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?
In case you haven’t already read him Terry Pratchett has some excellent works and while in theory the books are set in the same universe… in practice they’re all stand alone novels. I’d suggest starting with Guards! Guards!
There are even some reading guides depending on what sub-genre you are interested in if you don’t want to read the whole cannon. They all standalone pretty well though.