Reading Fantasy

I've divided this list into two sections: books you ought to read if you want to write fantasy, and a selection of my personal favourites.

Fantasy Must-reads

Not all the books in this list are great. Some of them I haven't actually read myself (mea culpa!). I have chosen them because they represent a wide range of the genre, and if you don't know what's been done to death, you can unwittingly create a cliché without knowing it.

In some cases I will recommend an author rather than a specific book. Bestsellers like Tolkien and Pratchett aside, genre authors' work often goes out of print, so it may be better to read whatever recent work you can get hold of, just to get a feel for their style and sub-genre, rather than try to track down the first volume of a particular trilogy.

1. The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien

   What can one say about the book that started it all? Read it if you have any pretensions to familiarity with the genre. If you can't stomach Tolkien's rather dated style, at least watch the movies!

2. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series

   Forget lame parodies of Tolkien - Pratchett is the king of fantasy humour. My personal favourites are the "Witches" books (Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, etc) and the "Captain Vimes" ones (Guards, Guards!, Feet of Clay, Nightwatch, etc), but pretty much every Discworld book is excellent.

3. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R R Martin

   I have to admit that I have not read these books (yet) as I'm not a huge fan of epic fantasy; however they are reckoned to be one of the better modern examples of the subgenre. I originally recommended Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series in this slot, but he's better held up as an example of how not to write :)

4. Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm

   Two pen-names, one author. Margaret Ogden began writing as Megan Lindholm, but decided to publish some of her later work under a new name because it had a slightly different tone to her earlier work. She still produces work as Megan Lindholm, but it tends to be darker than her Robin Hobb stuff, which is more traditional fantasy. In the "Assassin" trilogy and its sequels, Hobb shows how to combine traditional fantasy inventiveness with solid characterisation for a satisfying read.

5. Mercedes Lackey

   If you're writing fantasy aimed primarily at teenage (and older) girls, Lackey is a must-read. One of the most prolific fantasy writers of her generation, her Valdemar series is set in a typical American fantasy world - pseudo-medieval, sexually egalitarian, lots of magic and, apart from the bad guys, a lot nicer than our world :)

   She also writes contemporary urban fantasy, e.g. the "Elves in L.A." titles such as Bedlam's Bard (a.k.a. A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows) and the "Serrated Edge" fantasy/cyberpunk series.

6. The Lankmar series by Fritz Lieber

   Classic sword-and-sorcery, these volumes of short stories have recently been reprinted in the Gollancz "Fantasy Masterworks" series. The best is probably The Swords of Lankhmar, in which heroes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser fight, steal and wench their way across a continent of shapechanging rat sorcerors and translucent ghoul maidens. Ripping stuff!

7. Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny

   The first and best of his books about a dyfunctional family of immortals who make Macchiavelli look like an amateur. The later Amber books are less coherent - this is definitely a case where it's worth hunting down a copy of the first of the series.

   Bluffer's tip: First edition copies of this book are extremely rare and valuable. The first printing was accidentally sent to be pulped before it was ever shipped, so only a handful of preview copies survive.

My Favourite Fantasy Novels

These are some of my personal favourites rather than must-reads - though I of course recommend that you do read them! Note that this list doesn't included authors I like who have already been mentioned in the previous list, such as Tolkien, Pratchett and Hobb.

1. The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

   A greatly-overlooked gem from one of fantasy's most inventive authors, this is a marvellous tale of magical time-travel, gypsies, poets, dark sorcery, 18th-century secret societies and Victorian lowlife.

2. The Bone Doll's Twin and Hidden Warrior, by Lynn Flewelling

   Although published as separate volumes, I strongly suspect that this is one of Flewelling's novels that had to be split up owing to size - the first one ends on a major cliffhanger that left me incredibly frustrated by the year's gap in publication! Macabre but not gruesome, with a refreshing take on the genre clichés of prophecies and secret heirs to the throne :D

3. The Rai-Kirah Trilogy, by Carol Berg

   Very strong characterization of her two male leads and a cracking pace make these books real page-turners. The only let-down is the leads' respective romantic interests, who are under-developed and (in the case of one) totally unsympathetic, making the male character's devotion to her hard to stomach. Zelazny's influence, in the shape of an enormous castle in a magical parallel world, is palpable without seeming plagiaristic.

4. The Worm Ouroboros, by E. R. Eddison

   Not an easy read, written as it is in English that owes more to the sixteenth century than the early twentieth (Edison was a friend and contemporary of Tolkien), but intoxicating because of it.

5. Chase the Morning, by Michael Scott Rohan

   A fantasy swashbuckler, in which jaded yuppie Steve Fisher stumbles upon a secret world of semi-immortals whose ships can literally sail into the sunset. The second volume of this trilogy is somewhat bland, but the third (Cloud Castles), in which Fisher discovers who - or rather what - he is destined to become, is truly mind-blowing.

6. Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones

   All of Jones' young adult novels are excellent, but this is my favourite, partly because it's a touching retelling of a classic folk tale, the Ballad of Tam Lin, and partly because some of the action takes place in Bristol, where I went to university :)

7. The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

   One of the best children's fantasies ever, set in an wintery British landscape full of legends come frighteningly to life.

8. The Iron Dragon's Daughter, by Michael Swanwick

   Swanwick brings fairy lore into the modern age to chilling effect, in a story where the fairies' traditional reliance on, and aping of, human culture has turned into a parody of the Industrial Revolution, complete with factories and child slave labour.

9. Deryni Rising, by Katharine Kurtz

   This book has been mercilessly criticized by Ursula Le Guin in her classic essay From Elfland to Poughkeepsie for its lapses into modern dialogue, and there are historical gaffs that still make me cringe (glazed windows and upholstered furniture in a setting based on 11th-century Britain!), but I have a soft spot for it nonetheless. Worth reading as a very early example of the genre that emerged from the late sixties US craze for Tolkien, or simply because Alaric Morgan is still one of the tastiest guys in fantasy :)