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Buzzfeed's Laughable List of the 51 "Best" Fantasy Series


Jerol

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This list was posted on Metafilter and my peeps there are ripping it to shreds. Someone said of The Sword of Truth, "it's as if Ayn Rand wrote fantasy torture porn" 

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OK. Taking a step back. I'm now wondering what percentage of that list (1) deserve to be there, (2) actually were written in the last 50 years, and (3) are actually complete (and thus allow us to make a final judgement). Not very many, I'd expect.

Let's see for 2 & 3:
  • The Kingskiller chronicles Unfinished
  • The Stormlight Archive Unfinished
  • A Song of Ice and Fire Unfinished
  • The Lord of the Rings Not written or published in the last 50 years
  • The Lightbringer Unfinished
  • His Dark Materials OK
  • Discworld OK
  • The First Law OK
  • The Sword of Shannara OK but not a series
  • Demon Cycle Unfinished
  • The Riddle-Master Trilogy Ok
  • Mistborn Original trilogy over, but series is indicated to be continuing
  • Gentlemen Bastard Unfinished
  • The Inheritance Trilogy (Jemisin) OK
  • The Liveship Traders OK
  • Harry Potter OK
  • The Sword of Truth Unfinished
  • The Chronicles of Narnia Not written or published in the last 50 years
  • Earthsea OK if not basing oneself on first book (published in 1964)
  • The Fionavar Tapestry OK
  • Ravens Shadow OK
  • The Broken Empire OK
  • A Land Fit For Heroes OK
  • Outlander OK
  • The Wheel Of Time OK
  • Malazan Book Of The Fallen OK
  • The Black Company OK
  • Elemental Logic Unfinished
  • The Chronicles Of Amber OK
  • The Avalon Series OK
  • The Merlin Quintet OK
  • The Dark Elf Trilogy OK
  • The Elric Saga OK
  • Redwall OK
  • Temeraire Unfinished
  • Inheritance Cycle (Paolini) OK
  • The Riyria Revelations OK
  • Prince Of Nothing OK - it's not the whole second apocalypse
  • Dragonlance OK I suppose
  • The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant the unbeliever OK
  • The Powder Mage OK
  • The Once And Future King Not written or published in the last 50 years
  • The Bartimaeus Sequence OK
  • Gormenghast OK
  • Abhorsen Unfinished
  • The Dark Is Rising OK barely, based on publication dates
  • The Farseer Trilogy OK
  • The Traitor Son Cycle Unfinished
  • The Dreamblood Duology OK
  • Riftwar OK
  • The Magicians Trilogy OK
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The Abhorsen Trilogy is complete

ETA: Also not sure I would call the Discworld books as a whole a series. I'd say things like The Witches, The Watch, Tiffany Aching etc. constitute their own series within a wider world. So only the Tiffany Aching series would have been incomplete at the time. (This bit is addressed to Denvek)
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It's a pretty sloppy construct. Are we talking fifty years, or of all time? If it's based on sales, then Tolkien and Rowling should be ahead of Rothfuss. They have absolutely no clue about what's going on in the SFF community, otherwise they'd know Goodkind is considered laughable or that MZ Bradley is now shunned from any consideration. If it's a list for all time, where's Fritz Leiber? Jack Vance? 



MZ Bradley is now shunned? I know she did some allegedly terrible shit, but this is the first of heard about any actual shunning.
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Many of these authors in this list are wonderful writers who have given us some great books, and of course, every such list is subjective and worthy of some spirited argument between the partisans of one author versus another.

 

However, the obvious omissions from this list of authors make me think that the writer of the original piece is not even trying.

 

You can just google "Top 100 Fantasy Books" and a person with even a basic reading experience in the genre is going to note that some authors are fundamental to the art.

 

- Jack Vance

- Gene Wolfe

- Stephen R. Donaldson

- Guy Gavriel Kay

- Fritz Leiber

- Jonathan Stroud

- Tad Williams

- Lloyd Alexander

- C.S. Friedman

- Poul Anderson

- David Gemmell

- Cornelia Funke

- Piers Anthony

- Tamora Pierce

- Anne McCaffrey

- Robin McKinley

- Steven Brust

- Mercedes Lackey

 

...and on and on.  Are these my personal favorites?  No, some of them are definitely not, but their omission is pretty jarring.

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MZ Bradley is now shunned? I know she did some allegedly terrible shit, but this is the first of heard about any actual shunning.

 

I don't know if I should have used the word shunned. I have noticed that in any genre discussion I've been in where her name was brought up (not by me, I threw Mists of Avalon in the garbage)  the reaction has been one of immediate vitriol. 

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