Just finished reading The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings, and wondering what to read next
For context I did not grow up reading books, came to it in my early twenties and found I preferred historical, academic or social books. Therefore reading really felt like a chore and I struggled.
Read what I would consider my first novel/story book last year which was The Iliad and found that I quite enjoyed it, decided I was going to try something else. The Lord of the rings came to mind as I have rewatched the movies countless times, I researched recommendations on editions and how to read, therefore I started with the Hobbit back in June.
I just finished reading the last book of the trilogy today, which compared to my previous reading habits is lightening fast. And I am a little sad, I will read the appendices but am uncertain what to do next. I'm thinking unfinished tales and then the silmarillion.
Wondering if anyone has any suggestions, also about any other series or universe to read about after these, preferably with movies that I can watch before hand as it helps me with imagining what I'm reading.
Edit:
First of all I wanted to thank everyone for sharing your ideas, it has been immensely insightful and I feel like there are a lot of possibilities for me to pursue even if not immediately but in the near future.
I've decided I'm not quite ready to leave middle earth yet and so I will be persuing the silmarillion, and then unfinished tales. Any thoughts on tom bombadil?
After this the following quite interested me:
- prince of nothing
- the resurrection OST
- dune
I feel like I might actually start with dune as it will be a foot in the door into sci-fi but let's see
I've suggested it here before, but you may enjoy the Prince of Nothing series by R. Scott Bakker. The author is a pHd in philosophy, and while it may not quite read like a mythological "document" in the same way as Tolkien it definitely engages an academic type reader. There's enough under the surface that it has a bit of narrative heft. No films though unfortunately, though it could make a good fantasy series I think.
The Dune series is often regarded as kind of a sci-fi parallel to Lord of the Rings, it serves as grandfather to a lot of scifi tropes and concepts. The latest film by Denis Villeneuve is really great and will certainly populate your imagination for you, there's a second film on the way next March, so a good time to get into the stories perhaps.
More sci fi that has media associated with it; The Expanse is an excellent show and the books its based on are well loved. I'm also part way through the show Foundation, based on the books by Isaac Asimov. I've not read the books, but Asimov is regarded in a similar way to Frank Herbert as someone influential on modern science fiction. The show has been decent so far, it has a high budget and some real moments of spectacle.
I'll second The Expanse, the show is possibly my favourite on-screen sci-fi ever and the books are even better. Also Foundation, I haven't read the books but have been very much enjoying the show, and I love everything Jared Harris is in. Planning a binge of Season 2 soon.
Not sure if this is what OP is looking for but Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is some of the best scifi I've read in recent years. Unless spiders make you squeamish ;) The sequel is fabulous too, and I'll be reading the third as soon as I'm done with the Polity books by Neil Asher. I love me a well built sci-fi universe with lots of content.
Can't leave out The Culture books by Iain M Banks either. Each one is a standalone story set at various times in and around The Culture. Character names are impossible to remember (Juboal-Rabaroansa Perosteck Alseyn Balveda dam T'seif, a human, or how about Sprant Flere-Imsaho Wu-Handrahen Xato Trabiti, a drone working for Special Circumstances) but there are some seriously interesting sci-fi shenanigans in every book. One involves an actual virtual hell, like the Matrix but every conscious thing in there is horrifically tortured in ways not even possible in the real world, which was scary as f*ck to read. I might start wearing a tinfoil hat to stop anything from scanning my brain, making a copy of me and uploading me to hell lol
Man, I want to love the culture series, and all the world-building and universe bits are so cool. But dear God is the story bad. I only got 60% of the way through the first book, as I just can't stand Changer McCoolGuy and his plodding antics any longer. Every chapter and scene that wasn't part of the main plot was amazing, but I feel like Banks fumbled the actual plot bits and characters so hard.
Maybe the other books are better? I'd be interested to know, like I said love the universe but I couldn't slog through it anymore
I thought the first book, Consider Phlebas, was pretty good. The second book, The Player of Games, was top-shelf, A+ scifi. The third book, Use of Weapons, had so much potential, but I hated the gimmicky non-linearity and that killed it for me. Never read past that.
I'd definitely say it's worth giving the others a go. I thought overall the first was the weakest, though I still enjoyed it.
I wouldn't go near the Expanse books, personally. They are less tiring than Tolkien but swimming through solid rock is less tiring than reading Tolkien so that's not saying much.
It's not that the Expanse books are all that bad. They're just not really particularly good either. They read largely like a treatment for a screenplay, and getting a TV show was probably the intent of the authors. They're fairly easy reads and they're not too challenging conceptually so that might be a positive for someone in OP's position. The Expanse TV show is... sort of OK. I generally don't like sci-fi on TV because it's always so.. diluted. I read the first five books before finally getting too bored to carry on, but the TV show I didn't even make it to the end of season one.
I watched one episode of Foundation and then remembered why I didn't like Foundation except as an idea. I would never really recommend anyone read Asimov. He's much better as an influencer on other authors than someone to actually read. He's very dry. Very dry. Again, not a great choice for someone getting into reading. Asimov is not fun. He's very, very important in the history of sci-fi but just read The Last Question and I, Robot (the latter bearing very little relation to the film of the same name)
Dune is a good shout but I've never heard anyone compare it to LotR. I can't really judge Villeneuve's film yet because it's not finished, but I have some amount of hope it'll be OK. He hasn't screwed it up too badly, yet. I'm not sure Dune is a good read for someone making their way into reading, it's one of the densest texts out there. But it's far more fun than Foundation, at least!
I'd suggest 2001. Kubrick's movie is arguable the greatest sci-fi film ever made, and Arthur C Clarke is consistently pretty accessible. There are four books, and there is, eventually, a conclusion.
If screen versions are important I'd also suggest many of the works of Philip K Dick, who is probably the most to-screen adapted author. In no particularly order, book/movie:
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep/Blade Runner
We Can Remember it for You Wholesale/Total Recall
The Man in the High Castle/The Man in the High Castle
A Scanner Darkly/A Scanner Darkly
The Minority Report/Minority Report (film is awful but still, it's a film)
Bit left field, but Neil Gaiman's Sandman is great both onscreen and on paper, but it's a graphic novel not a prose one. Don't bother with American Gods, the TV show is awful. Good book though. (same goes for Good Omens)
The Expanse actually started as an TTRPG campaign and the authors turned it into a book. I think they were 5 books in and pretty popular when the TV show started and the show stops at book 6, so they avoided the Game of Thrones issue of running out of material.
The Foundation is trying to film the unfilmable. The book has no characters that carry over long enough for a visual medium. Making an anthology-type show might have worked but it'd be boring as hell.
The first season starts a bit rough, but they correct the course for S2 and it's actually pretty good now. The way how they focus on the Cleons is what brings the story to life. Jared Harris as Hari Seldon and Lee Pace as Brother Day pretty much carry the show (and Laura Birn as Demerzel later in S2). Salvor Hardin and Gaal Dornick are actually the most boring bits of the show all the way through.
As an avid Asimov reader I wasn't sure what to expect of the tv adaptation of Foundation, but they have really sold me with the conclusion of the second season. The show has reworked the story so much to make it filmable that it's now its own retelling, but it works. Certainly helps to have Jared Harris and Lee Pace leading a mostly stellar acting group. The spirit of the book still remains, even with the newly created spectacles the show has devised. I would recommend the show to book readers and non-readers alike, but note that it takes awhile to get through to the payoffs.
Just to add. I recommend Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clark. It's wonderful.
It is, and it deserves a TV series. Apparently Denis Villeneuve is attached to the current version of the movie project but who knows if that will ever get off the ground. It's been stumbling about in development for a very, very long time, although Villeneuve has only been involved a few years.
I'm not sure I'd recommend reading Gentry Lee's sequels.
I think The expanse just might not be your cup of tea.
If anyone is interested in audiobooks, this series is excellent. It features a full cast and Gaiman does the narration for it as well. It's really well done and they've adapted everything, but the last volumes I believe
To each their own, I've re-read all of the Expanse books several times.
Anyone watching the Foundation show and then deciding to read the books should be aware that they are in for a very different experience. The show has little connection to the books: the plots, the themes, and the characters are quite different. The show and the books are best considered as two totally different works by differente writers, that just happen to share some names in common.
Obviously the production value is a lot less than the Denis Villeneuve version, but the older Sci-Fi channel miniseries is probably the adaptation the most closely follows Dune. They have another miniseries, Children of Dune, which tracks the next two books. Each series is about 11 hours total, which is really what the material deserves to do it any kind of justice without significant editing
That looks interesting, it reminds me a bit of the Codex Seraphinianus, a fake encyclopedia written in a made up language about a surreal world that doesn't exist. The imagery is equal parts beautiful, amusing and grotesque.
Read the Silmarillion next!
Be wery though, it's basically like reading a history book.
Or the Bible
I'm confused. Your username is Valar despite never having read the series? What's the story behind that?
I believe I had just been reading about the fangorn forest and the return of Gandalf when I received my invite
Looks like their user is pretty new though - newer than when they started reading the series. And they watched the movies tons of times?
Are the Valar ever mentioned in the movies?
Come to think of it I am uncertain that they are. Perhaps in the Amazon TV series they may get a mention
There are no decent film or tv adaptations, but I would recommend Ursula K leGuin's Earthsea series.
They are ostensibly written for children (which is when I first encountered them) but they are beautifully written books that take on serious themes. I'd say those books have lived in my psyche for decades and probably had a good part in shaping who I am. Compared to Tolkien, they are very short and simple, but deep.
I never saw the TV series so I can't say if it's connected, but The Sword of Shannara trilogy and The Heritage of Shannara book series are both pretty good collections of fantasy novels that have a similar feel to Tolkein's work. There are a few parts with big battles that I find drag on too long, but the rest of them are great.
I understand the urge to have the show to watch with - I'm much more of an absorb the words kind of reader and just memorize what is happening rather than actively imagining things.
The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan is one of my favorites, but very long (14 long books). Jordan definitely has his limitations as a writer, but it's a magnificent story. It's a much more complex and interwoven story relative to LotR, but I feel like it has its shining, deeply moving moments in similar ways to Tolkien's work. There is also a lot of humor.
Amazon has done TV series adaptations of the first two novels. There are significant departures in the details of the story, but I think it will prime you reasonably to visualize the characters. The casting in the Tv series is excellent.
The audiobook versions are also great. That is my preferred way to read them these days.
The first book is almost literally LotR ;) And it's bad in that sense. As far as I know it was requested by the publisher, then when WoT gained popularity Jordan got more leeway and so each subsequent book departs from Tolkien works and becomes its own thing. I love Wheel of Time, it may be the most important fantasy series for me, I picked it up when I was 15 or so and it has been formative for me, as a reader, in some ways. I never finished reading it and in fact I'm in a re-read at the moment (finished book 4 in August). I highly recommend this series with the caveat that the first book is kinda bad because of how strong the similarities between WoT and LotR are at the beginning. It sucks when people tell you to plod through some bad to get to the good, like "the first four books suck, but wait for book 5" :D However, with WoT you don't have to endure for so long. The second book is really good and from the third onward it's peak fantasy to me. :)
I disagree with you, unless, I suppose, one to boil both stories down to "people from a backwater follow a wizard to save the world". But in the particulars, the worlds are vastly different.
One of the reasons I like the series so much is that Jordan did a really interesting job of pulling ideas from a wide variety of mythologies, including Slavic and Norse myth. He makes allusions that suggest that out world could really be a long lost turning of the wheel, while simultaneously making it clear that it was really different, e.g. "as sure as peaches are poison".
I don't know what the circumstances of the first book were, but it seems clear that he had the end in mind because there are questions raised in Eye of the World that are not answered until much later in the series.
It's the Baalzamon figure for me. He's literally Sauron and Moiraine (Gandalf) accompanied by Lan (Aragorn) forms the fellowship of
hobbitsbackwater peasants. They need to go to Mordor (the Blight) andthrow the ringfind the Eye of the World. The analogies are blatant and I I've seen that opinion many times, with which I personally agree. Furthermore, the first book (or even the second one) feels like your run of the mill fantasy with the Big Evil and the Hero and the clash between Light and Darkness. Yawn. So I'm super happy that it turns out to be much more.EDIT: there's even a man coming annually on a cart with fireworks, haven't seen that one before ;)
It has lovable characters, interesting lore and superb worldbuilding. To me, every country feels completely different culturally -- from clothing, through people's behavior and their sayings to architecture. In my opinion most writers are either good at writing characters OR worldbuilding. Jordan somehow was good at both.
This puts me in mind of something Terry Pratchett wrote:
So in some sense, Tolkien is going to be present in any fantasy. But the way the story is developed, what drives the characters, the amount of agency they have, even the ideas of good and evil, are much different in WoT.
There is an interview with RJ (I think it is appended to an audiobook version of one of the WoT books) where he says something like:
I wish I could find the interview, but I have not been able to. This interview gets into similar ideas somewhat. Also notable is that he started with a six book contract, so he knew from the beginning what the scope of the story was going to be, even if it outgrew those six books.
Lions of Al Rassan is a great fantasy book with some emotional weight to it, reminds me in certain ways of the Lord of the Rings although Lions does not have fantasy races, only different human countries and cultures/ethnicities.
The Once and Future King by T H White,
Watership Down,
Shogun by Clavell
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett,
The Chronicles of Amber,
Murderbot Diaries
Deed of Paksenarrion
Adventures of Robin Hood
Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Christo
I will stop here but there are many more
Yes! "The Lions of Al-Rassan", "Under Heaven", "Tigana", and most of Guy Gavriel Kay's other work from 1990 onward is worth checking out.
Interestingly, when GGK was only 26 years old, he was chosen by JRR Tolkien's son, Christopher Tolkien, to help edit the Silmarillion. The two of them worked essentially in secret, editing the various pieces of the manuscript into a single document in 1974-1975.
GGK commented in a 2014 article for the Guardian on how editing Tolkien's work affected his own approach to writing:
Fantastic bit of insight in relation to GKK and Tolkien's work. Thanks for sharing that.
Plus one for the Murderbot Diaries, just read the novellas first before the novel.
My only issue with Murderbot Diaries is how the author charges full book price for what's essentially a novella. $12 for ~150 pages, oof.
CS Lewis was a friend and fellow Oxford scholar with Tolkien. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. A different style than LOTR but also an excellent fantasy series.
Funny enough, I had to read and do a book review for Inventing the Middle Ages by Norman Cantor. And Cantor has an entire chapter dedicated to the Oxford writers and in which he criticized the three authors for writing fantasy books based on medieval society and acted like writing fantasy was beneath them. Well to be fair the book had other issues and is one of the more controversial historiography books on Medieval history for reasons.
Also, in short I do not recommend Cantor's book. Mostly because it is quite bad in terms of how bad he put his criticism of the different historians, other than the Tolkien and Lewis chapter.
You could also get into the writings of their friend Charles Williams
Currently working through the trilogy myself. Read The Hobbit years ago, loved it.
I tried the Silmarillion, but I'll admit that it's kind of a tough read. It's like a bible and it sort of drones on about lineage and things of that nature. I almost wish there was like, an abridged version with a lot of the "fluff" removed.
You might consider getting into even older Sci-Fi/Fantasy stuff. A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs is pretty awesome and there are sequels, part of his Barsoom series. From the same author, I really loved The Land That Time Forgot, the first in the Caspak trilogy. Also, H.G. Wells' The Time Machine is a pretty wild ride. Plus, these are all public domain now, so you can find them for free all over the place.
Hyperion Cantos series by Dan Simmons. Sci Fi, but has a similar scale and depth as Lord of the Rings. Essentially a massive quest through space and time with complex diversions.
The Simarillion reads very different from the Lord of the Rings but is is still an amazing work of literature. It is based around a series of stories and reads more like history than novel.
My recommendation is to reread the Lord of the Rings some time after reading the Silmarillion. There are so many references that you can’t pick up out of context. Understanding the connection to the deep history of Middle Earth makes reading the Lord of the Rings much more rewarding.
Agreed, there are so many fantastic small details in LotR that are referencing events in the Silmarillion.
It is a tough book to read, it is like the Bible and a history book together. But I love it, I think it is his Magnum Opus. I always keep my dms open for people asking Silmarillion questions. I love that book so much.
I'm just here to say that I find it so impressive that The Iliad is what got you into reading more..! 🤯
Had to read parts of it a few years ago for philosophy class and it, along with The Odyssey, was some of the heaviest reading I've ever had to do
Huge kudos!
I feel like my ability for imagination varies and having some sort of baseline helps me a lot with text where I have no problems imagining Details while dya dreaming.
Therefore the most descriptive the text the more it helps me, but for baseline I had X amount of Greek mythology movies in my head (i.e. clash of the Titans) and assassin's Creed Odyssey. So in. The Iliad when they were talking about the battle, the sounds and piercing of armour it really sprung my imagination. So in my head we had:
Dune! The second part of the new dune movie is coming out next year. Dune is also one of the best sci Fi series ever written
Maybe try Witcher books. I would advise to play games actually to have something to visualize the books though. The Netflix Triss Merigold doesn't really fit the games' Triss and it's really shame (IMHO) - I haven't watched the series though.
If you want to try some other reading (non-fantasy), I can highly recommend books by Tom Clancy that got their own movies: The hunt for Red October, Clear and present danger, Patriot games, The sum of all fears.
If you want to read more books that movies were made of, I can recommend First Blood (first Rambo movie) and books that Die Hard 1&2 is based on (can't remember the names from top of my head, sorry). Ot was great read!
Don't bother. Because the show is nothing like the books. And since Henry Cavill (who is a massive Witcher fan) left the show, there is no reason to watch it because he was the reason why the show was held together. That and the writers for said show actively hated the source material. And because of this hatred, after season one the quality actually went down to a laughable degree.
I’ve been on a fantasy binge lately, so if you’d like more fantasy I can easily recommend:
Rothfuss and George Martin are why I refuse to start any series that isn't finished. I'm well over Song of Ice and Fire by now, but I still really, really want a proper ending to Kvoth's story and I finished both series at around the same time.