What fantasy books and authors are we talking about the most?
Reddit User einsiboy, creator of the TopRedditBooks site, recently posted a list of the Top 100 Fantasy Books discussed on Reddit in the past year. The information is compiled from 2018 – 2019, based on comments in the subreddit r/books, and uses number of mentions plus comment scores to balance out the data.
Therefore, the list skews more towards popular fantasy books of the last few years, with a handful of classics claiming some spots as well. Individual books from prolific and well-known fantasy authors on the list dominate the list, so there’s a lot from:
- Neil Gaiman
- N.K. Jemisin
- George R. R. Martin
- V.E. Schwab
- Brandon Sanderson
- Sarah J. Maas
- Scott Lynch
- J.K. Rowling
- Katherine Arden
- Joe Abercrombie
- Leigh Bardugo
- Steven Erikson
- Robin Hobb
- Patrick Rothfuss
- Naomi Novik
- …and Tolkien
Which one could well expect. What’s interesting, though, are the new or standalone titles that manage to find their way into the discourse (or, The Discourse).
When grouped together, they comprise a really interesting recommended reading list!
- Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
- Saga Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
- Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
- Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
- The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
- The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
- Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
- The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
- The Black Tides of Heaven by JY Yang
- Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
- Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse
- The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan
There’s a lot of range in there, from mythology retellings to muscular sword epics to prairie fantasy to literary character dramas and even on to space opera. We see fantasies in there with a wide variety of cultural origins, too.
And that’s just a starting point!
Just having a quick look at all the authors and their titles reminded me of this: there is, and has been, some truly wonderful writing in fantasy. – I have a particular affection for the First Law Trilogy (Joe Abercrombie) and the first six books in Robert Jordan’s ‘Wheel of Time’ series.
Any other recommendations?
Quite a comprehensive list here
The Name of the Wind is by far the best book in the genre. Don’t get me wrong. I love Sanderson’s books, but Pat’s writing style is unrivaled.
This is a great list. The Gray House is a very dense read and deserves many conversations to untangle the threads of plot, character, and symbolism buried in that book. Its more magical realism that straight up fantasy, but it definitely fits in the fantasy genre. Its unlike any book I have ever read. I think I’m going to have to look it up on reddit now and follow that conversation. I read it a year ago and I’m still thinking about it.
I’ve read 35 of the books on this list. I own many of the other ones, but I haven’t had time to read them yet. I’m little ashamed of myself because sometimes you try to keep up, but you keep falling behind.
I reread the Library at Mount Char recently. A fabulous stand alone book and highly recommended.
37 here. I am not sure why The Lord of Rings and the three volumes it comprises all appear on the list though.
I’ve read 27 of the books and I have some of the books on my shelf.
some great reading ideas![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
ok…like the list, but so many other great fantasy books!! Michael J, Sullivan – The Ryria Revelations. Circe by Madeleine Miller is not Fantasy..it is historical fiction. Also, The Dragon and The Coin series – Daniel Abraham(begins with The Dragon’s Path). you forgot Peter V. Brett -his series begins with “The Warded Man”. Excellent!! so many more ^_^
I’m the co-creator of the website TopRedditBooks, and just wanted to thank you for the coverage Gabriella Tutino.
It has really helped us gain some exposure.
shaynatower: I agree with you that there are so many more amazing fantasy books.
If the list was based on my personal opinion I would have included The Ryria Revelations, the Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks, Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb, Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe and many more.
I also want to share our new list of the Top 100 Science Fiction Books, which was also created in the same way as the fantasy list.
That is by parsing comments from r/books on reddit, and ranking books by number of mentions and comment scores.
If anybody has any questions I will be happy to answer them.
Glad to see The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins on the list. That’s a phenomenal read, one of the best first novels I’ve ever read (and one of my favorite books overall. It’s a whole new mythology!).
Kings of the Wyld is about as much fun as you can have in one book. I’ve found some great recommendations from the Reddit fantasy and printsf book groups. They tend to repeat themselves a lot over these top books, but there are always forgotten or hidden gems that someone mentions that are worth reading.
Interesting. I wonder how much of a correlation there is between books that also get made into TV/movies.
Also, is there any accounting for postive vs negative comments?
Having read the list – I’m kind of delighted to see Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle Earth on there :)
As an aside, I do think the algorithm needs some tweaking. Pretty sure I saw both Mistborn and ‘The Final Empire’ on there, but those are the same book (technically The Final Empire is the first book in the Mistborn trilogy, but everybody calls it ‘Mistborn’. And Lord of the Rings showed up, along with individual trilogy mentions. Although I’m not sure how you’d split that out.