- Anne McCaffrey's "Pern" series.
- Naomi Novik's "Temeraire" series
- Tamora Pierce's series spanning multiple mini-series: Lioness, Protector, Tricksters and Immortals.
Books
Book reader community.
There is a book anthology called Rogues, complied by Phyllis Eisenstein. It is a compilation of short stories from various writers across many disciplines. While there is a lot of different stories, they all come back to a character who is deceitful in character you can't help but root for them a bit.
Check out dungeon crawler Karl and he who fights with monsters! Can also find them in audio book format 👌
Irene Radford The Dragon Nimbus series. I read it ages ago and have fond memories.
You should get on goodreads and look up books you loved to see what else is recommended from people who also read that book. I find great ones that way!
Otherwise I absolutely could not put “Forth Wing” down by Rebecca Yarros! The second book (five are expected) comes out in a week or two. A friend recommended it and it was so good I fell into a slump afterwards trying to find something as exciting.
The Lies of Locke Lamora is a fun fantasy heist book
The Book of Three is the first in a classic high fantasy series. It's a lovely comfort read, but definitely targeted at younger readers.
You might consider Nix's Abhorsen series for a unique take on Necromancers.
Foundryside is wild and fun if not a hugely traditional fantasy. Imagine if you could carve sigils on objects to make them ignore reality in very specific ways.
Oh also the Demon Cycle series by Peter V Brett was a fun romp. I like the way the author built a pretty unique world with a lot of different aspects to it. He did a good job of switching the point of view across characters to challenge perspective.
Discword
Discworld is so fun, start with book 4 7 or 11 or 13 to get a feel for the strength of the story (and read one of the best ones), but really its pretty fun from the start if rough because the author is figuring out how to be an author still a bit
11 is probably my favorite, but you should read 4 and then 11 because they're connected.
edit: damn I should read the whole post first...
Fairy Tale by Stephen King is a refreshing take on classic fantasy themes!
The Lost Years of Merlin, the whole series. Feels like someone gave the Arthurian mythos some actual magic by fleshing out who Merlin was as a teen.
Assassin's Apprentice trilogy by Robin Hobbs
It's very polarizing, as in some people love it and some people absolutely hate it, but Stephen Donaldson's "Thomas Covenant" books are among my favorite. Not so keen on the later volumes, but the first two trilogies are amazing.
I know he said specifically no heavy politics, but Thomas covenant is pretty heavy and dark. The tale is good, it can be hard reading in parts though given the protagonist. If you like the exploration of the antihero, the gap series by Stephen Donaldson is pretty solid too.
you started way too high the quality list imo