The Terror of Knowing

Welcome one and all to this week’s Top 5 Wednesday post! For those of you who don’t know Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly meme/challenge which was created by the wonderful Lainey from gingerreadslainey and is now overseen by the equally lovely Sam from Thoughts on Tomes. Every Wednesday, participants devise their Top 5 based on a given topic.

This Wednesday’s topic is a Booktube SFF Awards Babble Crossover Topic: Auto-Buy Sci-fi and Fantasy Authors! As a mostly fantasy reader, it’s unsurprising that there are a fair few SFF authors whose work I will always read, regardless of the synopsis, so this topic is pretty perfect. Let’s not waste any more time, let’s get into it…

Honourable Mention: J.K. Rowling

Before you start to throw things at me, I should explain: Rowling’s presence on this list as an “honourable mention” is simply because, nowadays, she has well and truly diversified beyond SFF. The Harry Potter series may have been her debut (and a pretty spectacular debut at that, I think we can all agree) but she’s since written contemporary and crime, as well as expanding the Harry Potter Wizarding World even further. So is she really mainly a SFF author anymore? Only time will tell, but that’s also why she’s “only” an honourable mention on this list.

5. Maggie Stiefvater

Ever since reading The Raven Boys I knew I couldn’t ever not buy something that Maggie Stiefvater has published since those books. (I say “since” because I’m not so fussed about the The Wolves of Mercy Falls series if I’m honest, oops!) I find her writing incredibly vivid and compelling, it just has a vibe I can’t quite explain, but it makes me want to live in the world she creates in her stories. So it’s safe to say I’ll definitely be buying her forthcoming books.

4. Samantha Shannon

I’ll definitely be auto-buying at least four more books by Samantha Shannon because that accounts for the remaining books in The Bone Season series. But, even without that, I’d still want to buy everything Shannon writes – I will likely buy her next book, The Priory of the Orange Tree because it’s a standalone fantasy (with dragons?) and I don’t know much more than that but I trust her so implicitly as an author that I will automatically buy whatever she puts out, just because I love The Bone Season, The Mime Order, and The Song Rising so much.

3. V.E. Schwab

If you have spent any amount of time on this blog at all you will not be in the least bit surprised to find Schwab make an appearance on here. She’s one of the authors I talk about constantly, partly because I really love her videos and tweets about craft. (If you’re a writer and don’t follow her, you really should because she has great advice and tips on the whole writing process!) But also I adored her Shades of Magic series so much and I am so excited for anything she writes in that world – hopefully there are enough of these projects coming that I will stay excited about Schwab’s writing for many years to come.

2. Neil Gaiman

Again, it’s probably no surprise to find Gaiman is a big presence on this list of auto-buy authors. I adore Neil Gaiman’s writing style, and The Graveyard Book is firmly in my top books of all-time. He has such an amazing way with words that he could be spinning a story about the phone book and I would read it avidly. He just has a way of making the fantastical seem like the most everyday thing – like, in Coraline, he just casually mentions that the cat talks, and you just go along with it because he writes his worldbuilding in such a matter-of-fact and convincing way that you don’t even pause to acknowledge the weirdness of whatever he’s just told you. That, to me, is his big skill in writing, and it is for that very reason that I will always buy his latest book without question.

1. Leigh Bardugo

Much like Neil Gaiman, Leigh Bardugo’s presence on this list cannot possibly be a shock to anyone who has been around this blog long enough to experience me discovering any of the Grishaverse books. I thought I’d enjoyed The Grisha trilogy thoroughly, and then I read the Six of Crows duology and I fell head over heels in love with Leigh Bardugo’s writing. Her narratives, her worldbuilding, her characters are just so dark and complex and utterly wonderful that I will be greedily eating them up for many years to come, or so I hope anyway! I really hope she keeps expanding the Grishaverse even further because I can’t get enough of her characters – they feel so real and tangible and I adore them all, even especially the precious murder babies like Kaz Brekker.

That’s all for now folks – those were my Top 5 Auto-Buy SFF Authors. Who are your auto buy authors? Be sure to link me to your Top 5 Wednesday post if you have one- I’d love to read it!

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