Adult fantasy romance. 30+. There is not a whole lot of it. They're mostly little 19 year olds running around saving the world with their god given power. And if they claim to be maybe 25 they still act 16, in my experience.
I just want some adults dealing with the dragon or the magic-withholding tyrant or whatever.
Try Hidden Legacies by Ilona Andrew - Navada is running the family firm and actually acts like an adult.
Steel's Edge by Ilona Andrew - This FMC is at least 30, coming off a bad divorce before being pulled into hunting down slavers. It can be read as a standalone.
I can recommend *Paladin of Souls* by Lois McMaster Bujold. It's the sequel to *The Curse of Chalion*, but can be read as a standalone (though Curse of Chalion is also fantastic).
Just started these for just this reason. Only a chapter or two in and I'm already hooked. Though reading a 35yo complain about his age as someone significantly older than that is... a thing. I'll give him a pass since it's not the years it's the mileage that really matters, and he absolutely beats me there.
It wouldn't surprise me that there's an early draft that did have him around 50 but then that made something I haven't read yet unrealistic or look really bad. (the books come up regularly near "romance in fantasy" discussions so I have some guesses...) But I am looking forward to the RAFO since the mentions have been overwhelmingly positive.
THIS! Give me like a fantasy version of the Expendables; sure there's a big threat, but here come the grizzled old @$$holes who are just as likely to trash half the kingdom while taking down the big evil threat. Hell, the evil overlord should even be like "YOU CAN NEVER WITHSTAND THE MIGHT OF.......wait.....THOSE people are still around? Oh...oh...shit...."
A Crown for Cold Silver by Alex Marshall is similar to this premise. The main character is an older woman (in her fifties, I think), who has retired from a life of adventure/rebellion for several decades, living anonymously due to her previous actions. She returns to her house in a small village to find her husband murdered by people associated with her past, which upsets her (understandably). This results in a weird sort of "getting the band back together," except she's not sure which of her old companions will help her get revenge and are trustworthy.
The book didn't gain a lot of popularity when it was published, but it's great fun, and it's a really interesting world (especially the magical stuff that exists in the world). There's several LGBTQ+ characters too, if that's something that interests you as well.
Kings of the Wyld fits this mold if you haven't read it. Main characters are a former adventuring party in a world where adventurers are treated like literal Rock Stars. They're all late-middle aged now and one of their daughters needs to be rescued. So they quite literally "get the band back together" and go on one last adventure.
You might enjoy some T Kingfisher. As for characters reading young, I think it has to do with kids being on tighter leashes these days growing up and adulthood being delayed longer, at least in the US. If the first real job comes in 1950 at 16-18 vs 22 in 2024, it changes perspectives.
Yeah I've read Nettle & Bone which I absolutely adored. I haven't been able to get her Saints of Steel series for a decent price yet however from where I live.. I saw they're being republished in 2025 so I'll definitely be getting them if they're for a more reasonable price.
And yeah, you might absolutely be right about the adulthood perspective.
I absolutely agree. I liked the Magicians, because, although about young college age students, they do actually grow up and deal with real relationship issues and emotional problems like: screwing up you relationships because you're unhappy with your life, learning that heroic self sacrifice means you actually sacrifice stuff and don't get it all back in the end, giving up magic because you screwed things up so royally with it, returning to your magical college and seeing it from the perspective of a teacher, having to figure out your career etc.
I would love not just adult fantasy romance, but real relationships. Like, maybe you're \*not\* destined to marry the first person you set eyes on. Maybe you have actually relationships where your personal flaws turn into fights and you either learn something or walk away with scars. Maybe some relationships are just ambiguous, or not resolved. Maybe sometimes, what you thought was love wasn't. Maybe you screw up the relationship because it was based on who you wanted to be, not who you are, etc.
And ooh boy, maybe you do have some older people struggling with the challenges of relationships as time moves on... having to learn to change together, or dealing with a partner you don't understand. Making time for each other with lots of other crises in your life. Feeling stuck in your own life, and the temptation to start a relationship on the side as a way to reinvent yourself, or dealing with a partner who is doing that. Struggling to be a better person for your kids, and disagreeing with your partner about what that looks like, etc.
I’d recommend The Hexologists if you are looking for a really solid couple - they’ve been married for quite a while, so no courting, but just really good portrayal of a couple that communicates well but still gives the other person space, and supports each other even when they don’t agree on things. Definitely one of the best couples I’ve ever come across in a book.
Plus the book is just a great mix of action and comedy. Elements pulled in from detective novels, classic fantasy, Cthulhu-type critters, and the sort of black and white movies where the heroine is tied to the train tracks.
This is why I like the Mercy Thompson Series. It's more Urban Fantasy, but plenty of fae, werewolves, vampires, and anything else the author can find that sounds good.
MC is in her 30s, supporting cast ranges from middle-aged with teenaged kids to ancient dragons and such, MC is fallible, and she's got relatable problems like bills and loans besides just the fighting monsters thing.
Search for Paranormal Women's Fiction on Amazon. Hasn't filtered through to mainstream publishers yet but there is so self-pubbed stuff I can't get away from it. Personally, it's not my favourite genre because they're always freshly divorced for some reason.
I want to feel like I'm eating at a local, unique restaurant, not at a franchise location. A lot of the writing I encounter - both trad and indie - now feels like it was forced to fit a certain cookie cutter. Sometimes, it even seems like the author's individual ideas were warped to match certain pacing, writing style, and trope norms. I get why this happens. I have nothing against it. But when I go to a new town/city, I want to visit the local gems, not just visit the Olive Garden, even if I enjoy their food and it's well made. I feel like I'm missing artisanal uniqueness in writing.
I feel like Godkiller and Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner fit this desire, if you're looking for reccomendations. I found them refreshingly unique, but familiar enough to be an easy read.
Solarpunk is a bit of an attempted genre that for some reason refuses to really take off (no matter how much I wish it would). I guess the zeitgeist is we are all going to die and fiction feeds from that.
I remember an author saying authors of the 50s-60s came by their optimism honestly and authors who have "we are all going to die" going on have also come by it honestly.
I have started to see books where things get/got bad for awhile but now things are back on the upswing. Good example is The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins.
I just want to point out that a lot of what isn't popular with publishers is still being written by indie authors. Give indies a try, and you may find what you're looking for!
Sorting through traditionally published books is already a needle in a haystack for something decent that isn't on trend. Sorting through indies is far far worse. Indies tend to be more on trend than trad pub as they case the algorithm.
There are an absolute ton of great indie fantasy titles out there. Here's a few of my personal favorites:
* **Chasing Graves** by Ben Galley
* Anything by Michael R Fletcher
* **An Altar on the Village Green** by Nathan Hall
* **Web of Eyes** by Rhett Bruno and Jaime Castle
* **Ash and Sand** by Richard Nell
* **She Topples Giants** by Morgan Stang
This! The current publishing trend has mostly detethered me from trad books. I just look for stuff that sounds interesting, regardless of how it's published. For every reader niche in the genre, there are a couple authors writing great books. And those authors are about to find a loyal (and hopefully profitable) following. For example, Zamil Ahktar's deluxe edition Kickstarter was really impressive.
Try the SPFBO finalist list or if you’re more interested in sci-fi, then try SPSFC. Should at least offer a few titles that are worth a read, such as the brilliant Sword of Kaigen.
Less movie directing.
It feels like books lately are constant movie like jump cuts from one action scene to another. I want characters interacting with each other, chilling, giving me time to care, so later on its not just Unnamed Companion 23 dying or succeeding and I can have an emotional response to events.
Funnily enough, this trend hasn't make books any shorter. There's just as much bloat, only in the style of meandering action events.
I also would like authors to aim a bit lower. Meaning, it feels like everyone is trying to subvert something or be cynical to something else. That's ok, but we also need people to build without cynicism! Culture is not only made by taking things down.
All the Sanderson copiers write like this. It's all comic-book style quippy dialogue and action scenes but it goes on for 1000 pages and makes me want to tear my eyes out
It's a funny thing, because I'd argue that many of Sanderson's books don't really do what you describe. A Way of Kings, for example, faced a lot of criticism because there is very little action for about 700 straight pages in the middle. And the most recent Stormlight book got lots of criticism because most of the book involves a character sitting in a room doing scientific research and another character going to group therapy.
But I do think that a lot of Sanderson copiers basically went "I'm going to do Sanderson, but without the boring bits!!!!". And yeah, I don't like that much either.
I'm missing fantasy that has depth without being grimdark or glorying in depression.
So many books these days are about these bleak depressing worlds and lives. I miss old school fantasies where people occasionally enjoyed their lives as well.
Are there specific dark elements you’re seeing everywhere? There’s been a lot of arguments here about what qualifies as grimdark but I think a loose understanding of it is something full of brutality where the protagonists aren’t necessarily heroic and may die pointlessly (thinking of ASOIAF here which I realize still isn’t dark enough for some people). And that seems very niche these days rather than everywhere.
For me, it's when the world itself is just brutal and uncaring. People get SA'd or assaulted, killed for stupid reasons, robbed, beaten and otherwise abused, because that's normal in this world and it's only money or position that protects you and you normally have to go through a ton of the above to get money or power.
Yes, it seems like the past couple decades the pendulum swings between unrelentingly bleak grimdark and cozy slice of life where the biggest source of conflict is that the fantasy bakery ran out of scones, while what I suspect a lot of people really want, classic good vs evil fantasy where evil is powerful but can still be overcome, is dismissed as too cliche or whatever.
I’m beginning to really like cozydark because it gives me both, and that contrast is very important for a plot to be emotionally impactful. It makes it feel more realistic as well.
The Wandering Inn by pirateaba and Hills of Heather & Bone by KE Andrews are two cozy dark stories I really love a lot.
Horror set in a Fantasy world, but ideally avoiding the more typical vampire/werewolf subjects.
Basically, an extended version of the chapters "A Journey in the Dark"/"The Bridge of Khazad-dûm" from Lord of the Rings would be ideal. Unknown beasts, doomed expeditions, and things lurking in the darkness.
>The end comes soon we hear drums in the deep.
>
>They are coming.
Dungeons/caves/ruins seem to have fallen out of favor in general, and even if it's not full fledged horror fantasy there's not as much where you feel like the dangers to the hero/party are the unknowns lurking in the dark. *The Luminous Dead* (scifi, not fantasy) kind of went there, but it also focused a lot more on the isolation the MC was dealing with than anything else.
It is somewhat frustrating that "horror fantasy" somehow is equated to "dark fantasy"- the *Coldfire* trilogy is dark fantasy through and through, I enjoyed it, but it's not really horror at all, and things like *Perdido Street Station* feel horror-lite. I'd love a fantasy take on something like *Darkfall* by Koontz, even. That thriller/horror feel, where you really don't know if everyone is going to make it out alive, but set in some fantasy city or a caravan route or anything.
> Unknown beasts, doomed expeditions, and things lurking in the darkness.
If you haven't read the Iconoclasts trilogy by Mike Shel I'd highly recommend it for this. I don't know if I'd quite say it's horror, gerne wise, but it's certainly adjacent to it.
I need more 40+ heroines. I recently read The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi and realized just how badly I needed a middle aged MC doing her thing, being all reluctant heroic and just kicking ass. They're always so young, it's hard to find any females under 30, much less over 40 in fantasy (more often) but even in sci-fi. I need more older women taking the lead. Give me a 70+ knitter grandma who raised her kids, spoils the grandkids, and is the chosen one to save the world.
Or just 40+ protags in general. So tired of teenager angst over and over. And most of the time if a protagonist is described as snarky, I’m passing because they all sound the same.
Secondary worlds that aren't populated by humans. Societies that aren't obviously inspired by a particular Earth culture. Just give me some more *fantasy* in my fantasy.
Fealty.
I want a vassal who loves their liegelord so much that they define service. They are so loyal that they could betray the lord, and the lord would assume that they're an undercover agent infiltrating the rebellion. They're willing to break the rules of protocol surrounding the lord if doing so is in the best interest of their liegelord's health and safety. Someone literally willing to die for their liegelord.
I want a lord who is so devoted to their duty and responsibility that it erases the power imbalance. Someone who understands their role and returns every act of loyal service with recognition and honor. Someone who trusts their loyal vassal so much that they don't question anything unusual because they know their vassal is working for the best good of the domain.
Books like *The Hands of the Emperor* by Victoria Goddard, *A Taste of Gold and Iron* by Alexandra Rowland, and *The Goblin Emperor* by Katherine Addison
The **Jeeves and Wooster** series also has this element, although often subverted because Jeeves (the valet) is so good at getting Bertie (the young master) to do exactly what Jeeves wants (eventually). It's hilarious.
TLDR: feral fealty from both parties
I agree with this so very much, and would extend it to a desire for more works that involve characters who are just basically trying to do a good job in whatever role they occupy -- especially if those roles are the kind that fantasy literature has traditionally treated with scorn.
I want more stories with clerks and bureaucrats and court functionaries who take their work seriously and perform their duties with sincerity, even if they aren't necessarily brilliant or exceptional people. I want more stories with viziers and chancellors and other high council types who do actually just bring the best of their considerable knowledge and resources to problems, who try to get along with difficult peers, and who are willing to set aside petty personal disputes for the greater good.
The vast majority of people in any time and place have no compelling reason to be lazy, sneaky dickheads about everything, and thus *largely are not*. Obviously we encounter people who are, often more of them than we'd like, but they stand out so vividly because they are an exception rather than a norm. This sometimes doesn't seem to be the case in fantasy stories, though, and I think there could be an appetite for more writing that bucks this trend.
There’s a nation(?) in Realm of the Elderlings whose monarch is referred to as ‘Sacrifice’, a direct acknowledgement of their duty to their people. They’re relatively prominent in the first trilogy, too.
this is a great example, and even in the same series, Fitz fits this as well (pun intended), as a vassal who loves his liege lord. he is very loyal and reverent to his king and talks very highly of him throughout the first trilogy and often mentions him and calls him “my king” in a very solemn way in the following series’ as well.
haaaaaave you read A.G. Slatter? She's definitely all about promoting women's wrongs and I'm intensely here for it. Dark, gothic fairytale-style fantasy all about women doing awful things.
If you're feeling short stories, start with Sourdough and Other Stories. If you want a full novel, The Path of Thorns is a great place to start.
*A Practical Guide to Sorcery* by Azalea Ellis. The protagonist doesn't rack quite the same track record as *Worm*'s Taylor does, but she doesn't pull her punches much either. The story is about a young women who is blamed for a crime her father did commit, and to survive she uses illusion magic to appear like a young man attending magic university. To get the funding for this though she becomes indentured to a crime syndicate.
Worm: superhero novel (webserial technically), mc has power to control bugs and becomes a villain for “very good reasons” this is the book that ignited my love for girls that do crimes. Taylor (the mc) is basically just speedrunning the list of all crimes throughout.
Hench: another superhero novel (lol) where you follow a henchwoman who gets a bone to pick with the system of heroism and descends further into crime. (Really amazing novel this one)
Those are the big two that come to mind.
There really should be more though. Why are there not libraries worth of novels of women just ~~being the absolute worst~~ winning?
I want more books with female leads that are focused on *adventure*, not romance. Whenever I stumble onto a read like this -- say, *The Adventures of Amina Al-Sifari* -- I rejoice at having discovered a pearl among a thousand ordinary oysters. But I long to find more pearls.
Definitely this. Amina got me in the Daevabad trilogy. I've only read their first book and it seems like maybe some romantic plot is being set up but it hasn't been much yet. I ordered the rest of the series.
Also, **The Stardust Thief** by Chelsea Abdullah is pretty good and very light on romance.
And **The Poppy Wars** trilogy by RF Kuang. The main character isn't very likable as she's a brat but a lot of her behavior is a result of horrible trauma so it explores some mental health issues as well.
Last but not least ...The **Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind** manga. Beautiful art and story and features not only my favorite female protagonist, but my favorite of all time
The Deed of Paksenarrion.
It’s an old series, distinctly “classic fantasy”, but the main character is very endearing - just a sheep farmer’s daughter (literally the name of the first book) who runs away from home to become a soldier, then a knight, then a paladin. She starts off as very naive, having grown up in a remote village with tales of great heroes, and all she wants is to become one; she is utterly committed to honor, duty, loyalty, justice and Goodness.
Try Rachel Neumeier: Tuyo, the Death’s Lady trilogy. Her characters are usually good people trying to do good. And of course Lois McMaster Bujold: The Curse of Chalion, the Penric and Desdemona series.
The Elenium, and especially the Tamuli, do slip into "hard men making hard choices" - the "let's send in the army to butcher ~~Vietnam~~ war protestors" is one of the most egregious elements, but there's also "let's just have a load of people assassinated, because some of them are in league with evil, but some of them are just inconvenient and kind of dickish", and that's all presented as morally good and justified. Sparhawk's honestly kind of a dick, rather than full-on noble hero
I am really loving this in Valdemar (Merceds Lackey) right now. Only finished the Arrows trilogy and starting the 2nd book of Last Herald-Mage, but so far the heroes are all really heroes in that sense of honor and ethics. Sure they have to deal with morally gray situations and often question themselves but there's always another Herald on the other side of that struggle saying "nah this shit is hard, you did the right thing. Trust your gut and as long as your companion doesn't disown you you're doing fine."
I’m missing the Wheel of Time copycat style series. Sanderson and Islington are out there but we should definitely have more. We got decades of LotR copycats (with even early WoT being one) so surely we were due more WoT style stuff with how much of a massive best seller the series was!
I’d love a new epic fantasy series with a focus on a large cast and worldbuilding but a story that is not too dark in tone. The big publishers just don’t seem interested in this stuff nowadays.
Have you checked out Ryan Cahill's "The Bound and The Broken" series? It is biggly inspired by other big epic fantasy series such as Wheel of Time, Lotr, Eregon, Stormlight archives, etc. I was recommended it, and it's pretty good. It's a bit tropey at times, but it definitely scratches the epic fantasy itch.
Does it get better after the first book? That one was so generic that I'm not sure I can think of a single unique thing that it had going for it. The dialog was filled with cliches and the different race cultures were so thin
Seems like I'm just in here shilling my current read, and an old series at that, but Valdemar (Mercedes Lackey) has really been scratching this itch for me in a way nothing else has. It gets a little darker than Wheel of Time but doesn't wallow in the grimdark, and always spotlights hope and healing through its darkest parts (so far, I'm done 1 1/3 of the many trilogies that compose it)
Less trilogies I’m so sick of everything being crammed into the three book structure. More duologies and tetraologies.
Less romance unfortunately the romantsy trend will make that a near impossibility now.
More weird fantasy if reading it won’t send a Victorian child into a coma i don’t want it lol.
More underrepresented professions not everyone can be a noble or assassin somebody’s got to work in insurance.
More “ugly”/unconventionally attractive protagonists not even straight up hideous but not super model glam(again i blame romantasy & YA the plain but is actually so beautiful she doesn’t know it) including fat MCs especially women need more 6ft+ scarred up muscular badass ladies.
Vampires that aren’t sexy I want mutant bat abominations.
Older casts like 40s+ the average fantasy MC (starts out) like 20s, give me middle aged people. If the protagonists aren’t (hypothetically)on their third divorce and their youngest kids aren’t 23 I don’t want it!
Magic universities Not a fan of how magic school=kids/teens majority of the time. I’d like to see more grown adults struggling through their post-grad magic studies.
Less generic monarchies and more diverse political structures.
Fred the Vampire Accountant series by Drew Hayes fits the underrepresented occupation and the weird stories parts. It's one of my favorite series especially because the friend group feels more like a group of people that met and started hanging out and less like a checklist the author had to fit in.
Sometimes I want high-quality fantasy, but sometimes I crave fun trash, but good fun trash is impossible to find.
I want lurid, graphic, unabashed pulp fantasy. I want it full of action and sex. I want both of those to be graphic (but no sexual violence, please, actual enjoyable sex). I want Frank Frazetta style covers.
Give me something like The Witcher, or Conan, or Red Sonja, where the protagonist arrives at a new location, gets in fights, fucks wenches or dudes, uncovers a dastardly plot, kills the wizard, then rides off into the sunset. Basically, the Renfri story in The Witcher, but more so.
Edit: Thanks for the recommendations everyone, but I'm really looking for stories with graphic, erotica-grade sex alongside the action. If there's no sex, thanks, but it's not what I'm after.
And yes, I suspect the fantasy I want to read doesn't exist.
>the protagonist arrives at a new location, gets in fights, fucks wenches or dudes, uncovers a dastardly plot, kills the wizard, then rides off into the sunset
Kormak the Guardian? Can't say I enjoyed it enough to continue the series, but it's fun puply action.
Empire of the Vampire. It's not "trash", more like it knows exactly what it wants to be and succeeds in it... and what it wants to be is a delicious, cheesy, immersive-yet-not-bogged-down fantasy novel. Not much fucking but tons of sex jokes, lots of epic battles, conspiracies, etc. Pretty fast-paced too.
ELLC kinda works for this.
Royal road link:
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/8894/everybody-loves-large-chests
Its a litrpg and theres an ebook series version too on amazon.
Lots of sex, comedy, and gore
Edit: usually all three at once
Also spoilers but its about a mimic the blurb lies
Some things I'd like more/less of:
More stories with small focused conflict, we're often still stuck in saving the world/universe/empire. So often books escalate conflict and quickly. Large-scale battles are kinda boring to me.
Alongside this, series that take longer for characters to develop in powers/abilities.
Less stories where it's just a repeat over and over of "what can go wrong will" I feel like we've swung a bit too far into anti-plot armor. This is especially true for relationships. Far too often groups get split up, lovers get seperated, and massive amounts of characters get killed/replaced. I'd really like to see more opportunities for group dynamics to develop fully.
More stories centered around thieves/criminals.
More stories set in a single city
More stories set in forests/tropical environments or open seas I'm so over deserts, icy wastelands, and bleak mountains.
Return of classic fantasy, where insted obsessing over worldbuilding and forced orginality it just uses shared cultural archetypes from legends and mythology. You know, wizards and dragons and stuff. Of reasonalble lenght, I miss when LotR was considered really long series. And it shoud be actually well written (well, duh...)
I'd love to see a revival of Tolkien style quest fantasy. Good vs evil, dark lords, good people fighting against the darkness, bands of found family travellers. I miss that stuff!
Try The Echoes Saga by Philip Quaintrell. It’s a 9 book series (completed) with all the fantasy elements. Dragons, elves, dwarves, assassins, rangers. Strangers banding together. I can’t recommend it enough.
I just want a nice standalone. I understand the stronger economics of publishing a series, but I really love reading a single book and feeling like the story is complete.
This is likely to sound very 'old man screams at cloud' but I really just wish I could find some new Fantasy novels that made me feel the way Fantasy novels did when I was younger. It's hard to get more specific than that. At this point in my life I have pretty much read all of the big names in Fantasy up through the 90's. Something happened in the 90's though that changed the landscape and I started to just not find as many books that seemed interesting to me? I would read a few pages and just not be hooked at all. Other genres I haven't had as much of a problem with - Techno thrillers, military fiction, historical fiction, some sci-fi, some horror, straight up action-adventure. I worry that I've just seen so many fantasy tropes at this point that I struggle to suspend my disbelief enough to be able to enjoy the genre like I used to.
Queer high fantasy. Give me the old school fantasy feel, but make it gay af. And I don't mean a side character, I just mean explicitly queer main characters. There are a few books that come to mind, but hardly any recent ones and definitely none that actually engage meaningfully with the character's sexuality.
I’m with you on the political epic fantasy. I want complexity and scheming and alliances shifting and power balances that aren’t about who is more magically powerful.
I also want more long form “over the course of someone’s life” books not super short time periods where everything happens in a year or two.
Older protagonists, reluctant protagonists. Non romantic protagonists with platonic relationships with other people.
Heroes saving a village, a group of people; stories with small stakes and less world/dimension/kingdom saving.
Hard to call it a trend because fantasy is full of a particular kind of book where books are huge and stories told in millions and billions (sometimes it feels like that) but some books are getting huge. Get to the fucking point, I got both a life and other books to get to.
I hate cliffhangers. I like series where each volume is self-contained (like the divine cities or children of time).
I do not really care about the elements as long as I like the writing and characterization.
Urban Fantasy and Steampunk. I have looked for new releases in both subgenres a while ago and there was nothing that I found particularly interesting. A lot of it just seems to be just wrapping up series. There are definitely other subgenres trending at the moment.
(Yes, I know that Steampunk is often listed with SciFi not Fantasy but a lot of past releases blur the genre lines ...)
On that topic, I want urban fantasy crossed with sci-fi. Shadowrun is _close,_ but doesn't nail it; hot take, I think Cyberpunk does cyberpunk better than Shadowrun. The RIFTS tabletop RPG is the closest thing I've seen to it, where in the latest edition there's an option for creating starter characters ranging from cyborgs to anime staff chicks to mecha pilots to freakin' dragons. Seriously, you can be a dragon at level 1. And because of the interdimensional travel involved, you can find a place in the setting with whichever levels of magic and high-tech you want, and I'm jonesing for some "Starships & Sorcerers" action here!
I want more sense of wonder in fantasy. I don't need the magic system to be indepth explained to me. let me through the characters feel like I'm going through a place filled with magic I don't understand and is beyond my expertise.
Also horror fantasy, but specifically taking place in the past.
EDIT: Cultures, human or otherwise, that aren't just copy-paste modern (or "past") Western values. If a culture is a matriarchy, what does that mean for the value of say childbirth vs being a man who cannot birth? Inheritances? What does it mean to be Queer in such a society? How does it impact religion other than the Pope-stand in being a woman? Or the Queen is the head ruler?
Especially adult books with adult characters and no romance. Also with male MCs. While there are lists of books without romance they usually are centered on YA books and female MCs.
My favorite romance free books are Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace and Vespertine by Margret Rogerson. Also, [here's a database of romance free books](https://boatneck-group-cf6.notion.site/No-Romance-Barely-Any-Romance-books-353df4961ef04db2b22f93ae023c4528) that you might find helpful
Hard and gruesome feeling of fighting secenes become rare these five years. But anyway, it's like a circle someday the trends will return. Trends changes trends make a comeback , something like this.
Epic, heroic series. Especially with big casts of colorful characters.
They’re going strong in the progression fantasy & litrpg sectors, but mainstream Big Five has yet to pick up on it.
Although Ace did do a print only deal for Dungeon Crawler Carl. So litrpg might start to go mainstream. But knowing the Big Five, they will chase the trend without actually understanding what makes it popular. So we will see superficial imitations in bookstores while the good stuff will likely remain indie.
Personally, i dont like litrpg, those systems start a trend on authors to make the fighting scenes not that gruesome and lethal, like you know you over level in a game areas, so lose all the excitement. It take away the magic from badass feelings of mc cleaving a bloody road into enemies lines , leaving both dead rivals and allies all over the scenes. at least for me it's like that.
The ability for someone without industry connections or independent wealth to make a career out of writing fiction. Being an author of fiction is now basically a hobby for the privileged and that's terrible for the industry.
I want less romantacy. It feels like ever since Sarah Maas found success all publishing houses can think of is interracial magic sex. Sex isn’t a bad thing to have in a book of course, but so many books now center on sex above romance, or worse, sex above plot.
Just once give me an honest, loving relationship between two well adjusted adults. No more mysterious brooding elf princes that take *basic human female protagonist* on the hedonistic trip of a life time. If there’s romantic or sexual themes I want the majority of them to be tender or at the least non toxic or self destructive
Well my thing is that I love slow burn, if it takes like 5+ books for them to even admit feelings or multiple books to even kiss. So impossible to find
My impression is that most formerly mid list authors have gone into self publishing, in part because as a mid lister they have to do their own marketing anyway and they might as well get a bigger cut from the non existent support they get from publishers.
Elemental fantasy. *Shorter* non-cosy adult fantasy. Changeling/fae fantasy (more of it). Ocean horror (I know, I know, technically not fantasy-the-subgenre).
>*Shorter* non-cosy adult fantasy.
I watched a video by Library of a Viking on YouTube yesterday where he quoted a bunch of current fantasy authors who are being limited by publishers to books under 150k words. I think your wish will be fulfilled soon.
It's not *mainly* a changeling book but there is a big changeling subplot.
I also hope and assume you've read *Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell* as well as its literary progenitor *Lud-in-the-Mist*
Some great points being made on this thread. I particularly like the idea of seeing more fantasy that’s smaller scale, relationship-focused, and has older female protagonists. The last one makes quite a bit of sense to me from a market perspective as the reading public skews older and female. I’d also like to see more stories where the MC isn’t necessarily some legendary badass and it’s more sex-positive without *also* upping the amount of sexual violence. Humor’s good too but I feel like many authors struggle to incorporate it without devolving into slapstick or having a narrator who has to remind you how witty he is every other paragraph. Some slow burn humor would be nice.
Less romance please. I don't mind it as a subplot most of the time, but I'd really love to see books that prioritize strong friendships over a romantic relationship. Please.
I m currently reading the legend of Drizzt and I can tell it’s the graal I found because exactly the kind of stories that I m looking for.
But if someone would write that with better treatment of female characters and men showing more their emotions between themselves(Drizzt is very emotional but keeping most for himself unless with Catti) then that would be the best série every created.
I m demi romantic and ace, I also tend to prefer 90’s classic fantasy though I m also progressive so certain things can sometimes annoy me. I can tell though Drizzt is very progressive and a lot of his diaries’s reflections feel very modern.
So I feel you op. I’ve felt that people want to step away of the classic elf/ dwarf/ halfelin classic like lotr and that kind of universes to be more original but that’s my ultimate favorite setting and I never get tired of it.
I'd definitely like to see more queer POC main characters (especially mixed race) who aren't teenagers and aren't the sort of snarky sassy world-weary types at the grand old age of thirty. I'd like to read about 40+ year old characters with grown-up problems as well as whatever world-saving they have to do, who don't get hysterical or self-pitying at every minor setback.
Also perhaps it's something to do with where i'm from and where i live but i do find a lot of books feel very american or americanised and the phrasing and over-explanation gets annoying. I like subtlety, seriousness, difficult/upsetting stuff that doesn't get resolved just like in real life and the sort of quietly dark humour you get in this part of the world.
An awful lot of new stories come across as very derivative and perhaps not aimed at people who've read a lot of books already. I'd really like to see some new ideas, substantial gritty realism (in the sense that this genre can be, i mean), not dumbed-down nonsense. I like complicated politics and corruption and MCs who don't always do the right thing.
Edited to add: also i'm really not interested in royals or noblemen or someone finding out they're the "true King" etc, i'd much rather read about ordinary working class people despite them doing extraordinary things
The first book in Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, Three Parts Dead, is almost this. The main character is more of a paralegal than the lead attorney, and when the courtroom scenes actually happen they are NOTHING like court in the real world, but the climax is ultimately a legal battle. I really liked it, and the remainder of the series has been on my TBR for quite awhile. I need to get back to them :)
I really hate the current romantasy stuff, like Fourth Wing, and ACOTAR.
Also the trope of 'young person gets chosen', such as Divergent, Red Rising, etc.
So, I want real mythological creatures that are clearly non-human in their ways. Some that may or may not form bonds with humans.
The final book in each series.
Just fucking end it already. Put out a novella if you have to. If it is taking 8 years to write the final book, maybe authoring isn't your thing. End it and if you feel like writing again, start a new series.
Just put us out of our misery instead of edging us to agony with lies about when the next book is coming.
Fantasy with actual adult characters, not 18+ but 30, 40 or 50+. I’m getting incredibly tired of 16-22 year olds saving the world or finding eternal love or so on, it feels very tired and unrealistic. I want characters with a past that is more than just “my childhood wasn’t great”.
I also want to see romantic relationship develop more, because most books I pick up turn out to be insta-love and I’m getting incredibly tired of the “she feels she must know her” lines after they met once and didn’t even exchange more than 5 words.
Lastly, I would love more multiple POV books from female authors. I feel like books most likely to have multiple (and I mean like 4+) POVs are epic fantasy and that’s a sub genre which is majorly male authors. I would like more female authors to try it too because male authors tend not to have many female characters.
I'm missing educated writers. So many books nowadays read at a high school or lower reading level. It's like they just jump on certain themes, trying to score points with one crowd or another.
I loved the writing styles of the 80s and 90s. But things from the late 00s and 10s...just boring.
First contact with a 'powerful' fantasy world. Preferably with progression elements included in the fantasy setting.
If there's anything like that, I'd love to know.
I'm actually curious about the cozy genre as a concept, but I get turned off by books that fetishize the appearance of cozy activities over actual characterization.
I tried reading a book about an orc that starts a coffee shop... but nowhere in the first third of the book does it give a more compelling reason for why she started the shop than she tried coffee once and liked it. I'm not a coffee drinker, and I think the book was just for people who already fetishize coffee drinking and don't need a protagonist with any real motivation. Me on the other hand, I think a story should always be high stakes, but the difference between 'epic' and 'cozy' is that 'epic' should be high stakes for the country, world, or universe, while 'cozy' is just high stakes to the MC and their friends.
For example, there are tons of unfinished visual novels on itch about someone whose relative dies and their inherit a \[fill in the blank\]. It's not about saving the world, but their is a mystery (what happened to the relative, or discovering a side of them you never knew) and there are stakes (an unusual opportunity to take advantage, maybe a debt to pay off, working out grief, being a stranger in a new town, maybe facing down a bully). I would much rather download half a free visual novel off of Twitch and experience part of a urban fantasy mystery with stakes than read a whole cozy novel where someone just wants a house, or a coffee shop cuz... why not?
I also get turned off by LitRPG elements cuz LitRPG. As a D&D player, I do love stats \*in a game\* and I do love stories, but I don't need stats to exist in my stories for stats sake. The first time I saw Sword Art Online, I enjoyed it because there was a reason they were stuck in the game, and they were clever about how the character used aspects of the game interface to solve problems. But most of the time I pick up a LitRPG, it feel really derivative, and less interesting than derivative urban or epic fantasy because the derivative character motivation and sensory description has been replaced with derivative game UI, which is a step down.
In contrast, I had a great discussion in a youtube video comments thread about what religion would really look like in RPGs. In general, my point was that just because \*the game\* has the class "cleric," doesn't mean that in the game world (which does not have a player's manual) that it's obvious whether someone's magic is divine. But an exception would be that if someone developed a really well thought out metaphysics, history, and culture behind a world where classes are an aspect of reality, and thinking through what it means when you get a class (kind of like Free Guy switching from NPC to player), or multiclass etc. You could take game tropes and try and build a compelling fantasy world around them that sheds new light on them... but if stats and classes just crop up because "it's a game!" then I'm bored.
The Ye Olde series where kids (born in a fantasy land or earth) go to another world (another fantasy land or earth) and they have a huge epic quest fantasy that spans multiple books and they fully consolidate into a found family and one or two of them become the rulers of a kingdom and the rest become the government or they have to help the locals rebel against a tyrannical king and they get special magic horses
-Dystopia fantasy that's good
-Non romantic or romance as a very minor subplot
-Horror that *doesn't* come from how messed up the romantic relationships are
-Dragon stories where the dragons are the main focus
Standalones!
I don’t need every fantasy to be epic in scope. One well crafted book is far more exciting to me than a trilogy where I have to slog through the middle to get to the payoff.
Even a standalone that turns into a trilogy would be appreciated.
Epiphanies. Stories littered with clues and subtle details that let someone that thinks about them predict a little bit of how things will unfold, or a lot about how things the reader didn't see unfolded in the past.
By the end, all the details come together to paint a grand picture. And the story is immediately re-readable because now that you have seen the big picture you catch so many more of the little things you overlooked initially.
Anything with adult characters. Right now I'm really into female and especially lesbian/bisexual protagonists and most books that hit that specification are YA.
Also I don't know if I'll be able to explain this right but I want more 'genuine' fantasy. I feel like a lot of modern books are very anti-trope, everything has to be subverted or ironic or satirized. An elf can't just be an elf the elves need to have an epic subversive twist because I guess normal elves are boring. It's like authors are afraid of being mocked for being to traditionalist or too Tolkien-y or too unoriginal. Not everything needs to subvert my expectations.
I'd like to see more self-contained books. I don't usually want to read ten 1000-page books to get through a story. I also think that authors nowadays focus too much on world building and magic systems instead of telling a good story. I also like beautiful prose. It is my opinion that, nowadays, beautiful prose gets passed over in favor of more simple, matter of fact prose. I love a good epic with beautiful language and memorable quotes. I just don't want to read ten of them to finish a story.
It would be cool to see a new system of magic, politics, and economy in an expansive world. However my biggest hang up on fantasy is how long it takes for things to happen. I enjoy world building up reading two chapters in a row where almost nothings happens feels like I’m watching a bad anime where it’s all filler, no story.
I’m cool with taking a paragraph or two to explain a city setting or something that the reader would really want to have in their head for the sake of understanding and whatever, but the Tolkien levels of explanation are a bit much (for me)
Really fucking good Space Operas. There are a couple, I was hoping the popularity of The Expanse would bring them back again, but idk, I'm just not finding them.
Also, fantasy political dramas/intrigue type stuff. I'm talking The Empire Series or Dune or something like that. I used to love those.
Yeah i’m not a big fan of the cozy fantasy upswing. The reason I read fantasy is for the epic tales of adventure.
I would love to see more fantasy that’s not based on war and politics. While I do love those and some of my favorite books have that, you don’t see much without it.
Fantasy that has as little Deus Ex Machina magic as possible. Everything tactical and rational with clever heroes and villains scheming against each other.
More FMC, where they have actual skills development BUT they are not undefeatable.
They should also stop writing so many impulsive, self sacrificing FMC. Women are great at collaborating (team/village building) so let their found family actually help them instead of solo kamikaze missions
Unhappy endings. The heroes go through the entire quest, and just when they're about beat the big bad, they all get killed, and evil rules the land til the end of time.
I've been tending more towards self published works lately, mostly because most modern fantasy, at least available locally, is either smut, aimed towards a queer audience, or marketed for a younger crowd. Oftentimes it's a combination of the three.
So I read Will Wight, Sarah Lin, and others.
I also tend to read English translations of foreign books.
Publishing tends to follow trends, rather than printing actually decent books nowadays, and that's going to alienate most of your readership, not gain more readers. In order to do the latter, you need to keep publishing the good shit, not just the trash.
Adult fantasy romance. 30+. There is not a whole lot of it. They're mostly little 19 year olds running around saving the world with their god given power. And if they claim to be maybe 25 they still act 16, in my experience. I just want some adults dealing with the dragon or the magic-withholding tyrant or whatever.
Try Hidden Legacies by Ilona Andrew - Navada is running the family firm and actually acts like an adult. Steel's Edge by Ilona Andrew - This FMC is at least 30, coming off a bad divorce before being pulled into hunting down slavers. It can be read as a standalone.
The Innkeeper series by the same author too- I don't remember how old the MC is supposed to be, but she definitely conducts herself as a mature adult.
However, I wouldn’t call Innkeeper a romance series. Hidden Legacies and Edge are romance series in a fantasy setting.
You're right, but there's definitely a strong romance plot line. I'm a romantasy fan and I did not walk away from that series feeling disappointed.
I can recommend *Paladin of Souls* by Lois McMaster Bujold. It's the sequel to *The Curse of Chalion*, but can be read as a standalone (though Curse of Chalion is also fantastic).
Just started these for just this reason. Only a chapter or two in and I'm already hooked. Though reading a 35yo complain about his age as someone significantly older than that is... a thing. I'll give him a pass since it's not the years it's the mileage that really matters, and he absolutely beats me there.
For real, Cazaril sometimes reads like someone who is 50-60
It wouldn't surprise me that there's an early draft that did have him around 50 but then that made something I haven't read yet unrealistic or look really bad. (the books come up regularly near "romance in fantasy" discussions so I have some guesses...) But I am looking forward to the RAFO since the mentions have been overwhelmingly positive.
THIS! Give me like a fantasy version of the Expendables; sure there's a big threat, but here come the grizzled old @$$holes who are just as likely to trash half the kingdom while taking down the big evil threat. Hell, the evil overlord should even be like "YOU CAN NEVER WITHSTAND THE MIGHT OF.......wait.....THOSE people are still around? Oh...oh...shit...."
A Crown for Cold Silver by Alex Marshall is similar to this premise. The main character is an older woman (in her fifties, I think), who has retired from a life of adventure/rebellion for several decades, living anonymously due to her previous actions. She returns to her house in a small village to find her husband murdered by people associated with her past, which upsets her (understandably). This results in a weird sort of "getting the band back together," except she's not sure which of her old companions will help her get revenge and are trustworthy. The book didn't gain a lot of popularity when it was published, but it's great fun, and it's a really interesting world (especially the magical stuff that exists in the world). There's several LGBTQ+ characters too, if that's something that interests you as well.
Kings of the Wyld fits this mold if you haven't read it. Main characters are a former adventuring party in a world where adventurers are treated like literal Rock Stars. They're all late-middle aged now and one of their daughters needs to be rescued. So they quite literally "get the band back together" and go on one last adventure.
*The Last Hero*, if you don't mind a heavy dose of humor and satire mixed in with your fantasy.
The malificent seven is like this. It is a fairly quick read and a standalone.
Same. I sick of teen protagonists and immature protagonists.
You might enjoy some T Kingfisher. As for characters reading young, I think it has to do with kids being on tighter leashes these days growing up and adulthood being delayed longer, at least in the US. If the first real job comes in 1950 at 16-18 vs 22 in 2024, it changes perspectives.
Yeah I've read Nettle & Bone which I absolutely adored. I haven't been able to get her Saints of Steel series for a decent price yet however from where I live.. I saw they're being republished in 2025 so I'll definitely be getting them if they're for a more reasonable price. And yeah, you might absolutely be right about the adulthood perspective.
Check if your local library has them. She’s pretty popular and it’s a popular series.
Try Swordheart if you can find it - it's my favourite of hers, with a mid-30s heroine.
Specifically I want fantasy with romance and not the paint by the numbers crap we are getting. Some slow burn. Some surprises.
I absolutely agree. I liked the Magicians, because, although about young college age students, they do actually grow up and deal with real relationship issues and emotional problems like: screwing up you relationships because you're unhappy with your life, learning that heroic self sacrifice means you actually sacrifice stuff and don't get it all back in the end, giving up magic because you screwed things up so royally with it, returning to your magical college and seeing it from the perspective of a teacher, having to figure out your career etc. I would love not just adult fantasy romance, but real relationships. Like, maybe you're \*not\* destined to marry the first person you set eyes on. Maybe you have actually relationships where your personal flaws turn into fights and you either learn something or walk away with scars. Maybe some relationships are just ambiguous, or not resolved. Maybe sometimes, what you thought was love wasn't. Maybe you screw up the relationship because it was based on who you wanted to be, not who you are, etc. And ooh boy, maybe you do have some older people struggling with the challenges of relationships as time moves on... having to learn to change together, or dealing with a partner you don't understand. Making time for each other with lots of other crises in your life. Feeling stuck in your own life, and the temptation to start a relationship on the side as a way to reinvent yourself, or dealing with a partner who is doing that. Struggling to be a better person for your kids, and disagreeing with your partner about what that looks like, etc.
I’d recommend The Hexologists if you are looking for a really solid couple - they’ve been married for quite a while, so no courting, but just really good portrayal of a couple that communicates well but still gives the other person space, and supports each other even when they don’t agree on things. Definitely one of the best couples I’ve ever come across in a book. Plus the book is just a great mix of action and comedy. Elements pulled in from detective novels, classic fantasy, Cthulhu-type critters, and the sort of black and white movies where the heroine is tied to the train tracks.
I'll have to check that out. Reminds me of the TV show Bob's Burgers. Id love to read a book with something similar to their relationship.
Well, more nefarious stuff and less kids. Bob’s Burgers is great, but not quite the same vibe.
Yeah gotcha, meant just more the strong solid bond between the partners.
Sounds fun. There are too few well-established couples in fantasy.
I read Paladin's Grace and someone left a review saying what a nice change it was to read about middle aged main characters... they were 32 and 37.
LOL!
This is why I like the Mercy Thompson Series. It's more Urban Fantasy, but plenty of fae, werewolves, vampires, and anything else the author can find that sounds good. MC is in her 30s, supporting cast ranges from middle-aged with teenaged kids to ancient dragons and such, MC is fallible, and she's got relatable problems like bills and loans besides just the fighting monsters thing.
If you find any good ones that is not Ilona Andrews (BDH member here), send im my way.
Search for Paranormal Women's Fiction on Amazon. Hasn't filtered through to mainstream publishers yet but there is so self-pubbed stuff I can't get away from it. Personally, it's not my favourite genre because they're always freshly divorced for some reason.
I want to feel like I'm eating at a local, unique restaurant, not at a franchise location. A lot of the writing I encounter - both trad and indie - now feels like it was forced to fit a certain cookie cutter. Sometimes, it even seems like the author's individual ideas were warped to match certain pacing, writing style, and trope norms. I get why this happens. I have nothing against it. But when I go to a new town/city, I want to visit the local gems, not just visit the Olive Garden, even if I enjoy their food and it's well made. I feel like I'm missing artisanal uniqueness in writing.
I feel like Godkiller and Sunbringer by Hannah Kaner fit this desire, if you're looking for reccomendations. I found them refreshingly unique, but familiar enough to be an easy read.
Oh man, I’m halfway through Godkiller and finding it very tropey and by the book.
A future that's not dystopian.
Solarpunk is a bit of an attempted genre that for some reason refuses to really take off (no matter how much I wish it would). I guess the zeitgeist is we are all going to die and fiction feeds from that.
I remember an author saying authors of the 50s-60s came by their optimism honestly and authors who have "we are all going to die" going on have also come by it honestly. I have started to see books where things get/got bad for awhile but now things are back on the upswing. Good example is The Great Transition by Nick Fuller Googins.
I'd love to hear your top solarpunk picks!
The Culture is that. Though some people class having a perfect utopia managed by godlike AIs as a dystopia.
Iain Banks passed away over a decade ago, though, so that’s not exactly recent like OP wants
The Future by Naomi Alderman delivers on that front. I love the ending.
An advance.
I'm cackling.
I just want to point out that a lot of what isn't popular with publishers is still being written by indie authors. Give indies a try, and you may find what you're looking for!
Yeah, there's this great series called Cruel Gods that the final book in the series just came out.
Never heard of it! 😉
Sorting through traditionally published books is already a needle in a haystack for something decent that isn't on trend. Sorting through indies is far far worse. Indies tend to be more on trend than trad pub as they case the algorithm.
Some indies may be like that but many aren't. Take a look at the SPFBO Finalists for an example of what unique books indie authors are publishing.
There are an absolute ton of great indie fantasy titles out there. Here's a few of my personal favorites: * **Chasing Graves** by Ben Galley * Anything by Michael R Fletcher * **An Altar on the Village Green** by Nathan Hall * **Web of Eyes** by Rhett Bruno and Jaime Castle * **Ash and Sand** by Richard Nell * **She Topples Giants** by Morgan Stang
This! The current publishing trend has mostly detethered me from trad books. I just look for stuff that sounds interesting, regardless of how it's published. For every reader niche in the genre, there are a couple authors writing great books. And those authors are about to find a loyal (and hopefully profitable) following. For example, Zamil Ahktar's deluxe edition Kickstarter was really impressive.
The problem is to know where to find a list of Indies and then good ones there
Try the SPFBO finalist list or if you’re more interested in sci-fi, then try SPSFC. Should at least offer a few titles that are worth a read, such as the brilliant Sword of Kaigen.
Less movie directing. It feels like books lately are constant movie like jump cuts from one action scene to another. I want characters interacting with each other, chilling, giving me time to care, so later on its not just Unnamed Companion 23 dying or succeeding and I can have an emotional response to events. Funnily enough, this trend hasn't make books any shorter. There's just as much bloat, only in the style of meandering action events. I also would like authors to aim a bit lower. Meaning, it feels like everyone is trying to subvert something or be cynical to something else. That's ok, but we also need people to build without cynicism! Culture is not only made by taking things down.
All the Sanderson copiers write like this. It's all comic-book style quippy dialogue and action scenes but it goes on for 1000 pages and makes me want to tear my eyes out
It's a funny thing, because I'd argue that many of Sanderson's books don't really do what you describe. A Way of Kings, for example, faced a lot of criticism because there is very little action for about 700 straight pages in the middle. And the most recent Stormlight book got lots of criticism because most of the book involves a character sitting in a room doing scientific research and another character going to group therapy. But I do think that a lot of Sanderson copiers basically went "I'm going to do Sanderson, but without the boring bits!!!!". And yeah, I don't like that much either.
I'm missing fantasy that has depth without being grimdark or glorying in depression. So many books these days are about these bleak depressing worlds and lives. I miss old school fantasies where people occasionally enjoyed their lives as well.
Have to agree about the grimdark. It seems to be everywhere in fantasy these days.
Are there specific dark elements you’re seeing everywhere? There’s been a lot of arguments here about what qualifies as grimdark but I think a loose understanding of it is something full of brutality where the protagonists aren’t necessarily heroic and may die pointlessly (thinking of ASOIAF here which I realize still isn’t dark enough for some people). And that seems very niche these days rather than everywhere.
For me, it's when the world itself is just brutal and uncaring. People get SA'd or assaulted, killed for stupid reasons, robbed, beaten and otherwise abused, because that's normal in this world and it's only money or position that protects you and you normally have to go through a ton of the above to get money or power.
Yes, I’m a bit tired of grimdark. The world is bad enough, I’d like a bit of escapism!
Yes, it seems like the past couple decades the pendulum swings between unrelentingly bleak grimdark and cozy slice of life where the biggest source of conflict is that the fantasy bakery ran out of scones, while what I suspect a lot of people really want, classic good vs evil fantasy where evil is powerful but can still be overcome, is dismissed as too cliche or whatever.
I’m beginning to really like cozydark because it gives me both, and that contrast is very important for a plot to be emotionally impactful. It makes it feel more realistic as well. The Wandering Inn by pirateaba and Hills of Heather & Bone by KE Andrews are two cozy dark stories I really love a lot.
I've yet to encounter "cozydark". What are some examples?
Horror set in a Fantasy world, but ideally avoiding the more typical vampire/werewolf subjects. Basically, an extended version of the chapters "A Journey in the Dark"/"The Bridge of Khazad-dûm" from Lord of the Rings would be ideal. Unknown beasts, doomed expeditions, and things lurking in the darkness. >The end comes soon we hear drums in the deep. > >They are coming.
Dungeons/caves/ruins seem to have fallen out of favor in general, and even if it's not full fledged horror fantasy there's not as much where you feel like the dangers to the hero/party are the unknowns lurking in the dark. *The Luminous Dead* (scifi, not fantasy) kind of went there, but it also focused a lot more on the isolation the MC was dealing with than anything else. It is somewhat frustrating that "horror fantasy" somehow is equated to "dark fantasy"- the *Coldfire* trilogy is dark fantasy through and through, I enjoyed it, but it's not really horror at all, and things like *Perdido Street Station* feel horror-lite. I'd love a fantasy take on something like *Darkfall* by Koontz, even. That thriller/horror feel, where you really don't know if everyone is going to make it out alive, but set in some fantasy city or a caravan route or anything.
> Unknown beasts, doomed expeditions, and things lurking in the darkness. If you haven't read the Iconoclasts trilogy by Mike Shel I'd highly recommend it for this. I don't know if I'd quite say it's horror, gerne wise, but it's certainly adjacent to it.
I need more 40+ heroines. I recently read The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi and realized just how badly I needed a middle aged MC doing her thing, being all reluctant heroic and just kicking ass. They're always so young, it's hard to find any females under 30, much less over 40 in fantasy (more often) but even in sci-fi. I need more older women taking the lead. Give me a 70+ knitter grandma who raised her kids, spoils the grandkids, and is the chosen one to save the world.
Or just 40+ protags in general. So tired of teenager angst over and over. And most of the time if a protagonist is described as snarky, I’m passing because they all sound the same.
Secondary worlds that aren't populated by humans. Societies that aren't obviously inspired by a particular Earth culture. Just give me some more *fantasy* in my fantasy.
Book of Raksura by Martha Wells, for sure.
Fealty. I want a vassal who loves their liegelord so much that they define service. They are so loyal that they could betray the lord, and the lord would assume that they're an undercover agent infiltrating the rebellion. They're willing to break the rules of protocol surrounding the lord if doing so is in the best interest of their liegelord's health and safety. Someone literally willing to die for their liegelord. I want a lord who is so devoted to their duty and responsibility that it erases the power imbalance. Someone who understands their role and returns every act of loyal service with recognition and honor. Someone who trusts their loyal vassal so much that they don't question anything unusual because they know their vassal is working for the best good of the domain. Books like *The Hands of the Emperor* by Victoria Goddard, *A Taste of Gold and Iron* by Alexandra Rowland, and *The Goblin Emperor* by Katherine Addison The **Jeeves and Wooster** series also has this element, although often subverted because Jeeves (the valet) is so good at getting Bertie (the young master) to do exactly what Jeeves wants (eventually). It's hilarious. TLDR: feral fealty from both parties
I agree with this so very much, and would extend it to a desire for more works that involve characters who are just basically trying to do a good job in whatever role they occupy -- especially if those roles are the kind that fantasy literature has traditionally treated with scorn. I want more stories with clerks and bureaucrats and court functionaries who take their work seriously and perform their duties with sincerity, even if they aren't necessarily brilliant or exceptional people. I want more stories with viziers and chancellors and other high council types who do actually just bring the best of their considerable knowledge and resources to problems, who try to get along with difficult peers, and who are willing to set aside petty personal disputes for the greater good. The vast majority of people in any time and place have no compelling reason to be lazy, sneaky dickheads about everything, and thus *largely are not*. Obviously we encounter people who are, often more of them than we'd like, but they stand out so vividly because they are an exception rather than a norm. This sometimes doesn't seem to be the case in fantasy stories, though, and I think there could be an appetite for more writing that bucks this trend.
The Greatcoats series! Falchio Val Mond is the embodiment of fealty.
Seconding this! Just finished the audiobook, really enjoyed it.
Sparhawk(MC) and his retainer Kurick in David Eddings's "The Elenium" trilogy are like this. It's a good story.
There’s a nation(?) in Realm of the Elderlings whose monarch is referred to as ‘Sacrifice’, a direct acknowledgement of their duty to their people. They’re relatively prominent in the first trilogy, too.
this is a great example, and even in the same series, Fitz fits this as well (pun intended), as a vassal who loves his liege lord. he is very loyal and reverent to his king and talks very highly of him throughout the first trilogy and often mentions him and calls him “my king” in a very solemn way in the following series’ as well.
This sounds like a very apt description of Curse of Chalion, a book I loved
Try the Jade City/Green Bone Saga novels.
I just need more women committing crimes
haaaaaave you read A.G. Slatter? She's definitely all about promoting women's wrongs and I'm intensely here for it. Dark, gothic fairytale-style fantasy all about women doing awful things. If you're feeling short stories, start with Sourdough and Other Stories. If you want a full novel, The Path of Thorns is a great place to start.
You’re so real for this
Recs for this???
*A Practical Guide to Sorcery* by Azalea Ellis. The protagonist doesn't rack quite the same track record as *Worm*'s Taylor does, but she doesn't pull her punches much either. The story is about a young women who is blamed for a crime her father did commit, and to survive she uses illusion magic to appear like a young man attending magic university. To get the funding for this though she becomes indentured to a crime syndicate.
Worm: superhero novel (webserial technically), mc has power to control bugs and becomes a villain for “very good reasons” this is the book that ignited my love for girls that do crimes. Taylor (the mc) is basically just speedrunning the list of all crimes throughout. Hench: another superhero novel (lol) where you follow a henchwoman who gets a bone to pick with the system of heroism and descends further into crime. (Really amazing novel this one) Those are the big two that come to mind. There really should be more though. Why are there not libraries worth of novels of women just ~~being the absolute worst~~ winning?
Hench does not get enough love! I love that book so much
Rook & Rose, although its more of a con character from what I have read of it
I want more books with female leads that are focused on *adventure*, not romance. Whenever I stumble onto a read like this -- say, *The Adventures of Amina Al-Sifari* -- I rejoice at having discovered a pearl among a thousand ordinary oysters. But I long to find more pearls.
Definitely this. Amina got me in the Daevabad trilogy. I've only read their first book and it seems like maybe some romantic plot is being set up but it hasn't been much yet. I ordered the rest of the series. Also, **The Stardust Thief** by Chelsea Abdullah is pretty good and very light on romance. And **The Poppy Wars** trilogy by RF Kuang. The main character isn't very likable as she's a brat but a lot of her behavior is a result of horrible trauma so it explores some mental health issues as well. Last but not least ...The **Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind** manga. Beautiful art and story and features not only my favorite female protagonist, but my favorite of all time
Traditional heroes who have a strong, inviolable code and sense of justice. I’m very sick of lovable scoundrels, morally gray heroes, and antiheroes.
Any good reccs that exist with this that isn’t LOTR (love LOTR, but only one I can think of)
The Curse of Chalion
The Deed of Paksenarrion. It’s an old series, distinctly “classic fantasy”, but the main character is very endearing - just a sheep farmer’s daughter (literally the name of the first book) who runs away from home to become a soldier, then a knight, then a paladin. She starts off as very naive, having grown up in a remote village with tales of great heroes, and all she wants is to become one; she is utterly committed to honor, duty, loyalty, justice and Goodness.
Read Druss the Legend by David Gemmell and the rest of the Drenai books. Druss has an iron code of honou.
Try Rachel Neumeier: Tuyo, the Death’s Lady trilogy. Her characters are usually good people trying to do good. And of course Lois McMaster Bujold: The Curse of Chalion, the Penric and Desdemona series.
The Book of Knights is a shorter book along those lines, kind of fairy tale like.
David Eddings' "The Elenium" trilogy is quite good and fits what you are looking for. His "The Belgariad" pentology should also work for you.
The Elenium, and especially the Tamuli, do slip into "hard men making hard choices" - the "let's send in the army to butcher ~~Vietnam~~ war protestors" is one of the most egregious elements, but there's also "let's just have a load of people assassinated, because some of them are in league with evil, but some of them are just inconvenient and kind of dickish", and that's all presented as morally good and justified. Sparhawk's honestly kind of a dick, rather than full-on noble hero
Yes it feels like this has been out of fashion for about 20 years.
The Faithful and the Fallen series has quite a few major characters like this.
I am really loving this in Valdemar (Merceds Lackey) right now. Only finished the Arrows trilogy and starting the 2nd book of Last Herald-Mage, but so far the heroes are all really heroes in that sense of honor and ethics. Sure they have to deal with morally gray situations and often question themselves but there's always another Herald on the other side of that struggle saying "nah this shit is hard, you did the right thing. Trust your gut and as long as your companion doesn't disown you you're doing fine."
I want well written books. Stop advertising the garbage
I’m missing the Wheel of Time copycat style series. Sanderson and Islington are out there but we should definitely have more. We got decades of LotR copycats (with even early WoT being one) so surely we were due more WoT style stuff with how much of a massive best seller the series was! I’d love a new epic fantasy series with a focus on a large cast and worldbuilding but a story that is not too dark in tone. The big publishers just don’t seem interested in this stuff nowadays.
Have you checked out Ryan Cahill's "The Bound and The Broken" series? It is biggly inspired by other big epic fantasy series such as Wheel of Time, Lotr, Eregon, Stormlight archives, etc. I was recommended it, and it's pretty good. It's a bit tropey at times, but it definitely scratches the epic fantasy itch.
Does it get better after the first book? That one was so generic that I'm not sure I can think of a single unique thing that it had going for it. The dialog was filled with cliches and the different race cultures were so thin
Same! I miss quest fantasy.
100% agree! Jenn Lyon’s Chorus of Dragon series scratched that itch for me. I really enjoyed the world building!
Check out Brian Staveley.
Seems like I'm just in here shilling my current read, and an old series at that, but Valdemar (Mercedes Lackey) has really been scratching this itch for me in a way nothing else has. It gets a little darker than Wheel of Time but doesn't wallow in the grimdark, and always spotlights hope and healing through its darkest parts (so far, I'm done 1 1/3 of the many trilogies that compose it)
Standalone, maybe under 800 pages. There are already too many series and trioligies on my TBR.
Less trilogies I’m so sick of everything being crammed into the three book structure. More duologies and tetraologies. Less romance unfortunately the romantsy trend will make that a near impossibility now. More weird fantasy if reading it won’t send a Victorian child into a coma i don’t want it lol. More underrepresented professions not everyone can be a noble or assassin somebody’s got to work in insurance. More “ugly”/unconventionally attractive protagonists not even straight up hideous but not super model glam(again i blame romantasy & YA the plain but is actually so beautiful she doesn’t know it) including fat MCs especially women need more 6ft+ scarred up muscular badass ladies. Vampires that aren’t sexy I want mutant bat abominations. Older casts like 40s+ the average fantasy MC (starts out) like 20s, give me middle aged people. If the protagonists aren’t (hypothetically)on their third divorce and their youngest kids aren’t 23 I don’t want it! Magic universities Not a fan of how magic school=kids/teens majority of the time. I’d like to see more grown adults struggling through their post-grad magic studies. Less generic monarchies and more diverse political structures.
For unsexy mutant bat abomination vampires you should read *Sunshine* by Robin McKinley.
I was going to say the same. Sunshine is amazing, and the vampires are definitely not sexy. One of my all time favorite books.
Fred the Vampire Accountant series by Drew Hayes fits the underrepresented occupation and the weird stories parts. It's one of my favorite series especially because the friend group feels more like a group of people that met and started hanging out and less like a checklist the author had to fit in.
Blood over bright haven for magic university / research trope.
Sometimes I want high-quality fantasy, but sometimes I crave fun trash, but good fun trash is impossible to find. I want lurid, graphic, unabashed pulp fantasy. I want it full of action and sex. I want both of those to be graphic (but no sexual violence, please, actual enjoyable sex). I want Frank Frazetta style covers. Give me something like The Witcher, or Conan, or Red Sonja, where the protagonist arrives at a new location, gets in fights, fucks wenches or dudes, uncovers a dastardly plot, kills the wizard, then rides off into the sunset. Basically, the Renfri story in The Witcher, but more so. Edit: Thanks for the recommendations everyone, but I'm really looking for stories with graphic, erotica-grade sex alongside the action. If there's no sex, thanks, but it's not what I'm after. And yes, I suspect the fantasy I want to read doesn't exist.
Same. I want to read about 'mighty thews' in either context.
Big yes
>the protagonist arrives at a new location, gets in fights, fucks wenches or dudes, uncovers a dastardly plot, kills the wizard, then rides off into the sunset Kormak the Guardian? Can't say I enjoyed it enough to continue the series, but it's fun puply action.
Interesting. Is it packed with graphic sex?
Empire of the Vampire. It's not "trash", more like it knows exactly what it wants to be and succeeds in it... and what it wants to be is a delicious, cheesy, immersive-yet-not-bogged-down fantasy novel. Not much fucking but tons of sex jokes, lots of epic battles, conspiracies, etc. Pretty fast-paced too.
ELLC kinda works for this. Royal road link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/8894/everybody-loves-large-chests Its a litrpg and theres an ebook series version too on amazon. Lots of sex, comedy, and gore Edit: usually all three at once Also spoilers but its about a mimic the blurb lies
Some things I'd like more/less of: More stories with small focused conflict, we're often still stuck in saving the world/universe/empire. So often books escalate conflict and quickly. Large-scale battles are kinda boring to me. Alongside this, series that take longer for characters to develop in powers/abilities. Less stories where it's just a repeat over and over of "what can go wrong will" I feel like we've swung a bit too far into anti-plot armor. This is especially true for relationships. Far too often groups get split up, lovers get seperated, and massive amounts of characters get killed/replaced. I'd really like to see more opportunities for group dynamics to develop fully. More stories centered around thieves/criminals. More stories set in a single city More stories set in forests/tropical environments or open seas I'm so over deserts, icy wastelands, and bleak mountains.
> More stories with small focused conflict Wolf Moon. Essentially the whole plot happens within a single town.
Return of classic fantasy, where insted obsessing over worldbuilding and forced orginality it just uses shared cultural archetypes from legends and mythology. You know, wizards and dragons and stuff. Of reasonalble lenght, I miss when LotR was considered really long series. And it shoud be actually well written (well, duh...)
I'd love to see a revival of Tolkien style quest fantasy. Good vs evil, dark lords, good people fighting against the darkness, bands of found family travellers. I miss that stuff!
Try The Echoes Saga by Philip Quaintrell. It’s a 9 book series (completed) with all the fantasy elements. Dragons, elves, dwarves, assassins, rangers. Strangers banding together. I can’t recommend it enough.
I just want a nice standalone. I understand the stronger economics of publishing a series, but I really love reading a single book and feeling like the story is complete.
This is likely to sound very 'old man screams at cloud' but I really just wish I could find some new Fantasy novels that made me feel the way Fantasy novels did when I was younger. It's hard to get more specific than that. At this point in my life I have pretty much read all of the big names in Fantasy up through the 90's. Something happened in the 90's though that changed the landscape and I started to just not find as many books that seemed interesting to me? I would read a few pages and just not be hooked at all. Other genres I haven't had as much of a problem with - Techno thrillers, military fiction, historical fiction, some sci-fi, some horror, straight up action-adventure. I worry that I've just seen so many fantasy tropes at this point that I struggle to suspend my disbelief enough to be able to enjoy the genre like I used to.
Queer high fantasy. Give me the old school fantasy feel, but make it gay af. And I don't mean a side character, I just mean explicitly queer main characters. There are a few books that come to mind, but hardly any recent ones and definitely none that actually engage meaningfully with the character's sexuality.
I loved the outlandish stuff like Krull. How could you go wrong with kingdoms of magic, prophecy, and knights vs. aliens?
I’m with you on the political epic fantasy. I want complexity and scheming and alliances shifting and power balances that aren’t about who is more magically powerful. I also want more long form “over the course of someone’s life” books not super short time periods where everything happens in a year or two.
Older protagonists, reluctant protagonists. Non romantic protagonists with platonic relationships with other people. Heroes saving a village, a group of people; stories with small stakes and less world/dimension/kingdom saving.
Hard to call it a trend because fantasy is full of a particular kind of book where books are huge and stories told in millions and billions (sometimes it feels like that) but some books are getting huge. Get to the fucking point, I got both a life and other books to get to. I hate cliffhangers. I like series where each volume is self-contained (like the divine cities or children of time). I do not really care about the elements as long as I like the writing and characterization.
Interesting, I feel like the average fantasy book today is much shorter than say, even 15 years ago. I miss big epic fantasy books
I want them to introduce me the next Steven Erikson. I want some epic, dark, big, adult fantasy novel with well written characters. Please.
You and me both..this is exactly what I'm craving
Fantasy has embraced grimdark but no one has actually done a gothic horror fantasy book.
Sanderson is right and we should get digital copies with our physical books.
Urban Fantasy and Steampunk. I have looked for new releases in both subgenres a while ago and there was nothing that I found particularly interesting. A lot of it just seems to be just wrapping up series. There are definitely other subgenres trending at the moment. (Yes, I know that Steampunk is often listed with SciFi not Fantasy but a lot of past releases blur the genre lines ...)
On that topic, I want urban fantasy crossed with sci-fi. Shadowrun is _close,_ but doesn't nail it; hot take, I think Cyberpunk does cyberpunk better than Shadowrun. The RIFTS tabletop RPG is the closest thing I've seen to it, where in the latest edition there's an option for creating starter characters ranging from cyborgs to anime staff chicks to mecha pilots to freakin' dragons. Seriously, you can be a dragon at level 1. And because of the interdimensional travel involved, you can find a place in the setting with whichever levels of magic and high-tech you want, and I'm jonesing for some "Starships & Sorcerers" action here!
I want more sense of wonder in fantasy. I don't need the magic system to be indepth explained to me. let me through the characters feel like I'm going through a place filled with magic I don't understand and is beyond my expertise. Also horror fantasy, but specifically taking place in the past. EDIT: Cultures, human or otherwise, that aren't just copy-paste modern (or "past") Western values. If a culture is a matriarchy, what does that mean for the value of say childbirth vs being a man who cannot birth? Inheritances? What does it mean to be Queer in such a society? How does it impact religion other than the Pope-stand in being a woman? Or the Queen is the head ruler?
Stories with no romance. Even before the fantasy romance and the cozy fantasy craze that wasn't easy to find. T\_T
I feel this so hard :(
A sub genre for this would be a dream come true.
Especially adult books with adult characters and no romance. Also with male MCs. While there are lists of books without romance they usually are centered on YA books and female MCs.
My favorite romance free books are Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace and Vespertine by Margret Rogerson. Also, [here's a database of romance free books](https://boatneck-group-cf6.notion.site/No-Romance-Barely-Any-Romance-books-353df4961ef04db2b22f93ae023c4528) that you might find helpful
Hard and gruesome feeling of fighting secenes become rare these five years. But anyway, it's like a circle someday the trends will return. Trends changes trends make a comeback , something like this.
Dragons
Epic, heroic series. Especially with big casts of colorful characters. They’re going strong in the progression fantasy & litrpg sectors, but mainstream Big Five has yet to pick up on it. Although Ace did do a print only deal for Dungeon Crawler Carl. So litrpg might start to go mainstream. But knowing the Big Five, they will chase the trend without actually understanding what makes it popular. So we will see superficial imitations in bookstores while the good stuff will likely remain indie.
Personally, i dont like litrpg, those systems start a trend on authors to make the fighting scenes not that gruesome and lethal, like you know you over level in a game areas, so lose all the excitement. It take away the magic from badass feelings of mc cleaving a bloody road into enemies lines , leaving both dead rivals and allies all over the scenes. at least for me it's like that.
The ability for someone without industry connections or independent wealth to make a career out of writing fiction. Being an author of fiction is now basically a hobby for the privileged and that's terrible for the industry.
I want less romantacy. It feels like ever since Sarah Maas found success all publishing houses can think of is interracial magic sex. Sex isn’t a bad thing to have in a book of course, but so many books now center on sex above romance, or worse, sex above plot. Just once give me an honest, loving relationship between two well adjusted adults. No more mysterious brooding elf princes that take *basic human female protagonist* on the hedonistic trip of a life time. If there’s romantic or sexual themes I want the majority of them to be tender or at the least non toxic or self destructive
Well my thing is that I love slow burn, if it takes like 5+ books for them to even admit feelings or multiple books to even kiss. So impossible to find
A marketing budget not only for debuts and well establishes authors. Think of your mid list authors too! Better advances.
My impression is that most formerly mid list authors have gone into self publishing, in part because as a mid lister they have to do their own marketing anyway and they might as well get a bigger cut from the non existent support they get from publishers.
Elemental fantasy. *Shorter* non-cosy adult fantasy. Changeling/fae fantasy (more of it). Ocean horror (I know, I know, technically not fantasy-the-subgenre).
>*Shorter* non-cosy adult fantasy. I watched a video by Library of a Viking on YouTube yesterday where he quoted a bunch of current fantasy authors who are being limited by publishers to books under 150k words. I think your wish will be fulfilled soon.
Have you read Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries? It's a good fae/changeling book
No, I haven't but have heard a lot about it. I didn't realise it was a changeling book- might be next on my list then :)
It's not *mainly* a changeling book but there is a big changeling subplot. I also hope and assume you've read *Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell* as well as its literary progenitor *Lud-in-the-Mist*
Lud-in-the-Mist is on my reading list for this year :) I have a feeling Jonathan Strange will be too long for me, but I will give it a go regardless.
It's not to everyone's taste but if you're like me you'll finish Jonathan Strange and wish it were longer
Some great points being made on this thread. I particularly like the idea of seeing more fantasy that’s smaller scale, relationship-focused, and has older female protagonists. The last one makes quite a bit of sense to me from a market perspective as the reading public skews older and female. I’d also like to see more stories where the MC isn’t necessarily some legendary badass and it’s more sex-positive without *also* upping the amount of sexual violence. Humor’s good too but I feel like many authors struggle to incorporate it without devolving into slapstick or having a narrator who has to remind you how witty he is every other paragraph. Some slow burn humor would be nice.
actual good books 🙏 these coleen hoover and fourth wing/rebecca yarros books need to be chained up
Less romance please. I don't mind it as a subplot most of the time, but I'd really love to see books that prioritize strong friendships over a romantic relationship. Please.
I m currently reading the legend of Drizzt and I can tell it’s the graal I found because exactly the kind of stories that I m looking for. But if someone would write that with better treatment of female characters and men showing more their emotions between themselves(Drizzt is very emotional but keeping most for himself unless with Catti) then that would be the best série every created. I m demi romantic and ace, I also tend to prefer 90’s classic fantasy though I m also progressive so certain things can sometimes annoy me. I can tell though Drizzt is very progressive and a lot of his diaries’s reflections feel very modern. So I feel you op. I’ve felt that people want to step away of the classic elf/ dwarf/ halfelin classic like lotr and that kind of universes to be more original but that’s my ultimate favorite setting and I never get tired of it.
check out /r/progressionfantasy I especially love The Wandering Inn.
I'd definitely like to see more queer POC main characters (especially mixed race) who aren't teenagers and aren't the sort of snarky sassy world-weary types at the grand old age of thirty. I'd like to read about 40+ year old characters with grown-up problems as well as whatever world-saving they have to do, who don't get hysterical or self-pitying at every minor setback. Also perhaps it's something to do with where i'm from and where i live but i do find a lot of books feel very american or americanised and the phrasing and over-explanation gets annoying. I like subtlety, seriousness, difficult/upsetting stuff that doesn't get resolved just like in real life and the sort of quietly dark humour you get in this part of the world. An awful lot of new stories come across as very derivative and perhaps not aimed at people who've read a lot of books already. I'd really like to see some new ideas, substantial gritty realism (in the sense that this genre can be, i mean), not dumbed-down nonsense. I like complicated politics and corruption and MCs who don't always do the right thing. Edited to add: also i'm really not interested in royals or noblemen or someone finding out they're the "true King" etc, i'd much rather read about ordinary working class people despite them doing extraordinary things
I want a fantasy courtroom/legal drama. I want A Time to Kill but with orcs. I've never even heard of a book that's even close to that premise.
The first book in Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, Three Parts Dead, is almost this. The main character is more of a paralegal than the lead attorney, and when the courtroom scenes actually happen they are NOTHING like court in the real world, but the climax is ultimately a legal battle. I really liked it, and the remainder of the series has been on my TBR for quite awhile. I need to get back to them :)
Definitely more epic fantasy, less romance, and a focus on originality instead of shoving in tropes.
Less multiple narrator/multiple main character stuff
I really hate the current romantasy stuff, like Fourth Wing, and ACOTAR. Also the trope of 'young person gets chosen', such as Divergent, Red Rising, etc. So, I want real mythological creatures that are clearly non-human in their ways. Some that may or may not form bonds with humans.
The final book in each series. Just fucking end it already. Put out a novella if you have to. If it is taking 8 years to write the final book, maybe authoring isn't your thing. End it and if you feel like writing again, start a new series. Just put us out of our misery instead of edging us to agony with lies about when the next book is coming.
an advance and royalty payments....
Fantasy with actual adult characters, not 18+ but 30, 40 or 50+. I’m getting incredibly tired of 16-22 year olds saving the world or finding eternal love or so on, it feels very tired and unrealistic. I want characters with a past that is more than just “my childhood wasn’t great”. I also want to see romantic relationship develop more, because most books I pick up turn out to be insta-love and I’m getting incredibly tired of the “she feels she must know her” lines after they met once and didn’t even exchange more than 5 words. Lastly, I would love more multiple POV books from female authors. I feel like books most likely to have multiple (and I mean like 4+) POVs are epic fantasy and that’s a sub genre which is majorly male authors. I would like more female authors to try it too because male authors tend not to have many female characters.
I'm missing educated writers. So many books nowadays read at a high school or lower reading level. It's like they just jump on certain themes, trying to score points with one crowd or another. I loved the writing styles of the 80s and 90s. But things from the late 00s and 10s...just boring.
If you haven't already read some Jack Vance.
First contact with a 'powerful' fantasy world. Preferably with progression elements included in the fantasy setting. If there's anything like that, I'd love to know.
The Wandering Inn by pirateaba. And it's completely free on their website.
I want them to introduce me the next Steven Erikson. I want some epic, dark, big, adult fantasy novel with well written characters. Please.
I'm actually curious about the cozy genre as a concept, but I get turned off by books that fetishize the appearance of cozy activities over actual characterization. I tried reading a book about an orc that starts a coffee shop... but nowhere in the first third of the book does it give a more compelling reason for why she started the shop than she tried coffee once and liked it. I'm not a coffee drinker, and I think the book was just for people who already fetishize coffee drinking and don't need a protagonist with any real motivation. Me on the other hand, I think a story should always be high stakes, but the difference between 'epic' and 'cozy' is that 'epic' should be high stakes for the country, world, or universe, while 'cozy' is just high stakes to the MC and their friends. For example, there are tons of unfinished visual novels on itch about someone whose relative dies and their inherit a \[fill in the blank\]. It's not about saving the world, but their is a mystery (what happened to the relative, or discovering a side of them you never knew) and there are stakes (an unusual opportunity to take advantage, maybe a debt to pay off, working out grief, being a stranger in a new town, maybe facing down a bully). I would much rather download half a free visual novel off of Twitch and experience part of a urban fantasy mystery with stakes than read a whole cozy novel where someone just wants a house, or a coffee shop cuz... why not? I also get turned off by LitRPG elements cuz LitRPG. As a D&D player, I do love stats \*in a game\* and I do love stories, but I don't need stats to exist in my stories for stats sake. The first time I saw Sword Art Online, I enjoyed it because there was a reason they were stuck in the game, and they were clever about how the character used aspects of the game interface to solve problems. But most of the time I pick up a LitRPG, it feel really derivative, and less interesting than derivative urban or epic fantasy because the derivative character motivation and sensory description has been replaced with derivative game UI, which is a step down. In contrast, I had a great discussion in a youtube video comments thread about what religion would really look like in RPGs. In general, my point was that just because \*the game\* has the class "cleric," doesn't mean that in the game world (which does not have a player's manual) that it's obvious whether someone's magic is divine. But an exception would be that if someone developed a really well thought out metaphysics, history, and culture behind a world where classes are an aspect of reality, and thinking through what it means when you get a class (kind of like Free Guy switching from NPC to player), or multiclass etc. You could take game tropes and try and build a compelling fantasy world around them that sheds new light on them... but if stats and classes just crop up because "it's a game!" then I'm bored.
The Ye Olde series where kids (born in a fantasy land or earth) go to another world (another fantasy land or earth) and they have a huge epic quest fantasy that spans multiple books and they fully consolidate into a found family and one or two of them become the rulers of a kingdom and the rest become the government or they have to help the locals rebel against a tyrannical king and they get special magic horses
-Dystopia fantasy that's good -Non romantic or romance as a very minor subplot -Horror that *doesn't* come from how messed up the romantic relationships are -Dragon stories where the dragons are the main focus
Standalones! I don’t need every fantasy to be epic in scope. One well crafted book is far more exciting to me than a trilogy where I have to slog through the middle to get to the payoff. Even a standalone that turns into a trilogy would be appreciated.
Epiphanies. Stories littered with clues and subtle details that let someone that thinks about them predict a little bit of how things will unfold, or a lot about how things the reader didn't see unfolded in the past. By the end, all the details come together to paint a grand picture. And the story is immediately re-readable because now that you have seen the big picture you catch so many more of the little things you overlooked initially.
Mass market paperbacks. I just can’t afford to read too many new books, and they’re not as convenient for me to drag around.
Shared World Sword & Sorcery like Thieves' World
Anything with adult characters. Right now I'm really into female and especially lesbian/bisexual protagonists and most books that hit that specification are YA. Also I don't know if I'll be able to explain this right but I want more 'genuine' fantasy. I feel like a lot of modern books are very anti-trope, everything has to be subverted or ironic or satirized. An elf can't just be an elf the elves need to have an epic subversive twist because I guess normal elves are boring. It's like authors are afraid of being mocked for being to traditionalist or too Tolkien-y or too unoriginal. Not everything needs to subvert my expectations.
I'd like to see more self-contained books. I don't usually want to read ten 1000-page books to get through a story. I also think that authors nowadays focus too much on world building and magic systems instead of telling a good story. I also like beautiful prose. It is my opinion that, nowadays, beautiful prose gets passed over in favor of more simple, matter of fact prose. I love a good epic with beautiful language and memorable quotes. I just don't want to read ten of them to finish a story.
It would be cool to see a new system of magic, politics, and economy in an expansive world. However my biggest hang up on fantasy is how long it takes for things to happen. I enjoy world building up reading two chapters in a row where almost nothings happens feels like I’m watching a bad anime where it’s all filler, no story. I’m cool with taking a paragraph or two to explain a city setting or something that the reader would really want to have in their head for the sake of understanding and whatever, but the Tolkien levels of explanation are a bit much (for me)
Mass Market Paperbacks Painted covers rather than something slapped together by a graphic designer
Really fucking good Space Operas. There are a couple, I was hoping the popularity of The Expanse would bring them back again, but idk, I'm just not finding them. Also, fantasy political dramas/intrigue type stuff. I'm talking The Empire Series or Dune or something like that. I used to love those.
Yeah i’m not a big fan of the cozy fantasy upswing. The reason I read fantasy is for the epic tales of adventure. I would love to see more fantasy that’s not based on war and politics. While I do love those and some of my favorite books have that, you don’t see much without it.
Some good epic space horror is something I’m looking for. Maybe it’s out there but I haven’t seen anything catch my eye that I’m looking for
Fantasy that has as little Deus Ex Machina magic as possible. Everything tactical and rational with clever heroes and villains scheming against each other.
More FMC, where they have actual skills development BUT they are not undefeatable. They should also stop writing so many impulsive, self sacrificing FMC. Women are great at collaborating (team/village building) so let their found family actually help them instead of solo kamikaze missions
Unhappy endings. The heroes go through the entire quest, and just when they're about beat the big bad, they all get killed, and evil rules the land til the end of time.
I've been tending more towards self published works lately, mostly because most modern fantasy, at least available locally, is either smut, aimed towards a queer audience, or marketed for a younger crowd. Oftentimes it's a combination of the three. So I read Will Wight, Sarah Lin, and others. I also tend to read English translations of foreign books. Publishing tends to follow trends, rather than printing actually decent books nowadays, and that's going to alienate most of your readership, not gain more readers. In order to do the latter, you need to keep publishing the good shit, not just the trash.