This has been sitting with me since I finished a reread of a series I won’t name to avoid spoilers, but it applies broadly enough that I think it’s worth discussing.

There’s a specific type of villain that appears regularly in epic fantasy. Not the cackling power-hungry type, not the traumatized antihero. I mean the villain whose central argument is actually coherent. The one who looks at the world the protagonist is defending and says “this system is broken and here is exactly why” and is not wrong.

The best versions of this archetype are genuinely uncomfortable to read. You follow the hero through three books learning to love this world and then the villain delivers a diagnosis of it that you can’t refute. The poverty is real. The corruption is real. The cost of maintaining the status quo falls entirely on people who never chose it. The villain saw all of this and decided to burn it down.

And then the author panics.

Because at some point the …

https://variety.com/2026/gaming/news/wheel-of-time-animated-series-movies-video-game-thomas-vu-1236693410/

I need to vent about Mistborn because Era 1 is literally one of the best things I’ve read in fantasy. The allomancy system alone is worth the price of entry cuz its logical, it has real limits, and Sanderson actually uses those limits to drive the plot instead of just making his characters look cool. The world is this ash-covered dying place where the villain already won a thousand years ago and you feel that hopelessness on every page.

Then Era 2 happened, same world, but different era, completely different vibe. Suddenly its a western with guns and a detective plot. And characters who feel like they belong in a YA novel I didnt sign up for. I get that Sanderson wanted to show how the world evolved but the tonal shift hit me like a wall and I never recovered from it. The thing that really got me is that Era 2 is clearly written for people who love Sanderson’s other Cosmere stuff and want all the connections and references but I just wanted more of what Era 1 made me feel. …

I put off giving Dungeon Crawler Carl a go for ages because I naively thought the gaming / litrpg elements would mean characters and plot took a backseat and that the humour and tone wouldn’t be ‘serious’ enough for what I enjoy (I love books by Joe Abercrombie, John Gwynne, Adrian Tchaikovsky, George R.R. Martin, etc).

I finally started Dungeon Crawler Carl in December and I’m now on the 5th book. Every assumption I had about it was wrong to some degree. The first book definitely leans into the litrpg side and can be quite mechanically heavy from a game systems perspective, especially if you’re not a gamer, but I felt this becomes a lot less prevelant as the characters and story evolve. I’m not going to mention any names or spoilers but I’m blown away by the level of depth and how well written almost all the characters are, even minor ones. I didn’t expect this series to cover themes and topics as dark or serious as it has, but …

For me, it’s Druss the Legend by David Gemmell.

As a teenager, I became a violent person. I grew up in a dysfunctional family (calling it a “family” is generous), and I had no clue how to navigate the world. I was the kind of guy you’d cross the street to avoid.

Reading Gemmell gave me the moral compass no one had ever provided. And Druss, more than any other character, is the one who shaped me. Even today, when I’m unsure about something, I ask myself: “What would Druss do?”

(Setting aside the absurdity of picturing a warrior with a battle-axe in a work meeting about a dashboard that just went live, it works pretty much every time.)

I’m curious if any of you have a character like that :-)

One of my biggest gripes with many fantasy books I’ve read and didn’t fully enjoy is that, sometimes, the worlds do not feel ‘lived in’. The action concentrates so much on a few individual characters, that the world they inhabit sometimes feels empty or artificial. I like action as much as the next guy, but one of my favorite things about fantasy is getting to see the world and worldbuilding through exposition. For those of you who have read ASOIAF, some of my favorite chapters were those where Brienne and Pod were just walking around, meeting people, it made the world feel alive. In a similar way, I greatly enjoy when the author shows us all the different ways in which the world works - the laws, the bureaucracy, the everyday food, the description of the streets, the seemingly mundane interactions between the characters, the political system in its everyday life (not just in civil war/breakdown), and a long etcetera.

I believe this is why I sometimes struggle …

I have just finished Alexandre Dumas ‘ 1250 page epic “The Count of Monte Cristo” and I did NOT think I would love it nearly as much as I did: it is everything you could ever want in a novel.

At its core, it is the ultimate revenge story, and the book also perfectly blends genres of romance, mystery, thriller, and historical fiction/drama.

The characters that we see, whose lives and families we observe are well written and explored, and the transformation of the innocent, jovial, youth of Edmond Dantès at the peak of his happiness, to the aged, cold, unrelenting vengeance of The Count of Monte Cristo is some of the most compelling character development I have ever seen (especially towards the end where he contemplates whether his revenge was even worth it or not).

Some conversations, mainly those where Edmond talks to Abbé Faria, those where the count reveals himself to his enemies, or when Mercédès begs him not to kill his son (there are more examples but these …

I want to be careful about how I say this because I don’t mean it as a criticism of other books or the way other people read. I just mean that something shifted for me with this one and I’ve been trying to understand what.

I’ve read a lot of science fiction since my early twenties. I tend toward the harder end of the spectrum, enjoy the worldbuilding, the problem-solving, the way a well-constructed future can make you think differently about systems and technology. I’ve gotten a lot from that kind of reading. But I think I had developed a habit of treating the human characters in those books as somewhat secondary, as vehicles for experiencing the ideas rather than the point of the thing. The ideas were the payload and the characters were the delivery mechanism and that felt fine because the ideas were usually very good.

The Dispossessed broke that for me. Shevek is doing physics and doing politics and doing revolution and also just trying to figure out how …

I read about 250 submissions in February while building the next issue of a speculative fiction magazine, and once you read enough stories in a row you start noticing patterns (as a survival mechanism probably).

Not saying these are trends or anything, but instincts a lot of writers seem to have right now (or they’re leaning toward).

1. A lot of transformation.
I expected some shapeshifting and body horror, and there was definitely some of that. But more often the transformation was quiet or subtext. A lot of stories seemed to be about that middle moment where someone realizes they’re not the same person they were before. Obviously “change” is key to a lot of storytelling, and I will probably explain this badly, but the idea of transformation was in a lot of stories. Largely where the character wasn’t driving it. The world forcing a change. That kind of thing.

2. Super small scale.
I assumed we’d see a lot of galaxy-spanning plots and giant worldbuilding …

Over the last few months I’ve been FINALLY diving back into the Alliance-Union series by CJ Cherryh. I read Cyteen about 10 years ago but never came back to her stuff. In November I decided to read Hellburner and oh my gosh what an absolutely fantastic book.

I finish the 3rd book (chronologically) Downbellow Station a week ago and it’s been the strongest one yet. A space opera so deeply about war but with honestly very little WAR in it. It’s more about the political and social ramifications of war and the displacement of refugees. Especially with everything going on in the world, I thought it really brought to the forefront how refugees are immediately seen not just as undesirables but as criminals just because some much higher power decided to destroy their homes.

For all the love (much deserved) I see ​​​​​​for Ursula K. Leguin, I’m really surprised I don’t see anyone talking about CJ Cherryh.

Edit: Also, Slow Time, Hellburner and Downbellow Station …

After reading many different book series, I’ve put together a short list of worlds that scare me a little

The Culture from Iain M. Banks breaks me every time I think about it seriously.Post-scarcity, near-infinite lifespan, no compulsory work, the Minds running everything perfectly. Sounds incredible until you sit with what you actually are in that world. A biological curiosity. A pet the AIs find charming but don’t need for anything. Every project you take on is essentially a hobby because nothing you do affects whether civilisation keeps functioning. The Minds would barely notice if you spent your entire thousand year lifespan watching old movies and eating.

The only Culture citizens who seem to have real stakes are the ones recruited into Special Circumstances - doing the morally compromised work the Culture pretends it doesn’t do. Everyone else is just very comfortable and quietly losing their mind about it in ways the novels occasionally acknowledge and then move …

Something that drew you in immediately and you couldn’t put down?

I’ve gotten out of the habit of reading, and I really miss it, but I need something engaging to get me back into it. So, I’m casting a wide net in hopes of finding something that piques my interest!

I’m not talking about length or word count. Just physical size. I’m trying pretty hard not to spend time on my phone anymore, so I’m at a point where I’m almost exclusively reading vintage mass market paperbacks. Something I can put in my back pocket and read them when I have free moments during the day.

I’m sure I would enjoy the Tree Body Problem, but there’s no way I’m carrying around that monster 9.5x6.5in trade paperback all day.