My reading history of 2025 so far is as follows:
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"The Way of Kings" and the Mistborn trilogy (The Final Empire, Well of Ascension, Hero of Ages) by Brandon Sanderson
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The Broken Earth trilogy (The Fifth Season, Obelisk Gate, Stone Sky) by N.K. Jemisin
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"Running with the Demon" by Terry Brooks
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"The Great Library of Tomorrow" by Rosalia Aguilar Solace
I enjoyed The Broken Earth and Mistborn trilogy, but I did not like The Way of Kings, Running with the Demon or The Great Library of Tomorrow. I don't want more books from those authors.
What I disliked were side-plots that dragged on for way too long (Sanderson), narrators who wasted entire pages thinking about their childhood and other things I didn't care about (Brooks, Solace) and magic systems so soft that every problem could be solved by deux ex machina (Solace). Naturally, I also ended up not liking that "Running with the Demon" took place entirely in (relatively) ordinary modern day America.
Most important to me are fight scenes with comptently written adversaries. The protagonist's enemies shouldn't feel like cannon fodder.
Second is the exploration of dangerous fantasy environments. Not necessarily dystopian or apocalyptic, but a place (or places) hostile enough to at least give the impression that even the main characters aren't safe from getting killed off long before the book ends.
The target audience should be adults, so it would be better if the protagonist isn't a child.
A paper printing is mandatory.
by Sephyrias
2 Comments
Heroes, Joe Abercrombie. Stuffed with them.
In the *Book of the Ancestor* series, by Mark Lawrence, the progagonist is 9 at the beginning and 19 at the end. So she’s not an adult the whole time.
But she’s an exceptional child, essentially a superhero in training, and the fight scenes are very good and frequent. Despite the relative youth of the protagonist, I consider this series appropriate for adults like me.