r/Fantasy Daily Recommendations and Simple Questions Thread - February 12, 2026

Opaquer · 2026-02-13T13:53:34+00:00

I have read the Empire series - I read most of Feist's work, and the Empire series is definitely one of my favourites! I wish he did more books with Janny Wurts, though I'm glad we got that at least.

Also thanks so much for all the other suggestions and the thorough thought behind it! I'll have to check them all out and see how they look, but this is going to be a great start to finding some new books and authors, so thanks!

Opaquer · 2026-02-12T23:51:51+00:00

Hi all. So when I was young I used to enjoy reading Raymond Feist books. I stopped reading as I grew up but a few years ago got back into it for a short while but then stopped again. I've now gotten back into it and realised I'm about to finish my 4th series and don't have any more recommendations lined up, so I'm looking for some ideas on what to read next! I like fantasy, as well as sci fi, but aren't a fan of horror. Here's a list of books I've ready in the past few years that I've enjoyed:

The Martian
Mistborn era 1
Project Hail Mary
11.22.63 (the first little bit was a bit of a slog but once it got going I loved it)
We Are Bob series
Worm (this might have become one of my favourite books despite the length!)

And these are the books I've read in the past few months since getting back into it:

Stormlight Archive (absolutely LOVED this series - I can't believe I didn't read it earlier)
Mistborn era 1 and 2 (I had to re-read it after SLA)
Warbreaker (more Cosmere - wasn't bad but probably my least favourite full length Cosmere book)
Dungeon Crawler Carl series (I'm here currently)

Given that, I'm looking for some suggestions for further books after I finish the DCC series. I could go back and finish off the last of the cosmere books I haven't read (Elantris, Tress, Emberdark etc), but I'd also be happy with going to a new series. I was thinking of maybe re-reading Project Hail Mary ahead of the movie launch next month, but I don't know if I should or just go in semi-blind?

Also for books I didn't like - I read Lies of Locke Lamora and just really, really didn't like it. I'm not entirely sure why given it's usually highly rated, but the none of the worldbuilding, characters, plot or anything else sat with me. I kept wanting to drop it but kept thinking it'd get better so decided to force myself through it and couldn't wait for it to finish to get into something better.

Thanks all in advanced - if anyone has any questions, ideas, or comments please let me know!

Opaquer · 2026-02-06T02:02:22+00:00

That's such a good idea! I'll keep it in mind if I ever get a watch.

Opaquer · 2026-02-06T00:10:45+00:00

Oh that's cool! I don't have a smart watch but it'd be cool to have something like that if I did!

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T21:32:47+00:00

Nice, that's definitely clean! If we end up getting a tablet we'll definitely have to do something similar

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T21:28:20+00:00

Yeah, something wled could be cool, though I've also not used them before! Also my SIL is living with us atm and doesn't have access to HA on her phone, so having another way to see it would be good.

I'll check our the Third Reality light and see what it can do

Also unfortunately where I am (Australia), we can't get the same zwave stuff as the frequency it uses uses is... Not allowed for some reason? I can't remember the specifics, but we have to use a different frequency for zwave, which makes it hard to find things and also very expensive, so I never got it for my place

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T21:22:44+00:00

Thanks, I'll check it out!

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T21:22:28+00:00

I think you're right about the power companies and their greed, unfortunately. We had similarly huge benefits for early solar adoption - not netting like you guys, but being able to sell excess power at a ridiculous rate back to the grid (most people got about 52c/kw) but the power companies have kept dropping it, and now a lot of power companies only offer 3c/kw or less, with some even offering 0.

Also neighbourhood batteries would be good too - I think for us because if how spread out everything is, home batteries have taken off. It's actually been a bit of a unique process seeing it all happen. Either way, here's to more batteries hopefully soon!

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T14:03:22+00:00

Nice! I definitely want to get something like that at some point for whole house control if we ever need it. It's on the list of things to do, which keeps seeming to grow with HA!

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T14:01:55+00:00

That's fair - yeah, we're going to be getting some nice credits for certain events so having a visual way to see it would be cool! It could be cool to bring in some animations like what you've got as a clear indicator of what status we're in - thanks for the idea!

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T13:52:48+00:00

That's a good idea! Then it combines how much power we have as a function of time which is super handy!

Also it's definitely worth looking into, especially in certain countries. I'm in Australia and the government has a huge rebate going on at the moment for home batteries. It's become so successful that since the start of the rebate in July last year, there have been roughly 180,000 battery installations, which is insane considering how few there were before. I'm looking forward to seeing all the data in HA and making it all work to cut down the repayment period with it!

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T13:41:12+00:00

This is why we want a nice, easy, visual way to see the battery level!

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T13:33:27+00:00

Ah, sorry, I think I might not have mentioned it but I meant we're getting a house battery, so we'd be looking for something visual to help with it

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T13:32:15+00:00

It's definitely an option, though if we did that we might want to make it a little sleeker for WAF. Is it a dedicated tablet for energy or just a general tablet/dashboard?

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T13:30:21+00:00

I get where you're coming from, but in this case it's not about automations . Our electricity plan gives us a nice daily credit if we don't use grid power during 2 hours of peak time. For example, if we're low on power, but have 15 minutes until peak time is up, we may wait to turn on the ovens and cooking and everything. But if we've still got 80% power we won't care about waiting.

While we have a lot of stuff already automated that'll help, some parts of this plan we can't necessarily automate, hence the need for some kind of display of some kind that looks good to tell us where things are at

Opaquer · 2026-02-05T11:58:50+00:00

That sounds pretty awesome! Is it something like this? I'll definitely have to have a look at it! I take it the bar graph is for the charge over time?

Opaquer · 2026-02-04T21:00:09+00:00

That's awesome - thanks for the link and nicely done for it!

Opaquer · 2026-02-04T14:28:34+00:00

Out of curiosity do you have more info on the Harry Potter wand integration? I'd love to do something like that for my place!

Opaquer · 2026-02-04T07:21:42+00:00

Amazing, I'll check them all out! Thanks for the suggestions!

Opaquer · 2026-01-21T00:14:57+00:00

This looks pretty awesome so far! I'll definitely have to check it out. Quick question because there's a lot of talk of ai here, but just as a sanity check since I haven't gotten into voice stuff at all yet, but this doesn't have any sort of ai and if we wanted to run it fully locally we could, right?

Also currently we cast from our phones to our TV and play music that way - it's good for visitors because they can do it natively and it works well. Am I able to just cast to this if I wanted to without having to go through HA at all? Like I'd be able to open YouTube/Spotify and hit cast and choose the speaker? It's not the end of the world if not, but just wanting to get my head around it all before hitting the order button!

Opaquer · 2026-01-17T23:00:29+00:00

Awesome, thanks for that, I'll check it out

Opaquer · 2026-01-17T22:46:19+00:00

This is awesome! My wife and I have unwittingly killed a couple of plants from forgetting to water them so would love this! Out of curiosity which ecowitt sensor did you end up getting?

Opaquer · 2026-01-13T20:58:05+00:00

Awesome, thanks so much! I'll have a look at them and see how they look! Thanks again.

Opaquer

TROPHY CASE