I get sad whenever I reread the books and see all the set-up he was working on for Vetinari's "Undertaking" that was never realized (subways, tax reform, etc.) Also why did that Mary Sue race of gobbos have to infect every book towards the end?
I figured they were either a metaphor for jews or jeets. Probably jeets
One of the things I enjoyed about the series was watching Ankh-Morpork go from early-Renaissance to Mid-Victorian era. Somehow pterry made it all work within series internal logic. Vetinari was perhaps my favorite character and I wish pterry could have finished what he had planned for him.
Read Mistborn. If you like it, he has over 9000 other books just like it!
I suppose on the topic of books that got a lot of teens into reading fantasy and just reading more in general, lowkey I think people are too hard on Brando but then again I haven’t read anything since Oathbringer.
I’m really enjoying DCC and I’m up to date after reading PoH. Yeah, Faction wars was kind of where things were supposed to come to a head but there are enough plot threads to keep you guessing to what comes next. With 2 books left in the series before concluding, Matt Dinnaman is really setting it up to be something special after the conclusion of Parade of Horribles. Plus I can finish one of his books in a week which makes the “time spent” to “enjoyment” ratio pretty worth it.
His Stormlight books are enjoyable if you're in the mood for gigantic 2000-page epics. His newest one was full of poz, though.
It can’t possibly be worse than what Rick Riorden did to the Percy Jackson franchise.
The only other series in the LitRPG genre I was able to finish was Mark of the Fool, and it’s more genre adjacent than heavily RPG element focused. It’s also nowhere near as good as Carl, so YMMV. You can try digging through Royal Road, since thats the site the pioneered the concept, but most of the works on there are in progress. I couldn’t make it past the opening chapters of He Who Fights With Monsters, but it might get better?
Sando’s oneshot books were legit his best work, Elantris has my favorite character in the whole Cosmere. Hrathden is legitimately one of his most interesting characters, but that’s a whole other rant.
What I’ve found with most litRPG books is that the whole video game leveling system is usually just used to prop up bad writing. Don’t know how they will get out of a situation? Have them level up and gain a new skill. Where DCC gets it right is that…
Im largely harsh on the genre for this specific reason, even as Im actively trying to write a LitRPG series myself. I think the trappings of a preconceived system that serves as an easy to understand basis for a magical system is good, but I think using it as a crutch for lazy writing or as a do cool shit button is the worst way to use it. I do also think that it’s a major draw to people who only consume anime and manga, and the hope that even one of them makes the jump to reading ACTUALLY good fiction is enough to not make me hate the genre outright.
I've scouted quite a few "rising stars" on RR since, to my understanding, that is still far and away the best place to self pub anything fantasy/litrpg/wuxia. I cannot understand how the DING DING WAHOO and giant stat blocks became common among this genre. I understand why they work mechanically, but in a literary sense, it is the living embodiment of tell don't show. I don't recall the name but I read a "cozy" dungeon crawler a couple years back that opens up in the most typicaly way possible, but it was charming enough for me to read through their first dungeon crawl about 10 or so chapters in. There, they get this blink dagger thing that lets them teleport across long distances, so like a diegetic fast travel mechanic that they're supposed to go and leave in the place they want to warp to. I was then presented with 20 pages straight of loredump vomit and talking about how different cultures in the world have different gender norms and that's why the side character doesn't like being called a girl o algo. Why do people do this? It starts off nice and then turns vomitous as soon as you're past the barest investment threshold.
I actually like The Wandering Inn since it is a nice breather between my usual reads, need a break from cosmic wars and interstellar wars and other kinds of wars and it was a nice fit. Regarding Sanderson, I'm not a major fan of his but I loved the Mistborn trilogy and you should absolutely give it a read. He's overrated to hell but I still think that he's a very skilled writer, he very clearly plans his story out ahead of time and is very skilled at painting major plot and setting elements as minor details until the big reveal, the kinda shit that makes rereading his books a lotta fun, though it feels like once you read one of his series you kinda read them all and the rest seem way less interesting since now you know what to look for. Still, Mistborn is a great read and the magic system absolutely lives up to the hype it gets,
Autism+vidya gaems as the sole frame of reference. No hate to those who enjoy them, I tried Mother of Learning and some cyberpunk cultivation story and bounced off them both. Just not my type of storytelling.