Tier Ranking my first 15 fantasy books by PLOT and PACING

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]I'm a new reader and I spent hours and hours on BookTube looking for fantasy book recommendations and these are the first 15 books that I read. I don't know why I'm doing this. You You guys will see it though. Today I'll be tier ranking those books based on plot and pacing. The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson, there are about 100 pages that I really enjoyed and were really engaging but 900 of those pages were kind of boring. I'm not going to lie.

[00:00:22]This to me from here on out will be the reference point for bad pacing. This goes for D. Words of Radiance, the plot was actually pretty [ __ ] good but again, there were just so many pages where I just thought you could have chopped 800 of those pages down to maybe 400 and we would have still felt what we needed to feel. So, I'm going to go B.

[00:00:40]Red Rising by Pierce Brown, the plot is not bad but if you're used to watching like anime or Korean or Japanese content, it's not going to blow you away but it's pacing is insanely fast. So, I'm going to have to give this a high B.

[00:00:53]Golden Son by Pierce Brown, I would say the plot was definitely a step up from Red Rising and it still maintained a really good pace. So, I'm actually going to give this an A. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, I absolutely love this book but if I'm just looking at pacing and plotting alone, I'm going to give it a C. I can get why people would say it's really slow. I personally think there is a plot, [ __ ] happens all the time but I can see the argument. The Lies of Locke Lamora, I think the story is strong and it has a lot of oh [ __ ] moments but sometimes those flashbacks really [ __ ] [laughter] started to piss me off. So, that kind of pulled away from the pacing for me. I'm going to put this in B. The Rage of Dragons, the plot itself is actually really weak. From a pacing standpoint, this might be the fastest paced book. We're going to put it in B. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, the pacing wasn't terrible.

[00:01:37]There's a good amount of variety in the plot, things continually happen but it didn't entirely pull me in. I'm going to give this a B. The Sword of Kaigen by M.

[00:01:44]L. Wang, now this is a tricky one. After the big moment in the middle of the book, it gets really slow but the pacing up until that point was actually pretty good. The story was really engaging for me. I'm going to throw this in A. Next up, we have the three books from the Cradle series, Unsouled by Will Wight.

[00:01:57]From a plot standpoint, it's nothing to write home about, but it's super fast-paced. I'm going to give it a B.

[00:02:02]Soulsmith, which is book two, kind of more of the same. I'm going to give it a B. Black Flame, this is book three in the Cradle series. The story picks up and the pacing is really good. It's just so much fun, so much fun. So, I'm giving this an A. Never Die, it is super fast-paced, but I wouldn't say the plot was that interesting and the pacing didn't really make up for it, either.

[00:02:21]So, I'm going to give this a low C. Jade City by Fonda Lee, the pacing was fine.

[00:02:25]I don't know, I just just the plot was really uninteresting to me. I'm going to have to give this a C. The Will of the Many by James Islington, it's a solid all around book. Nothing really blew me away from a plot standpoint. The pacing is is not terrible at all. The plot was interesting enough. Um I'm going to give it an A. I didn't know what I'd be ranking these things in my mind, so I didn't know [laughter] that there were going to be no S tier. Oh, maybe that means if you have really good plot or really good pacing, it's hard to have both. I don't know. Let me know what you think of this tier list in the comments below. Do you agree with me? Do you disagree with me? You can talk [ __ ] I don't mind. You better come with some good arguments, catch you guys on the next one. Peace, peace, peace.