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I hope Sanderson is on this list. He produces hot garbage.

You got me there great joke😂❤

I like the old one better I think it is far superior to the new one

Wait, they had a show about a pandemic come out during the actual pandemic? 😂 thats hilarious but also such bad timing

Good one

Wow-bone hunters and reapers gale back to back-those are my next to Malazan reads! I’m somehow even more stoked to get there

Wait,… aren’t there only 100 fantasy series out there?

These books look awesome! I just added them to my tbr

Wow, many Malazan books!

Awesome. I hope to finish WoT in 2025 (TBD on more Malazan 😂)

So happy to see The Empire Trilogy on here! One of my all time favs, and doesn't get enough attention.

Harper Hall Trilogy is probably my favorite part of the Pern Chronicles. And I typically don't read YA.

•Absolutely love Magician by Feist! •oh wow, Heroes is really high! I gotta move that up my tbr. •lots of dragons of perns and stormlight, i really gotta get on reading more of these series •your top 3 is so different from others I've seen! Not surprising for anyone who watches you though😂

Jim when you start a new series that is already many books in, do you plow through all of them or read one or two - pause with a palate cleanser - then dive back in? Currently reading WoT and wondering if I should pause every now and then so as not to get burned out. Just don’t want to hop off and then have trouble getting back in. Curious how you approach big series.

I got it on Friday and finished on Monday, but as we all know - it is the journey, not the destination that we’re here for

Yessss, i love that the book of the ancestors made the list! I actually disagree and liked Before They Are Hanged better than The Blade Itself. The first book had some pacing issues for me personally

Only one I hadn't heard of was Stover! I will have to check him out and add to thr tbr. Some authors i dont see alot are M.L. Wang, Jenn Lyons, Shannon Chakraborty, and Richard Swan. Though to be fair M.L. Wang has been getting more attention since Blood Over Bright Haven got picked up to be traditionally published.

I totally agree about medievalism! I've been seeking out more bipoc fantasy authors as they pull from their own background/cultures and it has been so refreshing! Have you read How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler? It pokes fun at some of these tropes, like chosen one, and is wickedly funny. It's kind of dark, kind of bloody, and the audiobook was a riot.

This is one of my favorite series, and was my introduction to grimdark fantasy. I am an avid Mark Lawrence fan and grimdark fan now!

Haha omg I have a WTBR too! Mine isn't in any particular order, it's more a list of books I'm interested in and the app storygraph lets me sort by genre so I can find something on the list that fits whatever mood I'm in to read. Oh, oof, I do not struggle to dnf at all. Life is too short and my tbr is too long to read a book I'm not loving. That being said, I have different types of dnfs. A soft dnf is when I'm just not in the mood for a certain type of book, but will go back to it when I'm in the mood for it. Hard dnf is a just no, never. I definitely suffer from series fatigue. I felt so seen when you said you do palette cleansers😂 I'm so glad you said fantasy can be brain heavy! I've always said I use romance books as palette cleansers to give my brain a break between fantasies.

Ive read 2 of the 3 for this series. I enjoyed the first book quite a bit. The majority of the second book didn't seem like it actually moved the story along at all and could have been skipped completely, it felt like a filler book to me. I hope the third is better. If you liked this series, you might want to check out Vicious by the same author. I like that better than this series so far.

I cant wait to see the top 20 😍 some really good books already on here, so very curious what you liked better

Man you have my Number 1 and Number 2 books in the 20’s in Changes and Words of Radiance lol

I read First Law and was in absolute love. I decided to do the stand alones before diving into thr next trilogy. I started with Best Served Cold and havent picked up a Joe Abercrombie book since 😅. It wasnt bad, but it wasn't as good for me as the first trilogy. Maybe I was a little too obsessed with Glokta and that's why? I agree about the foreshadowing. It was very heavy handed. I picked up on it and i am literally the most oblivious reader possibly ever 😂 Cosca was easily my favorite character this book too! I wanted so much more of him, he felt more fleshed out as a character to me. My biggest issue was Monza and Shivers. I just didnt like them at all. When it started i did like Monza, she had so much potential, but she came off wishy washy at points for someone who wanted vengeance no matter the cost. Shivers, just, ugh. He was interesting until he went off the deep end

I'm here for all the grimdark goodness!!

The Legacy of Orisha series was very popular on tik tok if i recall correctly (much like SJM). The first book was Children of Blood and Bone, and it is still highly recommended a lot. I have not personally read it as I am leary of the YA genre and especially if tik tok blows it up. Throne of Secrets was also all tik toks doing 😂 Ive heard mixed things about The Bright Sword. I purchased it just because of the author when it released, just havent gotten around to it. Have you read the Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett? One of the top fantasies for me this year personally. I'm also obsessed with the second book in Mark Lawrence's The Library trilogy, The Book that Broke the World. Third book is being released in April 2025 and I'm so pumped for it!

My favorite of all his books

For Throne of Glass, the series gets better as it goes. You can tell she was new to writing in the first couple of books. There are definitely valid criticisms of the writing, and I agree with most of them, BUT her writing is easily digestible for a wide audience. Her world building isn't overwhelming or overly complicated. It's like reading a summer blockbuster movie, and that's why it's popular. My favorite thing about SJM is she was a great gateway for a lot of my friends to transition from reading strictly romance to more traditional fantasy series. For that alone, I absolutely love TOG.

I’ll admit I struggled with Red Rising (felt like it was space hunger games) but really liked book 2. Morning Star is on my early 2025 TBR list so I’m glad you have it ranked a little higher than both. I think The Great Hunt is still my favorite WoT book so far but I’m finishing the series next year so we will see if that holds up and I think for me Words of Radiance is still my favorite Stormlight book to date. Looking forward to tomorrows video 👍

No its not, its oaky, but the ending is borderline retarded. his best is the Heroes.

If at first you don't succeed, then parachuting may not be for you :D

I’m on the second book having never read any fantasy book ever ! I love the series so far

I finally caved and bought Sword of Shannara today thanks to you. It was that or Dragonflight. Hope I chose wisely.

Yep, a tale too long to tell!!

Abercrombie has caught the Rothfuss disease: no releases in past 24+ months.

Okay dude, I'm gonna need that background wallpaper you are using...

Shockingly I have only read 4 of these 20 books (Harry Potter, Anne Rice, the Shannara one and Game of Thrones) and spontaneously I doubt that any one of those would make my own top 100 list.The Order of the Phoenix, while still a good book, is my least favorite in the Harry Potter saga, and while I loved Lestat, I still think I would find 100 books I like better. I would have to reread Wishsong but generally Terry Brooks and Martin don't really belong to my favorite authors. From the other authors, I've only read Sanderson (though from Mistborn, only the first three books so far), Mark Lawrence (Love him, love him, love him, but that's based on the Broken Empire trilogy and while everything else written by him is high on my TBR, I haven't come to it yet) and Jim Butcher (only read and loved the first three Dresden Files books, so again, pretty high on my TBR.) For some reason, I never read the Pern books , most probably because I'm not the biggest fan of Dragons, and I basically had forgotten that this series existed at all. But now that you reminded me that it is kind of a scifi-fantasy mashup, it suddenly became interesting to me, because I read Jen Williams Winnowing Flame trilogy this year, and she also mixed Scifi and Fantasy in a pretty genius way (and there were Dragons I actually liked), so I think I have to put it on my TBR as well. Joe Abercrombie is planned for next year, I also want to read Malazan pretty bad, and I have at least heard the name of Brent Weeks. Z.B. Steele sounds interesting, so the only two books I'll let gladly slide is the both Zombie books, because I like Zombies even less than Dragons. So thanks for the inspiration, and I'm looking forward to the other parts in that series

I love your lists Jim 💗

I’ve read a few of them. A little shocked A Game of Thrones was so low but I’m sure there will be some great books in the next 80

If you're not skipping Lord Foul's Bane, you're not doing your job!!!

Great review and agree on Roth, great character. Loved the book!

A while ago you reviewed a book by Erik Goodwyn where you mentioned the author was a psychiatrist. Given your positive review, combined with the fact that one of my favourite fantasy authors, Karl Edward Wagner, had also been a psychiatrist I thought I'd give the book a go and pre-ordered it. Wagner's novels often read somewhat like westerns, and he greatly admired Peckinpah's film 'The Wild Bunch'. You probably see where I'm going with this...

Amelia Earhart’s plane has still yet to be found. I’ll bet you I know where they’ll find it. The last place they look!

The Heroes is hard to beat, man. Did they give any teases of who Lamb was early on? I didn't get it until the very end, the first time I read this. I was not prepared 😂 And what a juxtaposition, to name him Lamb given his reputation in the North 😂

so sorry for the long post incoming, but here's my notes on the authors mentioned that I was scribbling down while watching the video: Kinda want to read Terry Goodkind, because I also know a lot of people who recommend it, and those who don't like it mostly do it for philosophical/political reasons I'm not bothered with in my reading (real world application might be different, though^^). I read Eragon as an adult and Zach is probably right. You can still enjoy it, but you'll see the flaws. My two main problems with the book series was that the writing style shone through too much especially in the first book, where Paolini was really young (I still give him major props for pulling that book off at that age). I really enjoyed book 2 or 3 though, though I'm sure I can put the finger exactly to the moment when he had to start rewriting because some idiot told him to a tetralogy instead of a trilogy. And I hated it so much that to this day I haven't read book 4, the rest of my family all enjoyed it though. I used to love Shannarah as a youth, but I don't know how well they have aged over time. I reread the first story when that terrible tv series came out and found the book even more terrible, to be honest. Completely derivative retelling of LotR, and really badly written at that, if you ask me. Makes me kind of hesitant to return to it, though I still might because I remember that even 30 years ago, I liked the books to follow much better than the first one. Twilight. Worst first book I didn't DNF. Enough said about it. Wheel of Time is the complete difference to me. Absolutely loved it, even the slower parts where still great, everyone who says different isn't worth being listened to in my opinion, and I'll gladly die on that hill. Still have to read most of the Witcher. Pretty sure I'll like it based on the short story I did read and they all stand behind me in my shelf waiting for me, but at this moment I'm not qualified to make any statement (apart from expecting that the German translation will probably be way better than the English one, especially as translator Erik Simon is an award-winning Sci-Fi author himself) Really want to read Thomas Covenant, and like with Goodkind, the critics haven't said anything about it that would me me reconsider. But we'll see if I get into it. SoF&I. *sigh*. First, I don't really get the hype. Read the first book, and still wait on the moment where Martin suddenly turned into that great author everyone says he is. I could probably name 10 authors just from the top of my head who are way better writers. And given that the series hasn't been finished yet and probably never will be, I just don't see it being worth the investment. IF he finishes it, I might reconsider that stance just to find out if my theories about how it ends are correct. Btw. loved how Zach directly went to it back again when you talked about Overhyped books. Pretty exactly my stance on it. Like with Shannarah, I loved reading Eddings in my youth, and I consider him to be the way superior writer compared to Terry Brooks, so I'm way more inclined to reread those somewhere down the line. Have to admit though that I like the Elenium/Tamuli cycle way better than the Belgariad/Malloreon one. Also kinda have fond memories of reading them to my (now ex-) wife, though that cost me dearly, because when she got pregnant, she went all Ce'Nedra on me, and I am very much not a wizard. ;) Can't say anything about Brent Weeks. I also have to still read anything of the Stormlight Archive, and yes, I consider Sanderson to be the most overhyped author in the history of fantasy. This said, I really liked everything I did read by him so far, so that's not saying he is a bad author at all. It's just me thinking he could be way better if he wrote a little less and took more time with the stuff he does. Still highly enjoyable, so I'm pretty sure I won't regret diving into the Stormlight Archives beginning next year. Oh and now you did it. Bringing Rothfuss into the discussion. Those books I consider to be legitimate high literature in a way you generally don't see in fantasy apart from maybe Ursula K. LeGuin. Makes it even more frustrating that we most probably won't ever see the end of it, but those books are pretty much the best fantasy I've ever read. Another hill I'll gladly die on, and contrary to Martin, I still would recommend everyone to read it ASAP. Can't speak about SJM. I'm not into Romantasy at all, so I haven't tried her yet, but I gifted one of her books (House of Earth and Blood) to my daughter, who is reading a lot of romance stuff and she DNF'd it pretty early, so given the size of my TBR and with new and interesting books being published on a weekly basis, I don't see myself giving it a try anytime soon.

I remain neutral on this topic :D

Funny!