recent! I just finished the last of the 74 Hugo winners for best novel. Here’s my unsolicited thoughts and lists for your bemusement, criticism, and reflection!

If seeing my list makes you think, “wow, I bet they’d love _____”- please let me know! Always looking for new recommendations!

EDIT: idk how that wild formatting happened. Copied from google docs. Sorry about that!

My absolute favorites (in no order): 

The Left Hand of Darkness (1970) and The Dispossessed (1975) by Ursula le Guin.

In my opinion the best writer and the best written novels of the whole lot. The worldbuilding is excellent, the character development in engrossing, the societal commentary is timeless, and the stories are just downright entertaining. 

The Three Body Problem (2015) (and the following two books of the trilogy that didn’t win Hugos) by Cixin Liu.

The epitome of “hard sci-fi”. Somehow, Liu pairs the …

And why is it “The sky over the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

So, its been a few months since I finished reading spin, but I still think about it from time to time. It did something most other sci fi don’t do. It focused on the world surrounded by the phenomenon and did it in a way that made the story beautiful and/or elegant.

Now, I haven’t read a lot of sci fi. I’ve mostly read the popular ones like Asimov and Herbert, some crazy ones like Egan and Watts and modern ones like Reynolds and Cixin Liu and Tchaikovsky. I’m not sure where spin sits in between all of these, but this book did something most sci fi I’ve read didn’t do. The whole story felt way more personal. The sci in the fi was a backdrop and the story was about the people dealing with it. Normal people who are not going to solve it alone.

To me the story feels nostalgic, which makes sense to some extent, given that its written in a memoir type way, but I personally loved it. I also liked how some mysteries we never truly learn about, like what …

I got it out of the library a moth ago. I was expecting an action-packed story with clever insight on gender roles. What I instead got was a boring slog that took too much time developing context and got too excited about its ideas to focus on plot.