Yeah totally! Initially just whipped this together as a MVP. Been trying to read more non-technical books so I thought about making a site that'd help me choose one to pick. Aim is to have a top weekly/monthly section as well as you said, different categories!
https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/ is a sub for SciFi, and has occasional compilation and recommendation threads, and a wiki with some more links in it.
I read a sci-fi book where three characters were in a punishment squad in some distant (communist?) future.
They were on a planet with incompatible dns, so they couldn't eat anything local. They ended up using some cloning equipment to make "hams" and grafted on extra limbs for travel rations.
Was a bit disappointed to see Malazan Book of the Fallen #1 - Gardens of the Moon so far down. It'd be interesting if they took the series as a whole. One example is The Lies of Locke Lamora, I think it's a good first book but almost everyone I've spoken to/read comments from agrees is bottoms out in book 2 and 3. Personally think the same of Rothfuss' work. Conversely a lot of people say MBotF improves past the first book (I think its excellent from the start), so it's a tough list to base the entire experience on.
Malazan is goddamn amazing, it has world building like no other fantasy series since LOTR. It's a real sleeper, I believe it will become much more popular in the future, perhaps after a grotesque screen adaptation. To my friends who are hesitant to jump in I often liken it to Berserk meets ASOIAF; unrelenting horror with captivating enigmatic lore meets a rich political drama of war and conquest spanning many continents and cultures. The prose isn't as gracefully written as Rothfus stuff and the editing is periodically disappointing, but I can't think of any modern fantasy series that even comes close in terms of the depth and complexity of the world's fantasy lore. Recommendations welcome!
> The Lies of Locke Lamora, I think it's a good first book but almost everyone I've spoken to/read comments from agrees is bottoms out in book 2 and 3. Personally think the same of Rothfuss' work.
Well to add to your data points, I disagree with both statements that the gentlemen bastards and the kingkiller chronicles get worse.
I think they both depart from their source material in the second books but do so necessarily in order to create a standalone story that isn't formulaic.
Especially with regards to Locke, the author made some incredibly bold kill-offs at the end of book one which left the question of how to follow up with a sequel. I'd say his strategy of consolidating the key characters while expanding our knowledge of them through flashbacks is very compelling. I can't get enough of their origin stories and allows me to experience the "dead characters" again, albeit in small quantities. I'm also a huge fan of how powerful wizards are in those books, it seems closer to how unbalanced a mage would be wandering around our world and the fact we follow non-mages really sets the tone for uphill battles.
I saw the film Stardust years ago and liked it (didn't love it), and years later I thought I'd give the book a shot.
Although I did finish the book, I thought it was a slog to get through. It wasn't the fact that it was different than the film, but it had to do with Gaiman's writing style.
I'm definitely not rushing out to read his other novels.
While we are on the topic, if I didn't like the "Mistborn" series, is it worth trying other Sanderson books? I felt like he did a really good job finishing the Wheel of Time, so it's not his writing per-se I didn't like, I just couldn't get invested in any of the characters in the series.
I liked the first trilogy of mistborn but lost interest in the sequels. There were parts of the first trilogy that .. well, were better than others.
I think the Stormlight archive is Sanderson at his fantasy best. Characters driving plot in a cohesive, complex world. Stormlight has huge tombs of books covering a story that feels like it is really moving and subplots that tie back and resolve.
Of all the authors I'm following right now I think Brandon is the most likely to complete his "work". The guy is a machine for writing, he's never let a year pass without a new book.
Of course death/accidents can happen to anybody, but I can't imagine he's going to suddenly drop his output, given how prolific he has been over recent years.
One of his nice tricks is to "relax" by writing different kinds of books, which seems to be working out really well for him.
I conciously avoid reading incomplete series, with only two exceptions and he's one of them. (The other is Steven Brust, who I've been reading for 20+ years. Slowly getting closer to the finish-mark there, the waits between books aren't as bad as with some authors, but they're still annoying!)
I couldn't get into Mistborn either--solid, just didn't grab me. His Reckoner series is my favorite (Steelheart, Firefight, Calamity), though it's YA and more superhero than fantasy. Also Elantris, his first published novel, and its follow-up The Emperor's Soul.
This is a fine list. I think the algos are probably reasonable and so forth.
The reason I can say that is because it reads pretty much like a greatest hits of fantasy fiction list.
It would be interesting to normalize it in various ways:
Most read book per unit time that has passed since it was released. (Contrast NK Jemisen’s work from last year with Martins work from the 90s with Tolkien etc)
Most commonly read book that is not on the amazon list. (Most surprising book on the list)
Most widely read book that doesn’t have a tv show or movie.
And perhaps other smart variations that you and other readers might think of.
I would have preferred to see some examples of books that are really high quality, but not so well known.
Two Examples:
Daniel Abraham's (co-author of "The Expanse") The Long Price Books, "Shadow and Betrayal" and "Seasons of War".
Also, the truly fabulous and sadly not widely known books by Geoffrey Wilson in which he imagined a Europe ruled by the Indian Empire and their magic: "Land of Hope and Glory", "The Place of Dead Kings" and "The War of The Grail".
From that list: “Senlin Ascends” is a journey up a steampunk Tower of Babel whose main character starts off as a bit of a prat, but over the course of the book (and series) really matures and becomes a great character. I highly recommend it.
This is great tool to see what everyone is reading but I would refrain from choosing books solely on the ranking shown here because its always better to choose your own books, movies, music, battles,etc,. rather than aggregators or recommendation systems dictating what is good. I am not saying that this tool is doing the same but as a user we all need to be aware of the bias that naturally comes with these kind of services [0].
In rather harsh words of Arthur Schopenhauer
“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
Grats for shipping something, but my advice would be to give it more social substance since a list of books isn't all that inspiring. I can just go to Amazon's fantasy section for an equally inactionable list.
For example, one idea is to link/embed comments that mention it.
neat site and usual suspects are there, would prefer if you could add more books and some filters
I've been mostly reading fantasy books for past 5+ years and /r/Fantasy [1] has been the major source to find books. I like that there are plenty of discussions to focus on different categories, self published, underrated, webserials, etc.
The books are quite good as well, but as is common with these things, the books and the show diverge in ways I won't spoil. Expect it and enjoy the books for what they are.
What do you mean by that? I just finished Stardust and The Ocean At The End Of The Lane and his writing was quite lovely - but he was going for the fairy tale vibe with those books.
I have a similar, possibly identical complaint about American Gods. Reading American Gods made it clear that Neil Gaiman is very clever (intelligent, tricky plotting) and, independently, a great writer (good with words).
But his tastes are different from mine. There are sections of American Gods that are much too vulgar/crass/obscene/whatever for my taste.
This is also why I never read the sequel to Lies of Locke Lamora.
You find Scott Lynch crass and obscene? It's been a while since I finished those books but that doesn't ring a bell.
Do you mean metaphorically like a crass analogy or like full of swear words? The former would bother me much more than the latter tbh , especially since we're following orphan street urchins - seems in character almost.
However, very cool - any thoughts for other categories (SciFi, etc.)?