20 books to read while you wait for The Winds of Winter

2. The Wheel of Time

When it comes to juicy fantasy that can keep you reading for hundreds of hours, it’s hard to find a better series than The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson. Completed at 14 books, it’s one of the longest continuous narrative sagas of all time. If you’re one of those people who’s been waiting years and years for The Winds of Winter, wishing you had something you could get as invested in which is actually finished, then The Wheel of Time might be for you.

The story focuses on best friends Rand al’Thor, Perrin Aybara, and Matrim Cauthon — three young men who are ta’veren (aka Very Special People who are destined for Big Things). When monsters come to their small backwater village hunting them, Rand, Perrin and Mat — along with their friends Egwene and Nynaeve — are whisked away by an enigmatic sorceress, her bodyguard, and a wandering gleeman.

If all this sounds a little too tropey, don’t be too quick to wright this series off. The Wheel of Time plays into its classic fantasy trappings, but there are some cool SF elements in there as well. And at 14 books strong, there is a lot of room for these characters to grow and change over the course of the series; they’re all given immensely satisfying arcs. Given its length, the series is great for a reader who likes to theorize and search for hidden clues. As we know, there are plenty of those in the ASOIAF fandom.

With Amazon currently developing a TV series based on these books, the time has never been better to see what all the talk is about. This is a badge of honor series for any fantasy reader, and while it does have slow books moments, the overall journey is so good that it is absolutely worth trekking through them.