
Show HN: Top Fantasy Reads – Fantasy books Reddit is reading - sacert
https://topfantasyreads.com/
======
dannykwells
I feel like it would be nice to have a "rising" category - most of these are
from heavy hitters/already famous.

However, very cool - any thoughts for other categories (SciFi, etc.)?

~~~
jodrellblank
[https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/](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.

~~~
hug
Speculative Fiction, not science fiction.

Fantasy is more than welcome there.

------
ta2345252666f
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.

~~~
root_axis
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!

------
atarian
_American Gods_ and _A Game of Thrones_ were some of the most abandoned books
in 2019 as well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21957798](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21957798)

~~~
m463
I had so much trouble getting through American Gods.

On the other hand, his pacing worked well in the short story "How to Talk to
Girls at Parties" he published on his blog:

[https://www.neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/How_To_T...](https://www.neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Short_Stories/How_To_Talk_To_Girls_At_Parties/How_To_Talk_To_Girls_At_Parties_\(Text\))

~~~
BlameKaneda
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.

------
aidenn0
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.

~~~
jwkane
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.

~~~
alexgmcm
I quite liked Mistborn - only read the trilogy.

I'm worried about reading the Stormlight Archive because it's unfinished and
ASOIAF and The Kingkiller Chronicle have burned me in that regard.

Does it actually look like he'll finish Stormlight though?

~~~
stevekemp
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!)

------
rohmanhakim
I love how you linked each book into bookstore.org. Any specific reason?

~~~
sacert
Saw a post about them a few weeks back and was interested in how they support
independent bookstores so I thought, why not?

------
three_seagrass
_Iron Gold_ is Sci-fi, not fantasy.

Do that genre next!

------
omarhaneef
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.

------
Wildgoose
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".

~~~
mcphage
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.

~~~
Wildgoose
Thanks - I'll check it out.

~~~
mcphage
You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy it.

------
johnnyo
Can you talk a little bit about how you are finding book names in comments and
how you are making your ranking?

------
rohan1024
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.”

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17939766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17939766)

~~~
m463
I find the commercial top-n lists not useful.

top fantasy: #1 urban vampires #2 harry potter

top scifi: #1 star wars book #2 star trek book

recommended for you: author(s) you bought before

~~~
thaumasiotes
> recommended for you: author(s) you bought before

They're not going to do better than that. The author is almost the only thing
that matters in determining whether or not you'll like a book.

Now, if it's an author you bought before and then you hated the book, there's
room for improvement in the recommendation.

~~~
m463
> They're not going to do better than that.

I can give you a few examples where there's room for improvement.

If you liked jules verne, maybe you'll like h.g. wells

If you liked isaac asimov, maybe arthur c clarke.

If you liked william gibson, maybe bruce sterling.

If you liked twilight, arrgh!

------
hombre_fatal
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.

~~~
sacert
Very true, main goal was to ship something to see if people are interested
before I continue working on it.

------
blarg1
I haven't been very impressed with any fantasy novels except for the Game Of
Thrones series, and even that series has started petering out.

Only other one which I liked was The Sundering series by Jacqueline Carey, and
mainly for the dialogue between two of the characters.

------
asicsp
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.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/wiki/lists](https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/wiki/lists)

------
matthewtoast
This is great. Any plans to add other genres (sci fi, espionage, mystery...)?

~~~
dvasdekis
Yes please! This is great. Another request for Sci-Fi from me! :)

~~~
rohan1024
I have heard good words about The Expanse. I haven't read the books but have
seen the show and I think it's fantastic.

~~~
kjs3
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.

------
mrfusion
Is there a way to Link back to the HN comments on each book?

Btw I’ve been reading the robin Hobbs books for probably all of 2019 until
now. There’s just so much there. Really enjoyable.

------
hornd
This is pretty cool. Is the comment processing restricted to some period of
time? Maybe considering linking to Goodreads as well?

------
ahpearce
Can you share a bit about how you implemented?

~~~
yakshaving
Seconding this :)

------
RyanMathewson
The page title is “Page Title”?

------
russellbeattie
Oof! I'm sorry, but Neil Gaiman's writing is... unpleasant. Purposefully so. A
lot of people seem to like this, but I'm definitely not one of them.

~~~
EdwardDiego
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.

~~~
thaumasiotes
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.

~~~
Zenbit_UX
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.

~~~
thaumasiotes
In the case of Lies of Locke Lamora, the book is full of swear words.

That's not true of American Gods. The problem is the same, but the details are
different.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Hate to break it to you, but life is full of swear words also.

