⚠️ [UPDATE]: Thanks everyone, for all the book recommendations for both books with MMCs, and also books with better FMCs as well! I've added several of these books to my tbr list and am super excited to give them a try! Thanks so much!! 💕

-----

I know this is a VASTLY unpopular opinion, and it's just my taste, but I've grown so-so tired of women in stories--like SICK and tired (which is ironic, speaking as a girl). FMCs are almost always like:

• I'm not like other girls

• I can do whatever a guy can do (probably better)

• people look down on me because I'm a woman

• No one needs to save me / ain't no damsel

• My greatest flaw is that I need to believe in MYSELF

• I'll show everyone

• Etc, and so on, so forth, and what have you...

Just... eww...

(And the plot armor and/or O.P. abilities they give some of these women to forcefully MAKE them plot-relevant is just ludicrous). It's like they were not created as characters who are female, but rather FEMALE for the purpose of being POINTEDLY powerful, "strong" females, with the strength of womanhood and/or sexism being an actual theme.

The problem is, when you make a woman's gender roles a THEME of the story, you're inviting the reader to actually judge her (and other characters in the book) based on gender. Because of that, the characters are constantly under appraisal and have to prove themselves to other characters in the story and to the readers. It feels less like a story at that point, and more like an on-the-nose allegory about gender roles that is constantly asking you to think about and evaluate the character's worth as a female representation in literature--with a story on the side.

Exhausting. (And I find the characters this creates are often unlikable and often way overcompensate).

I don't know. Maybe I'm just particularly salty after the last book I read, but I think I only want to read books with male protagonists from now on... 😓

On that note, anyone know any good fantasy novels with male leads? Preferably ones WITHOUT protagonist love interests or female supporting characters? I'd love some good stories about dynamic duos, found family, drama, friends, adventure, and/or high-stakes action, etc??

Always loved S&S and I'm so glad I found Neveryon.

And The Darkness That Comes Before must be the best first book of a series I've ever read. Cannot wait to read more Bakker and Delany!

Am I the only one that couldn’t make it through this fever dream of a story? I always finish things but I just couldn’t force myself to go any further…..I felt pretty disappointed as this came so highly recommended.

So I tried to read Red Rising a couple of months ago, I loved the beginning of it but I despised the rest. I stopped reading at about 70% through. I hate the main character now, I hate the whole premise of the book, I hate how it is written so egocentric, I hate all descisions made in the book. For me it feels like it was written by a child. I do however like the world it is building.

I did like the whole academia setting in The Will Of The Many so it's not that. I just feel like the writing style is what gets me most. Darrow is a litteral child making child descisions and the side characters are not better.

I can't see how this series is on so many people's top reading lists, every time I see one of the top reading lists with this on top I immediatly negate it.

Please convince me to read on because I don't want to carry this hatred for a book/series so beloved.

With the risk of being downvoted to oblivion, know that I am writing this wanting to like this. I want to get over my hatred.

I am only about 4 hours into Empire of Silence, but so far I can't help but roll my eyes at how many things seem to come straight from Dune.

The shields that stop bullets but not swords, the gladiator scene, a Scholiast is basically a Mentat, the uranium mining for interstellar travel, everything being called "guilds", and more.

Additionally, the trope of the unloving father, psychotic brother, etc are not interesting to me.

Perhaps I have gone in with too much skepticism, but the book is doing it for me so far. Does the book ever get less derivative?

Hello everyone,

I have been trying to read WoT for 10 years. I have completely restarted the series 7 or 8 times and have made it as far as book 9 once. I was about to try again because I'm very stubborn and hate not finishing something, but as I started it I remembered that every female character in the series makes me want to bash my head into a wall.

Anyway, I'm finally trying to let go of this goal of reading WoT once and for all, and I really want to read Malazan for the first time. I have read just the first book once before and LOVED it, so I know it's my cup of tea (the only reason I stopped was because I started a medication that screwed me up and made me quit reading for a year).

So, what I'm looking for is just reassurance that I won't want to literally kill every female character in Malazan. Some is fine, but I just cannot bear another series that turns every woman in it into a sassy, pretentious pancake. I'm not afraid of a very long series, in fact I relish it, I'm just afraid of reading it and finding I hate the women, quitting, starting again, quitting again, etc. So, will I hate every woman in this series? And any words of encouragement/advice as I start this epic would be much appreciated. Thank you!

So lately I’ve seen a massive trend in downvoting simple opinions (especially in threads about George RR Martin, Sanderson and Hobb) and I just don’t get it? This is a sub about books and books are and will always be a matter of subjective taste. I get it when you downvote something rude or insulting (which btw should be reported), but downvoting someone for saying “I really like [insert author or book series]” is just immature and weird behaviour. It’s okay if you don’t agree, but let others have their own opinions, guys. Discuss things like adults. Come on.

I read the Red Rising series back when it was a recently “finished “ trilogy. I remember thinking it was a cliffhangery Hogwarts houses but with socially conscious revolutionary vibes sci-fi skin on tried and true tropes, but beyond the plot pacing, not actually that interesting. I noticed it showing up on many folks’ best-ever lists in the last year and I have felt genuinely confused. I thought of it as more or less fluff. Fun, but not earning the spots next to authors like Tolkien or Le Guin or Herbert, or..well, you get the idea. I’m NOT trying to yuck your yum here, just asking if there’s more to this that I missed on my pass through. If I were to read it now from the modern recommendations,y memory tells me I’d experience an action movie in space with personal drama and some twists with a backdrop of righteousness. Is there more?

I started reading mistborn over 3 weeks ago and only read uptil chapter 9 or the start of part 2 with is still like 25% of the book but that is way too much time for me to read so little.

The story just hasn’t clicked with me or maybe my expectations were too high for it. And it’s not like the story is bad, it is good, good plot and good characters. But for some reason I’m not not enjoying it or getting consumed by it. It might be because I read crooked kingdom snd Six of Crows right before it which is another heist plot (i enjoyed them a lot) and was just burned out from that trope.

I’m reading project hail mary right now, should I try to continue Mistborn afterwards or give it more time and just read smth else. Ig my main question is just when does the story pick up, or is it just not for me?

Hello guys,

I started the first book of LOTR but I find it a bit boring. Do not get me wrong, I know about the process of making this world and 80 years back he created the whole history, a language and the whole world. That makes Tolkien a true genius, for some I find it boring even though I am 150 pages in. I just don’t feel it. Should I continue?

Hi all! I'm in a little bit of a slump. These are the books I've read in the sci-fi and fantasy genres for the past couple of years and would love suggestions. Prose is most imperative!!

Hi all,

We've added a new rule to the subreddit: We don't allow AI book cover witch hunts.

If you think a book has an AI cover, keep it to yourself or go post somewhere else :)

We recently had ~50 users pile on a book review someone left, saying the cover was AI and attacking the book. Turns out the cover is by a human artist with a long history in cover design. You might think you can't tell, but you can't. And we don't want this constant witch hunt mentality in this group.

We want to focus on the content of the book.

Update: Some good questions here :)

• No, we can't ban AI covers because they are impossible to detect. See my example above, where we had 50+ users claim a book cover was AI that actually had a human artist. Thus, we do not allow anyone to claim a book cover is AI.

• Should AI be used to create art or writing? No, but going on a witch hunt when you just don't know doesn't help anyone. The problem is that detection doesn't work, and we do not want this community to be full of AI witch hunts versus real discussion about a book's content.

• Are there tools that can detect AI? Not reliably. That is a big part of the problem here. There is currently no way to reliably detect AI.

• Does this mean you can't discuss covers? No, in no way does this mean you can't discuss book covers. You can't claim it is AI and go on a witch hunt, though, as the example above shows, you don't know what is and isn't AI, and we don't want human artists being attacked by these wild witch hunts where everyone goes into a mob mentality.

Also, apologies as we banned a known spammer and they used 20+ accounts to attack this thread and others; we are working to ban their additional spam accounts now.

I’ve read the first four books of Malazan Book of the Fallen. Here are my subjective ratings so far.

Gardens of the Moon: 3/5

Deadhouse Gates: 4/5, legitimately great

Memories of Ice: 3.5/5

House of Chains: 2/5

For context, I’m a clinical psychologist with a doctorate. I read piles of dry, technical material for a living. So this oh It’s too dense/hard..is not my issue. I also did not find these books particularly cerebral in the way the fandom sells them. The learning curve is mostly is being okay not knowing everything immediately and once you accept that, you can follow the story fine. Erikson also does occasional sit down explanations and lore dumps that are very much not subtle so it’s fairly easy to follow overall.

My issue is this..Malazan excels at scale, plot architecture and convergence. The events are cool. The history feels deep…The world has weight. When the books hit, they hit because the machinery of the world is impressive.

But is that what makes fantasy good?

Because for me, what makes fantasy great is emotional investment. Character attachment. The slow, earned bond where you actually care what happens. And across the first four books, the list of characters I truly could care about is so short.. just Felisin, Duiker, Itkovian, Heboric, and Karsa amongst almost hundreds of named characters and almost 45 unique POVs just from the first four books.

Karsa is the perfect example of the weird split in my experience. House of Chains starts with his arc and it rips. I absolutely adored Karsa’s POV. I thought I was about to get another Deadhouse Gates style payoff. Then the rest of the book happened, and I felt like I spent a month of reading time for maybe 20 percent satisfaction, mostly front loaded.

And the emotional beats in Malazan often feel blunt to me. Characters cry out of nowhere, then explain why they’re crying. It can feel like the book is telling me, hey this is emotional now…instead of making me feel it. Coming off writers who build interiority like Robin Hobb, it’s jarring. Hobb’s whole strength is making you feel trapped inside a character’s heart and choices, and Malazan often feels like watching history happen from a distance.

Which brings me to the part that actually ruins fantasy discussions: the fandom posture…oh lord

I’m not saying Malazan is bad and you’ve got bad taste if you like it. I like plenty of stuff that is objectively messy or flawed, because subjectively it hits my buttons. That’s normal. Taste is taste.

What I can’t stand is the pseudo intellectual circle that forms around Malazan where finishing the ten books becomes a personality, and any criticism gets met with you just ohhh didn’t understand it cuz Erikson doesn’t hold you hand.. or keep going, it clicks at book seven. If your defense of a series is that you’ve got to be through 4000 pages of text before it gets interesting, maybe the writer isn’t good at weaving an engaging story.

Also, the scale and lore argument is not the slam dunk people think it is. If we’re grading by sheer brutal, enormous, timeline spanning lore and epic events, Warhammer 40K can outgun almost anything. That doesn’t automatically make it better storytelling. Lore density and big events are not the same as great reading experience.

So yes, Malazan is epic. Yes, the plot convergence can be satisfying. Deadhouse Gates proved that to me.

But for my taste, it often trades emotional intimacy for panoramic spectacle. That’s a valid trade. It just doesn’t make it the objective pinnacle of fantasy, and it definitely doesn’t justify the fandom high horse.

If you love Malazan, cool. But don’t sell it as this flawed masterpiece which it objectively is not.

Everyone else (Like Kaladin, Balat, Szeth, no Dalinar pov yet i think) is just resignated and passive and I start to be really annoyed by all the accepting suffering men in there.. there are barely any meaningful dialogues or relations between people we meet, everyone is really isolated and depressed. Idk how to explain it but the book feels very clearly written by a man (which ist obvious but i never really noticed it in the storytelling/writing like this before..)

Sooo did anyone else feel that way? Is it getting better? How long till the story starts to develop or like Pick Up some dynamic? I want to keep going cause its supposed to be so good but right now i am frustrated...

I managed to slog through the farseer trilogy and the mad ship but can't continue, the books are just so bland.

This isn’t ment to be a controversial post or to start drama.. but I don’t know why everyone has Name Of The Wind so high on the list of top books in the genre. I read it and it was fine…but there was nothing genre defining or elite with that novel in my opinion.

Anyone else feel this way? I must of missed the memo 😂

I started it 2 months ago, read 200 pages in 3 days, haven’t picked it up or another book up since. It’s so tropey and read YA to me because of the tropes (adoption, school, etc) and main characters age.

I don’t know what to read now. I’m picky with fantasy. I like sanderson, robert jordan, recently fell in love with M.L. Wang.

I read Red Rising after hearing constant praise over it and I just...didn't like it. I found the main character to be an unlikeable male version of Katniss. I honestly found most characters to be unlikeable and it felt like work to finish it. Anyone else felt this way about the book or other books? My friends are looking at me like I'm crazy about this lol

First of all, I genuinely do not mean this as a sh*t post. I have read the whole series and I will say I liked it. I even re-read it. I think Sanderson did a good job finishing it for Jordan. However, WoT is consistently highly recommended and at the top of people's lists. So I am curious what puts it there for people.

For me (and this is my opinion, again I respect that people can enjoy what they want), I really struggle with the character development and world building of this series. I never felt like there was a lot of progression with a good number of the characters. A lot of them felt one-dimensional or had built in really annoying traits, such that if I had a braid I would surely tug on it. The world building is a bit defensible as a turning of the wheel so I get it but felt very borrowed.

Those are things I struggled with in this series and why I don't highly recommend it to everyone. But I'd love to hear what others think to maybe look at it with a different perspective.

I’d love to hear peoples opinions on this comparison. Though I have a feeling it’s going to be a one way argument but I’m curious to see.

Midway/early through the second book I had to stop reading this series. I just can't stomach some of the cruelty in this series. I would probably adore this series if it was just a smidgen less grim, more like the farseer books. But the sexual stuff with characters having to give their body away for protection was just to much for me. I bounced off game of thrones for the same reason.

It's so frustrating, because I can tell this series will be great, the world building is awesome and I love how the story feels so natural and not a classic good Vs bad. I'm fed up of the hand holding other stories have and I adore how you have to work it out. And I really actually like the themes of tyranny and regret and honour ect.

Anyone got any similar series but a bit less grim?

I like stormlight, name of wind, realm of eldelings ect. But I'm just coming back to fantasy after a period of sci fi and I want something a bit more challenging with a bit of a scarier side.

I'm a little late to the game, but I read some great books last year, some were rereads, and there were also quite a few disappointments. No DNF books last year, though!

Let me preface this by saying I’m not just a hater for all modern fantasy. I really enjoy Erikson’s Malazan Book of The Fallen for instance. GRRM is, of course, completely fantastic.

That being said, I really cannot understand why people love Brandon Sanderson, particularly Stormlight Archive *SO* much.

Stormlight to me feels reading the rulebook for an RPG game. It’s so obsessed with “epic world building” that it forgets to write human beings that feel like real humans instead of video game characters or something.

Much has been written on how Sanderson’s religion pops through into his writing and his characters are a little too clean and PG. I don’t think this is really a deal breaker for me (though it makes me think he may have been better off writing YA novels or something) but it’s not my favorite aspect of his writing either.

His prose feels kinda like those RA Salvatore DnD novels or something. Maybe I’m a hypocrite here cause I find battle scenes in Malazan palatable if a little long sometimes, but some of Stormlight just feels like I’m reading wayyyy to much “look how cool this guys swords are” kinda passages that just go on and on.

I’m not demanding that all modern fantasy prose must be on the level of Hemingway or Byron or something here. I can appreciate pulp slop as well. Something about Sanderson’s prose just triggers me in a way I can’t quite understand myself.

Many people love Sanderson for his world building. The issue I have with all world building focused work is that it forgets that to find the world compelling, it must come attached to an incredible story. Tolkien is incredible world building obviously, but it’s because the lord of the rings is an incredible story. Good books cannot just be a wiki of a world.

Maybe his other work beyond Stormlight is better, I have no idea. Maybe my judgement is unfair. I’d just like to understand why his work is SO blockbuster insane popular.

Yo yo like this series was highly recommended and I really enjoyed The Devils but I’m currently 1/3 of the way through The Blade Itself and it is actually boring me to sleep. I know it’s the first in a series and it’s got to establish tone and the setting but yikes it’s seemingly a nothing burger…

Can someone tell me without spoilers if the book/rest of the series picks up.