Fantasy is a huge, sprawling mega-genre. Like only a touch of speculative fiction? Magical Realism is your ticket.
Like a lot of magic and more? Epic Fantasy will suit you. So might contemporary fantasy.
There’s something for everyone.
I like a whole range of different types of fantasy. Here’s my top 10 list—will any of them surprise you?
The Pern Series by Anne McCaffrey – The Dragonriders
I know, I know. Anne McCaffrey would break out in hives if she caught me calling her Hugo and Nebula award winning series “fantasy”, but for most of the very early books in the series, that’s exactly how the series reads, like a deeply fascinating fantasy.
Besides, there’s dragons. And very cool dragon-riders.
The series gets two entries in this list, because the books in it are sharply divided by various parts of Pern society. The dragons and their dragon-riders are one of the best aspects of the series.
The Gunnie Rose series by Charlaine Harris
The Gunnie Rose series, starting with book 1, An Easy Death, is an alternative history of the North American continent, which features the descendants of the last Tsar of Russia, who escaped to America (in actual history, Tsar Nicholas and his entire family were assassinated in the last days of the Great War).
I love alternative histories, but this one is special – there’s magic. Everywhere.
Charlaine Harris doesn’t pull punches when telling her stories. The first book is amazing.
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson (The Cosmere series)
Brandon Sanderson is known as an epic fantasy author. He finished off the Wheel of Time series when Robert Jordan passed, and was already a very successful fantasist even then.
Mistborn, though, isn’t just a fantasy story. It’s also a heist story. Love Ocean’s 11? Combine it with unique magic systems, and you have Mistborn.
The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper
The Dark is Rising series is a kids’ fantasy series that, even if you’re reading it as an adult, packs an emotional wallop. This series is responsible for my life-long love affair with King Arthur mythology and everything Welsh.
The fourth book, The Grey King, makes me cry every time I read it. It deservedly won the Newbery Medal.
Susan Cooper has been named this year as the 40th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA).
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
I discovered The Once and Future King not long after finding Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series, and wallowed in more King Arthur.
This one is on my list because I love, love, love to hate the tragic romance triangle between Arthur, Guenivere and Lancelot.
The Last Pendragon by Catherine Christian
Acquiring copies of this book was once next to impossible. I had a tattered copy when I lived in Australia, and finally hunted down an equally battered copy when I moved to Canada…and it took me nearly ten years to find it. (It’s a lot easier, these days, with Amazon and other on-line stores listing old print editions!)
This book cemented my obsession with all things Arthurian. It tells the tale of King Arthur by, first, placing the story where it should be in history; the sub-Roman era (fifth and sixth century Britain), not in the medieval period where knights in plate armor joust.
And it tells the tale with a minimum of magic and supernatural elements (although there are some). It’s a brilliant rendition.
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
I’ve seen a lot of best-of-fantasy lists where The Lord of the Rings (not Lord of the Rings—the movie shortened the name) is added as “obligatory” entry, with the list compiler adding a notation that the book is there because fantasy readers would scream if it wasn’t.
That’s not why I’m adding it here. I love The Lord of the Rings. I’ve read it every year since I was 14.
But I’m not nearly the Middle-Earth nerd that I thought I was.
Recently, I read Why We Love Middle-Earth: An Enthusiast’s Book About Tolkien, Middle-Earth, and the LotR Fandom by Shawn E. Marchese & Alan Sisto. These guys put me to shame.
But their book will inspire you to read The Lord of the Rings, and perhaps even more of the books and lost tales set in Middle-Earth. They unashamedly adore Tolkien’s fantasy world.
The Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris
I loved the books long before the True Blood TV series came along and blithely ignored almost everything in the books.
Harris’ series is the only one in this list to feature vampires, which is odd, because I’ve written a lot about vampires in my own stories.
This is the second Charlaine Harris series on my list. She writes stories that seem gentle and slow, until you get to the end, when blood is spilled, stakes are astronomical, and her main characters rarely walk away unscathed.
My favourite in the series is Book 4, Dead to the World. I can’t explain why without laying down massive spoilers. But I will say that Sookie, toward the end of the story, is forced to make a decision that is utterly heartbreaking.
The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski
This is one series where I usually recommend that the TV series be watched as you’re reading the books. There’s connective tissue here and there, but the books tell the story of the Witcher in a different way to the TV show. Neither is better than the other, which is why I suggest reading/watching. It’s like a braid, with the TV show weaving over and under the stories.
But it’s classic fantasy, with a distinctly European flair. I grew up (re)reading classic fairy tales, and this series has the same “feel” as those tales.
The Pern series by Anne McCaffrey – the Masterharpers books
The second entry for this series, focusing this time on the Harper Hall and its residents, and the Masterharpers, too.
What I like about this sub-series of books isn’t the music, but the fact that the harpers of Pern are political lobbyists, activists, and far-thinkers. They quietly direct the affairs of Pern while the dragon-riders take all the glory.
Fascinating!
.png)