Here is the list where I found the longest series for anyone interested! I think most series are on this list but it might not be 100% accurate since I haven't gone through and verified every single number: www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fzybw5ojrdyma1.png%3Fwidth%3D2186%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26v%3Denabled%26s%3D959896c304bdcaef2aa0c8877146ac3a42900e76

I have a real hard time calling King's books a series. He wrote a bunch of stand alone books and then decided after the fact they were all in a shared universe.

Glad to see a booktuber talking about pre-90s fantasy. Don’t see enough love for some of these oldies.

Start with Riftwar first, it gives you a better understanding of what is going on in Daughter of the Empire. There are also some cameos that will make more sense from reading Riftwar first.

Considering you did the list based on universes I think both Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms are kind of missing from the list… just Legend of Drizzt is listed with more than 3mio words on the Reddit list

The Wandering Inn has become one of my favourite series up there with the Cosmere but for different reasons. I think its length lends it a lot of benefits, things don't ever feel rushed and I think that can lead to some really solid payoffs, and the length also means that you get a very good balance of extremely tense moments paired with moments that are muchcmore relaxing and more slice of life which is something I love. This series truly does include nearly every subgenre in fantasy and ao it has something for everyone. The main character Erin may not be for everyone, she is a very upbeat character, but there are so many great characters in this series that I think anyone can find someone to love. I listen to the audiobooks between other series I read and that has let me catch up on the officially published works while still reading other series.

I don't know if you'll see this, but let me explain the wandering inn. The wandering inn is actually 12 million words now! Which is insane! And its currently split between 10 Volumes on the web serial. Not books the books are coming out after the web serial, and they come out as audiobooks, or eBooks. So there are 12 books, but they only come up to volume 5, or 6? There's about 3 audiobooks every year because it's already written. When the series is finished it will be over 40. She writes about 20,000 words a week on average, so have fun catching up hahaha

So, Dragonlance has like over 100 books... no mention here?

Thank you for these suggestions! Plenty there to keep us busy :-) I'm reading the Raymond E Feist series at the moment, and I would recommend starting with "Magician", which is the first book of the first trilogy. I can see that you could also start with Daughter of the Empire, which is set in the world on the other side of the rift to the first trilogy, but I think it helps to know the history of the conflict before you see it from the other side. "Magician" is 99p for the Kindle version in the UK at the moment, too!

Fun fact, 11.3million words is on average 5081 words written a day(rounded down!) Which is insane since it’s one person. I’m on book 5 of the Wandering Inn currently, and the quality has only gotten better, which is even MORE mind boggling. There have been story beats I haven’t been particularly happy with recently but that’s more to me thinking “SERIOUSLY! Give this character a break!” But overall it has been an absolute pleasure!

As someone who has read all 13+ million words of The Wandering Inn I forget how short the largest epic fantasies are. It will take around 9-10 years for audiobooks to catch up to where the story is currently at, given its current pace. If they up the pace to 4 audiobooks a year then it ‘ll be more like 5-6 years. I’d say the series feels about 2/3rds of the way done. I think it’ll be about 20 million words when it’s finished, of course I could be hard wrong and it’ll go on on for 30 million words, or it may never finish lol just a new generation will be written about. But it doesn’t bother me, since it’s an amazing story that I love to see keep going.

Did you exclude all liscensed media? I expected the Legend of Drizzt to appear somewhere on this list. It is currently 39 books long and counting, all by the same author. I know that the books aren't massive tomes, like Stormlight, but I figured that total book count would easily make up for the difference.

Curious to know where Terry Brooks' Shannara falls in terms of length if Terry Goodkind managed to get more words into Sword of Truth than Brooks did Shannara, as well as Terry Pratchett's Discworld.

So weird to hear someone say that fantasy books written in the 80s and 90s are "classics". LOL. I've read at least some books in all of those series except Malazan and the Wandering Inn.

Where does the The Dragonriders of Pern series fit in? With 26 primary books and a total of 52 total works I could not find a word count on it.

For what it's worth, The Saga of Recluse does have modern entries. The most recent book came out January 2024 and there's another one scheduled for release in November. In addition, if all your numbers are from last year, you're probably not counting that January release.

42 books in Terry Brooks Shannara series. Should definitely be on here.

Katherine Kerr Deverry cycle got me back into reading. good 15 books

It's strange not to see Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms in the reddit list! Btw I'm curious about The Wandering Inn... it can't be a physical publication, right? 😱

I am surprised Dragonlance isn't on this list somewhere with 38 books in the series. One of my favorites.

The Malazan books remain my favorite story(ies) of all time. I've done 4 readthroughs to date, taking a break to read other things in between, and each time I go back to Malazan I appreciate it more.

Don't forget Michael Moorcock's Multiverse series ( The Eternal Champion ). Loads of books and characters and worlds to explore.

Pirate is actually just a super advanced version of chatgpt. Also, Dragonlance has nearly 200 books (More of a universe than a single series). I would say the crown still goes to Kaoru Kurimoto's Guin Saga, at 147 volumes and 26 side novels.

I was very happy to hear you mention Xanth. My birth father loved that series as a child and he gave the whole series to me the first time I went to visit his family. I have read some of them and they can be a real trip. I went into the first one thinking it would be a cute kids story kind of like Redwall. It threw in some.elements that I wouldn’t give young kid. Still really funny and I would recommend. The map of the world is literally Florida. Hmmm….maybe this isn’t really a fantasy series after all. 🤔 🐊

I was rather surprised that the Star Wars EU from Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978) through April, 25, 2014 was not counted here, unless it is considered more science fiction. This seemed like a good place for it.

For the Riftworld series, you should read Magician first (both Apprentice and Master). Then you should read Daughter and Servant of the Empire, then finish the Riftwar books, and then Mistress of the Empire.

I grew up reading the Xanth series. Good stuff, especially in the beginning. The first 10 or so are the best part. I would agree with another commenter below, the later books fall off as it becomes "forced" to be punny, where the entire series is rooted in puns and humor. It came much easier in the early books. But conceptually, its still a fun series.

Okay ENOUGH. The true longest piece of literature and a stand alone on top of that - no other shared universe and stuff involved - is the novel Bringing a Farm to Live in Another World. This novel has a whooping 14,000 chapters! With each chapter having around 1,500 words so you multiply that 14,000 multiplied by 1,500 then you get a Whooping 21 MILLION word count AND this novel is still ongoing, it could potentially reach 20,000 chapters. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

I've read 80-90% of The Sword of Truth series and enjoyed it. I read it before I was really exposed to more of the fantasy world and now that I'm more familiar with so much more Sci-fi/Fantasy... I still think it holds up.

The Xanth series is actually a fantastical alternate reality of the state of Florida (not joking.) And the concepts of the the world revolve around puns and plays on words. A "Night Mare" is a literal horse. "Isle of View" = "I Love You". "Centaur Isle/Center Aisle" etc. It's a playful, tongue-in-cheek series. Not sure if I'd compare it too closely to Discworld, because it's a lot more of a surface-level kind of humor. But it's still funny and epic in it's own way. A lot of the series is broken up into sets of trilogies. Hope that helps. (UPDATE: Since posting this comment, I've looked into Xanth again and realized that is has a lot of problems I didn't understand before. I'm gonna have to withdraw my recommendation for it. It, uh, doesn't old up well.)

I will admit i have only listened to the audio books, but the Wandering Inn is an amazing vast world that is constantly growing and filling in more and more of the world as it goes. It has an amazing fleshing out of the goblin race to a point you totally care about them in a way i haven't seen done anywhere else. There are multiple races, cities, continents and different systems of government that even when appalling you can understand why they exist in the place they do exist. Historical reasons for all kinds of things are hinted at building a great world. Let alone the magic systems, that are used really well as plot movers. There is so much left to discover in the world and love that it exists. If you don't think you can read it it is definitely worth a listen. Especially as each book is around 40 hours so well worth a credit on audible, and great performance as well.

The wandering inn felt intimidating but its surprisingly easy and fast to read. My wife has already read 9 of them in just a couple of months and only reads casually. The world building is very slow, so you dont feel overwhelmed by a ton of descriptions or info dumps. Its a serial so she barely edits, she just writes and give sort of a cursory edit. Apparently the community provides edits. The author has talk about her process a lot, its pretty fascinating.

First one that came to mind (before seeing the video) was Terry Pratchet's disk world series... based on numbers of books.

Krynn world with the dragonlance books?

I cut my teeth on Pierce Anthony's Xanth series when I was a child. The creativity kept my young mind enthralled and was what had me reading throughout my childhood. If you have kids, I would definetely see if they are interested.

Thanks to you now I added more books in my TBR list

Would be interesting to see a list of this sort done for Science Fiction as well- I've read some longish SF series but I wonder whether they'll even feature on such a list

Some favourites on that list, especially Valdemar. Valdemar isn't the only series by that author, either, so if you haven't read any Mercedes Lackey yet, give it a go. Surprised not to see Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern novels on there, as there are certainly a lot of those.

If you would have grown up in the 1980s in the U.S., you would have seen how Anthony and Lackey dominated the fantasy shelves of mall bookstores. There are still lots of copies circulating in used bookstores.

The Dragonlance saga (based off of the D&D module and later campaign setting) has 205 books in its series; don't know if it counts though, as it's done by different authors.

I was wondering where the Dragonriders of Pern came in at, or possibly it's considered science fiction not fantasy.

Just for people who are wondering, a book classifies as a "novel" if it has 40,000 words or more. books consisting of 100,000+ words are considered "long"

I think their should be a distinction between a series that is on continuous story, like WOT and a series that is several distinct but interconnected stories, like 1st Law or Realm of the Elderlings

Honourable mention: Reverend Insanity with 5.0 million Words, and it is not completed yet. But one of the best book series ever.

I've read all of the Wandering Inn series so far, and I can confirm it's a single, extremely prolific author. The first book was... not great. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't in my top 100 books of all time, but it was interesting enough for me to try the second book, and the third... and by the time I was reading the fourth I realized I was hooked. It's not the most well written series of all time, but it does have the time to do all the world-building and in-depth character stories that you could ever want... and when this series hints at a checkov's gun... you may have to wait a couple MILLION words for the payday... but after all that buildup, those paydays are always really good. Took me nearly 6 months to read! Now I check every week for updates... it's one I'm absolutely going to continue reading. I've read a large number of the series you featured here... I love longer stories, but the Wandering Inn is certainly worth your time if you want to get seriously invested in an absolutely massive story.

What about Dragonlance? Over 190 books! Lots of authors, but the same world. No idea how many words though....

I have been reading the Wandering Inn as my "supplemental" read for almost 3 years now and am still nowhere near catching up. It's what I read at night in conjunction to my "primary" book. It is easily one of my all time favorite series and one I recommend constantly to my friends. I know its daunting but everyone should give it a try if they are looking for a series that tackles every subgenre possible in a fantasy world

So, after watching this video I decided to read The Wandering Inn. As the author states in the epilogue, there are some typos, grammatical errors, etc. throughout the book, but I couldn't put it down. Read book one in 4 days. Starting book 2 now. Have to say, I'm kind of into it. At some point you might need to give it a try.

Wow 😯 liked ur video 🎥 didn’t know some of these books on ur list !! Thank you!! 😊

In regards to the wandering inn, the author writes 2 chapters a week and posts them to a website where you can read for free. They are broken up into 9 volumes. Only recently has a publisher been breaking up the volumes into books with 11 books out so far. Those 11 books only cover the first 6 volumes so there are still many more books that will come out.

You should check up on Dragon Lance books. There are so much. And apparently all connected. I have read some. But i gave up collecting haha

OMG, I have read the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey and she has created such a full and diverse world with her Valdemar novels. It's so immersive and completely enthralling, that I have trouble putting her books down to sleep much less doing anything else. I highly recommend any and all of her books, especially the Valdemar novels.

After reading the dark tower series, I went through a phase of re-reading Stephen King novels to spot the DT references I missed the first time.

Spell for Chameleon is one of the funniest books I have ever read. And Saga of Recluse is an incredible series, and my favorite author of all time.

I’m only on book 2 but for the Wandering Inn, I’d recommend listening to the audiobook.

Oh, if you like the realm of the elderlings you will definitely love the realm of valdemar. While you can start anywhere I recommend starting at the first published, and then going in roughly release order. Release order isn’t necessary, but at the very least read each trilogy release order, and be aware of which trilogies are expansions of previous trilogies. I’m honestly surprised how many of these giant universes I’ve at least dabbled in, I think I’ve read at least one book in a third of the ones you mentioned.

What should be on this lis list is “Wild Cards” by George RR Martin. There are about 18 books and one of my favorite fantasy series. An alien race with a biology similar to humans, releases a virus on the earth that kills over 90% of the population. Those that survive are classifies as Aces or Jokers. The Aces have favorable powers, each unique. The jokers have unfavorable mutations. This series is definitely for adults and very entertaining

People get pissed over Sword of Truth because Goodkind acted like he was an ORIGINATOR and it was unique. There were clear, obvious and intentional DIRECT steals from WOT, LOTR and others.

I've read many of the Xanth books. They are actually a lot of fun. In some ways they are classic fantasy. In other ways, a bit less so. They have a few more adult elements. But I read them in junior high and wasn't concerned. If I'm not mistaken, he is STILL writing them.

I was waiting for Xanth! Yup I've read around thirty ish of them. Quite a saga. You can read the first 6 ish and get an idea of it. The series is broken into sequels, trilogies, standalone stories. Sometimes it focuses on a character for a few books, then moves on and uses that character as a supporting character in subsequent books. You gotta appreciate puns. Lots of puns in the fantasy naming conventions of piers Anthony.

I was confused when you included some books but then i realized you were including books that aren't saga's. The wandering inn is epic.

hm. I'm surprised the Drizzt series and Dragon Lance series didn't make the cut. Lackey, though, i knew had quite a lot, but I didn't know it was quite that many

The first 6 books of the Realm of the Elderlings are free on Audible (you might need a subscription, but it doesn't cost credits) and I started with the 4th book, Ship of Magic, and am addicted to it. Robin Hobbs can write some awesome characters!

I've been going through Saga of Recluce and other Modesitt works like The Imager Portfolio and his most recent series The Grand Illusion and he has become one of my favorite authors but he's definitely not for everyone. Even though Recluce is a fairly standard medieval fantasy it's got a very interesting structure where each book is set during a different period of the world, for example one book might be set in an early medieval period and the other is set in an industrial revolution period and you get to see how the world changes and develops/regresses with each book and the magic system is fairly interesting as well with a great focus being put on the effect the use of magic has on the world. He generally focuses on the day to day activites of a character and slowly building up the story over constantly moving the plot forward thus people could find his stuff slow or boring, especially in Imager and The Grand Illusion where there is a great focus on the economics and the politics of the world and Modesitt goes into great detail when those two areas are in question.

Wooh! Malazan mentioned! If you have any interest in large scale battles, warfare, or fantasy tactics, Erikson is that guy. Edit: Come on, King doesn’t count. What even is that. Come on. Dark Tower is a series, but the “Stephen King Universe” isn’t a thing. Mentioning Maine and retconning characters doesn’t count as a greater narrative. If that’s the case, then how many words are written in the entire Forgotten Realms universe?

If you count series written by multiple authors, the winner would probably be Dragonlance with over 150 books.

If we're looking at the numbers for books written in a universe, I wonder where Warhammer 40K books would rank? It’s all the one universe and has many writers contributing to it that have rules they have to follow to ensure continuity. (Yes, I know it's scifi, this has just made me wonder) A quick google seems to indicate that there are over 300 books at a minimum. If we apply an average of 40,000 words per book (standard novel length) to the number of books indicated to be in the universe according to FictionDB, 338, we get 13,52,0000 (thirteen million five hundred twenty thousand). That’s a lot of words…

Definitely finish Malazan! Absolutely worth the effort

Sanderson should probably counted as the entire Cosmere. I think this should be a 'by one author list' which would shorten Malazan, Riftwar, and WOT at least. If you include multiple authors then the Forgotten Realms amd Dragonlance come into play. Conan may even make the list. Probably some others as well.

LITRPG coming in kicking down the door like "What!?"

Finally someone talks about The Sword of Truth series! It is hands down my favorite fantasy series of all time!! I highly recommend it!

I think Joe Dever's Lone Wolf gamebook series have also insane amount of word count (2.5M fosho, dunno if more) and it ended at like 31 books, with now all of them getting an extended editions that add previously cut content making them even larger

Thank you so much for introducing me to The Wandering Inn series. The first 2 were on a buy one get one free on Audible so I spent a credit. I’m only on chapter 2 but am loving it. I’m not too sure that this would be a series for you, though as it is a humorous litrpg/iseki series. The narrator so far has been brilliant and I don’t think I will have a problem listening to her for the next 43 hours, that’s just the first book. 😂 For anyone who reads digitally, on Kindle at least, the books are only a few £’s each in the UK, so I suppose they won’t be too expensive in other countries. 🎉 Alternatively, it is legally free online 😂

The Xanth series is a lot of fun. It contains a lot of dad humor. The author still refers to it as a "trilogy". The first eight are excellent, but they kind of go downhill from there. Also, I was stunned not to see the Dragonlance series. There has to be at least 40 books by now.

Would have thought the Forgotten Realms would be at the top, with 40+ books just about Drizzt, with Dragon Lance not far behind.

Sword of Truth is controversial mostly due to the author being very disrespectful towards the Fantasy Genre itself, if I’m not mistaken. Like Rowling, Goodkind regards himself as something better than Fantasy, and is very condescending. He also made some iffy remarks about Robert Jordans health etc. So many fantasy fans don’t include him as a legit fantasy writer, because he doesn’t consider himself as one and sees himself as better than it.

I highly recommend going through wandering inn author's interview with matt fantasy book reviews before judging it. You will get the vibes of the series from the interview A common pitch for recommending wandering inn is it being called malazan lite.

I can't see how Wandering Inn qualifies when for all I can see, none of these "books" have ever been released in print format.

Don't be initimated by wandering inn, it seems daunting if you see its length, but once you start reading it you will not stop. I caught up to wandering inn 2 years ago and have re tead it once more and am caughtup to series , and I find it much more bingeable than cosmere. As I have only read stormlightarchive , it is below wandering imo.

I love seeing older fantasy books mentioned! I've read many many Xanth books, they are middle grade to YA, but some other works by that author are decidedly NOT. I've read every single book in the Valdamar series including the book that came out last year! I'm so glad she is still writing books that instantly transport me back to my collage days. The Valdamar books are YA, as are most of her many other series she has also written. I finished the last Robin Hobb book in December, and have one Dresden Files book to be up to date. I think I've read all of Sir Terry Pratchett's works. I don't really read Steven King anymore, but I've read at least half his work.... An amazing author with 20 books in one universe in two connected series is Patricia Briggs, I recommend her Mercy Thompson/Alpha and Omega series. Which author should I take a deep dive into next?

Piers Anthony reads like it was written by teenage boys. But I still like his Incarnations of Immorlaity

I have to disagree with the Stephen King "universe." He himself said his stories/novels were set in multiple universes/realities. But some of his characters, like Randall Flagg, were able to traverse his "Multiverse" and move from one universe to another. Flagg is the main villain/antagonist in the Stand and the Dark Tower series. Since I brought up Flagg as an example,The Stand itself is definitely not in the same universe as the rest of his work. When first published in 1978, it was set in 1985, and the story tells the tale of people surviving a "superflu" that was developed in a government lab, accidentally escaped or released to the outside world, and proceeded to kill off 99% of the US (and it is assumed the world) population. In 1988-89, King published a revised and greatly expanded version of the novel, and moved the date of the action to 1995, where it still stands. Other novels published since the Stand revision are set in the "present" day (for the most part) with no mention of an apocalyptic plague that essentially knocked modern society back into the stone age (in terms of electric power usage and modern conveniences) or the big battle between good and evil in the novel's climax as described by the author. Therefore it can't be the exact SAME universe... Obviously the stories set in and around Derry, Maine share common ground and characters (like Faulkner's fictitious Yaknapatawpha County Mississippi), but other books don't feel part of the SAME universe, other than they're written by the same man with an instantly recognizable writing style.

Valdemar is excellent. You can probably start with any of the series, though I'd start with Arrows of the Queen, which is the first published book. And you can't count Goodkind, since he doesn't write fantasy: "First of all, I don't write fantasy. I write stories that have important human themes. They have elements of romance, history, adventure, mystery and philosophy. Most fantasy is one-dimensional. It's either about magic or a world-building. I don't do either." - Terry Goodkind Finally, King is a fantasy writer like Clancy was a fantasy writer. (All of Clancy's books escept for Red Storm Rising are set in the same alternate history, which is certainly a subgenre of fantasy.)

About King's universe, yes and no. Yes, they're all connected but there are different dimensions and parallel universes. For example: in some universes, IT is dead and in others, alive

I've fallen off a couple of these, but I'm 100% on the Recluse books and I've read them since it started. Great to see Feist and Lackey getting a shout out from the past. I was huge on Piers Anthony but things definitely went off the rails a couple decades ago.

Why wasn’t Warhammer 40k included? I think Horus Heresy has like 50 books and Siege of Terra as well. And that’s only what happens before actually getting to 40k

If we're doing universes then forgotten realms definitely belongs on this list.

The discworld books are amazing

The Recluce books are interesting. They tend to be almost standalone--characters in one are more likely to have heard of the characters in another as historical "greats" than to actually know them personally. And they have as far as I can tell two major themes: 1. Deep philosophical questions of the values and uses of order, disorder and different sorts of compromise between the two, along with musings on craftsmanship. 2. The idea that any political problem can probably be solved by assassinating someone. No, really. On that first thing, I think Modesitt's thinking on the subject developed and shifted over time; where the first book treats order vs chaos as an almost good vs evil deal, pretty one dimensional, over time there's a fair amount of nuance introduced. I haven't read all of 'em, but now and then I'll pick another up if I'm pretty sure it's not one of the ones I already have . . . they do get a bit same-ey after a while.

It is an easy read. Online chapters are in effect mini stories, so if you do take a break and then go back to it, you will be fine. The author cites on her website it is at 12.4 million words now. She is a machine of a writer. And yes - it is an incredible story. Fun, entertaining, thought provoking and has hidden depth. I am loving it

What about the Legend of Drizzt? 39 books so far.

Feist, Modesitt, and Anthony are some of my favorite authors and I highly recommend reading their works. All things equal, it is best to read them in chronological order.

If it is about "universes" that are huge, I'm surprised the Dragonlance universe wasn't included.

The wandering inn being the longest and that just started 6-7 years ago.. this is insane. No words.

The DragonLance universe has 190 books.

The Xanth series by Piers Anthony is comparable to the Terry Pratchett Disc World Series. A lot of silly humor and all the stories are set in the same world but with different characters. I remember reading these books as a kid and I still reference some of the books and characters 😊

Did the series have to be by a single author? Because otherwise, and if Stephen King’s books are all one universe, then Dragon Lance (~150 novels according to Wikipedia) and Forgotton Realms (-400 books) have to make this list if not take the top spot by a comfortable margin

The only one new to me is the series by Michelle West, which I'll now have to look up. I suspect I've read a lot more older/classic fantasy than most people on BookTube though

Shouldn't Warhammer 40.000 novels be in the lists? There are like 200 books from that universe

The Wandering Inn is also on Audible.