POPULAR ADULT FANTASY BOOKS | A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW

hi guys so today's video is going to be a comprehensive overview of ten very popular or well respected adult fantasy stories I'm gonna start with the story that is probably one of the most popular adult fantasy books is often at the top of fancy books everybody should read lists and that would be name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss if you are pretty new to the fantasy genre this is a great one to start off with because of the fact that it is not too fantasy leaning you don't feel like you have to have read a bunch of other things before getting into this one you don't have prerequisites it is a coming-of-age tale at its roots at its core and it is very beautifully written it's written in a way that a lot of people actually compare to literary fiction you follow our main character named both in modern day you see a glimpse of his life and you get a hint of this very epic reputation that he has built and then he ends up telling you his life story so the main focus of the book is actually him within his youth it's a it's a coming-of-age tale the fantasy elements are woven into I would say the lore of the story rather than there being a very set magic system that everything is revolved around or having fantastical creatures that you're trying to conquer while it has some of those things within the story it really is centered more on this boy growing into a man the main thing I see praised in this story is the writing style a lot of people think name of the wind has one of the most beautiful poetic writing styles without being overly flowery or purple prose it feels like patrick rothfuss always has an intent with the prettiness of his writing but one of the cons for a lot of people is that the story is so focused on both that if you don't like both you probably won't like the book this character does have a hint of I'm pretty good at a lot of things and because it is him telling the story a lot of people argue that he's an unreliable narrator that he elevates things to make himself look better in the telling of his own story so it's one of those things where you go into wondering is he really this amazing of a character or is this just how he presents himself do you find his characteristics inspiring or do you find them not skating the next series on this list would be Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan wheel of time is arguably one of most daunting stories on this list because the fact that the series is 14 books long if you count the prequel then it's 15 books I read the first four books in this series a lot of people do say even if they're fans of the series that the beginning is very similar to Lord of the Rings and for some individuals they'll really appreciate this Lord of the Rings is something that regardless of whether you like fantasy you are likely fairly familiar with so it does have this sense of familiarity to it for some people this is a negative they feel it's too derivative they feel it's not very unique but most people who go beyond the first few books will say that as the story progresses within those 14 15 books definitely becomes its own thing as you can imagine with 1415 books you are going to get it very well fleshed out world Robert Chernin is often praised for his attention to detail but for some individuals is actually seen as a negative thing because sometimes they don't want details about everything they would rather focus on bigger picture things or they would rather focus more on the characters so it's a matter of personal preference you will see a lot of the world you are not just contained to a very small location the characters end up going out into the world the magic system is very interesting and that the magic that women pull from is pure whereas the magic that men pull from is tainted to give a very big idea of it so men who have the ability to use magic will eventually go insane but the twist is that the person who is essentially the chosen one is supposed to be a man who can use magic so kind of a what do we do if somebody can use magic they might go crazy and hurt a lot of people or they might be the person to save everybody which one is it because of this setup the Wheel of Time series you will see the women often having more power than the men you will also see women sometimes mistreating men but it's supposed to be a little bit more of a reflection on hey this is what this might actually be like with it this world but again for those people that are wanting a full view of pros and cons some individuals see this as just sexism in Reverse they don't really like that they would rather have a world where it's not one gender constantly berating the other but it does have a little bit of an interesting flavor it's different and it appeals to a lot of people next up we have black prism by print weeks I have read the first book in this series and it is ongoing not all of the books are out yet but it is almost done when you hear people talking about this story you often hear them talk about the magic system and for good reason because the magic system is very prevalent and it's also very unique it is based around colors some people have the ability to draw from certain colors and have abilities associated with those and there was one person at any one given time who has the ability to draw on all of the colors person is known as the prism and they hold a great deal of political power as well as just literal power from their magic a lot of individuals find that this is a great story for showing great morality or at least showing characters that aren't that likable but you sort of can't help but like or hope for better things to happen to them you kind of want them to succeed even though it seems like everything in their world isn't very good and on the flip side you will find that some people feel that the characters are just unlikable and they just don't want anything good to happen to them nor do they want to keep reading about them it definitely does not have that typical this is a hero I can get behind type of character set so if you're the kind of person that wants a hero for your hero not really what black prism is to be completely honest there are a lot of people that don't care for this book because they feel it's portrayal of women is sexist and that is not something for me to try to tell you what to think because everybody is going to have a different idea of what is and is not considered sexist a lot of people feel it's an imperfect world sexism is a part of that and so it's just ingrained into the world as a means of realism where some people feel is only really ever toward the women and the women themselves wouldn't think the way they think or feel the way they feel just because the world is sexist it's up for you to decide I still think that if it sounds interesting I always people to pick it up find out for themselves but it is a conversation that is had about this series pretty often and it would feel not particularly genuine of me to mention it without letting you know that there's a little bit of controversy surrounding the book because of this on the topic though of stories that are known for being dark and having characters that you can't necessarily say are good guys we have the first law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie I have read the first book in this series I'm gonna admit I really liked it it is grim dark in my opinion at its finest of the grim dark books that I have read I have found for my own personal taste I'm a little bit of a wimp and sometimes for me it feels like shock value it feels like it's trying to be really dark just to be like hey look everything's messed up and in this particular story there are horrific things mentioned there are horrific things within this world but I never once felt like I was like like Joe Abercrombie was trying really hard to disrupt me and unsettle me as much as possible I'm trying to give you all an overview just as a collective means of people's thoughts and not just mine so I apologize I started kind of letting you know how much I liked this story but I really did I really like the first book that said it took a long time for me to like the first book because I'm a huge fan of character-driven stories but I've not read too many books that are so character driven that I can't really even describe the plot of the book to you and that is this first book in this story I found that for a long time because the characters aren't necessarily good guys you don't immediately feel a connection to them or a desire for them to succeed so it took so long for me to care but then once I started to care I didn't really mind that I didn't know where the story was going I had no idea what the main plot was because I just wanted to be with these characters more the drawback of this story is that if you are a plot driven reader or if you even just want an inkling of plot in the first book of a series and you want to know the direction we're going in you really don't get much of that in this first book is I'm told eventually more plot-driven as the story progresses throughout the trilogy but it's a trilogy that's a third of the story in that first book and I have no idea the direction it's going in like I said I just know I liked the characters at some point enough to want to be with them more but if you're if you're a plot driven reader this might not be the one for you next up we have malice and and I have read the first book in this series gardens of the moon and this is one that is very difficult for me to talk about so the author is Steven Erikson and originally the story him and another individual were planning on this being adapted and it didn't get adapted so they turned it into a series of novels and in the first book I think that that is very obvious because a lot of the ways in which things are described it feels as if they meant for it to be aided by something visual you really don't get a ton of of emphasis on character expression character feelings within certain moments and I think that can create a detachment from the characters overall the first book in the Mallesons series is one that even the fandom kind of collectively agrees is the weakest and a lot of people have seen have even wanted individuals to skip this book because they feel it does not do a good job of setting up the rest of the series or locking you in and really grabbing your attention and making you care it is interesting in a lot of ways there's a lot of things that I think have potential to eventually be something magnificent but within the first book I didn't really find for myself I care too much about a lot of the characters I didn't care too much about a lot of what was going on because you get so little of what's going on you can see that we're setting up for something grand but you don't really get a whole heck of a lot with in this first book you just get the foundation beginning and again I find I wouldn't normally state my personal opinion so forwardly when I'm trying to be informative but this is what collectively I have seen a lot of people say so know that if you're gonna try it check out malazan the fandom will tell you it's the greatest thing ever but it is a huge commitment it is epic fantasy at its best but you got to commit to a lot of it if you or somebody who's pressed on time this might not be the one for you I do want to add though that while I wasn't personally gripped by that first story immensely it did have a lot of elements that were familiar and that had a lot of elements that were very very unique meaning that we have some assassin guild we have dragons we have interesting magic but then we have races that are very strange and we have a world in which the means of individuals communicating with one another is different and the relationships between individuals based on class or based on gender not exactly the same as what I've found in a lot of fantasy books so it's got a lot of things that you can say oh yeah that's that looks kind of Dungeons & Dragons familiar to me but then over here you've got things that are totally different from anything else I've seen in science fiction and fantasy where malazan is ultimate I'm going all-in I am committed over here we have shades of magic by ve Schwab it is a trilogy so it is much shorter than a lot of the other series on this list I have read through the entire trilogy and it's one that I think you're wanting to just get a taste of what adult fantasy has to offer if you're wanting a good time fun read a fast read that's this story the premise is that there are parallel worlds that only a select few people can go between our main character Cal is one of these individuals and he accidentally brings something from one world into the other that he wasn't supposed to bring and chaos ensues it's definitely a story that the build is a little bit slow initially but once it gets going it really gets going and the first book feels like a bit of a complete story but the continuation in the second and the third books open the world up a little bit more and you definitely get more of the other characters be Schwab is often someone that a lot of individuals feel has really unique premises and also the way in which she writes is very accessible both for adult fantasy readers and young adult fantasy readers it's almost fluid with its ability to be accessible and entertaining to fans of both for some people this is a negative anything that can be entertaining to a younger audience or anything that might feel even slightly less dark or adults in tone to them is lesser they want something that dives deeper they want something that isn't as up on its feet light fun a good time and if you're somebody who wants to get into dark gritty things it's not that this series doesn't have that it definitely has some very emotional moments but it's not grimdark by any means and also is accessible so for some individuals they feel the more accessible it is the more mainstream it is and the less it is similar things have been said about the next story on this list which would be miss borne by Brandon Sanderson beyond people thinking that this could be a young adult you also actually see it sold in young adult from time to time as well as being sold in adult fantasy and it's one of those stories where it has very dark things in it it has some really gripping moments throughout the trilogy that tackle things like depression and grief and the violence can sometimes be kind of extreme but it still has a writing style that is very accessible it has characters that you can latch on to very quickly and some some people will argue that the fact that you can see those characters quickly like characters quickly define characters easily that's a sign of a character not being particularly nuanced but for other people it's just these are characters with prominent personalities you set up for miss Bourne is you take the very common trope in a lot of fantasy stories of the chosen one who's supposed to save the world and Sanderson said what would happen if that person lost what would the world look like and that's miss Bourne you have a world that is not doing well because the Dark One has ruled for a thousand years and we have a select few individuals who have decided they're going to try to overthrow this person's rule the magic system in this story is one that is truly a system is almost scientific in the fact that there are rules and limitations to the extreme there are things you can do there are things you can't do there are things that certain individuals will never be able to do and there are certain individuals that can do basically everything that the magic system allows but it is very clear that's not ultimate endless possibilities the way miss burns magic system works is that you have some individuals who have the ability to get certain powers by digesting a certain kind of metal there's a specific power associated with each metal then there are individuals who can use all the powers from all the metals those individuals are called mist born hence the name of the series and for a lot of people this kind of a magic system that really feels like it is a system creates higher stakes because you know that if something happens they're suddenly in more danger it's not like the magic can suddenly be something different and it can save everybody there's some spell that can all send heal everybody or there's a spell that can get them out of there and transport them to new places and for a lot of people they crave that kind of a thing now in their fantasy they crave that feeling of oh no what happens if in the middle of a battle they run out of their metals what are they gonna do but for some individuals the magic doesn't feel very magical anymore it feels a little too tangible it feels a little too like science and that's not appealing to everybody I'm going to stick with Sanderson and talking about the Stormlight archive series one thing that with the magic people feel oh it's not magical enough with Miss Bourne I find is not quite the case with the store my archive series I think Stormlight does a fantastic job of the magic system being somewhat foreign to the main characters themselves so when you start to see magic within the world it feels more like magic there's some sense of wonder and some sense of mystery as opposed to the very clear here are all the rules and limitations and a tutorial of how the magic works they are massive that's a downside for a lot of people they are all at least a thousand pages long you have interludes within the story that break up the main parts each book is essentially multiple books and these interludes take place between them they follow characters that you don't really see any other point a lot of times you don't know what the relevance is to the actual story but when you get to the main characters themselves they are extremely fleshed out for some people to the point of too much detail some people feel that Sanderson includes things that they don't really care about they don't want to see they want more action they want more doing and they want less let's reflect on the characters because of this combination of having some characters that you get to know very slowly but very intimately while also having some characters that are sprinkled in here and there and that you really don't see as often or quite understand why they're important it can be very difficult to pinpoint what the main setup for the story is the main premise but the thing that ties most of our main perspectives together is that there is an assassination of an important political figure and ever since then we have had a war spring up as a result that is meant to be vengeance for that that person who was killed some people will say that the store my archive books have a very clear here's the good guy here it's the bad guy but I think the more that you read the more that you see that that's not necessarily true from the very beginning you probably will have characters that you root for you will have a character that you're like yeah that guy is a good guy that's a that's a good person I'm gonna root for them but they don't always stay 100% good they don't always end up having a very good past the more you get to know them the more you see them as not only people but sometimes flawed people work sometimes not really even good guys that said there are still some individuals that are that are just heroes they're good guys you can get behind them you can root for them if you are the kind of person who is looking to feel unsure about the morality of your characters you will find that is the case for some and storm light but not all on that note we have The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski this is a story that we have characters that are kind of really selfish almost every single character is really selfish but in a way that is so realistic that it's almost frustrating he manages this author to capture how aggravating people can be how bitter they can be toward one another how they can constantly butt heads but still somehow have really meaningful relationships with other people they can connect with other people and they live in a world that is just horrific it's a world plagued by war our main character is a monster hunter named Geralt of Rivia and his life is very much intertwined with these two other individuals one of them is a feisty mean sorceress named yennefer and the other is a feisty but lovable young girl named ciri who is a lost royal the ability that the coffee has to make very real feeling characters is phenomenal in my opinion but the story does feel very character-driven just like with first law if you are somebody who likes a plot driven story witcher is probably not gonna appeal to you it also can sometimes be depending on how you look at it very difficult to get into because the first two books are collections of short stories and I very much think that you should read them before starting the official series because they provide a ton of context to the characters they were written before the actual series and so the relationships the meaning behind why certain characters care so much about certain other characters all of that is going to be lost if you don't start with those collections short stories some people hate short stories they don't want to read them for some people that'll be a nice way to get a taste of witcher but then it might be jarring when they go into the official series and it's not short stories anymore so getting into it can be a little tricky I also feel it's important to note that this story was originally written in Polish and the reason that I find that's important is because I've seen a lot of people say that the use of language vysokovsky is done masterfully in its actual native language but in its translations we lose some of that and on top of that there are certain elements of writing that are valued differently in different countries so you'll find that sukazi has a tendency to have very long sentences his use of dialogue at times can be very long with little breaks in between and sometimes things will just feel different to what you're used to you might actually crave that you might think that sounds really cool but for other people they might find the writing styles differences to be not to their flavor the last story on this would be the Farseer trilogy by Robin hobb and I have only read the first book the assassin's apprentice a lot of fans of the series have told me that it continues to get better and better the first one doesn't necessarily show you just how emotionally taxing the series can be the first book to me felt very reminiscent of classic fantasy the writing itself is a bit more formal it's pretty but not flowery it just feels nice she clearly has a good use of language and the story is one that you kind of can't help but feel so bad for your main character Fitz is a boy who is the son of a noble person but he is illegitimate and because he has some claim to power it is very important for those in power to keep him close but not really allow him to ever have much freedom they don't want him to eventually rise up and try to claim the power for himself if you're new to fantasy I definitely think this is a good one to start with because of the fact that at its core it's a coming-of-age story there's a lot of politics but it almost feels like historical fiction as a posted fantasy because the fantastical elements are not extremely prevalent in the way that they are maybe with black prism and miss Bourne a potential downside though is that this story Robin hobb is clearly a good writer her writing style is slightly more formal which is an interesting mix with a character driven story because it can come across as boring a lot of times when you have character-driven stories what is so compelling about them is the very human voice in the narration whether it's first person or third person you feel this connection because you feel like is it is being delivered to you through the lens of a person and people aren't particularly formal and they're not particularly poetic all the time and her writing style is very formal it is very nice it's very pleasant she clearly is a fantastic writer but know that because of the setup of the story you don't necessarily feel like you have the super strong connection to Fitz through the narrative you have more of a connection to the character based off of the things that are happening to them anyway that is it for an overview of these ten very popular adult fantasy series if you're looking for more in-depth information about any of them I will link any videos I've done that are reviews or chats anything like that in the description bar down below and if you're interested in purchasing any of these I'll have links for them as well thanks so much for watching I hope you found this helpful and I don't have a great birthday [Music]

Channel: Elliot Brooks

Views: 392,824

Rating: 4.92946 out of 5

Keywords: elliot brooks, fantasy, fantasy books, popular fantasy books, best fantasy books, favorite fantasy books, adult fantasy, adult fantasy books, adult sff, fantasy recommendations, adult fantasy for beginners, adult fantasy for ya readers, brandon sanderson, stormlight archive, mistborn, malazan, first law, name of the wind, farseer, witcher, wheel of time, robert jordan, popular fantasy reads, shades of magic, ve schwab, joe abercrombie, black prism, brent weeks

Id: gXOP6if3Ic4

Length: 25min 7sec (1507 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 30 2019

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[u/vellass]

Sh5es been a fan of the games and books for a long time. She also did an extensive review of the show with her husband.