I'm on a bad streak right now where I've DNF'd several different series because I'm tired of what I call the "game of thrones effect".
Seems like every fantasy series these days follows that same pattern: a handful of MCs that are integral to the plot because of their lineage. Various political factions vying for power. An ancient evil seething in the background. Ugh.
I'm not looking for a book with hundreds of characters waging war on each other across a vast world. I don't care that the Baron of Backstabbia hates the Count of BagsOfGoldia because his daughter looked at him funny when they were teenagers, and that's why he's going to betray all of his alliances and side with the Duke of NotSoSecretlyAlliedWithTheAncientEvilia. I DON'T CARE.
Simple stories can also be deep and complex. I just want a story with a smallish cast of characters and a plot that doesn't involve the minutia of the politics of a global war, killing gods, genocide of X because Y, or the unmaking of reality.
Stories about exploration. Maybe something focused on a small scale, like thieves in a city. Characters that get swept up in an adventure where the stakes are simply to find a bunch of treasure.
Examples of books I'm not looking for:
ASOIAF aka. Game of Thrones
Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne (DNF)
The Tide Child (DNF)
The Dagger and the Coin (DNF)
Examples of books I loved:
Lord of the Rings
Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn
The Last King of Osten Ard
Legends and Lattes
The Crystal Shard
The Dragonlance chronicles
The Gentleman Bastards (The Lies of Locke Lamora)
I prefer books with an ensemble cast and told from a 3rd person perspective. I'm ok with 1st person perspectives sometimes, but it doesn't happen often.
Please don't recommend any Abercrombie or Sanderson books.
by dmfiend
7 Comments
I’ve really enjoyed E.E Knight’s [Dragoneer](https://a.co/d/g9wF03k) series. Also, have you read the [Chronicles of Narnia](https://a.co/d/7R85rLG)? C.S Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien were friends so I find their series to have a similar energy to them.
If you enjoy legends and lattes, have you read the sequel Bookshops and Bonedust? A book series that is similar to Legends and Lattes is [Can’t Spell Tea Without Treason](https://a.co/d/dsDiUdb).
I haven’t personally read it yet, but I’ve also had [A Fellowship of Bakers and Magic](https://a.co/d/1TQxo6O) recommended to me a bunch of times.
The Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories are some of the classic fantasy in this mold.
You might want to check out the Thieves World short stories. All street-level fantasy by a variety of authors. Mostly single character stories but they’re all set in a shared world.
It’s sci-fi not fantasy, but I think you’d love the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers. Small-scale stories about people caught up in larger events. It’s fantastic.
**Many Tim Powers novels are like this**. He writes “secret histories” that put magical backstories into a well researched historical-fiction style context.
***On Stranger Tides*** is set in the golden age of piracy and follows a a puppet maker turned pirate who encounter voodoo magic on the high seas.
***The Anubis Gates*** sees a modern-day literary scholar go back in time to 1700s England to watch a Coleridge lecture in person, but things go wrong and he gets caught up in another time travellers plans.
***Declare*** is a John LeCarre-style spy story involving djinn, Noah’s ark, and the Cambridge Five. This one might be a bit close to the complex politics of GOT, but that complexity serves the spy story which just follows one main character and his associates. You don’t need to follow the various factions fights with each other, just the ways they affect the protagonist in his investigation/career.
The first step is amazing
Penric’s Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold.
A bunch of Fantasy of Manners books. Try Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal. It’s basically Pride and Prejudice with magic.
Daughter of Mystery by Heather Rose Jones is a f/f Fantasy romance set a few years after the Napoleonic wars. I love the worldbuilding and the magic system.