Heck yes. “What happens now!?” Where do the characters go? What happens next in the world the author built for us? Personally there’s even a slight bit of resentment to pick up another book about another character set in the same world, perhaps somewhere else in the timeline, because I got so into the part I’d read and don’t want to have to shift gears and learn about new characters, settings, and personalities.

I do the same for TV series, I don’t watch one unless it’s complete. Why wait for episodes or invest time in a series that turns out to get bad or get cancelled? There is enough good, complete ones to watch.

Robin Hobb’s assassin series

Sanderson’s big fantasy series right now, the stormlight archive. Oh my god, each book is just made to make you get drawn deeper, and deeper until you hit the end. The gap between the first and second book was so freaking long to wait. I think we’re up to book five now, so you don’t have to have that feeling for a while.

Alternatively, if you like blue fantasy (talking animals and wise spirit guides that help sometimes hapless humans), mercedes lackey did great things with her heralds of valdemar series. I’d actually recommend jumping into it at a later point because her writing greatly improved from the first trilogy. You could start with magic’s pawn/promise/price, which has one of the earliest depictions of lgbt protagonists I ever read.

If you like more ‘earthy’ fantasy, the wit’chfire series (actual series name, banned and the banished) by james clemens (who I just found out is a pseudonym for a sci-fi author who didn’t want to be ‘smeared’ as a fantasy author and has some other good books when i googled for the name) is really good. Don’t start his other series, because even though it was fantastic, it’s never going to be finished. I think we’re at like 30 years now and never gotten the third book.

And then there’s the big one, the bold one, the ‘start you off so small and build you into a great, grand sweeping epic’ jim butcher series: the codex alera. The first book was riveting from start to finish. I actually think it was the best one, because the worldbuilding was just so sublime. I loved the characters more and more with each added book, but the magic of the beginning was just amazing.

N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (beginning with The Fifth Season).

Also, Brandon Sanderson’s various Cosmere works, especially The Stormlight Archive (beginning with The Way of Kings) and the original Mistborn trilogy (beginning with The Final Empire).

For me it was His Dark Materials. I read it when I was 14 and it completely changed me. My mind was aware that it was a book, but my soul knew that reality is what you experience and I just experienced a lifetime.

I read it again ten years later and I recognized so much of myself in those books, I was actually surprised by the impact it made on me, even though I already knew back then that I would never be the same.

The wheel of time series is the best out there.

The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

Saving for later when I forget all about this. Why is there no remindme function on Lemmy?

Also, do you like space operas? Bobiverse series Lost Fleet series Expeditionary Force (ExForce) Series Odyssie One series (Into the Black) Murderbot diaries

I have this a lot, but the most it has happend was about 10 years ago with the webserial worm ( https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ ), I read it so much. I read it before work, I read it during lunch, I read it when I got home, I went to sleep late etc. etc.

When it was done I had forgotten what to do with my time, I wound up re-reading it again but slower at a few chapters a day rather than turning myself into a gremlin for maximal reading efficiency.

If you want a summary, it’s a superhero story, which usually really isn’t for me, but something about the tone of the writing and the way the world worked in this one made it work.

Powers are incredibly varied, but the strongest characters are the ones who know how to use their powers well, the protagonist exemplifies this, where she doesn’t get a cool flashy power but she figures out how to use it so well and adapt to each situation that she becomes terrifying.

I also liked the charactersation of the heroes and the villains, where the heroes are somewhat vain and egotistical which means they do good things when the cameras are rolling rather than being “morally good”. the villains are mostly just people on the edges of society for a mix of reasons which means they do what they want, but I think since then “The Boys” has also done something similar so the effect may be lessened.

Curious if anyone else on Lemmy has wound up reading it.

Definitely The Expanse series if you haven’t read it yet. I loved so many of the charcters, a bit sad to not be reading about them anymore.

The Red Rising trilogy left me with this feeling. I loved the terraformation zones descriptions and how the technology is described and implemented.

The story takes lots of twists and turns, kept me glued to the books.

I came to the comments just to say this. I’m glad I’m not the only one

You know what the worst book ever written ever was? “Football, It’s a Funny Old Game” by Kevin Keegan.

Or as I’ve recently come to calling it, GNU + Terry Pratchett

Giant Nosy Neighbor?

Greatest Nut Ultimately?

I’ve barely read any books since he died tbh.