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Reddit's Top 105 Fantasy Series/Books of All Time

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
Similar to the top 100 author list that Ankari posted a while back and I've been trying to post something on ever since (we're up to 40 now, I think) this is the Top 105 Fantasy Series/Books of All Time list according to Reddit. Strangely enough, I've either read, have read some of, or own almost all of the books on this list. However, actually having completed said books, not sure what my number would be. It takes me forever to read, although I've been getting better at finishing what I start these days. Some questions:

1. How many have you read?
2. Which ones would like to read if you haven't?
3. Which books did you try, but couldn't finish?

Of course, you can only answer the first one if you'd like. :)

Reddit's Top 105 Fantasy Novels/Series of All Time - How many of the top all time fantasy novels/series have you read
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
I got a score of 73. Probably add another five or six if you count books I started but didn't finish (Eragon, Mistborn, etc). I have a half dozen or so in my stack that I haven't read yet. Ideally, I'd like to read them all, but some of these works don't belong anywhere near a Top 105 list (Eragon, for example) and there are works I'd have on the list that are missing.
 
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Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
The same as the last 100 authors list. There are several names that may be glaring omissions, but these were voted on by Reddit users, so that's how it turned out I suppose.

I probably own at least half of the books listed either in print or on Kindle. I at least have one book from several of the series listed as well, in some cases the whole series. I think it's a decent list, but yeah, maybe some probably don't belong there.

Of the longer series (Wheel of Time, Harry Potter) I may never get around to reading them. I'd like to, especially now that they're finished, but just so many books that are ahead on my list. It would be fun to go through the list and try to read most of these. I already have read the first five books in (#1) A Song of Ice and Fire. So maybe finally taking a crack at (#2) Lord of the Rings would be good? Seems like I've been putting that off for years, for one reason or another.
 
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Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
I've read 10 books on that list with another 5 started which I haven't gotten back to, but I very much intend to finish. It doesn't help when I'm a slow reader. There are a lot of books on that list which I have on my ever expanding to-read list, but when you mix in other genres, it becomes a daunting task to read them all.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
I had 64. As in pretty much all things, reddit and I disagree quite heavily. But there are some good ones on there that usually get left off Top 100s - I was happy to see Chalion.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
I had 65, plus a couple of 'started, not finished', and a couple others where I saw the movies (Harry Potter). Very likely I did read a couple others, but have long since forgotten the title.

Ones I'd like to read - I think - are:

1) Darkness that Comes Before
2) Dark is Rising (this one sounds familiar - maybe I did read it decades back)
3) Abhorsen
4) The Emperors Soul
5) A Shadow in Summer
6) Nightwatch and Daywatch
7) Legend of Eli Montpress
8) Low Town

Started but Not finished:

1) Wheel of Time
2) Black Prism
3) Eragon - though I did read the first book.
 

Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
ThinkerX: Darkness that Comes Before is one of my favorites. It may not be for everyone, but I really liked the world and characters. A Shadow in Summer (the first in the Long Price Quartet) is an interesting premise. I'd say it's worth a look for anyone who doesn't want the typical "kill the dark lord" kind of fantasy.

I've been wanting to read Low Town for quite some time as well. I think it's on my Kindle. Ditto for Legend of Eli Monpress.
 

Creed

Sage
I have 17 down, and another 5 that I've started.
It's been many years since I read the Riddle Master trilogy, though, and I can remember less than half of what happens.

ThinkerX: Darkness that Comes Before is one of my favorites. It may not be for everyone, but I really liked the world and characters. A Shadow in Summer (the first in the Long Price Quartet) is an interesting premise. I'd say it's worth a look for anyone who doesn't want the typical "kill the dark lord" kind of fantasy.

I just need to say "Thank you!" for that.
The Darkness That Comes Before is such an amazing trilogy! I'm on the third one and as soon as I'm done high-school I'm going to devour it!
And I started the Long Price Quartet last year and was thoroughly impressed by the first book. A Shadow in Summer was something I NEEDED to read, because it taught me some valuable lessons about character-building. And I have the second and third waiting, so I'm looking forward to the lesson continuing!

Daniel Abraham and R. Scott Bakker are two of my three favourite authors of all time. Steven Erikson completes the trio- but in my opinion R. Scott Bakker distils everything great about the Malazan series into his own beautiful trilogy.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
Ones I particularly want to read:
- a couple of the Guy Gavriel Kay's that I haven't gotten to yet
- Song for the Basilisk
- Exiles, by Melanie Rawn (I am actually reading the first Dragon Prince novel right now, by the same author)
- Vlad Taltos
 

Ruby

Auror
Hi, I scored 19. But I read lots of different genres as well as Fantasy. I've read my favourite Fantasy books several times. Maybe those should count as scoring more than one point? :D
 

Aspasia

Sage
25 :D But there's a lot more that I've started and not finished. I'm behind on a lot of series'. Thanks for linking this, there's a lot of books here that I remember I meant to read but never got around to it. I need to acquire books faster! Blood Song I remember planning to read a few months ago ...
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
I read a lot of non-fantasy. Would be interesting to see a top 100 list that includes all genres. The ones I see that are open to all books generally never seem to have a lot of fantasy.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
Yeah, a lot of my favourite books are non-fantasy. But I guess a Top 100 that was truly diverse would be a bit strange, which is why you never see them. Most Top 100 Books of All Time/The Last Century are going to be full of Shakespeare and Nabakov and graciously Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are perhaps allowed on the list, but it will break the flow of a Top 100 to go '88. Hamlet', '89. The Name of the Wind'.

Unless someone just made a person top 100, in which case anything is game, really.
 

Ruby

Auror
Hi Phil,

Maybe we could all post our own personal top 100 books of any genre on here, but then this would be a very long thread. :eek:
 
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Philip Overby

Staff
Article Team
I have a horrible memory sometimes when it comes to books, but I'd say I could come up with 50 or so Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books I read when I was a teenager right off hand. Not sure if they'd rank in my favorites, but some would be up there for nostalgic reasons.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
Haha, it would be a fun thread - maybe request people hide it under the spoiler bracket just so it doesn't stretch the page?
 

KellyB

Minstrel
Out of this list I have read:

1. A Song of Ice and Fire - read first two books so far, waiting till the end of season 4 of GoT before starting the third
2. Lord of the Rings - read
10. Harry Potter - read all of
12. The Mistborn Trilogy - read first two, currently reading third
82. Bartimaeus Triology - read all of

So, I haven't read nearly as many as most of you. Some others I own and are on my to-read list, and several others I plan to buy in the future.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
Well, I had a migraine and couldn't sleep tonight, so enjoy. :p

In no particular order, limited one per author. Series are grouped together when I think the whole series deserves the spot (provided I've read more than the first book). Avoiding non-fiction, as well, and too many short story or poetry anthologies (a few sneak in though). Standard disclaimer that these are my choices and based exclusively on my tastes and reading history.

Ringworld, by Larry Niven
Aelita, by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy
Let the Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist
The Captain's Daughter, by Alexander Pushkin
Dracula, by Bram Stoker
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
Mars series, by Kim Stanley Robinson
Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo
Kingkiller Chronicle series, by Patrick Rothfuss
Earthseed series, by Octavia Butler
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
Oz series, by L. Frank Baum
The Well at the World's End, by William Morris
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
The Steerswoman series, by Rosemary Kirstein
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbott Abbott
The Dying Earth, by Jack Vance
Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson
Up the Walls of the World, by James Tiptree Jr.
Le Morte d'Arthurby Thomas Malory
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy
Theban plays (Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone), by Sophocles
Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy
Who Fears Death, by Nnedi Okorafor
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Márquez
Inferno, by Dante Alighieri
Beowulf, by Anonymous
Sherlock Holmes series, by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Stone Dance of the Chameleon, by Ricardo Pinto
Dragon's Egg, by Robert L. Forward
Weaveworld, by Clive Barker
The Odyssey, by Homer
Freedom and Necessity, by Emma Bull and Steven Brust
Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton
The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
Lais, by Marie de France
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
The Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio
Dinotopia series, by James Gurney
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
Chalion series, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees
The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser
Embassytown, by China Miéville
Valdemar series, by Mercedes Lackey
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
Orlando: A Biography, by Virginia Woolf
The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki, by Anonymous
The Fionavar Tapestry, by Guy Gavriel Kay
Tipping the Velvet, by Sarah Waters
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Avalon series, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
A Dirge for Prester John, by Catherynne M. Valente
Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Islandia, by Austin Tappan Wright
Pern series, by Anne McCaffrey
The Iron Dragon's Daughter, by Michael Swanwick
A Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux
Saga of Recluse series, by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
The Makioki Sisters, by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges
Study series, by Maria V. Snyder
Genji Monogatari, by Murasaki Shikibu
Kencyrath series, by P.C. Hodgell
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabakov
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Kushiel series, by Jacqueline Carey
Prose Edda, by Snorri Sturluson
Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Queen's Thief series, by Megan Whalen Turner
The Worm Ouroboros, by E.R. Eddison
Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
Medea, by Euripides
Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, by Tad Williams
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
Witcher series, by Andrzej Sapkowski
Lavinia, by Ursula K. LeGuin
The King of Elfland's Daughter, by Lord Dunsany
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
Or one of those fancy lists, if you'd prefer.
 
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