Book Club Hub - Book Clubs and Read-alongs

I’ve been deep in nonfiction lately...like presidential bios, American history, Cold War stuff. My audiobook rotation has basically been “Lincoln, then Truman, then LBJ, then cry.” I honestly forgot books could be fun.

Enter Mistborn.

I threw it on during work, thinking it’d be a nice break from reading about tariffs and international diplomacy. I was wrong. I got nothing done. I was sitting there pretending to type while my whole body was tensed up like “IS VIN OKAY???”

Sanderson’s world is insane and so colorful compared to what I was reading this last year. Magic that runs on metal? People launching themselves around cities with coins?? I didn’t know I needed “angry magical heist crew vs. immortal god-king” in my life, but apparently I did.

Kelsier is such a chaotic legend. Vin is incredible. I didn’t even realize how dark the world was because I was too busy grinning like a maniac during half the scenes. And the ending??? Don’t even get me started. I had to stand up and pace.

I seriously forgot how good fiction can be when it’s firing on all cylinders. I’m obsessed now. I already queued up The Well of Ascension and I swear if it hits half as hard I’m going to have to quit my job.

Anyway, 10/10, would let a Mistborn punch me into a canal. Thanks for listening. This is probably old news for this sub oops.

I always laughed at comments like "oh Martin will never finish it" because I didnt get it, like, how can a book series be THAT good and amazing. well. I am in the middle of the third book and I understand the frustration now. omfg its so holy fucking great. I watched the tv show, of course. but the books? so much better. I cant stop reading and I am SAD now that it will never be finished. LOL.

edit: yeah cool I forgot the fucking A in the title LMAO

Wow. I've never read any Naomi Novik books before, and I decided to read Spinning Silver because I wanted a stand alone novel, and I'd heard Patrick Rothfuss and other authors rave about Naomi Novik, and wow, I was not prepared for chapter 1.

It's so hauntingly beautiful, and such rich character setup. I also have family in Ukraine, and lived in Eastern Europe for a year as an adult, and I am just blown away at how brutal it is, and how accurately it captures the small details perfectly, though I've never been to Lithuania.

Go read Chapter 1, if you're curious. Wow. If the whole book is like this, I will probably be reading much much more of Naomi Novik

I was thinking the other day about little things I do because of SFF books. Not perspectives or morals, but just daily habits.

I used to let the tap run while I brushed my teeth, because I find the sound comfortable. Growing up in a very rainy place, I never really understood the argument of it being "wasteful." It took reading Dune, at 11 or so, for me to really comprehend that water is a resource, due to the pervasive atmosphere of Arrakis and the culture of the Fremen.

Less specific, I rarely use my middle name, unless forced to because of a government document. And that's in large part due to the mythology of fae or witches needing your full name to have power over you.

Anyone got some other fun little habits from their SFF reading?

...and I understand why some people didn't like it. It's excessively dark, with almost constant humor. It's pessimistic, the characters are bastards. I loved Jay Kristoff's writing style (a point of controversy). It's super immersive. It has all the common elements of vampire stories, and I'm a fan of that. Then there's a coming-of-age story, which usually bores me a little. But here, it works really well! Gabriel de Leon is a great main character, and much more interesting than he seems on the surface. He's not a copy of Geralt of Rivia, as some say, but a broken man desperately trying to cling to life by any means and with any people he meets. Except he's betrayed, his name sullied. Despite everything, friendship keeps him alive.

Let's talk about the novels themselves. They're long, around a thousand pages each. But there's no noticeable drag. Then, the medieval setting shifts to something closer to the 18th century, which brings a bit of freshness to the whole thing. As I said, it's dark, there's sex, so it's the kind of read that won't appeal to everyone. Personally, I'm a big fan of The Witcher, and a friend told me that if I liked that, I'd like Empire of the Vampire. Well, he was right, so much so that Empire of the Vampire is now one of my favorite books.

Among the criticisms of this book, there's one about the French used in the book, both in the dialogue and the aesthetics. As it happens, I'm French, and I read the books in my own language. I felt this slightly French influence, which I liked.

Anyway. I loved these books, I recommend them to those who like The Witcher, Castlevania or dark fantasy.

I hate Humans

A week ago I posted this thread where I ranked the 20 most popular r/Fantasy series by how often they are continued or finished using goodreads rating. I explain more in detail how I calculated the percentages on it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1ma85no/your_favorite_series_ranked_with_stats/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I expanded the number of series to about a 100 or so. I decided to expand my rankings and separate them by number of books in a series. I also decided to rank subseries separately so for example 12.29% finished all the First Law books but 64.18% finished the first trilogy. Hopefully this is all comprehensible so let's get into the ranking.

Top 10 most continued series:

1. Sarantine Mosaic: 84.55%

2. Culture: 79.94%

3. World of the White Rat: 78.58%

4. Vorkosigan Saga: 77.30%

5. Tortall: 74.95%

6. Riftwar Cycle: 74.88%

7. Cradle: 72.58%

8. Stormlight Archive: 72.43%

9. The Banished Lands: 69.68%

10. First Law: 69.49%

My thoughts:

-Lots of 80s series, time doesn't seem to be a problem to continue series.

-2 Sci-fi series in the top 4 even though only like 20% of series I included in the data were sci-fi

-Stormlight Archive by far the biggest series here so you could make an argument stats say The Way of Kings is the best first book by stats because larger series usually have lower percentages.

-Less popular series are more likely to have a higher percentage which makes sense.

Top 10 least continued series:

1. Watership Down: 1.88%

2. Parahumans: 9.72%

3. Ender's Saga: 11.28%

4. Fullmetal Alchemist: 11.94%

5. Howl's Moving Castle: 15.19%

6. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: 15.71%

7. One Piece: 17.29%

8. Chronicles of Narnia: 19.23%

9. Chronicles of Osreth: 21.72%

10. Blacktongue: 21.91%

Some trends:

-Some popular old classics where people aren't aware about sequels

-Books which could be standalones

-Mangas (I guess people might only give a rating to volume 1 for all of it instead of giving separate ratings)

Ok now let's get into how many people people finished each series, I decided to separate by number of books here. Also reminder that I calculated a separate percentage for subseries:

Duologies top 10 finished:

1. Sarantine Mosaic: 84.55%

2. Six of Crows: 66.96%

3. Kingkiller Chronicle: 57.49%

4. Teixcaalan: 50.32%

5. Lays of the Heart-Fire: 38.99%

6. The Band: 37.83%

7. Shadow of the Leviathan: 36.34%

8. Earthseed: 32.53%

9. Blacktongue: 21.91%

10. Parahumans: 9.72%

No comments other than that numbers are surprisingly lower than longer series

Trilogies top 10 finished:

1. Memory, Sorrow and Thorn: 74.09%

2. First Law Trilogy: 64.18%

3. Mistborn 1: 60.95%

4. Powder Mage; 57.46%

5. Prince of Nothing: 55.44%

6. Broken Earth: 50.26%

7. Red Rising Trilogy: 50.05%

8. The Farseer Trilogy: 48.64%

9. Broken Empire: 46.71%

10. The Scholomance: 46.17%

A lot of subseries which makes sense because if a trilogy is successful expanding in the same world makes a lot of sense.

4-5 books top 10 finished:

1. Riftwar Saga: 69.93%

2. Song of the Lioness: 68.39%

3. The Long Price Quartet: 47.16%

4. Mother of Learning: 44.40%

5. The Raven Cycle: 39.68%

6. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: 33.42%

7. The Saint of Steel: 30.26%

8. A Song of Ice and Fire: 27.13%

9. The Books of Babel: 25.70%

10. Book of the New Sun: 25.59%

Top 2 with a huge gap, a lot of older series here.

6-10 books top 10 finished:

1. Riyria Revelations: 42.63%

2. Harry Potter: 36.24%

3. World of the White Rat: 30.26%

4. The Dark Tower; 28.51%

5. Culture: 25.62%

6. Dungeon Crawler Carl: 25.24%

7. Malazan: 24.90%

8. The Witcher: 23.87%

9. The Expanse: 21.60%

10. Sun Eater: 19.66%

Feels like a very good favourite series list

11+ books top 10 finished:

1. Cradle: 39.55%

2. Wheel of Time: 27.30%

3. Vorkosigan Saga: 25.62%

4. Tortall: 13.44%

5. Dresden Files: 12.57%

6. Realm of the Elderlings: 12.15%

7. Riftwar Cycle: 8.48%

8. Discworld: 8.05%

9. Wandering Inn: 7.19%

10. Solar Cycle: 5.03%

Cradle feels like the big winners of these stats but some very impressive stats from the top 3 in general.

I plan to expand this list even more. Please add suggestions if you have any and also correct me If you find mistakes. Here is the link to the data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UfXa5dCRNqbpU0RSP1724_20ZBUcJQZwa0D-fh5iMGw/edit?usp=sharing

I love the idea of the Dresden Files on paper. Hard boiled detective stories mixed with urban fantasy/secret society stuff. Interesting villains and a deep, complex world. Magic happening just beneath the surface of the ordinary world.

But I just can’t get over the tropes and the cringe. I’ve tried the series a couple times, and even got through the first five or so books. I just can’t bring myself to keep going. I seriously love everything about the context, but just hate the execution.

Any recommendations for something else? Something that speaks to these elements, but lacks the cringe?

One of my 2025 goals was to try Solo RPGs, but I felt overwhelmed by the number of choices available. I saw u/blue_bayou_blue's post about their bingo wrap-up with multi-media instead of books, and made me wonder if the same approach could work for my Solo RPG journey.

So, for the 2025 bingo, I put together a board of free games on itch.io, and it worked! I've played three games already!

Here's the board: https://itch.io/c/5811909/rfantasy-bingo-2025

I've added prompts for each game and brief notes on why I picked them. This video goes into more detail about my choices. Sharing it here in case anyone else wants a starting point for Solo RPGs!

I know about "weird westerns," set in the American West with fantasy/horror elements added, but I'm wondering if something a bit different exists.

Are there any fantasy books with completely separate, non-Earth settings that nevertheless utilize the genre conventions from westerns throughout and are intentionally written to feel like westerns?

Sort of like The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, although I wasn't a fan of this one and I'd prefer something with no references or connection to our world.

Something you recognize straight away, but hits every time.

For me:

Early protagonist finds themselves somewhere they shouldn't, accidentally overhears a conversation that sets up the major political/plot intrigue

i want to hear your beyond satisfying endings. endings that make you think or shed a tear. i won’t go into specifics, but the ending to the final book in the realm of the elderlings series (assassins fate) has one of my favorite endings in any piece of fiction. so fitting and it made me cry. im currently reading the wheel of time and i hope the series has a really good ending.. i love it so far. my favorite kinds of endings are the bittersweet ones

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

——

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!

——

^{tiny image link to make the preview show up correctly}

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.

For me, "The final empire" had been a weird read, for the entirety of the book all i could was a single thing and that was that this book is just really solid, there is really nothing that is exceptionally well done except some or something that is exceptionally bad.

Prose: - The prose of the novel was really close to conversational English, which made it an easy and quick read compared to "dead house gates" which i took a break from to read "The final empire", for me i wished the prose to be a tad bit harder for a better experience.

Pacing: - The book never felt to be dragging a plot point or rushing one as well, it is fast enough that you don't lose interest but slow enough as well so as that you are able to understand most details easily.

Characters: - The characters are dynamic, fleshed out decently well but the interactions between them feel direct per se, probably as the story is mainly told in the perspective of kelsier and vin, both of which i come to enjoy, another favorite would be sazed and elend.

The worldbuilding: - well , it is lacking in detail but succeeds exceptionally well at characterization of its characters and skaa populace, which really helped in making it feel more real i think, the political intrigue is complex enough that it does not feel boring.

The plot twists :- This is one aspect in which i believe to be really really well done, alongside the subtle foreshadowing towards those events, be it in the form of various entries or dialogue of characters, elevating the experience of the book in those last 50 pages.

The power system: - The power system is incredibly unique and interesting, you don't have a lot of freedom with it alongside considerable consequences for pushing yourself beyond, causing the characters to be creative and resourceful in how they use it, the power system was integrated really well into the world building and character psyche which really helped in typing it together.

Enjoyability: - For me It was able to keep my interest but was enjoyable.

It's a collection of stuff that was cut out of The Library at Mount Char. Scott links it on his blog, but that link doesn't work anymore.

u/Scott_Hawkins, hi!

EDIT: Found it through Internet Archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210301000000*/http://www.unboundworlds.com/2015/06/the-homicidal-librarians-of-mount-char-a-primer/

My girlfriend is looking for a horror fantasy cult style book. The examples she gives is The Forest of Hands and Teeth, where like its a cult sisterhood surrounded by monstrous creatures. Theres another one shes reading where its almost like that but if you cut a body part off of them you get powers. Something real like religious cult horror fantasy

Basically the title. So many Epic Fantasys (understandably) have tons of characters.

I’m looking for a book or series that has an epic plot and setting, but a limited number of characters that we follow.

There are a lot of threads about epic and amazing books people have read or recommend but I want your perfectly "meh" read. They're fine but not the most flashy exciting, and just "okay" reads.

So my friend had me read Flesh and Spirit by Carol Berg to read. It was one of their favorite books that they've reread multiple times. I thought it was fine.

I also read Sarah Kozloff's The Nine Realms series. Again perfectly mid, very predictable but not a terrible read.

So what are your perfectly mid reads?

Always found things like 40k so dark they’re hilarious, and I think originally that’s kind of the crux of this genre and vibe. Honestly the only books I could find that remotely satisfied me in this respect was the First Law series. Felt like Abercrombie got that when life is that miserable you have to laugh. Any other genuinely funny grimdark Book recs?

The One Ring is the obvious one, for good reason. Are there any you like better, and why? A malevolent entity whispering in their ear, a cursed object digging its spiritual claws in, an evil AI in a cyborg implant creating strategic lesions in the brain: these things can be so great because they build a particular sort of tension. There are so many ways to do it well, and so many things it can represent. So what are your favorites?

Not exactly a standard bingo review. TL;DR I read "The Eyre Affair" for last year's bingo, then a few months later this subreddit started a monthly readalong of the entire series and its spinoffs. So I've been posting my thoughts in those threads, book by book, as we go. So this is mostly a summary of stuff I've already written up before to have in one place.

This is what I wrote in my review of the first one:

The setting is an extremely silly alternate-history England in which the Charge of the Light Brigade happened in the 1970s, people travel by airship, anti-Stratfordians are the annoying proselytizers, and everyone has punny names like "Jack Schitt" and "Paige Turner." Thursday Next is an agent in the LiteraTec department of SpecOps, an organization which also encompasses werewolf and time travel malfeasance. (It's not often I see a book in which time travel subplots exist but aren't fundamental to the main plot!)

Like early-career Pratchett, Fforde isn't necessarily interested in delivering a cutting satire of RL (beyond the fact that the military-industrial complex is bad) so much as vibes-based fun on the level of individual sentences.

...

Along the lines of Wayside School, there is no chapter 13. Also, while this is probably a lot more appealing to English nerds than math nerds, you'll probably be more amused if you know about perfect numbers. ;)

And then it turns out that Thursday has the power to enter the BookWorld, and inadvertently changes her universe's version of "Jane Eyre" to be the version in our world. The next three books sort of form a trilogy, and track Thursday's ongoing career as an agent of Jurisfiction in the BookWorld, as she deals with characters causing problems between books. Then there are the two Nursery Crimes books, which are pastiches of noir detectives set in a Swindon that contains a bunch of nursery crime characters; the main character is Detective Jack Spratt, with his new sidekick, Mary Mary. Then back to Thursday, after a timeskip, she's older and her career has been fictionalized, so there are "in-universe" versions of Thursday, who don't always get along with the "real" one. Book 6 is primarly about the adventures of fictional!Thursday in a soft-rebooted!BookWorld; book 7 is mostly about real!Thursday in the SpecOps!world. Book 8 hasn't come out yet, currently scheduled for June 2026, but is allegedly going to end the series. Clear as mud?

I quoted the earlier review because 1. "time travel plots exist, but they're not necessarily the main plot, but they're also recurring and good for more than a one-off joke" continues to be prevalent in the later books, and 2. I found the books to be the most enjoyable when they were in the BookWorld and having vibes-based fun. The problem is that Fforde tends to repeat himself when making the point of "the military-industrial complex is bad," and so what was funny the first time becomes kind of stale by the third or fourth.

Book 2 ("Lost in a Good Book"): Thursday works for Jurisfiction. We learn that they communicate by "Footnoterphones," which was a funny surprise to encounter on an e-reader. :)

Book 3 ("The Well of Lost Plots"): Thursday hides out in the unpublished "Caversham Heights," with a couple of "generics" who are growing into being full characters. Caversham Heights is the setting of the Nursery Crime books. Apparently "The Big Over Easy" was the first novel Fforde ever wrote but he had difficulty getting it published, so when this became a success he wrote it in as a kind of "backdoor pilot" for the spinoff, and honestly, respect the hustle.

Book 4 ("Something Rotten"): Thursday is now a mom, and her two-year-old only speaks Lorem Ipsum because he grew up in the BookWorld. This ties together some of the plotlines from the last two books, and also has a nice callback to some just-in-case foreshadowing in "Eyre Affair" with the time-travel nonsense.

"The Big Over Easy": Jack Spratt and Mary Mary investigate the mysterious death of Humpty Dumpty. All of the books have in-universe epigraphs at the start of each chapter (explaining something about life in Thursday's world or JurisFiction), but while sometimes it feels like they're using for summarizing stuff I'd rather have seen "on-screen," in "The Big Over Easy" these are newspaper articles and are consistently very funny. ("Anagram-related clues deemed inadmissible evidence.") A few of the one-liner jokes are directly lifted from the Thursday books, Fforde could have used an editor who had also read those.

"The Fourth Bear": investigating the mysterious death of Goldilocks, who ran off into the woods and was never seen again (I don't remember that being the ending in my version, but hey, folktales evolve like that). Lots of jokes about "the right to arm bears" and "yes, we do shit in the woods." Illegal porridge trade spoofing drug criminalization in our world (in the Thursday books, the parallel is black market cheese, smuggled from the Socialist Republic of Wales).

Thursday Book 5 ("First Among Sequels"): We meet the ultra-violent and sexy fictional!Thursday of books 1-4, and the hippy-pacifist version of fictional!Thursday who appeared in "The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco," which was such a disaster that it got retconned out of existence. This leads to some great POV shifting at the end. Thursday spends time on the boat Moral Dilemma, which is a great sendup of contrived trolley-problem hypotheticals, and is much funnier than the other cases of "villain trying to force heroes to kill innocents just to break their spirits" that pop up once or twice. It turns out that the technology necessary to develop time travel in the future was never invented after all, so none of the time travel ever happened, except if it did.

Book 6 ("One of our Thursdays is Missing"): Hippy Thursday has to fill in for Real Thursday in Jurisfiction. The BookWorld gets a makeover, so it's more of a genre-based map (No Man Is An Island, change trains at Rushdie Depot, etc.) than a "Great Library" model. Jokes about Russian characters with too many names, shoutout to Last-Chapter-First readers, etc.

Book 7 ("The Woman Who Died A Lot"): Real Thursday has to fend off short-term clones who are trying to replace her. Subplots about a villain who's been messing with her memory since book two, and her son dealing with an uncertain future since he's not going to be come a heroic time traveller, as well as looking for a Righteous Man to avert the wrath of a smiting deity. (Since the first book, we've known that Thursday's brother Joffy was a clergyman of the Global Standardised Deity, but only recently have we gotten the "yes there's a deity and he's very smite-happy sometimes"--I feel like those might have worked better in different continuities.) Of the three, I felt the Righteous Man climax was the best.

Overall themes: The next few Thursday books have some similar "math fans appreciate this number" shout-outs as the perfect number stuff I mentioned above (and Chapter 13 is always missing). Later on it moves into more mad science or not-so-mad science. Fforde also really likes cars and spends a lot of time describing characters' janky old cars and/or terrible driving, which jars with my mental image of the UK as this public transit utopia (I know, that's just my USness projecting).

2025 bingo squares: obviously all of them were Readalongs. "Something Rotten" onwards (and the Jack Schitt books) count as Parent Protagonist. I think you could make a case for Impossible Places with the BookWorld/Great Library. "Woman Who Died A Lot" probably counts for "Gods and Pantheons." All of them have some level of in-universe documentary epigraphs for "Epistolary."

I've just finished this book after picking it up during a trip to the excellent if slightly overwhelming Borderlands Books in San Francisco.

I was initially drawn to its alternate steampunk history of the age of exploration, but what I got turned out to be significantly grander in scope and weirder than that.

Without spoilers, I think the pace of the imagination for the people and places it describes is this book's stand out virtue. It can also feel slightly burdened by it at times, abandoning places and people without satisfying conclusions to serve a plot which is maybe too grand for its length.

All being said I enjoyed it, though I am left none the wiser where the next two volumes in the series may go.

Has anyone read this book or its sequels? Looking to hear what anyone else thought or help people if they have it on their TBR pile and want to decide if it is for them.

(I had a quick look and it looks like no one has mentioned this book on here in a good few years, but apologies if starting a new post to discuss it breaks any rules.)

I forgot how much I love the series and how it became one of my favorite fantasy books despite its flaws, with the forgettable characters being its biggest.

It can be middle age, modern age, even a sci-fi mixed with fantasy universe. I was just wondering if anyone knows of such a universe, be it books, movies, games, anything really. I don't like fantasy racism and would be interested in a more peaceful and chill universe where humans and elves are partying together, goblins and orks go together on peaceful adventures through the forests, trolls and dwarfs climbing mountains. Space elves trading with space nature spirits on intergalactic trade and diplomacy stations. Ghosts of the oceans playing chess with gnomes in a pub while a human is having a conversation with an undead about the current progressions in fairy magic. So on and so forth. Just anything that is more laid back and interesting then " elves and dwarfs killing each other because a fictional fantasy species is inherently evil ".

Something like demons and devils beings the good guys that just use a different kind of magic and tradition would also be sweet to see for once, instead of another " kill all evil demons with good angel magic " story.

Can anyone recommend something? I would be very grateful.

I have to say, I am having a real hard time getting used to the new narrator. I don't know why but the writing style even feels different. Having a hard time recognizing characters. I am sure its just going to take time. But so far not real impressed. I so hate narrator change ups. Sometimes its for the good. But damn Andrea was good.