The Hero’s Journey: An Introduction

Announcing a brand-new newsletter in which I’ll be tackling the largest book series and author projects on my TBR.

I’m thrilled to introduce a third newsletter series to you all—it’s frankly one of the main reasons I wanted to expand my content to Substack.

Like many of you, I love to read—widely, backlist and frontlist, across genres. But there is one reading experience that is extra special, that brings me back to my earliest days as a young reader—and that is getting lost in a big series of chunky books (particularly fantasy). This kind of reading still brings me some of the most joy; and yet, I find myself getting sucked into the race of reading for quantity over quality that has become popularized on social media. I’ve long wanted to get back to my roots and tackle some of the large series and author bodies of work that have been patiently languishing on the shelves of my TBR.

Introducing “The Hero’s Journey”—a new content series in which I’ll be sharing my approach, thoughts, and discoveries as I tackle these big bodies of work, one by one. My hope is that you’ll follow along whether you’re reading these books or not; and especially, that they can serve as a resource and companion should you at any point now or in the future decide to pick them up for yourselves. I will be avoiding spoilers, sharing just enough context and details to make each newsletter interesting for both those who have read the books or to serve as a starting point against which you can gauge whether you are interested in picking them up yourself.

Some context in case you aren’t familiar: the “hero’s journey” references a common literary trope or story template popularized by writer and thinker Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it, a hero goes on an adventure, achieves victory in the face of various trials and challenges—often involving magical guides and various tests—and ultimately returns home. It’s a common foundation for many stories, in the fantasy genre and beyond; and I felt it was a fun framework for this task of embarking on a range of big literary adventures with you all.

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the books and authors on my list that will show up in this newsletter series looking ahead. Please do let me know in the comments if there are any you want me to prioritize, or any not listed here that I should consider adding. Many are fantasy or sci-fi, but not all—some are lengthy literary historical fiction series:

• Samantha Shannon’s The Bone Season series

• N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth and Inheritance trilogies and Dreamblood duology

• Robin Hobb’s Farseer, Liveship Traders, Tawny Man, Rain Wild Chronicles, and Fitz and the Fool series

• Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes series and Heir duology

• Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series

• Ken Follett’s Kingsbridge series and The Century Trilogy

• Sarah J. Maas’s Crescent City series

• Hilary Mantell’s Thomas Cromwell series (aka, Wolf Hall)

• Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series

• Octavia Butler’s Earthseed duology, Xenogenesis series, and Patternist series

• Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe

• Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher series

• Fonda Lee’s The Green Bone Saga trilogy

• Tasha Suri’s The Burning Kingdom trilogy

• Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow series

• Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between Earth and Sky trilogy

• Frank Herbert’s Dune series

• and more!

I will also revisit series I’ve already read, such as:

• Samantha Shannon’s Roots of Chaos series

• George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series (aka, A Game of Thrones)

• S. A. Chakraborty’s City of Brass trilogy and Amina al-Sirafi series

• J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

• Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses series

• Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games

• V. E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic series

But to kick things off: my first focus for The Hero’s Journey will be an author who, over the last 20 years, has carved out a really unique and renowned space in the fantasy genre: Brandon Sanderson.

In the next edition of The Hero’s Journey, I’ll provide an introduction to Sanderson’s work including my findings for a proposed order reading through the various books that make up his Cosmere universe. In subsequent newsletters, I’ll share about my experience reading the original Mistborn trilogy; and after that, I will either continue on in Sanderson’s Cosmere or take a break and pivot to another author or series. It’s all part of the journey, so stay tuned!

One caveat for this project: as with any hero’s journey, sometimes we fail in our tasks. Particularly for those series I have yet to read, I want to leave room for DNFing (
”did-not-finish”) or sometimes having criticism on the works. It’s inevitable that not every series I attempt to tackle will be a winner for me as an individual reader, and I want to be honest in sharing my thoughts knowing that we will live to fight another day, with another adventure.

These newsletters will be loosely planned to go out on a monthly or bi-monthly basis, with more flexibility than my other newsletter series; I’ll share new installments as I get to the next stage in my reading process.

In the next edition of “The Hero’s Journey”: a closer look at Brandon Sanderson, his Cosmere universe, and my findings in researching the best reading order.