Subscribe for fantasy reviews, lore, and theory videos! Ta'veren | Cosmere Enthusiast | Worldbuilding Connoisseur
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It was so refreshing to see some love for Tamora Pierce. I love all of her books and she is one of my favorite authors. The Circle of Magic series helped me become a fantasy reader.
Most writers have four options for a fantasy protagonist. The first option is if it's a well educated person the writer will probably need a lot of exposition that will feel unnatural and forced. To avoid that exposition they typically use one of the three remaining options. The ignorant farm boy trope, the Isekai trope, or the amnesia trope. These three options create protagonists who know almost nothing about the world, so the reader can learn about the world at the same time as the protagonist. Generally this will feel more natural to the reader. It is possible to have a well educated fantasy protagonist without endless exposition, but it is much more difficult to the point most writers won't bother trying. It's much easier to have a well educated character if the world is similar to Earth. The more different the world is, the harder it is to explain that world to the reader without it sounding like a history lesson.
If you like the setting and premise of Twilight (even if you hated the actual book) or the Modern Real World aspect to Harry Potter, or Anime like Akira, and Jujutsu Kaizen, or TV like X-Files, Grimm, or Dresden Files*, then you're secretly a fan of _"Urban Fantasy"!_ UF also has the benefit of typically being shorter, quicker books, that run the gamut from Kids, to YA , to Adult Audience focuses! Admittedly, it tends YA and AA (Horror), but there's a lot of variety, lots of fun to be had, and often feature books you can get through in a day or 2! here're some recommendations from the "lighter fare" pile! (the best examples from the genre, imo, tend to be more robust, resembling traditional fantasy books in size and density... they're also rare in the genre... but today, we're talking quick-reads!) Kids: Goosebumps is somewhat quintessential here! Literally _any_ "modern day kid encounters the supernatural" could be called UF. 😅 YA: House Of Night (P.C. & Kristin Cast) (Highschool Drama... With Vampires!) this is a long series, but it's complete, and the individual books are very quick reads! EDIT: YA and a half: Night-Wars (Graham Masterton). Your dreams can kill you, Night Warriors are regular people during the day, and saviors by night! AA: The Last Werewolf (Glen Duncan, stand-alone), Void City Series (J.F. Lewis, bloody, s3xy, funny, scary!) *yes, I know what I did there with Dresden Files ☺
I read the Song of the Lioness quartet when I was in high school (a long time ago); while I liked that series, I really loved the Protector of the Small quartet, by the same author - Keladry of Mindelan is one of my favorite book characters ever. Give First Test/Page/Squire/Lady Knight a try. I also loved the Trickster's Choice/Trickster's Queen duology (about Alanna's daughter, Aly), and the Bekah Cooper series.
Hey! I have a good reccomendation for you. It's called Swipe by Evan Angler. It's a dystopian series set in the future US with really good characters and it's centered around you having to be Swiped once you're 13 or you're an outcast. It's really good!
I don’t recall hearing them mentioned in any videos so have you read the Renshai books by Mickey Zucker Reichert? I remember enjoying the first two trilogies years ago but only read the first book of the third trilogy because the others weren’t out yet at the time and I haven’t got back into the series yet.
Went straight to library to get audiobook of Nettle & Bone and found it is Duration : 09:22:49 I've listened to a lot longer but that is a long listen for something under 300 pages. No ebook for me to check out. Would love to read it.
Try again. Half is children books and rest is no real fantasy. Only fantasy one is the Leiber stuff, wich is ancient. I would trow in such as: the last unicorn by Beagle (not a children story!), books by Terry Brooks, almost all of them pretty short, Zelazny‘s too. Tanith Lee. Pretty all 80’s fantasy novels were short. Short and sweet, I would say. But I‘m old and I was here for some contemporary fantasy recommendations.
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip are my favorite short fantasy books. You can find many editions for both that are under 300 pages.
I was gonna watch this casually during a relaxing bath but the dairy joke was so unexpected it really got me 🤣 Would you say Piranesi has similar vibes to the Slow Regard of Silent Things?
Gotta recommend Grendel by John Gardner. It's sort of a Beowulf prequel from the perspective of his first adversary, and it's some of the best first-person narration I've ever read! Themes like colonization, nihilism, and how art can pervert our understanding of the past and reality altogether are all explored to great depths, and it's all somehow done in under 200 pages! One of my favorites. 😄
The first 500 people to use my link will get a 1 month free trial of Skillshare: skl.sh/capturedinwords06241 Let me know all your short fantasy recommendations!
okay okay okay ... great video idea, I'll especially make sure to finally check out the first book in Age of Madness. First Law was quite cool, but a little to much character-focused for my taste. But PLEASE, explain to me, why does everybody put such high praise on Ocean at the End of the Lane? I read that one years ago because it was mentioned on SO MANY horror top lists, and I couldn't have been more disappointed. It's no horror book at all and there's just no point to the story 😅It's so weird and meaningless ... maybe I'm just a barbarian and can't appreciate abstract art or sth like that, but well ... really did not like that one 😆
I could not agree more about the Witcher books. His short stories are amazing! I didn't feel the same about his full length books and stopped after a few books.
The LOL's of "... Howl is rumored to eat the hearts of young girls" + "That's not good!" made me laugh 😂💙📚 Sabriel sounds really interesting to me so I think I'll read that somewhere down the line. :) I'm reading The Dresden files currently & I'm enjoying its dark tones! 😃👍✨️
A few that spring to mind: Diana Wynne Jones has plenty of other fantasy novels that are well worth reading. Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books are short but deep. The Face In the Frost by John Bellairs is one of my favorite very short fantasies. Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber are short and fast-moving, but they aren't standalones; you have to read five to get a complete story. I remember liking the short, silly, lighthearted MythAdventures books by Robert Asprin.
My favorite series with short books are: Alex Verus by Benedict Jack War for the Rose Throne by Peter McLean Fred the Vampire Accountant by Drew Hayes The Last Horizon by Will Wight Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne
As an author who is trying to get myself into the world of books... I started to wonder if one of mine will ever be featured or even mentioned by book reviewers and RU-vidrs... Don't know where to start, though XD
Most booktubers have an email address on their page that you can use to ask if they'd be interested in receiving a free review copy of the book or a PO box that you can just send a copy of your book to. But I can say from personal experience that even a reviewer with under 1000 subs could receive as many as 50 free ebooks and about 10 free physical books each year. So it can be years before they ever get to your book, if they ever get to it. You have to go into it with the expectation that for every 10 you send out, you might only get 1 review. Now if you look at reviewers with over 100k subs, I'm going to guess they receive more books each year than they could ever possibly get to. So the chances of having them showcase the book is even lower. Plus, many of them count on youtube as some sort of income so they need their videos to get views and reviews of well known books do significantly better than reviews of virtually unknown books.
I'm reading this right now and loving it! It's my first read by Sanderson. (I tried reading Tress of the Emerald Sea, but it didn't connect with me, so it went into my dnf)
Hey hey hey i'm also very excited! I think book 4 felt like it could be cut doen a bit because of Venli's flashbacks, Sanderson is aware of this himself. Because most of the things he wanted to show through her flashbacks were already shown in the other books for the story. But we're getting Szeth flashbacks this time around which i'm absolutely stoked for and i CANNOT WAIT COME ON SANDERSON RELEASE THE THING ALREADY.
Tim Curry as Mogget is chef's kiss ✨ Also, I would warmly recommend T. Kingfisher's middle grade/ya work, especially A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking. It was easily my favorite read of 2023.
By the way, have you read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell yet? I remember like a year ago I mentioned it in a comment and you responded that it was on your to-read list. It’s a BIG book, and personally, found the best way to experience it was with the audiobook read by Simon Prebble. But, of course, to each their own.
