Today we’re going to be talking about all things fantasy. We’re just going to have a fun chat about fantasy, all the things that I like in fantasy, based on my favorite fantasy books and series. The reason that I want to make this article is that fantasy is my favorite genre. I just love fantasy the past year. I haven’t been reading a lot of fantasy like this year. So far, I’ve read 30 books and only five of those were fantasy.
So I think I need to kind of step up my game and I just want to try some new things like I want to try out some adult fantasy. I want to read some more like popular, why a fantasy, so this article is just me Freeze framing my current fantasy tastes, my current favorite book so that you know after a year or two years when I read more fantasy books, I can kind of look back on this article and see how my tastes have changed.
Also, these kinds of articles are just a great way for you guys to get a little update on what my reading tastes are also recommendations. Okay, so now do we have all that out of the way, let’s begin with the first series.
1. A Darker Shade of Magic Series by V.E. Schwab
So the first series that I want to talk about is one that perfectly encapsulates everything that I love about: Adults, Epic Fantasy, and that is the A Darker Shade of Magic Series. So it starts with The Darker Shade of Magic, and then you have The Gathering of Shadows and I’m currently reading A Conjuring of Lights. This fantasy series is based on the idea that there is not just one London, there are multiple Londons. London is great London there’s no magic, but in another dimension, there’s also White London, where magic flourishes there’s the white moment where people are being corrupted by magic, and Black London, where everything kind of went wrong, and our main character Kell, he’s a special magician covenant cherry and he can travel between these dimensions. So that’s a unique premise: it’s also one of the reasons that I love it and love stories that have just like a fun, completely original idea that the story hinges on.
But let me just talk about the main reasons that I love this series. First of all adventure. This book is so full of adventure and action, and that’s the type of fantasy that I love it’s very low on the political intrigue and very high on just fun cool shenanigans. There are pirates, which is always a plus, obviously elemental magic, and just great memorable characters. So let me just explain to you what my experience reading this series is. I’m probably going to do a full review once I finish the conjuring a light, but I remember reading a darker shade of magic and I wasn’t a huge fan. This was like a three-star read for me. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t think it was fantastic. It’s a pretty standard, MacGuffin storyline and the characters were all just not there.
Everything in this book was just not there and I almost decided to not continue the series, because, usually with something as a three-star read, that’s not enough for me to continue, even though I did enjoy it. I’m so glad that I continued because these two books they’re amazing – and I think that’s mostly because in these two books in comparison to the first one, the world is just expanding so much we get so many more characters and the Schwab’s writing shines when she writes Character dynamics, especially characters that conflict with each other. All of my favorite character relationships are between characters that don’t like each other because you should have written them just so well, this series is not perfect.
I can see that there’s a lot of convenience in it. The magic system is rather loose. So that’s not your thing. You might not enjoy it, but if you want fantasy with a lot of adventure, constant plot twists, and just a great rivalry, storyline, and great character dynamics, you got ta read this and if you read a darker shade of magic and felt just so so about it, Just try to continue the series because it gets so much better.
2. The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo
The second favorite fantasy series that I want to talk about is The Grisha Trilogy by our new club. I just want to let you guys know that the reason this book is on this list is not that I recommend it to everyone I don’t. The reason that this is on this list is that this series is very special to me. After all, it is the first high fantasy series that I’ve ever read and it’s a series that made me fall in love with fantasy as a genre. Let me just sum up what this series has that I love it takes place in a fantasy version of Russia, which I love when fantasy stories take place in countries that are loosely inspired by real-world cultures, it has our magic system, that’s based on elements And gifts like some people can do things with fire. Other people can do things with when other people can heal other people can do it like metal and stuff.
I love that and we have a main character that finds out she’s special and secretly has powers. I know that trope is super overdone, but I love it every time and I’m unapologetic about it. Okay, I think this might be the first like the enemy main character, the ship that I’ve ever had, and I think it just influenced all my later ships because I love a good enemy Romi. Sorry, I understand that when people pick up these books now they’re not into them because, first of all, I think this is one of those y-a books that is more enjoyable when you’re still a teenager. After all, it deals with some typical teenage problems. Like the main character that thinks she’s so plain and so boring she’s constantly thinking about how guys might not like her she’s hating on other girls for being pretty, you know all that stuff that we’re kind of over right now, but that’s still in here and I Understand that, if you would read it now and you’re seasoned, why a reader you’re, just going to be like well.
This is just like every other way I’ve ever read, but that’s because it was the blueprint. Okay. This is a Series that I always recommend to people that are kind of trying to get back into reading and raving fantasy because this series just never fails to get new people interested in the fantasy genre.
3. Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
More Leigh Bardugo. We have my favorite fantasy book of all time. I think I think I can say that my confidence, and that is Six of Crows, is part of the duality with the Crooked Kingdom. In this series, we have a band of fantastically interesting characters that all have their talents. Some can do magic, some can do cool things with guns. Others are just smart and cunning. It takes place in the city and I’ve noticed this kind of my favorite fantasy setting. I want my books to either take place in a cool, fantasy city or a magical forest, but not a boring town site. So that’s my preference. It deals with Dark subjects, especially for why the characters are morally great because, they’re, all thieves and thugs, and it has a heist plotline.
These characters are trying to break someone out of prison, and that just makes me very happy because I love movies like Ocean’s eleven and things like that. The best part of these books is the characters. We get a lot of focus on the characters. The main thing that people critique about these books, especially six of crows, is that it’s very slow and not much happens and that’s true. That’s correct. Not a lot happens until the end at the heist, but that is just because we pay a lot of attention to the characters. And I didn’t mind I loved reading about all these characters, backstories, and again just the relationships that they have with each other and the dynamics that they have together. That’s just something that always makes me happy in any kind of book.
4. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
I just want to give a quick shout-out to Leigh Bardugo’s newest book Ninth House, which is her adult fantasy, which I also truly loved. It’s a super dark occult urban fantasy. It takes place at a yield, so it’s very dark academia and I can’t wait for the next book. I still have to wait a long time, but I can see this becoming one of my favorite series as well. If the next books in the series are as good as this one,
5. The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
Then my next favorite book is a recent favorite when I’m pretty sure I’m going to just put it on this list cuz I have a lot to say about it, and that is The Gilded Wolves. This is a book that a lot of people don’t care about. Even you know, I can talk about books like six of crows and a darker shade of magic, which are super popular, but I think talking about books that I love, but a lot of people. Don’T necessarily might tell you a little bit more about my specific preferences. This is a story that takes place in nineteenth-century Paris. I got ta admit that you don’t see a lot of Paris in this. It’s a historical fantasy, but it might as well. Just has been a high fantasy, but we’re just going to brush past that and we follow a band of characters. I just loved cool groups, and teams of characters as they go on a heist to find a magical item. This is a book that combines mythology from all over the world and just brings it together into this storyline throughout this adventure where they have to solve puzzles and solve riddles to get through to magical items, we also get to know the main characters.
A lot of people compare this to six of crows, and I say don’t do that because you’re setting yourself up for disappointment, because this book is very different. Yes, it has a group of cool main characters that go on a heist, but that’s where the similarities end. This one is way more plot, driven, and just theme-wise completely different, and that brings me to the thing that I love the most about the guild of rules, and that is the themes. Yes, I like all the puzzles, riddles, the characters, and the action. Those are things that made me happy, but I like how fanatically strong this book is. So a lot of people didn’t like this book because they said it was too complex and that it tries to do too many things by taking from all these different mythologies and having this completely original made of the magic system.
That was just too much. I say no because it works for the theme. Okay, so let me explain so the two themes that we find in the stories. On the one hand, the coming together of multiple cultures, we not only see that in the fact that it takes place during the Universal Exposition. We also have a super diverse cast of people that have all sorts of backgrounds, and the story revolves around the idea that mythologies from all over the world are all connected, and it just it all works. So I think if she were to only draw from one mythology, the whole thing would have fallen apart, and the other theme that we find here is, on the one hand, the coming together of science and math and puzzles, and on the other hand, like the humanities and magic and history, we also see this in the magic system, which a lot of people have said is very complex and a little convoluted and just a little kind of just doesn’t make sense.
And I get it. But it makes sense for the theme because it’s a magic system that makes you able to control objects, and make objects, do things like people can control either water or plans, but you can also make statues move it kind of feels like technology, and in that, I think it reflects the theme of the come together: science technology magic. I talked about this a lot in my top 10 books of 2019. I think this might be one of the first books, I’ve ever read where the magic system is completely original because most magic systems – yes they’re original, like the Christian trilogy, has an original magic system, but they’re still familiar based on elemental, magic, and clairvoyance. Things like that are things that we already kind of know about, but Roshani Chokshi completely crafted her original magic system in this book, and I liked it – and that’s also another reason that I love this book.
If you want your magic systems to be completely foolproof and hard magic systems, this one might disappoint you a little bit because it remains very vague with the limits of this magic system. But I personally kind of liked the fact that the magic system remained a little mysterious. Anyway read this book, it deserves more love, love this.
6. Uprooted by Naomi Novik
The last book that I want to talk about is just a book that just rudely fell off my bookshelf, and that is another type of fantasy that I loved, and that is Uprooted by Naomi Novik. This is an adult fantasy that to me encompasses that type of fantasy book that is very ethereal: fairytale Esque and romantic. This takes place in a valley that is being threatened by the evil magical fortress.
I love evil, magical forests and this wizard in the tower called the dragon protects the valley from this evil magical forest. But in exchange for that every seven years he takes a girl from the village and no one knows what happens to them, except that after a while, they return and they’re all great and happy and way more like strong, and our main character Agnieszka gets chosen by the dragon and she comes to his tower and she kind of finds out what’s going on there, it’s not only in kind of enemies Haste love romance that I like. It’s also pretty heavy on the romance. It’s also pretty fast-paced and action-packed.
A lot of things are happening and it’s extremely magical. It has a super soft magic system. So if you don’t like that, you might want to stay away from it like the Magic system is used as a deus ex machina multiple times. But this is one of those fantasy met systems that exists just to be magical and to aid just the mystery of the story. One of my favorite scenes of this book is a scene where the main character uses magic to make flowers grow. And it’s just like the page-long description of how the flowers are growing in the library and it’s so so. If you’re in the mood for a romantic fantasy with a lot of whimsy, you got a radar route and those were all my favorite books.
Okay, so if any of those books sounded interesting to you, please read them and talk to me about them, because they are my faves.