I have taken almost a year long break from reading fiction to focus on non-fiction. I am ready to start reading fiction again, but after such a long break I have no idea where to start.
Here are some books I have enjoyed in the past:
- Dragon’s Egg (Robert L. Forward)
- The Damned Trilogy (Alan Dean Foster)
- Mage Errant series (John Bierce)
- Cradle series (Will Wight)
- Gods of Blood and Powder (Brian Mckellan)
- The Spiral Wars (Joel Shepard)
- Basically everything Brandon Sanderson has written
Literally anything by Terry Pratchett. There are flowcharts.
Or my personal favorite: the Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. It’s not fantasy, but the writing and action might pique your interest. I think the best place to start would be the third book, HMS Surprise.
For some additional fantasy options that were enjoyed by a fellow Sanderson fan:
I will never miss an opportunity to plug Joe Abercrombie, The Blade Itself and the others in the First Law series are excellent and will get you about 10 books worth of excellent stories.
Chris Buehlman’s The Blacktongue Thief is also quite good and the third in the series after the first book and a prequel come out later this year.
Red Rising and the following books in the series by Pierce Brown are very good and very popular.
James Islington’s Hierarchy and Licanius books were quite good.
The First Law series is phenomenal!
Additional love for first law. Actually modeling a DND character after Logan for the next campaign. Finishing up the expanse myself, but wanted to go back to Joe Abercrombie after, just loved his style.
Since you’ve read Cradle and Dungeon Crawler Carl I’ll throw out the Divine Dungeon and Completionist Chronicles series by Dakota Krout. Both are progression focused, pun-laden, and very light-hearted. They are sometimes sloppy in tying things together, but they spark my imagination in ways most other books don’t. Technically Divine Dungeon is a prequel to Completionist Chronicles, but enough time has passed between them that it doesn’t especially matter.
He Who Fights With Monsters.
LitRPG like Dungeon Crawler Carl. The main character is a little /r/IAmVerySmart to begin with but much like his chin it gets smoothed out over time.
Although it’s maybe not exactly in the same vein as what you’ve read before, in addition to what others have recommended I can highly recommend the Malazan Book of the Fallen.
Would you be interested in something like Dungeon Crawler Carl? It’s not really fantasy per se but uses heavy fantasy elements in a sci-fi setting. New book also came out yesterday and I believe there’s going to be two more.
The Lord and Savior? Lol
I didn’t know the new book dropped, I will have to check it out.
I recognize this is an older thread, however, I want to ask – what are some of those nonfiction books read that you’d recommend?
In my post or the recommendedations from the post? Because all of the books I posted are really good, but for very different reasons. I have a bit of an eclectic taste.
What do you like? The books I listed range from hard sci-fi to really easy progression fantasy.
Oh pardon me. In your post, you mentioned a period of reading nonfiction only, wondering what you’d recommend from that time? Lmk if this makes more sense!
Ah I understand, nothing I that really stands out. I was mostly catching up on things that should have been assigned to me in school or that I neglected to pick up in college. A lot of dry history and whatnot. Any topic that interests you?
Ah gotcha, that’s valid. Honestly, I was curious on the off chance that some of those topics covered were about science (space, nature), history, and/or any insightful self-help reads. Thanks!
I hear the bible is pretty popular fiction
Unfortunately, I have already read it. Honestly it’s overrated compared to other fictions of the same genre.






