Bestselling author Brandon Sanderson started his journey with another fantasy icon's book series.
Few modern fantasy writers have been as successful as Brandon Sanderson. He has published over 70 books across genres and hit the milestone of 50 million sold worldwide in December 2025 (via Jabberwocky). His novels have been translated into 35 languages, according to publisher Penguin Random House. He has also influenced many other writers, many of whom he taught as an adjunct professor at Brigham Young University. However, Brandon Sanderson was once just like the authors who look up to him.
At the joint Blightfall and Scion launch party with James Islington and Janci Patterson on September 1, 2026, posted to YouTube on November 6, Sanderson said Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern books, which fuse sci-fi and fantasy together, first got him into fantasy. They were some of the first books he read when he started loving reading at 14. He considers Dragonriders of Pern deeply underread today because they profoundly influenced the fantasy genre. He would put Lessa, the primary protagonist of Dragonflight, the first book of Dragonriders of Pern, on the imaginary fantasy Mount Rushmore.
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