Epic fantasy recommendations... for someone who thinks they dislike epic fantasy

I love fantasy, but for a long time I didn't think so as I'd always synonymized "fantasy" as "epic fantasy", and I don't like epic fantasy. I've always been a lot more attuned to weirder speculative fiction, especially magical realism, "literary" fantasy (a term I loathe but it's what I got), and science fantasy. I'm not one for escapism, which is what I associate epic fantasy with (perhaps erroneously?), and in my experience, a lot of epic fantasy has been more escapist. I really like books that are challenging and brain-stimulating, which is what I want after a long day at work or mountaineering training.

That being said, I've read a few epic fantasy works this past year that were right up my alley. I'm also trying to read a greater breadth of speculative fiction, so I want to use 2025 to explore more worlds (literally/figuratively). I might be biased against epic fantasy, but I'd like to be shown otherwise.

I don't have many must-haves, though my list of epic fantasy I'm not interested in might evince some don't-haves. Here are some characteristics I like in fantasy in general, and some things I'd like to prioritize in reading new works:

  • Prose that's idiosyncratic to the author. I love books where the way they're written is as important to the story's goal as the narrative itself. The Spear Cuts through Water is the best example in recent memory, but it also applies to non-epic fantasy like Max Porter's Lanny and non-spec fic like Satantango.
  • Characters who motivations are understandable, not necesarily "likeable". I do not care about likeable characters as much as I do ones whose heads I can get into. I like sussing out the whys and hows of characters' actions. I have no preference for first-, second-, or third-person.
  • Non-western European mythology. I'm trying to read a lot more translated fiction, with 2024 and 2025 having a lot of Eastern European fantasy in particular. Not interested in progression fantasy, light novels, or wuxia. However, I'm open to western European settings that do something novel or are deeply based in the region's history; The Once and Future King is a go, but "The Belgariad" series is not.
  • Standalones and/or short series. I get pretty tired of series fast, especially if they're more than four books (and especially if each of those books is a tome). I just like having a diversity of stories as opposed to a single long-term series I focus all my time on. I know I might be in the minority there, but I'm interested in epic fantasy that is more self-contained.

Thanks! I'm making a good faith attempt to read more epic fantasy and get more understanding of this huge part of the genre I've (until now) not really been interested in.

Epic fantasy I've enjoyed:

  • Simon Jiminez - The Spear Cuts through Water. The book that successfully got me over my bias toward epic fantasy. I loved most everything about this, from the meta-narrative to the shifting perspective based on font style to the one-off lines from people the heroes meet along the way. I also liked how it was a distinctly different mythology and history from the standard European epic fantasy.
  • Gene Wolfe - "Book of the New Sun" series. Wolfe is my favorite speculative fiction author in the way he writes idiosyncratic and highly unreliable narrators in which you have to puzzle out truths, untruths, and truths they tell themselves. I also love how this is a world built on the detritus and decay of previous ages, to the extent something that would be far-future to us is ancient history to them. The perspective is not omniscient; teasing out what Severian is seeing and experiencing because he doesn't have the words to describe something like terraforming or the moon landing was incredible, and I'd like that historiography element in my epic fantasy.
  • JRR Tolkien - The Hobbit + The Lord of the Rings. Depending on when you ask, The Hobbit is my favorite book I've ever read. I adore how it is so whimsical without being fey, and it feels to me like the quintessential adventure novel with an unlikely hero as opposed to a glorified training montage for a big showdown. LOTR is also extraordinary to me, and that's mostly for the feeling of being an age-old epic and how the world itself is a character. Flippantly: yes, I like the descriptions of trees.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin - "Earthsea" series. With the caveat that I didn't enjoy the first or third books much, and I am not interested in anything YA in the way those were. Not that YA doesn't have its place, it's just not what I want and I don't need it. That being said, I love the creepiness of The Tombs of Atuan, the aging-adult themes of Tehanu, and the wistfulness of Tales from Earthsea. I also just like Le Guin's books in general.
  • Mervyn Peake - "Gormenghast" series. For a series that is more a character study in the grotesque than a straightforward narrative, being filled with the machinations and suspected machinations of others as they navigate and take advantage of ossified tradition. I also quite liked Titus Alone despite its major tonal shift.

Epic fantasy I am not interested in:

Please do not try to convince me otherwise. I guarantee I've read all the arguments in favor of them before, and they're not what I want.

  • Anything by Brandon Sanderson and the broader Cosmere. I read The Way of Kings and thought it was just fine, and based on all I've learned since then, I can leave my experience with Sanderson there. I'd cosign all of the criticisms often levied by non-fans, so I won't repeat them.
  • "Malazan Book of the Fallen" series. I'm simply not interested in 10+ book-long series where each book is a tome. Some readers want that enormous, overarching scope that they can experience over a year (or longer), but I'm not one of them. That being said, the postmodern approach to characterization and style does interest me. But I do not want an enormous series where all I'll be reading this year is Malazan.
  • "Kingkiller Chronicles" series. I read The Name of the Wind about a decade and a half ago and found it pretty strongly in the "okay" bucket, and not with as strong or poetic of prose as was sold to me. I find Kvothe intensely annoying, but not in the fascinating unreliability of Severian in Wolfe's BOTNS. Rothfuss also gives me the ick (as the kids say).
  • "Prince of Nothing" series. Does this count as epic fantasy? Regardless, I find the protagonist boring and edgy. I am not opposed to extreme darkness in my fantasy, but it needs to have more of a point.
  • "Realm of the Elderlings" series, "The Wheel of Time" series, and "The Belgariad" series. Similar to Malazan, I'm not looking for an enormous series of this scope. All I heard about WOT makes it sound like it's more or less the opposite of what I want to read. "The Belgariad" feels like the biggest example of my disinterest in boilerplate western European settings.
  • "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Made it through the first three books, then started the fourth and realized I didn't remember jackshit about the characters, and I didn't really care. The more I read other books, the less patience I have as well for GRRM's quirks on sex/sexualization and grimness. I don't mind reading about explicit, graphic sex in my fantasy, but I do mind when it's a 13 year old girl saying how wet she is (as in the first book).
  • "The Witcher" series. I read The Last Wish and found it just fine, if a bit puerile in its humor and treatment of women. I am a fan of the "fractured fairy tales" approach to epic fantasy though and would be very interested in more. The short story conceit was great, even if the framing device was transparent and awkward.

Other favorite speculative fiction reads of the last few years:

  • Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths and Ficciones
  • Mikhail Bulgakov - The Master & Margarita
  • Susanna Clarke - Piranesi
  • Jose Donoso - The Obscene Bird of Night
  • John Gardner - Grendel
  • Ted Chiang - Exhalation
  • Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren
  • Max Porter - Lanny
  • Paul Kingsnorth - The Wake
  • Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities