Most bingeable book series?
Forget highbrow literature and critics for a moment. What's a book series that stayed engaging and enjoyable throughout?
Bonus points if you don't have to provide a disclaimer for those one or two books in the series that are "a bit of a slog but still really good!"
My top nominations are:
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Red Rising: Never read anything quite like it. As an ADHD haver, reading something more than once is the bane of my existence. Not for this series. Endlessly re-readable and highly engaging throughout. Starts out as Roman hunger games in space, turns into peak Game of Thrones in space. God, it's so good.
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Harry Potter: Not sure I need to explain this one. Plenty to hate about this series and the author, but they aren't popular for no reason. I find the world to be magical, whimsical, and the story to be very engaging. The later books are particularly good.
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The Bobiverse: this is the most fun series on my list. The name and premise will turn most people away from this one and it's a real shame. I could not stop reading these and I'm dying for more. If this story went on forever and maintained its current quality, I don't think I'd ever get bored of hearing it on audiobook.
The Locked Tomb series (starting with "Gideon the Ninth"): Every book in the series so far has been exceptionally good and engaging. Personally, I find that the series improves even more with from second book (my favorite), although the first one is already very good on its own. As of now, the series has not been finished, but I'm eagerly anticipating the release of the last book, which is expected to come out this year.
The Expanse series (beginning with "Leviathan Wakes"): Remarkably, this series spans nine books, tracing a single crew's journey over approximately 80 years. Each book is engaging in its own right, although some may stand out more than others.
The Dark Profit Saga (commencing with "Orkonomics"): The final book in the series was released last year, and all three books stand out as some of the best satires I've ever read.
Mistborn Saga (starting with "The Final Empire"): With two eras explored and a third on the horizon, I can't get enough of this world's intricate building and its amazing power system. It's a series that keeps me eagerly awaiting each new installment.
The Expanse novellas are also worth the read.
I agree with Mistborn, and would add that this also applies to Sanderson's other work for me. Even his older stuff is just really fun to read.
My biggest issue with Sanderson is that I don't enjoy reading him in the moment, but I enjoy having read him.
I find his books to be slow burns and then by the end I find that the payoff was worth it to me.
Makes it really hard to start more of his books though, haha.
I for the most part, do not feel the same way. However, that is exactly how I felt about the most recent Stormlight Archive novel. It's not that I didn't enjoy it - I really did, and it was a very different style of story to the previous three books (I'll avoid spoilers). It's just that I felt very stressed the whole way through reading it, and only right at the end did the pay-off make all the stress feel worth it.
But honestly, I loved it and can't remember the last time I powered through a book so fast.
I have tried to read The Stormlight Archives so many times. I think the furthest in I've made it is 80 pages. There's so much set up and it's so much to remember. I'm trying again right now and it really feels like a slog.
I too felt that the first book required a genuine mental effort to get through (and this was going in after having read all the other Cosmere books first). The setting and social dynamics of the series initially feel very alien and the reader is constantly being confronted with new characters and information, the significance of which is not always immediately clear.
However, once I got through the first book, I thoroughly enjoyed all of the following ones which then really dig into (and in many cases tear away at) the foundations laid in the first. The initial investment is well rewarded in my view!
I have almost completed a reread of all his books and have really enjoyed it. There latest few and side stories were new to me though.
I have gotten a feel for his writing style and it does not get old at all even reading them all in order. The great moments of imagery and realization still hit right and the ends of his books keep the pages turning even though I had already read many of them.
All of his books are written to be in the same universe, so there are drips of links and increasing amounts of cross overs the farther in publication order you go. It has been hard for me to remember connections so binging all at once is really helping to lock it in.
Overall he's building a great world and I feel like the books are consistently good throughout.
The Locked Tomb books are fantastic. I've been recommending them to anyone who will listen since I picked up Gideon The Ninth a few weeks ago and almost immediately inhaled the whole series. Harrow the Ninth was particularly impressive by having whole sections written in the second person and making it work - and that's hard. According to Muir's socials, Alecto The Ninth was delivered for editing in December last year, which means a release probably sooner this year rather than later.
The Expanse, I am not so enthused by. I read six of them and I have no idea why I stuck with them that long. Would not recommend. It's not the best writing and the stories are fairly derivative. As an alternative I'd suggest Iain M Banks's Culture books instead, which honestly the best space opera going. Or Neal Asher's Polity series (from which a lot of the first Expanse book was "inspired"). Or Alistair Reynolds's Revelation Space or Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books, Stephen Baxter's Xeelee sequence, Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn or really just about any other sci-fi series.
The first Mistborn book is great and I loved Sanderson's magic system but for me the enjoyment drops off fairly fast after book one. I didn't even finish book three. Brandon Sanderson does seem like a really nice person though.
I've never encountered anything quite like Harrow the Ninth in terms of its second-person written style. Initially, the unfamiliarity of this style almost led me to abandon the book after the first few chapters. However, as I progressed through the story, I became completely engaged. The choice of this unique style blends so well with the narrative in the second book that makes me wonder why I found it strange initially.
Harrow stands out as one of my favorite characters in fiction.
Click to expand spoiler.
... and I truly hope to see more of her. While Nona was okay, and I appreciated the development of the other characters, it felt like a transitional book leading up to the conclusion. At this point, I firmly believe that Harrow has become the main character of the series, overshadowing Gideon.
The final chapters of the first book, where Gideon and Harrow fight together, are exceptionally well-written, and I recall the details of that battle to this day. The author seemed exceptionally inspired while crafting this scene, delivering a description so vivid and fluid that it successfully kept me on edge throughout the whole end of the book. It was a truly fantastic experience. Overall, I find that the rest of the first book kind of pales in comparison to the finale. Not that it is not a good book, it is just that Harrow does the mystery and revelation stuff better
If you're intrigued by the second person viewpoint, you may enjoy N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy. She won a Hugo (Best Novel) for each of the novels, the only person to ever pull the hat trick. While it's not necessarily binge-able, I don't think it can come with a higher recommendation.
I have to agree with this. The second person works exceptionally well in Broken Earth
The only other books that I particularly recall making 2nd person mode work well are Iain Banks' Complicity and Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower but both of those are still less impactful than how deftly Muir places us inside Harrow's head. Good books though, well worth a read.
I enjoyed the Raven Tower, but Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series is one of my favorites.
I really enjoyed ... (very minor spoiler)
having the main character be an AI and exploring the differences and implications of that.
Have you read Translation State? Because I love the dive into the Presger Translators
It is such an interesting universe!
I love the Radch books. The latest, the name of which I can't recall, is particularly good. Also I can't not love a culture that places as much importance on a nice up of tea as the Radch do.
Regarding the content of your teeny spoiler, I must recommend you read by Excession by Iain M Banks. Leckie is the closest I've read to Banks both in style and content, but as great as she is, she's not as good as he was.
Thanks, I will check it out!
I'm another TLT fan, I have reread the books multiple times including reading them aloud to my partner. I find so much on each re-read.
The Murderbot Diaries are fun, and also mostly pretty short -- definitely not a slog.
Anyone jumping into these, the suggested reading order is 1-4, 6, 5, 7.
There's also a 4.5 and a 0.5. I've already read 1-6 in that order, but I'm curious as to why you suggest 6 before 5?
That’s the order that they take place chronologically speaking rather than release wise.
Can't wait to try them. I've seen them suggested enough and this comment pushed it to the front of my awareness. Thank you!
The pricing is bonkers, novel prices for novella length books. Grab them from the library instead.
Great books and a fun to read.
Hitchhiker's guide!
It takes a quarter of the book to even hint at the game, and the beginning isn't exactly riveting storytelling. Amazing world building though.
(Re-re-reading it for a book club and hearing non-fans complain has opened my eyes a bit)
Different strokes, I guess. Player of Games was the most accessible of The Culture series I've read so far. I keep bouncing off Use of Weapons which is apparently everyone's favorite.
I think Use of Weapons is the weakest Culture book by some distance (unless you count Transitions, which is good but weird and not really Culture proper).
I usually recommend Excession as the best place for people to start.
Don't get me wrong, I fucking love the Culture books. They're the only books I've read twice - and now going on a third.
Banks's style of long prelude with tidbits of world building, that slowly starts building up to a fantastic finale isn't making it easy to bring "non-believers" into the fold :)
Player of Games doesn't really start until Mawhrin-Skel does The Thing and even after that there's a lull where Banks casually tells us that small GSV with a tiny human population has "only" 250 million people on it and other facts about the universe :D
Most of my re-read/easy reads that haven't been mentioned have been-
Guards/Moist series or some of the stand alone titles by Pratchett. Just super easy to read and very very good.
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher after a certain point - Kinda hard to explain other than to say his writing has evolved heavily with time and there's also certain plot beats that make earlier books feel a little slower. I'll still reread the later ones though.
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer. I read this probably in high school/college, and felt they were still quite enjoyable. Hardly the BEST THING EVER but more than good enough to enjoy the easy read.
The Reckoners by Branden Sanderson. While i re-read a lot of his stuff from time to time (Warbreaker being a favorite), this series, while far from perfect, felt really easy to blitz through and has a fun take on superhero stuff.
Beyond that some commentary on those mentioned-
Red Rising gets a lot of praise here and elsewhere, and I found it to be a tropey waste of a good setting and characters. There's a lot of interesting stuff to explore in the world created and almost none of it is. Characters are frequently huge hypocrits and it's not even called out or really discussed. I stopped at book 3 so maybe that's remedied down the line, but man the amount of "oh so no one is going to talk about this huh" was just huge.
The Expanse is something I'd reread but only if you paid me a LOT of money and certainly not something I'd argue was "easy". The books are quite long and there's at least two that are poor in my eyes and SERIOUS slog (oh boy...hero boy leading the blind...just what I wanted). Others are mostly good but still with their lousy A or B plots. The series overall is something I'd call quite good, but with the caveat that I would never have gotten through it if i hadn't gotten it as an audiobook, because I would zone out the boring parts and literally ignore calls to hear more on the good ones.
Thanks for sharing these suggestions!
I'm really surprised by your dislike for Red Rising, but different strokes I suppose! I found the characters to be very believable in their hypocrisy and shortcomings.
About the second half of the series, I'll say this: if you didn't enjoy the first half, you probably won't enjoy the second. However, the later books definitely examine the further consequences of what the characters have done.
This spoiler tag is okay to reveal if you've finished the first three books
Destroying is easier than creating. Tearing down an unjust government is one thing, governing justly is another
I'm another Red Rising hater (well, disliker) - a mix between hating how women are portrayed in what claimed to be an egalitarian society (the Golds not the Reds) which includes how many men are motivated by the death or SA of a woman, how much SA of Gold women there is (and it's fine, no big deal, normal even, but not SA of Gold men which is only how it works in fantasy), and that women are offered up as prizes, even by other women. (the dystopian aspect of having a class of sex slaves is not fun but it's consistent with the plot ) and the absolute misery of it. Our main is constantly talking about how awful things are while continuing to be awful. He doesn't SA women so that's a plus I guess. It just feels... Lazy to fridge multiple people, one more than once.
I get that some of the hypocrisy of the society is the point. But oh boy is it miserable to listen to that. I also don't think the author is aware of what narrative he embeded. I'm in the middle of Golden Sun so it may change.
I'm interested in your take on this for several reasons actually!
I agree and I don't agree.
I agree that you could call the treatment of women cruel in this society. And there is some fridging. But I think it's intentional. The society claimed to be egalitarian but clearly isn't and that hypocrisy is pretty much gold's biggest weakness throughout the series. It's often exploited by the heroes of the story even.
There are also a lot of very powerful women in this series and they're not powerful because they're sexy or because they're with powerful men - the women are brilliant. The first woman to die in the series does so intentionally as an act of bravery and rebellion, showing more courage than her husband (even if it was also a selfish and immature choice).
Also worth noting that this series passes the Bechdel Test several times. Pretty impressive considering it's told from a boy/man's point of view.
I think the best explanation for sexism and toxic masculinity in books is that the characters are sexist and live in a culture of toxic masculinity. Now, in some books, the authors celebrate and glorify this. In Red Rising, this is usually the trait of the bad guys and our hero, who is by no means a philosopher or intentional feminist, is inherently disgusted by this.
Sure, we see a bit of macho camaraderie between the good guys - calling each other "pixies" comes to mind as a bit problematic - but again, I tend to think that's intentional and fits the world they live in.
I also don't think men are treated well in this society either. Much like our own, they're often big, dumb cannon-fodder. And in this case, they're often cannon-fodder for intelligent women in power. There are also a ton of male sex slaves (pinks), but I suppose the implication is that they're very feminine or even gay. This might back up some of your criticisms.
I hope I'm not mansplaining this to anyone... Not at all my intention. I know that as a man I'm probably blind to a lot of these issues. I'm not experiencing them in my real life so they just pass by me without a second thought in literature sometimes too. It's the "default setting" for life so it goes unnoticed. I hope my response is taken as a healthy discussion piece as I'm intending it to be. I really welcome any responses anyone has to this.
I'll add that yes, the series continues to grow more complex as it progresses and a lot of the gnawing questions about power and consequences get explored more deeply. Most of the things you think are bad will probably come with a cost later and most of the questions you have are at least mentioned in passing, although not every single issue can possibly be explored to its end, the questions are at least raised and considered.
So here are the things I see about the Gold society in particular:
I actually think the author thinks he's made an egalitarian society because the women go to war school. It does not read to me as an insightful critique. This is even assuming our main's gendered culture is impacting him.
Other gendered stuff
Which brings me to other stuff about this society:
I also just think the main character is miserable all the time - and if he's not he's killing people - and making dumb decisions like "I learned not to do that again... I should fix that relationship... Yeah I'll never do that again for sure but still haven't fixed it .. et tu brute?!?!" I have no real interest in his "rise" or his glory and I assume any success he has will honestly be absolutely lacking any plan for the outcome.
I'm still listening along but I do know some spoilers for the end of Golden Son, so I know where this book is broadly going. I do think there's some interesting stuff in here, and it isn't necessarily that the culture is sexist that means I don't want to read it - I don't love as much SA as is in these books but otherwise - it's that to me I don't think the author actually gets how inequitable the society he built is. Our main doesn't comment on it, he participates. No one else has pointed it out to him. Mustang has had one line where she snaps back at it a little to others. And then her plot focus goes back to her relationship to him.
But I could be wrong and perhaps he'll surprise me in the end. Just.. so many dead women driving people to make choices and no one saying anything about their dead Patroclus. Not even when Achilles is discussed.
(Sorry this is so long. I have actively been thinking about this)
This is an amazing and well-reasoned response. Thank you for sharing all of it. This is why I come to Tildes.
You've given me a lot to think about and it actually makes me excited for my next re-read. I'll definitely be considering all of this.
Don't be surprised if I reply to this in like a year, haha.
Please do! I like discussions about this sort of thing, and I'm definitely open to being wrong about some of these things as I keep reading, though some of it I feel is pretty baked into the worldbuilding.
Yeah, i'm not really aiming to convince anyone on Red Rising, because if you liked it i'm glad to hear that. In general I felt there were a lot of moments where the hero became a hypocrite, and it was just ignored. No one really calling them out on "hey you said you'd never do X but now you are" and some weird plot moments (like what's in his chest...) just left me bleh.
If you want, my notes to myself after reading it were-
My thoughts on the series, some major spoilers
Overall 3/5. Probably closer to 4, 4, 2 for books 1/2/3 respectively. It starts somewhat tropey, and then manages to have some really strong scenes (The Jackal) and themes, while also including the usual teasers (how will his friends react when they find out who he really is). By the last book...most of that is just gone. A large majority of the interesting potential reveals all die long before anyone finds out, and most of the plans and interactions that have been built up are just wiped out. Really a shame that it just doesn't quite deliver on what it started building. By the end you're literally just begging for someone besides Darrow to get some sort of characterization.
It doesn't help the book seems to have a lot of ALMOST interesting themes, but it feels like they're there for false depth rather than actually explored. The main character has to make "tough" decisions all the time, but when he does it it's ok. When others do it its a war crime and unforgivable. There's this odd parallel between the protag/antag and yet rather than really exploring how extremely similar they are (to the point of tropiness) it just sorta says "yeah this is what the anti Darrow would do".
Of course! I love to hear criticism on things I enjoy. I hope my responses aren't taken as negating or dismissing those criticisms. I just enjoy a healthy discussion and I think you're making some pretty great points.
Book 1-3 spoilers
I think if you stop at book three, you don't get to see the chickens come home to roost. Darrow's decisions are punished in books 1-3 by his friends dying, but beyond that he mostly gets away with it. I think the argument would be that the rebellion is fighting as the underdog and has literally no choice, and that the war criminals were coming from positions of power and had more choices they could have made.
At the end of 3, Octavia Au Lune, before her death, foreshadows the second part of the series by warning Darrow that he is going to be more like her than he thinks, and that ruling will be challenging for him as it was for her. I wonder if you'd find the second part of the series more satisfying as these questions are explored more in depth.
Again, thanks for sharing. I am definitely enjoying this bit of reflection. It's like engaging with the series for the first time again honestly. I get to explore that world a bit more through this conversation.
I would encourage you to check out the Unspoiled podcast and its community because this is what they're doing with Red Rising now and it's why I'm reading them despite not being super into it. The discussion is interesting.
Well damnit, I stopped after book 3 just because it was just Darrow getting his head kicked in.
I'll add book 4 to my queue now =)
Nice! I'll give you the heads up. Book 4 is jarring at first because there are four different protagonists (switching between chapters).
Once their respective inciting incidents occur (happens pretty quickly), the story really takes off and you stop noticing the new format. And book 5 is widely considered to be the best in the series so far.
Yessssss. I love this series so much. It tails off in quality the longer it goes IMO, but it really scratches that "fantasy heist" itch that my head is always after.
Will Wight's Cradle series does a great job consistently growing the tension, scale, and stakes as the series goes on in a way that smoothly keeps you turning pages all the way through 12 books.
Like, I read 11 books in a week (the last one wasn't out yet) and the wait for the 12th was awful. It also helps that they're pretty light reading; the story structure, vocabulary and the consistency of "magic" system make it speed by.
Yeah, Cradle is like a really good shonen anime in book form. Eminently bingeable and really enjoyable.
I think the term for this genre is "Progression Fantasy". Basically you have a lvl1 protagonist who starts "leveling up" really fast because of reasons.
The Warformed: Stormreaver series is a decent entry too: https://www.goodreads.com/series/302625-warformed-stormweaver
The second book is in serious need of an editor (drags badly in the middle) but Reidon is a pretty interesting protagonist.
Yep! I didn't want to get too much into the genre weeds, but I'd consider Will Wight to be one of the founders of the genre along with Andrew Rowe and a few others. Cradle is, IMO, probably one of a handful of really good, readable examples of progression fantasy along with a few other standouts like John Bierce's Mage Errant series and Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl (bad name, excellent books) which I would also consider to be LitRPG.
I mean, you can really only call him one of the founders of the genre in English, from what I understand, the genre originated in China.
It's probably more accurate to say he adapted it for western audiences.
Yeah Cultivation stories are definitely not new, I more meant founder as in "person who recognized a group of things as a separate genre" rather than "first person to write in this style". I'd also consider Xianxia/cultivation fantasy to be just one corner of the Progression Fantasy genre but not the whole genre, there's lots of examples of Progression Fantasy that don't really take any cues from Xianxia like LitRPG, time loop stories, and more typical Epic Fantasy stories with a focus on the MCs growing in power.
The first book isn't the best Lindon's constant apologisin was a bit grating. The second one grabbed me like very few books have. I read everything in the series in under two weeks and had to wait for Waybound for a year =)
I am not a fast reader, but I blew through "old man's war" series by John Scalzi.
It is what I'd file under 'brain trash.' Easy to read and entertaining.
Honestly most of Scalzi's works are like that. He writes really easy to read books, which I really like. And I really don't understand how people complain that his works are too generic or easy.
I mean, super enjoyable. I think I read the whole series in a month or two.
People are allowed to like what they like, no need to gatekeep the joy of others (as long as it isn't actively hurting someone else).
One that I really enjoyed that I don't see mentioned often is Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series. It started as a bet along the lines of "give me any two things and I'll write a book about them", and he got a lost Roman Legion and Pokemon. I don't think I need to say much more. It's a really fun series.
Loved the series. I was amped to try his other work but it didn't feel the same and I gave up after one book.
Seriously, though, Codex Alera is a great popcorn series.
Worm is a pretty large web serial that pulled me in from the start and kept me busy for a long time. It's a bit over 1.5 million words so it's not something you finish in a weekend (for comparison wheel of time is ~4.3 million words and the lord of the rings just under 0.5). I won't give any spoilers as part of the thing for me was the way things really changed throughout the story and that I had no idea what was going on in the beginning, but I can say that I got really invested in the main character and the world. What really charmed me I think is that even though it's easy to put some labels on it I've never really read anything else like it.
This is the suggestion I was looking for. I definitely get pulled into books a lot but I don't think I ever had anything else ever had me reading excessively every time I had a few spare minutes like Worm did. Read the whole thing on my tiny iPhone 4 screen and just couldn't put it down.
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The Culture Series, absolutely if you are a fan of science fiction should be attthe top of anyones list.
Douglas Adams' trilogy (of five novels) is really rather bingeable. Not exactly a challenging read, unless you challenge yourself to read it without laughing.
I'd vote for Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series, especially the audio books read by Patrick Tull. They feel like your British uncle is telling you old stories about the Royal Navy, and even after 20.5 books (O'Brian passed away in the middle of book 21) you are left wanting more.
Watched Master & Commander for the first time recently, and I cannot wait to get stuck into these.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Expanse series, including the novellas. I read them after they had all been released and in the order in which they occurred, not released. I couldn’t put them down and was totally engrossed in each book. I also watched the series after finishing the book the season was based on. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys hard sci-fi.
The Final Architecture series and the Children of Time series, both by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Both are page turners throughout, and really interesting.
Was looking for these! I find the Children of Time books a bit more highbrow and big concept books that are still fun to read through.
Currently going through the Final Architecture series and find them to be similar to The Expanse in some ways. Plucky crew goes on a space faring adventure to save the galaxy. Although Tchaikovsky adds in some crazy concepts though.
The Saint of Steel series by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) — A great fantasy romance series following the paladins of a dead god and the various women and men that they fall in love (and have a lot of sexual tension) with. Book 4 of maybe 7 came out recently and I'm in the middle of it now. There are also three other books in the same setting (Clocktaur War duology and Swordheart) that are similarly good.
Ascendance of a Bookworm by Miya Kazuki — Obsessive bookworm is reincarnated into a medieval world without access to books, shenanigans ensue as she tries to get them any way she can. I love it for how the setting is handled with the scope slowly expanding over time based on what the main character needs to know. The final volume (for now at least) came out in Japan recently and should be translated by the end of the year; I'm subscribed to J-Novel Club for a weekly drip of a few chapters at a time rather than waiting for an entire volume.
The Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovich, especially the audiobooks of it.
I second Murderbot, Aubrey Maturin and Discworld.
I add The Vorkosigan series and the Scholomance series
I'll second Vorkosigan. I absolutely plowed through the entire series after it got recommended to me a few years ago here on Tildes.
Aubrey Maturin and Discworld are also among my all-time favorite series so thirded on those as well. Never read Murderbot (although it is in my read list) or Scholomance though.
p.s. My major issue with Murderbot, and the main reason I haven't read it yet, is because of how bloody expensive they all are for how short they all are. So I'll probably end up borrowing them from my local library since I have no intention of paying that much for every book in the series.
I'm going to explore Dorothy Dunnett's books. People on r/fantasy say that her historical fiction novels are favorites of many prominent fantasy authors.
My vote will go to the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming. They're fantastic spy thriller/adventure novels and a couple of them are just damned good Cold War thrillers.
Flemings sense of place is outstanding, his skills as a travel writer come through amazingly when describing the beautiful locales that Bond visits and delicious food and copious drink that Bond consumes.
I will say that Bond as a novel character is incredibly anachronistic, it's important to keep in mind that the novels were written during the 50's and early 60's by a white, upper class ex-intelligence officer who was born at the beginning of the 20th century. Bonds views on women, non-whites, Eastern Europeans, and members of the LGBT community are misguided and uninformed at best and downright horrendous at worst. However, Bond is an anti-hero, Fleming has described him as an assassin, a blunt instrument wielded by a government department and that he was never meant to be a particularly nice individual.
There's definitely novels that are better than others, Moonraker, Casino Royale, From Russia With Love, You Only Live Twice and Dr No are some of my favourites (Moonraker is perhaps a top 5 of all time for me) and there are some that are a bit weaker, in my opinion, Goldfinger and The Spy Who Loved Me for instance. They're not a slog to be fair as each Bond novel is pretty short with the longest clocking in at around 320 pages and the shortest coming in at about 120 or so if I remember correctly.
If you do read them and enjoy them, the continuation novels are also a blast. Kingsley Amis "Colonel Sun" and Anthony Horowitz trilogy are great suggestion of fantastic continuation novels that slot right into the Bond chronology without issue.
Have you read Charlie Higson's Young Bond books? They're great fun, despite being found on the "YA" shelf. Pacey and exciting and for YA, even pretty scary in places.
That said, I don't know how they compare to Fleming's because I haven't read those.
I haven't actually but it's not the first time it's been suggested I read them. I did read his continuation novel On His Majesty's Secret Service which came out last year to celebrate the coronation of King Charles. It was good fun to read so I'll need to look into grabbing one of the Young Bond novels when I can.
I agree, even as an adult I still manage to get sucked into them. Any time I sit down and really think about the world for more than a few minutes, it doesn't really make any sense. But when I'm reading the books, my suspension of disbelief kicks in and I really get sucked in, I think largely because of the characters.
It's a shame Rowling turned out to be such a twat.
If you like Harry Potter, you might like A Deadly Education and sequels. It definitely draws on Harry Potter, but I also see echoes of the Hunger Games and Enders Game.
I don't really agree with the Harry Potter vibes other than the school drama. It seems closer to an anime, or the magicians. It's def a fav in our house though.
I haven't read many fantasies about wizard schools. However, the class and status distinctions remind me of Harry Potter.
When I was a kid, I had four siblings, and when a new Harry Potter came out we got one copy between us. So when it was your turn, you’d spend all day and all night reading it. They were so enjoyable that it was impossible to put them down.
A few come to mind:
Here, someone becomes an accountant on a ship that builds hyperspace gates for later travel use. Or gets used to acting human in an android body. Or works on a migrant fleet that longer has to migrate.
Lately I've been binging on Expeditionary Force, and The Ranger series.
Expeditionary Force is an adult sci fi.
The Ranger series I got for my kid. He wasn't interested. I started reading. I couldn't stop.
They are consistent throughout, so you only need to read a few chapters to see if you will like them.
Sadly I am soon reaching the end of Expeditionary Force, really like it!
Michael Connelly's Bosch series is a good one because it doesn't follow the same pattern, like a lot of series. If this is out, I'm with SpruceWillis wrt the Bond books. They're so nice and sometimes heartbreaking.
I can't stop reading the Malazan series. It's an investment and not an easy read but boy does it deliver over and over again. I'm currently on my second read through of the main series, but all the novellas and trilogies are great too.
Gonna have to have another stab at these. I made it a couple of books in and the world-building was super cool, but I was struggling to keep it all clear in my head.
That's understandable, and a little bit part of the journey. Power through and it'll pay off, I promise. Book two already has a more defined through line than the first one does.
I admit the scale intimidated me away. Feels like a proper commit rather than something I can pick up and put down as life dictates.
Frontlines series by Marko Kloos. 8 books and the story is finished. There's one follow-up book with different characters that just came out.
A "realistic" scifi series, no blasters or phasers and no energy shields. We have colonised planets outside of the solar system. Humanity gets attacked by aliens - not the gray kind but bigger and needs to figure out how to unite and fight back. The MC is a glorified air force traffic controller, which makes things a bit interesting. He's not a super-soldier.
Palladium Wars by Marko Kloos. 3 books, still ongoing.
More sci-fi than the previous one, humans have moved to a new solar system a long time ago and the story follows what happens after a war from multiple viewpoints.
Kloos knows his military terminology and hierarchy, which is usually a sticking point for too many military scifi writers.
Spiral Wars by Joel Shepherd. 8 books, still ongoing - looks like it'll finish at 9 or 10.
Earth got attacked by aliens, humans pleaded others to help - they wouldn't. So humans just genocided the attacking race to the last soul. Now humans are a part of the galaxy, even though they're not really keen on letting genodiciding maniacs in. Political intrigue, multiple different alien factions, AI/Robots and some of the best space combat in any books ever. Also Trace Thakur is in my top5 best protagonists ever.
Cassandra Kresnov series by Joel Shepherd 6 books in total
The protagonist is a completely artificial person or android (or is she dun-dun), who is smart, beautiful, fast, dangerous and all that.
Lots of political intrigue, a few good fight scenes. Mostly politics. Not bingeable if politics isn't your thing :)
A lot of answers here that I can relate to. One that I haven't seen mentioned is the Wool/Silo series.
There's some really great recommendations already listed, so I'm definitely going to need to check out some of the ones I don't recognise.
One I'd like to throw into the mix is The Wandering Inn.
It's a fantasy series which is notable for a huge cast of lovable characters, surprisingly in-depth world-building and just being really, really long. It's the right mix of silly slice of life, epic fantasy and poignant moments to make it really bingeable, so I see the word count as an advantage rather than an imposition.
Like a few stories mentioned above it's a web novel, with some of the trappings of the progression fantasy and litRPG subgenres. Importantly though the purpose is to tell a good story, these gamey elements are in aid to the story and not the other way around.
Also the whole thing is available online for free, or there is ebooks / audiobooks for those that prefer to consume it that way.
The Culture series of books written by Iain M. Banks is dripping with sci-fi that always stimulates my imagination about the future.
I love how he just casually mentions these far out sci-fi things like they are completely normal (and they are in the world of The Culture).
Like the fact that people can just "gland" any drug they want by producing it themselves in their body automatically.
Or the fact that a "small" GSV has "only" 250 million people living on it.
And the main language in Culture is gender neutral, they've progressed past biology defining language as people can change sex at will and AI's exist and don't have a gender anyway.
Two that haven't been mentioned yet:
The Gaslight mysteries by Victoria Thompson, at 27 books and counting. It starts with a midwife in the turn-of-the-century tenements of Manhattan who gets involved with solving a murder. Beyond the mysteries, it's really good at imparting history in an immersive way.
The Penric and Desdemona novellas by Lois McMaster Bujold, set in her World of The Five Gods. I simply love how she envisions what it'd be like to be a sorcerer in that world. And she writes about nice people who are trying to do good things.
For my choice of bingeable (and I usually do a annual run through of both) I'd recommend W.E.B. Griffin's The Brotherhood of War series and The Corps series. Both are historical fiction and absolutely nail the vibe of the military. His characters are almost always landed gentry of America, independently wealthy, and in the service by choice but they're never unlikeable. Both are great series and I'd recommend them to anyone.
I read the entirety of the Dresden Files (that are out at the moment) in one month.
Easily the hardest I've binged a series. I really enjoyed it as a binge too, the continuity is enough to make it feel rewarding to binge.
Also as a note, easily findable online with the addition of "filetype:epub"
I enjoyed Codex: Alera quite a bit. I read the first Dresden File and it didn't really hook me. Do they get better as they go on?
Yes, give it a bit. It didn't take with me until the 3rd time I tried, actually.
Any of Tamora Pierce's series, with the caveat that there's some Less Than Stellar tropes in the older ones given they were written in the 80s. (She's actually spoken about it and changed things in her later books, which is awesome!)
Song of the Lioness Quartet,
Wild MagicImmortals Quartet, and Protector of the Small Quartet live in my head rent free and fundamentally shaped me as a person. I've probably read them a half dozen times each since I first picked them up as a teenager (which for me is a lot, I dislike re-reading books as a general rule)Her Circle of Magic and a Circle Opens series are also stellar. All of her books are loosely set in the same universe, the Circle books are set in a different country than the Lioness, wild magic, and Protector books.
I'd call them all medieval fantasy, and while they are YA books, they touch on a lot of things that still feel relevant even as an adult.
Check out the Pendergast series by Douglas Preston and Lee Childs. They’re kind of like X-Files detective novels that dip their toes into horror.
The other recent series starts with Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros. Very readable but has some extremely explicit sex scenes (that easily can be skipped).
It got mentioned in the book club thread, but the Demon Cycle by Peter V. Brett is wonderfully addicting and keeps you hooked, turning page after page until the very end.
Obviously tastes differ, but the book series that I've read over and over again is the Well World series by Jack L. Chalker. I first read it as a teenager and now, 30 years later, I can't count how many times I've re-read it.
The Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. There's a ton of them, and they all read like fast-paced action movies. If you're willing to switch off your critical brain for a while and just enjoy reading about Jack Reacher beating the shit out of bad guys who needed their asses kicked anyway, they're a very fun ride.
Haha, I remember being in Electra, Texas as a kid. I was there with my grandparents to visit my great-grandmother. Electra is basically a nursing home, a hotel, and a dairy queen, but there was this tiny grocery store we stopped at, and I picked up my first Deathlands books from the paperbook rack. I've read so many since then. They are uncomplicated and super fun as long as you're not expecting high art.