r/Fantasy · 2021

Most-mentioned books in r/Fantasy during 2021

This page ranks books by exact tracked mentions in r/Fantasy within the published source unit for 2021. Counts come from the reconciled subreddit-by-month matrix; a source unit may be a bounded sample.

136

Books ranked

33,546

Tracked mentions in 2021

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

Gardens of the Moon

Steven Erikson

A continent-spanning empire's mage-soldiers besiege a city that might already be doomed by gods playing a board game with human pieces.

3,170 in 2021

The Eye of the World

Robert Jordan

Trollocs burn a village hunting for one of three farm boys, so an Aes Sedai spirits all three out before anyone learns which.

2,545 in 2021

The Way of Kings

Brandon Sanderson

A bridgeman slave carries spears through a warzone he's not allowed to fight in, until he decides to become the soldier no one will follow.

2,229 in 2021

The Blade Itself

Joe Abercrombie

A crippled torturer, a vain swordsman, and a berserker haunted by his own alter ego get pulled into a war none of them understand yet.

1,772 in 2021

A Game of Thrones

George R. R. Martin

Ned Stark's family gets pulled into a succession war for the Iron Throne while an unkillable winter creeps south.

1,769 in 2021

Mistborn: The Final Empire

Brandon Sanderson

A street thief who can swallow metal and burn it for power gets recruited into a heist crew whose actual target is the immortal emperor who's ruled for a thousand years.

1,763 in 2021

The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien

A gardener and three friends carry a cursed ring across a continent at war, because the only way to destroy it is to walk it into the volcano that forged it.

1,615 in 2021

Assassin's Apprentice

Robin Hobb

A royal bastard trains as the king's poisoner and assassin, and readers fifteen books later still call the ending emotionally devastating.

1,395 in 2021

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

J. K. Rowling

An eleven-year-old orphan gets a letter, a train platform that shouldn't exist, and a scar that makes him famous for something he can't remember.

917 in 2021

#10

The Name of the Wind

Patrick Rothfuss

A legendary hero narrates his own rise from orphaned street kid to feared arcanist over three days, except Rothfuss never wrote day three.

880 in 2021

#11

The Fifth Season

N. K. Jemisin

An orogene comes home to find her son beaten to death and her daughter gone, the same day a continent starts splitting apart.

843 in 2021

#12

A Wizard of Earthsea

Ursula K. Le Guin

A proud boy on a poor island learns real magic, casts one spell out of arrogance, and spends the rest of the book hunted by what it let loose.

797 in 2021

#13

Storm Front (The Dresden Files)

Jim Butcher

Chicago's only professional wizard takes a case involving black magic and a mob boss, with a police captain who wants it solved fast or him gone.

729 in 2021

#14

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries)

Martha Wells

A security android with no interest in gender, romance, or heroics just wants to watch its shows, and ends up saving its clients from a conspiracy anyway.

636 in 2021

#15

The Hobbit

J. R. R. Tolkien

A hobbit who has never left his own pantry gets recruited by thirteen dwarves and a wizard to steal treasure back from a dragon.

617 in 2021

#16

The Black Company

Glen Cook

A mercenary company signs a contract with an undying sorceress they call the Lady, on the losing side of a war where the villains already won.

563 in 2021

#17

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

A man alone in an endless house of statues and tides slowly realizes he used to have a different name.

560 in 2021

#18

Dune

Frank Herbert

Paul Atreides survives his family's massacre on a desert planet and becomes the messiah the empire engineered him to be, then has to live with it.

558 in 2021

#19

The Lies of Locke Lamora

Scott Lynch

A conman runs cons on the nobility of a canal city built from alchemical glass, until a rival gang decides to burn his crew down to the ground.

527 in 2021

#20

Red Rising

Pierce Brown

A low-caste miner surgically altered to pass as the ruling elite infiltrates the academy that killed his wife, planning to burn the system down from inside.

523 in 2021