Unsure about quaint but Discworld is absolutely pleasant and grows a delightful lore around itself. General advice is skip the first two (Pratchett was just figuring it out) and come back to them when you already love Rincewind.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Second vote for Discworld
Guards! Guards!
Mort
Wyrd Sisters
Are all good places to start.
Small Gods is my goto reccomendation for starting points, it's completely self contained and one of Pratchett's best works
Second Small Gods. It's my favourite discworld book (even though I love the whole series).
That's a good thought on starting points.
Thirded. Discworld is great.
Small Gods and Reaper Man ftw.
Just to add that the BBC has done good audio dramatisations of several of Pratchet's works.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03mz1wb/episodes/guide
Small Gods and Mort for example, are excellent. Currently not available on bbc iplayer / sounds, although they do regularly rebroadcast them and make them available online, but should be floating around on the torrent or archive sites.
BBC sounds/radio is free to listen outside the UK, unlike the tv content.
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I love the first 2 and it's where I started, I don't see anything wrong with them and I will die on that hill.
I agree. The Colour of Magic is what got me into Discworld and I thoroughly enjoyed it as a standalone for a while.
I really don't think they're bad or even worse than the rest. I do feel like they're so different from the other books that whether someone liked them or not doesn't tell them if they'll like the rest, which is the only reason I don't recommend it as a taster before deciding on whether to read the other 30+ tomes.
I read the Discworld series in publication order and loved it. There was an almost continuous improvement in quality over the first few books which was also satisfying.
Fair play! I don't think they're bad per se but I do think that the others are significantly better. I wouldn't use the first two to demonstrate why Pratchett is one of the best things to happen to the English language since punctuation.
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For pleasantness and YA high fantasy vibe Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle is great.
For wizard school with a much more mature tone R.F. Kuang's Babel is a great read. Warning though it is much darker and heavier, so prepare yourself emotionally haha.
EDIT: was recommended that I give a heavier content warning to Babel which is fair. While it is thrown around as an HP alternative it is emotionally harrowing, has some extremely violent and disturbing sections, and is generally focused on depicting the horrors of colonialism. A good read, but prepare yourself going in and don’t expect it to be quaint or pleasant.
Just to add a couple of thoughts to this.
Earthsea is often described as being rather mature despite being YA. I agree. There's a clarity and immediacy to Le Guin's writing style that cuts straight to the point while also providing clear images and characters which is combined with deep and arguably universal themes and sometimes nice allegory.
Additional to this, the series goes or progresses in surprising directions. As is so often the case, Le Guin didn't intend to write as many books as she did, but used the opportunity to do interesting or personal things with each book. While there's a continuity throughout the whole series, it's not a simple or single story but rather multiple stories with large or important intersections. You could for instance stop any time you like and not really miss out on any satisfying climactic ending.
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Less ... bigoted? Were there themes of bigotry in Harry Potter that I missed? Or are you simply looking for a better-regarded author?
The way house elves are handled and the very stereotypical names come to mind.
Chang aside, Finnegan’s an exceptionally awful choice. As someone only technically alive and a world away during the Troubles, I assumed it was an oversight. I have since learned just how much an English adult would have to overlook to accidentally settle on the only perceptibly Irish character (edit: other than the leprechauns) having a nasty habit of causing explosions and trying to get ahold of whiskey.
If thats the level at which you take offense, good luck finding anything worth reading.
There is a big gap between not tolerating and supporting bigotry and being personally offended by something.
This is a really great distinction that I feel like the right wing is incapable of understanding because everything in their world view revolves around how they feel, so they just assume everyone else is just like them that way.
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Brandon Sanderson Cosmere fits the bill and is super easy to get into.
The Mistborn series might fit your description the most. But my personal favorite is The Stormlight Archive. The Stormlight Archive is what got me back into reading.
What makes the Cosmere so easy and enjoyable to get into is that different series are only vaguely connected. They take place in the same universe but on different worlds or realms. But since they share the same creation "myth" there are similarities between these worlds. When getting started a lot of the connections feel more like an easter egg. An easter egg that teaches you about the history of the universe.
But each series is basically self contained. Most characters and people aren't even aware of the existance of these different worlds. The focus is mostly on the specific world. Meaning you don't have to worry about reading order or missing out. Heck, if you don't enjoy a specific series you can even skip it without losing too much.
There are a few unpublished or planned books that will focus on the connection of these worlds, on characters that travel between them. They will probably be the most enjoyable if you read everything in the Cosmere.
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His Dark Materials
I got the trilogy as a used box set recently and I really wanted to love them but just didn’t click for me. Don’t read a lot of YA now anyway so maybe missed my chance, definitely see the appeal though and think it’s a good fit for OP’s request!
Agreed, especially now that the second trilogy is underway. Hoping the next book follows the same more mature progression and can wrap up the story in a satisfying way.
The Discworld series might be what you're looking for.
An obvious choice for me is The Hobbit. It hits a completely different and more adventurous feeling to LoTR, while still hinting at the lore that would follow. Sometimes I think I might prefer to LoTR in general tbh.
The Amber Chronicles by Zelazny
Branden Sanderson has a bunch of good series that fit the description.
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Raymond E. Feist's Magician series was quite engaging, I thought... though I read it many many years ago.
His Dark Materials aka the Golden Compass books
The David Eddings books are excellent.
I'm re-reading them again and quite like them, but OP might not - depending on what they consider bigotry and how sensitive they are. It was written in the 80s (Belgariad, anyway) and sensibilities have moved on a bit.
Especially ethnicity is very simplistic in the Belgariad - these races are mostly good, these races are mostly bad, each one has a pithy stereotype and people seem to behave more or less like theirs dictates. That seems unfortunate, but in-universe this is justified - the races really are significantly different through selection (7 gods each picked their people), breeding and religious pressure. One of the gods is the Big Bad, making for an "evil race". The story is not quite that black and white, but it's also only as complicated as needed.
I think taking it as commentary is a big mistake - at worst it's still just kinda lazy, IMO - but some people will likely get offended by it anyway. ("This will probably offend Polgara, but that's too bad. If it wasn't this, she'd just find something else.")
I would still recommend it to anyone who likes irreverent (for the 80s) High Fantasy - the story is bog standard YA Fantasy/coming-of-age etc., but then the story isn't really the point. While not Tolkien or Sanderson level worldbuilding, it certainly fits the lore part.
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The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty was very enjoyable. Still YA, but engaging throughout.
Percy Jackson... kind of? Still a tad childish.
I was quite a fan of the Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix when I was younger. The imagery is vivid, the characters are complex/capable, and the setting is an acid trip of wide-ranging allegory and symbolism.
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