I love fantasy, but fantasy series are kind of nefarious for some… problems.

Series that drag on to reach an arbitrary number, creating a number of filler books. (8/9/10 of a certain series comes to mind for “filler books” )

Series that keep going for so long and lose the thread, straight up making what happened in previous books seem silly and irrelevant.

Books that vary wildly in quality (book 10, shout out to you again)

Series that aren’t finished (GRRM fans, you might get your books if he lives long enough. King Killer chronicle fans… I’m sorry, but the author is dead even if the man remains).

I just really wanna try a bunch of fantasy standalone novels from different authors. But I can’t for the life of me find a website that’ll let me do that. Amazon will say after clicking on it “book 1 of x”, so like the information is there, but I can’t find any website that let’s me search for it. I can find websites that list like “Top x standalone novels of the year” but those are usually really click baity.

“Finished series only” filter would be sick as well.

Anyone have any ideas?

  • ericbomb@lemmy.worldOP
    4·
    7 months ago

    Haha my gf reads fan fiction and I do get jealous!

    She can do “cozy platonic, slow burn” with any 3 characters in a story and she’ll get a perfect list as if it’d been hand curated for her despite it being a seemingly insane thing to look for.

    Like how come I can’t just click on good reads " finished series only" but she can find a list of all stories where the main characters have been turned into cats and snuggle up together???

    • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      6 months ago

      Could you imagine if someone made a search engine that just filtered mainstream shows by tvtropes tags? AND does the dog die’s content warning database???

      Maybe try some fanfiction though. There’s a LOT of fanfiction written to create an ending for a series that never got one. The media will be different (although fanART is a thing too). Even if you’re worried about writing quality (hey, we were all 12 year old aspiring writers at one point) you can find some absolutely gripping stories. Force Over Distance completely fixed Stargate Universe for me. It was also super gay and had a bunch of University level math that may have been complete horseshit for all my dumb ass would know, but other than that was almost disturbingly faithful to the source material.

      Those were kinda upsides for me personally but the cool thing about fanfiction is that you do whatever you want over there we’re all just gonna mind our business in-LOL no there’s bitch fights over on tumblr every other fucking hour over shit that’s either completely dumb or wildly terrifying and most of those fights are about which popular media characters are legally/physically able to and/or should hold hands.

      Anyway I’m extremely picky (even with smut), but sorting by kudos and only reading the first two or three for a smaller Fandom (more for a bigger one obvs) has never done me dirty when I want a particularly engaging read. This isn’t to dig on other styles or skill levels of writing; there’s many different reasons and ways to write, and many ways that people get better at writing over time. But also I get that feeling of just wanting to smash your way through a 20 book series. The dopamine high is exquisite.