I'm looking for a low-power, low-stakes fantasy book (or series)

[Barbarian MD]

I love Brandon Sanderson and Jim Butcher. But sometimes I get tired of the all-powerful special "the one" who's literally going to save the world and/or universe from some elder god.

I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions for more intimate fantasy stories, well-written ones that focus on characterization as opposed to power creep and with end goals of rescuing someone or investigating something or whatever as opposed to stopping the full-scale destruction of the universe. Anthony Ryan's Blood Song started off this way for me, but then the scope of the story went to 11. Horatio Hornblower and Richard Sharpe are characters that I really enjoyed for this reason.

Thanks in advance!

[Dienekes]

You might like Joe Abercrombie. Very hack and slash, but good characterization and fun to read.

The First Law trilogy is the most epic, about potential wars and going to the ends of the earth to find artifacts and ancient wizards experiments. There is no chosen one, and the fate of the world is never at stake, at worst a kingdom would be toppled. But, as I said it is the most epic in scale. Even then, there are plot lines for certain characters (Glotka an inquisitor for the empire, and Collem a soldier for said empire for example) which are more about dealing with the rigors of maintaining a kingdom, uncovering secrets, and winning a war than anything inherently grand in scope.

The next 3 books are in the same world and follow the events of that trilogy, so you may need to read it to understand what's going on. But they fit what you're looking for much better.

Best Served Cold: A revenge tale of a mercenary who was betrayed by her former patron who has to decide whether to come to terms with what terrible things she's done in the past, or to take the final steps to be the brilliant but monstrous commander people think she is.

The Heroes: A look at a single battle and the events that lead up to it. Emphasis on the daily lives of soldiers and the politics behind the scenes.

Red Country: A medieval western. A family has been kidnapped and it's up to a young woman and her stepfather with a mysterious past to find out who took them, how to get them back, all while navigating the edge of civilization and the people who wind up there.

Another you might like is The Lies of Locke Lamora, which is about a bunch of thieves who get roped into a power struggle amongst a medieval-ish cities criminal underworld.

[Ibrinar]

Low scale low power is hard

From your mention of Harry dresden I guess that Urban Fantasy is okay.
How low powered? I guess destruction of the city is still to high as a risk.
Would something like the Rook work, they all have powers and not weak ones but book 1 mostly deals with searching for a traitor in the organization, dealing with the MCs complete memory lose (which she is trying to hide).
And I guess dealing with another organization which I guess is technically a country level threat but they only have to deal with some of the leading members.

Hmm going through my recently read books Star Crossed (Thief Errant) is quite low powered, but it's not unlikely that there will never be a third book so maybe not the best choice.Night owls (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18281997-night-owls) was relatively low scale and I liked it but not really outstanding.

The final formula series is relatively low power. The elements aren't weak I guess but it's mostly on conflicts between a few mages and alchemists and beside collatoral damage the characters are mostly the ones in danger if they failed the world wouldn't end or anything.

The Peter Grant series (or whatever the proper name was) is about a police department dealing with supernatural stuff. They are mages but relatively low powered ones.

Beka Cooper stays low powered until the end. (Guard member in a medieval fantasy city with some magic.)

[Douglas]

The Myth Adventures series by Robert Asprin is a good one. The main character is a magician, and he does develop meaningful magic power over the course of the series, but most of his biggest accomplishments are achieved more through cleverness and con artistry than magic, and the plots tend to be small scale and whimsical. Also, it's comedic.

If you'll consider sci-fi too, the Miles Vorkosigan series by Bujold is one of my favorites, and it's all about the crazy and crazily creative adventures and life of the main character. The fate of the Barrayaran Empire is sometimes at stake, but only in the sense that its future course could be very different, not that its existence is threatened, and even that is unusual.

[Traab]

The Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop is fairly low to mid level. I dont think anyone is destroying cities, though the most powerful can handle large groups of enemies. There is some big high end power towards the end of the last book in the trilogy, but there is generally little mention of it before then. It mainly focuses on the characters and interpersonal relationships and recovery from bad things. However, it is dark dark dark dark DARK! Lots of bad things happen, like, really bad things. But despite that, it was a series I enjoyed reading.

[JoshL]

Charles de Lint's Newford series might be up your alley. Most of the stories and novels are very personal and character based. Some are pretty high stakes, but most of the time the stakes are personal. There are also some high powered magic characters, but most of the time they're not used to solve the big problems, if that makes sense. Very folklore-ish approach to magic, heavy on Celtic and Native American traditions. Also, if you are a musician/artist, you'll relate to a LOT of the characters. I'd start with Dreams Underfoot, which is a short story collection that sort of reads like a novel. He's one of my favorites, and I recommend him every chance I get!

[The Glyphstone]

Since you mentioned Horatio Hornblower, have you ever heard of the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik? They're more alt-history than outright fantasy, but considering the alt- in question is "what if the Napoleonic Wars were fought WITH DRAGONS?", they are still pretty fantastical. The characterization is excellent, both for the humans and the dragons, the implications of making 19th century battlefields a three-dimensional environment are fairly logical once the handwave of draconic flight ability is past, and you really get to see both primary protagonists evolve over the course of the series. And while winning the war in Europe is a big deal to the characters, the French Empire is hardly a universe-shaking threat, so the stakes are still 'small' in the cosmic sense.

[LibraryOgre]

Go back to your roots. Read Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar books, starting Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or Howard's Conan. Usually, the stakes are "money" or "survival", and magic is a thing mostly held by evil people (though they experience plenty, and the Grey Mouser was an apprentice mage, once upon a time.

[Cheesegear]

Since you mentioned Horatio Hornblower, have you ever heard of the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik? They're more alt-history than outright fantasy, but considering the alt- in question is "what if the Napoleonic Wars were fought WITH DRAGONS?", they are still pretty fantastical.

Well, I don't know about the OP, but you've sold it to me.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, I don't know about the OP, but you've sold it to me.

They really are excellent. Said dragons can be anywhere from small single rider couriers to 120ft-long heavyweights, so what you actually get is a weird hybrid of traditional 19th century field battles and early 20th century air combat. Dragons carry crews, who use carabiners to hook themselves to harnesses, and the bombersheavyweights fly over enemy formations dropping grenades and explosive shells, while the fighterssmaller dragons carry riflemen and fly escort patterns around the big ones to protect them from opposing formations. There's anti-dragon ground defenses - shrapnel and pepper bombs fired out of cannons, dragon boarding actions, specialty breeds with unique abilities that make them particularly valuable (fire or acid breath, or night vision, etc.)...a really well-integrated world, and the later books do a fantastic job of exploring the non-military, social and political, implications of a parallel history with dragons integrated into the timeline.

[BWR]

I wasn't overly fond of the Temeraire series. It wasn't bad, exactly, but I was left rather bored. Just a personal opinion - I know a couple of people who really liked them.

I can second the recommendation for Leiber's Swords stories, as well as deLint. R.E. Howard's work in general, especiall his Conan, Kull and Solomon Kane stories. Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan and to a lesser extent John Carter of Mars/Barsoom.

I would be remiss if I didn't plug some less traditional fantsy like Robert Holdstock's "Mythago wood", a sadly ignored work of genius about fairy tales and personal growth or lack thereof.

Anything by John Crowley, especially Little, big

Much of the late Tanith Lee's stuff, like The Birthgrave, Tales from the Flat Earth (Night's Master, Death's Master, Delusion's Master, Delerium's Mistress, Night's Sorceries, plus a smattering of short stories), Kill the Dead and more. While there may be great power and nations rise and fall in these stories, this is pretty much incidental to the story and characters, not the focus.

Matthew W. Stover Heroes Die or Iron Dawn. While saving the world and great power does occur in the former, it's almost subdued and the MC is just a true joy to read about. The latter is Iron Age fantasy set in the Middle East, and quite low-key compared to much of the fantasy on the market (as in magic exists but is rare, weak compared to even Tolkien and not terribly reliable).

C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry stories.

Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories. Some of it can be rather high-power but the stakes are basically always personal.

Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun

[Yora]

Go back to your roots. Read Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar books, starting Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or Howard's Conan. Usually, the stakes are "money" or "survival", and magic is a thing mostly held by evil people (though they experience plenty, and the Grey Mouser was an apprentice mage, once upon a time.

Yeah, there's a whole genre of it.

[Traab]

Speaking of dragons, Joust by Mercedes Lackey is the first book in a four book series that is pretty solidly based on ancient egypt, only dragons are a thing that exists and is used in the military. The main character is a slave boy who is claimed by a Jouster to care for his dragon, who are mostly heavily drugged, barely controlled animals and dangerous to be around. Magic is really low key through most of the series. Dragons are basically one man animals, they are used as scouts, and to drop fire pots and such on enemy troops, as well as to joust against each other for air superiority. And yes, they use lances, like flying knights on horseback.

[Philistine]

A LOT of Glen Cook's stuff fits the OP's bill, but the very first thing that came to my mind was his Garrett, PI series. One way to think of Garrett is like an inverse of the Dresden Files: where Harry Dresden is a wizard in modern-day Chicago, Garrett is a modern(ish) noir private investigator in a kitchen-sink faux-medieval fantasy setting.

Garrett does (sort of) save the world from an invasion of inimical elder gods in one book, but for the most part his adventures take place on a much more personal scale - finding missing persons, busting kidnappings, preventing or interrupting thefts, bodyguarding and security, and hunting down murderers attempted and achieved. Even with the elder gods, his part was mostly just running around, trying to keep out of the way of things that could squish him like a itty bitty bug, until the powers capable of and responsible for dealing with that sort of thing actually noticed the situation.

[thorgrim29]

The Gentlemen Bastards series might fit what you're looking for, they're low-magic heist books

[Sermil]

If you'll consider sci-fi too, the Miles Vorkosigan series by Bujold is one of my favorites, and it's all about the crazy and crazily creative adventures and life of the main character. The fate of the Barrayaran Empire is sometimes at stake, but only in the sense that its future course could be very different, not that its existence is threatened, and even that is unusual.

Actually, Bujold has written two fantasy series: The Curse of Chalion and The Sharing Knife, and a stand-alone fantasy novel The Spirit Ring.

I highly recommend The Curse of Chalion and its sequel Paladin of Souls. Caz and Ista, the protagonists of those books, are very well drawn and I just really enjoyed spending time with them. The power levels are about as low as you can go and still be in the realm of fantasy -- there are very rare miracles, on the order of a miraculous healing, and an occasional demon with enough power to break a small building. The stakes are "low" in the grand scheme of things -- nothing more "important" than a person's soul... but oddly, the gods seem to consider that more important that kingdoms and worlds... Seriously, go read them.

The Sharing Knife is a series of 4 books, basically a romance/fantasy. There are two main plots; one is the budding romance, and then marriage, of the two main characters, Dag and Fawn, and the problems that brings from their families and people. (They're of two different cultures who don't get along well.) There's no magical resolution to this; Dag can't just whip out a magical dohicky to convince his mother to approve of his new wife. The other, interwoven, is the generations-long struggle of Dag's people to keep a kind of monsters called malices in check; malices are nasty but most of Dag's work is just boring, year-after-year patrolling around looking for new malices before they cause too much damage. Again, very low power -- Dag's main power is a kind of sixth sense which allows him to know what's going on in a mile radius, and Fawn has absolutely no powers at all except a keen mind and a certain stubbornness. Also very character-focused; Fawn's struggles to live in her husband's culture and fit in are given as much page-time as Dag's one big malice fight.

[Traab]

Another low power fantasy series, David Weber generally writes sci fi, but he has an awesome fantasy series called the War God series. Starts with Oath of Swords. He takes the tolkinian races and adds some unique twists, like, elves are immortal and almost suicidally depressed about that fact. Halflings are generally mistrusted thieves, their race was created by accident because evil wizards didnt bother to shield their magic from their servants and it twisted them. Think comic book logic on radiation, only it created an entire race instead of a single being. He also created his own race, called the hradani, the two main characters are this race. Very unique. There are gods and demons and such, but its generally rare they directly do anything, and even when they do its never city wide destruction, so the magic is fairly low level.

It is a great series, with lots of humor, the two main characters are constantly going back and forth with joking insults, it has plenty of action, mostly sword and board type stuff, as I said, there isnt a lot of magic. And it has a great ongoing storyline that is always growing as the series continues.

[Prime32]

I love Brandon Sanderson and Jim Butcher. But sometimes I get tired of the all-powerful special "the one" who's literally going to save the world and/or universe from some elder god.

I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions for more intimate fantasy stories, well-written ones that focus on characterization as opposed to power creep and with end goals of rescuing someone or investigating something or whatever as opposed to stopping the full-scale destruction of the universe. Anthony Ryan's Blood Song started off this way for me, but then the scope of the story went to 11. Horatio Hornblower and Richard Sharpe are characters that I really enjoyed for this reason.

Thanks in advance!Spice and Wolf might interest you. It's about a merchant and a retired pagan goddess who travel around a mostly nonmagical Renaissance Europe; most of the focus is on their relationship and money-making schemes.

[Sermil]

I'll also mention Guy Gavriel Kay's later work. His first work (The Fionavar Tapestry) is super-high-power fantasy, with gods and heroes of legend fighting for the fate of the multiverse. Then, pretty much every novel after that has ratcheted down the power levels and stakes. Tigana has stakes as high as a kingdom and involves a powerful spell that makes everyone not born there unable to hear or remember its name. By the time of The Sarantine Mosaic, it's really about a sculpture trying to survive court intrigue; there's only one small amount of magic in the whole two-book series.

The later books are set in settings which are very thinly disguised historical periods -- fifth century Byzantium for The Sarantine Mosaic, 12th century China for River of Stars, and so on. If you like historical fiction with just a little magic and characters who are just a little larger than life, these might be the books for you.

Kay is quite a good writer as well. Tigana, in particular, is one of my favorite books, even though I can never bring myself to reread it.

By the end, you really sympathize with people on both sides of the conflict; there are no ultra-evil Dark Lords here, just people trying to accomplish goals and deal with pain and love and uncertainty. Watching all the people you love and care about come closer and closer to conflict... Well, as I said, I've never been able to reread it even though I've consistently listed it as one of my all-time favorite novesl.

[LadyEowyn]

Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small books are good (focused on a young woman training to be a knight and dealing with various enemies and challenges along the way). Lots of good characters, interesting/terrifying mythical creatures (giant spiders, gryphons, centaurs, etc.). There are earlier books set in the same universe, but they're more medium-to-high power/stakes. Other relatively low-power low-stakes books in the same universe are Tricker's Choice and Trickster's Queen, about the daughter of the realm's spymaster basically working to set up a covert op/insurgency/revolution in a neighbouring country.

I also like Elaine Cunningham's Elfshadow and Elfsong; the latter is more medium-stakes but nothing on the universe-threatening level and not extremely high power levels.

[Sapphire Guard]

The Sam Vimes Discworlds? Sometimes he's trying to save the city or prevent a war, but he also spends a lot of time just trying to catch a murderer or prevent an assassination.

[dps]

A LOT of Glen Cook's stuff fits the OP's bill, but the very first thing that came to my mind was his Garrett, PI series. One way to think of Garrett is like an inverse of the Dresden Files: where Harry Dresden is a wizard in modern-day Chicago, Garrett is a modern(ish) noir private investigator in a kitchen-sink faux-medieval fantasy setting.

Garrett does (sort of) save the world from an invasion of inimical elder gods in one book, but for the most part his adventures take place on a much more personal scale - finding missing persons, busting kidnappings, preventing or interrupting thefts, bodyguarding and security, and hunting down murderers attempted and achieved. Even with the elder gods, his part was mostly just running around, trying to keep out of the way of things that could squish him like a itty bitty bug, until the powers capable of and responsible for dealing with that sort of thing actually noticed the situation.


Yeah, the Garrett, PI series was the first thing I thought of, too. I haven't had a chance to read much of it yet, and haven't gotten to the one with the elder gods, but the ones I have read, you could pretty much take the fantasy elements out and they'd work as straight-up noir-ish dectective stories.

[Cheesegear]

Yeah, the Garrett, PI series was the first thing I thought of, too. I haven't had a chance to read much of it yet, and haven't gotten to the one with the elder gods, but the ones I have read, you could pretty much take the fantasy elements out and they'd work as straight-up noir-ish dectective stories.

Simon R. Green (The Nightside, Deathstalker, my current second-favorite author after Ben Aaronovitch [Rivers of London]), also does pretty much the same thing with his Hawk & Fisher series.

[Sith_Happens]

Spice and Wolf might interest you. It's about a merchant and a retired pagan goddess who travel around a mostly nonmagical Renaissance Europe; most of the focus is on their relationship and money-making schemes.

This. I finally starting reading the books two days ago after watching the (truly excellent) anime a few years ago, and they definitely hold up. I also guarantee that Spoce and Wolf will be both the lowest-power and lowest-stakes things proposed on this thread.

[thorgrim29]

I also guarantee that Spice and Wolf will be both the lowest-power and lowest-stakes things proposed on this thread.

Come on now, you can't tell me that devoting 4 or so episodes on crashing the semi-precious stone market in a small town is not high stakes.

[Sith_Happens]

Come on now, you can't tell me that devoting 4 or so episodes on crashing the semi-precious stone market in a small town is not high stakes.

Compared to crashing the Moon into the Earth? Yes, I can tell you exactly that.:smalltongue:

[Nerd-o-rama]

I was literally coming in her to recommend Sanderson. Good thing I read the OP.

As an actual suggestion, most (well, a lot) of Discworld novels fall under this, given that while magic is prevalent in the setting it's more of a fact of nature than something that gets used in the traditional sense by Evil Overlords or Heroic Wizard Swordsmen. The only books that really hit the normal fantasy high stakes are the Death novels, most of the Rincewind books, and the occasional one-off that deals with the fate of a not-intentionally-useless country. In addition to the previously mentioned Sam Vimes/Watch novels, there's most of the Witch books (especially Maskerade, which is about an opera house), The Truth (mostly a political thriller), and Unseen Academicals (which is about wizards playing soccer. Actually, being written by a British author, that might constitute higher stakes than most fantasy novels.)

Mostly I'm just posting here to remind myself to check this thread for suggestions, though, since if I'm tired of anything, it's the constant world-ending stakes in almost every freaking piece of heroic fantasy fiction in existence.

[Kitten Champion]

I would say try the Wizards of Earthsea (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13642.A_Wizard_of_Earthsea) series by Ursula K. Le Guin if you haven't. While it has some of the loose trappings of modern fantasy epics, Le Guin's strength is her subtle, introspective characterization with stories which are much more tightly focused on personal struggles compared to most of the genre.

I would also add Le Guin's young adult series, Annals of the Western Shore (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13648.Gifts) which takes much the same tact.

[Lethologica]

I was literally coming in her to recommend Sanderson. Good thing I read the OP.
Well, be fair: The Alloy of Law has relatively low stakes for a fantasy story.

Oddly enough, Dragonlance has some good stories for this: Soulforge and Brothers in Arms are narrowly focused on the Majere brothers pre-Chronicles.

And Neil Gaiman wrote Coraline.

[endoperez]

Spice and Wolf might interest you. It's about a merchant and a retired pagan goddess who travel around a mostly nonmagical Renaissance Europe; most of the focus is on their relationship and money-making schemes.

I've been reading Spice & Wolf for the last few weeks. They're nice, but the even the official Yen Press translation leaves a little something to be desired. The protagonists banter all the time, but the translated banter feels... merely ok. There's rarely any real feeling or fun in it after the translation, or at least that's what I feel.

Still, it's nice to read a fantasy series about a 25-year-old merchant whose main goals are to make a profit, and to enjoy having someone to talk to after spending years on the road staring at a horse's backside. They're basically mystery novels ("what's really going on in this situation that will cause negative outcome X, and how do they get out of it"), where the solution is economical (futures, buying margins, taxes, loans, supply and demand...).

-----

I just finished, and heartily recommend, another low-key fantasy book: Majra.

It's about a desert paradise where craftsmen are kings, and cities wage war using their masterworks. Paper masters create flying airships which burn to dust under the searing glare of the desert masters; smelling a rose master's rose causes true love and a master storyteller controls other people's lives by telling their stories.
All I said was a lie, but "as it was told, so is it true..."

It's about a culture where people communicate through exaggerated stories that hint at the truth. There might not be any magic in the world at all. The main conflict arises from the existence of an empire based on laws and truth and order, which wants to civilize the "lying savages". The missionaries and soldiers of Majra build walls, demand identity papers, tax and police everything and so on. If it has a fault, it's that there's an obnoxious character in it.

-----

China Miéville writes dark fantasy, urban stories starting with Perdido Street Station. They're not urban fantasy; they're set in a fantasy world that's going through the industrial revolution and has been urbanized, but without any labor unions, civil rights or anti-racism movements. For a poor human, cactus-person, anthropomorphic mosquito or scarab-headed woman (the series is very inventive with the races), the city of New Crobuzon can be a horrible place.
For example, one of the methods of punishment is being Remade, that is, the city-sanctioned biothaumaturges (the series is also very inventive with the magic systems) get to experiment on you to exact some sort of punishment by replacing, removing, changing, adding or combining one or more parts of your body with machines, animals, parts of animals, other humans, parts of other humans or something else. After you've been Remade, you're a subhuman slave forced to toil away in some dangerous factory.

Miéville's novels are very dark. Not quite as dark as the aforementioned Black Jewels trilogy, but all sorts of bad things happen to various characters. At the same time, they're wonderfully inventive and subvertive, brimming with all sorts of interesting ideas about what fantasy is, or could be, or could have been. Miéville is against the fantasy hero who saves the world, against the derivative fantasy worlds of elves and dwarves and humans and orcs.

[Prime32]

I've been reading Spice & Wolf for the last few weeks. They're nice, but the even the official Yen Press translation leaves a little something to be desired. The protagonists banter all the time, but the translated banter feels... merely ok. There's rarely any real feeling or fun in it after the translation, or at least that's what I feel.

Still, it's nice to read a fantasy series about a 25-year-old merchant whose main goals are to make a profit, and to enjoy having someone to talk to after spending years on the road staring at a horse's backside. They're basically mystery novels ("what's really going on in this situation that will cause negative outcome X, and how do they get out of it"), where the solution is economical (futures, buying margins, taxes, loans, supply and demand...).Take a look at the official translation of the manga, if you can. The art is pretty expressive, and it preserves Holo's antiquated speech patterns. IMO putting the two of these together really brings her character to life, moreso than fan-translations or the LN release could manage.

[veti]

I highly recommend The Curse of Chalion and its sequel Paladin of Souls.

Seconded. Also the third in that series, The Hallowed Hunt, although it has a slightly more high-fantasy vibe about it.

Neil Gaiman: Stardust, The Graveyard Book, Neverwhere might meet your criteria.

Diana Wynne Jones: wrote mainly children's/YA fiction, but you might try Dogsbody or Fire & Hemlock.

If you're open to outright children's fantasy, by far the best I've ever read are the Moomintroll series by Tove Jansson.

[Feytalist]

I'll also mention Guy Gavriel Kay's later work. His first work (The Fionavar Tapestry) is super-high-power fantasy, with gods and heroes of legend fighting for the fate of the multiverse. Then, pretty much every novel after that has ratcheted down the power levels and stakes. Tigana has stakes as high as a kingdom and involves a powerful spell that makes everyone not born there unable to hear or remember its name. By the time of The Sarantine Mosaic, it's really about a sculpture trying to survive court intrigue; there's only one small amount of magic in the whole two-book series.

Kay is a good rec, yeah.

In a somewhat similar vein, there's also Stephen Lawhead. The Pendragon Cycle is a "historical" retelling of the Arthurian legend, with slight magical bits. The Song of Albion is a more-fantastical Celtic-inspired story, also with very subtle magic. Real-person-transported-into-alternate-universe type story.

[Barbarian MD]

Thanks everyone. A lot of these sound like fun. Now to figure out how much money I can spend on a giant stack of books!

[WalkingTarget]

Hmm... I'm not sure if it necessarily qualifies as "low-power" since things like teleportation and resurrection (with limitations) are present, but I'm always gonna push Steven Brust's books set in Dragaera.

The main sequence follow the adventures of Vlad Taltos. Human (minority) member of a fantasy equivalent of the Mafia in the capitol city of the Dragaeran Empire (Dragaerans being 7-feet tall on average and can expect to live a few millennia if they don't get killed first). He starts out as an assassin and eventually moves up to running a small part of town. Shenanigans happen and only a few books cover that part of his life, but they are published in a non-chronological order (the earliest book is the 4th one published for example) but I recommend publication order anyway.

The books are pretty much stand-alone in terms of plot. There is an ongoing metaplot, but it mostly centers on Vlad's character arc rather than anything resembling saving the world (although there are 2 or 3 books where he does get suckered into involved with important stuff, though). They're also mostly pretty short. Brust got his start in little paperbacks suitable for spinner racks at the drugstore and you can find the first 7 books in a set of 3 omnibus reprint volumes much easier than you can find the original individual books (the first book written was Jhereg). This series is set for 19 books and 14 of them have been published to date. "First-person smartass" narrative style for the most part, but Brust likes to do something different with the structure or narrative voice from book to book to keep things interesting.

There is another series he wrote in the same setting. It is set centuries prior to the main series (but due to the long life of Dragaerans, features some crossover characters with the Vlad books) and is intentionally written to evoke Dumas' books about the Musketeers (the first, The Phoenix Guards is essentially an export of The Three Musketeers into his setting). The magic of the setting is a bit more primitive here (no resurrection or teleportation yet, for example), but they deal with some important historical events of the setting (they're presented as being in-universe historical fiction) so you'd be better off reading, say, the first 4-5 books or so of the main series before jumping in here so you're familiar with concepts (and definitely read these before reading Tiassa of the main series since it relies heavily on knowledge of a few characters from these). These are a blast to read, though. Three novels in five volumes (like Dumas' works, the third is published as three books) and they are done.

There is also a stand-alone book, Brokedown Palace that is set between the two series over in one of the neighboring human kingdoms. It's kind of like taking his standard fantasy setting through the lens of Hungarian fairy tale with a dash of Marxist allegory and Hungarian language/Greatful Dead song title jokes. Kind of ancillary to everything else (so far), but I like it.

Here's a Goodreads list. (https://www.goodreads.com/series/49760-dragaera) The stuff marked "Vlad Taltos" is the main series, the "Khaavren Romances" are the historical series. I guess there's a short story, "The Desecrator" that could be read after Dzur.

[GolemsVoice]

Maybe the Witcher books by Sapkowski? While they DO feature a chosen one, she's still pretty vulnerable and gets hurt plenty. The other characters all struggle to get by without being crushed between the major powers that be. Magic and monsters exist, but they're rare and dangerous.

[TheThan]

Go back to your roots. Read Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar books, starting Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, or Howard's Conan. Usually, the stakes are "money" or "survival", and magic is a thing mostly held by evil people (though they experience plenty, and the Grey Mouser was an apprentice mage, once upon a time.

You forgot the third motivation. De Women.

but yeah, I was going to recommend reading Howards' Conan. They're short stories but that means you're not suck reading a lengthy series of books. Also they're not in any specific order, as Howard jumped around in "time" alot. So you can pick a story and not worry about where in the timeline you are because it doesn't matter. Also each story is self contained.

Basically it's an anthology.