Top 10 Best Selling Fantasy Series of All-Time 

What I don´t understand is why you didn´t call it that way before watching this video. I mean, it has always been THE daddy.

SoT was my first adult fantasy series too. At the time I loved it, and Richard was my favorite character. I think the controversy is Mostly because Terry goodkind is such an arrogant meme lol, and he kinda 'stole' a bunch of tropes. I'd have to reread it as an adult to make up my mind

Kahlan Amnell is my favorite character. I loved this series. I even liked the shitty tv series 😂

That's because they've been making horrible fantasy adaptations and interpret that to mean audiences don't want it

It's very sad 😭

Have patience, they’re looking for a studio partner that adapts the whole cosmere for years to come.

😂😂

I read the first 3 before even knowing the hate it got and I really enjoyed them...never got to reading the rest but if I get enough time I might just give it another go

Fully agree with everything said here, including the other reply - I enjoyed the first few books, had no idea about the controversy until I had already dropped the series on my own. Well said!

I'll another who enjoyed the early entries, for their quirkiness/absurdness, then abandoned the series for reasons you mention, and have no desire to resume it.

Yep, I agree 100%

This comment makes me happy 😊

@@libraryofaviking One was the Dark Tower and I agree it was great! The college books took priority. Sigh. Thank you for making my winter reading list a nostalgic yet new one all at the same time 😊

It has apparently sold around 37 million, so yeah. Might be considered YA?

@@GuardianKnightoftheRealm his Sword of Shannara series isn't YA

@@314159vedic I know. It has never been marketed or officially categorized as YA. However, it is definitely not R-rated either, which leads me to speculate that whoever made the list that this video is based on may have omitted it due to it perhaps not being "adult" enough. I am not weighing on on whether or not that is accurate, just offering a possible reason as to why a 37 million copy-selling series was conspicuously not on a list of top-selling series that starts at 10 million sold.

I agree, Shannara is amazing! I wonder why it isn’t on here.

I’ve been reading the first novel and it’s almost mesmerizing. It can be considered philosophical maybe.

The first novel was incredible. I would suggest stopping there. She started to go off the rails with the Lestat books.

@@bbarnhouse9022I completely agree. Interview is far and away her best.

Well sure you had to name him that when you saw the hourglass pupils ⏳

Riftwar is in my tbr!

Great series, Jimmy the hand is still one of my fave characters from any series.

Raymond E. Feist has sold 15 million plus books. Given that most of the books he's written (but not all) are part of the Riftwar Cycle, he probably has sold over 10 million in that series alone. Not sure where this channel got its numbers though, so maybe they have a better idea.

Considering sources claim magician alone has sold 10 million copies, he might need an update.

👀

Good point, and possibly relevant with relation to LOTR, but I can tell you as someone who has worked in the publishing field, very few books maintain any kind of relevant sales after the first couple of years. Sure, some books become classics and continue to sell year after year, but there are many very good books that go out of print after their initial printing. There are so few books that continue to sell year after year and decade after decade, that it's hard to even quantify what special qualities they might possess. As a fantasy book, LOTR is unique in how long it has endured and how many new editions have been printed. Does this give it some kind of unfair advantage in an all-time best-selling list like this? Sure it does. But maybe your favorite series will achieve that same distinction someday. More than likely, it will not.

@wolfetom10 I completely agree! All I'm getting at is acknowledging how many copies these top 10 series have sold and am wondering how well they did initially. Since they did so well, they're all still being bought, but I'm wondering how well that initial first few years were

Wiki is saying Harry Potter is now more than 600 million worldwide. I know this list was 'adult' fantasy, however I think keeping HP off the list is a travesty.

@@UNIDiver I think you could consider half of this series as adult fantasy because the books become darker and more brutal with processing of the story. If you just compare the first book with the books from the fourth an on you really also see a great development in her (J.K. Rowling's) writing style. But I guess this is still the "entrance" fantasy for millions of childs nowadays although the woke community currently tries to cancel her and her books. These were the books that got me into fantasy and the second series was LOTR so my journey was pretty much predetermined until today :)

​@@nicowagner2427I disagree, HP starts out as a middle grade series and shifts more into YA at around book 4 but I would never classify any of the books as 'adult fantasy' despite the somewhat darker themes in books 5-7

I adored Sword of Truth! I think the books have some wacky and wonky elements to them but I wouldn’t call any of them bad until book seven or eight. I think he was great character writer. Especially Nicci comes to mind.

Thank you for sharing your experience and for watching! Your comment is definitely putting me off reading it anytime soon.

I agree with Philip. I read the first book in the late 90s when I started teaching 3rd grade. We did SSR every day after lunch. (Silent Sustained Reading, or as the students said “shut up, sit down and read”) I wanted to model reading a chapter book for them, to prove they could finish one. After reading something near their level they decided it wasn’t a true representation given how fast I could read. I only read these particular books during SSR, no home reading. So I selected Wizard’s First Rule. It wasn’t terrible, but it was very derivative, especially of LOTR. My opinion was, meh. Knowing there were more the kids decided I should read the second one. Within the first 3 chapters I couldn’t read any more. It felt like a tired rehash of the first book. This sparked a discussion of why and when you DNF a book. Seeing me read them were great lessons for my students. Many years later I learned of the controversy around Goodkind, but I had long before decided I wasn’t going to read anything else by him. I’d rarely tell someone not to read a book. Almost all books will appeal to some people, but I would never recommend these books.

Sword of truth= worst book I have ever read

Honestly sometimes I think I've read different books. The series is full of indipendant strong women??? Kahlan, Cara etc. Each to their own :)

@@kevinhove6893I totally agree. It’s so bad that it’s really hard to believe that it’s popular.

I don’t think LOTR is underrated - I think they’re pretty universally acknowledged as both great classics and best fantasy series of all time. Tolkien is very highly regarded in the literary world.

He had a few small series and all the drenai stuff legen, Wayland and all that add up to a decent sized series but he was never as popular as the more Tolkeinesq or tolkein inspired.

WoT and ASOIAF are the two series that made me a person who will only read trilogies and then only if they are finished. I have both of those series in the original hard cover.

I totally agree. The very least that needs to happen is the author needs to finish the series ...or be the kind of author (like Joe Abercrombie) whom you KNOW will finish the series. Who wants to be left dangling because the author has either lost interest or lost control? I know I don't.

@@jannertfol I agree. I like Michael J Sullivan's method. He writes all the novels at once then releases them over time. Still if a series isn't finished there are so many out there that I want to read that are finished. My TBR has over 20 completed trilogies on it that I want to get to... I'll be just fine.

His prose is good, and for a while I was hooked ...but I got SO fed up with Kvothe! He is such a Mary Sue character! Nothing is ever too hard for him. He's beautiful, smart, talented, instantly masters every skill he needs, learns languages at the drop of a hat, everybody falls for him-except his enemies, of course. The first book was pretty bizarre in this regard, but by the time he was saving the entire universe AND bedding the fairy queen on his summer vacation from school in book two, I had to quit. I will not be reading the final book if Rothfuss ever gets around to finishing it. It's a pity, because Rothfuss is talented at worldbuilding. But his characters definitely need work, if they are going to be the least bit believable. Something has to challenge them besides their own talent and enterprise.

@@jannertfol Can't argue here.I liked book 1 but I haven't read Wise Man's fear though 😁

Pfffft my type of person 😂

Did you watch the intro of this video? :)

It’s also not a series

@@EmyN Technically it was. The first part was published in 1605. The second part was published in 1615--it's a true sequel. Most available versions just put them both together.

@@theimaginarium Yeah, but you know what I mean

@@EmyN true.

You will enjoy Gabaldon - either the Outlander series or her Lord John books - if you like fantasy, military history, late 18th century history in Europe and the USA, and don't mind some realistic romance (not overly sweet BS) thrown in.

​@@literary_bitesbig fan of Patrick O'Brian so I am sure military history and a bit of light romance won't be a problem.

I look forward to reading it!

I cant for the life of me see outlander as any kind of fantasy book.

@@GuunbaNo, they’re really not fantasy. They’re historical drama with a bit of time travel thrown in.

Not the biggest fan of the show. It just felt like smut, and this is coming from a history buff. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the books were better

I like smut because sexuality is part of life. But the books are far more nuanced because the smut is all what you make it in your head. Gabaldon is comfortable with kink though so people who aren't probably won't like her books.@@MsFiercePierce

My husband also dislikes it. His answer was “a little whimsy goes a long way.” He also dislikes Douglas Adams, and I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying Adams’ works. I’m like WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?! 😂

Idk much about Terry but Douglas Adams is a legend. His humour is quirky and awkwardly humourous. He literally writes an entire build up just for one joke and it lands well enough excellently. @@georginatoland

I LOVE the Mayfair Witches. I'm currently doing a re-read of the first book of that series. George R. R. Martin is the only author that has made me chuck a book across a room.

@@314159vedic I confess that I was given the first book in GoT in hardback when it was first published. I didn’t warm up to it at all and so I gave it away. I imagine that copy would be worth big bucks today. 😞

That's insane!

My introduction to fantasy was The Sword of Shannara.

@@314159vedic he was one of mine too, I love his books, I still read them today, twenty years after I first started. He's got a charm that outweighs his weaknesses, in my opinion