I was inspired to make this list by a topic that
@Eclipse recently resurrected: “What do you consider required reading in the fantasy genre?” I was somewhat underwhelmed by what was suggested in the thread. Most replies (including my own) were brief and confined themselves to particular sub genres by and large.
I thought about my own experiences with reading the genre over something like 40+ years and figured I could come up with a fairly decent list of recommendations that covered most (probably not all) of the subgenres over the bigger heading of Fantasy.
A few things about this list, it is not definitive, it’s confined to what I have read, enjoyed and would recommend to others if they wanted something. With that in mind, it’s also going to be skewed to my tastes, which I know won’t agree with those of everyone who reads it.
If you read through this and can’t find your favourite book, series, author or even sub genre then it’s for a few reasons: I haven’t read it/them, I have read it, but it didn’t impress me enough for one reason or another to recommend it to other people, I’m trying to include things on this list that have stood the test of time (sort of), so it’s highly unlikely that anything here had its first publication in the last 5 years.
There is one notable exception I probably have to mention. That’s
A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin. I’ve read the series, I really liked it, but I cannot in all good conscience recommend it. It’s unfinished and unfortunately is likely to remain so. Each book has left the reader on successively higher cliffs, so I find telling people to read it is an exercise in frustration. The series that I do put on the list (even the unfinished ones) tend to be relatively self contained stories leaving the reader with some sense of resolution.
The list will be alphabetical (there will be a few exceptions, I’m really hard put to find authors with surnames beginning with E, I, O, Q, U, X or Z). The year it was first published (as best I can track it down) will be next to the title/s. I’ll also where I can try to include a subgenre (this will get tricky with things like horror/dark fantasy or epic vs high fantasy. I won’t call something YA or children’s as those are categories, not subgenres). I’ll include a few words to give people an idea of what they’re getting into, but I’ll try my best to avoid spoilers.
Because the list became rather large, I'm just going to post it in more manageable bits.
I think that covers everything, so here we go:
A
Aaronovitch, Ben –
The Peter Grant series. The first book in the series;
The Rivers of London (called
Midnight Riot in the US) was published in 2010. (urban fantasy)
Since first appearing in 2010, Peter Grant has gathered quite a following, comics have been done based on the series and there is now talk of a TV series. Aaronovitch is native of London, and he clearly loves the city, all but 2 of the 6 novels and 2 novellas (
Foxglove Summer and
October Man) have been set in and around London and in some cases like
Rivers of London are virtual love letters to the city. There are a lot of cool little known history references in them as well.
The central character and narrator of Peter Grant is a bi racial policeman who accidentally discovers that he has a talent for magic when a ghost comes to have a chat to him at a crime scene, that brings him into the radar of Thomas Nightingale, and he becomes the legendary wizard’s apprentice. He also gets involved closely with the women who are the goddesses of London’s waterways.
They’re cleverly written and involving urban fantasies with a likeable, relatable protagonist. They do sometimes become a little too heavily involved with the police procedural side of things, which smacks of the author saying ‘look, I did research’.
Abercrombie, Joe –
The First Law trilogy and 3 standalone novels set in the same world as
The First Law. His first book;
The Blade Itself was published in 2006 (grimdark)
Inspired by the success of George R. R. Martin’s
A Song of Ice and Fire and its low magic, gritty approach to fantasy, Joe Abercrombie embarked on
The Blade Itself. It takes a walk on the darker side of the genre (the author jokingly refers to himself as Lord Grimdark on Twitter). There’s little to no magic in Abercrombie’s books (that includes his YA
Shattered Land trilogy, which reads kind of like his other work, just with the language toned down and the sex removed). No one in Abercrombie’s books is precisely good, but there are a few who are rotten to the core. He does employ some laugh out loud dark comedic moments at times, which I find sets him apart from other grimdark authors, whose works I find lacking in humour. He does some fascinating characters and his battle scene in
The Heroes remains one of the best I’ve ever read.
Anderson, Poul –
The Broken Sword published in 1954 (heroic fantasy)
Anderson was writing grimdark before anyone had hung a name on it, and
The Broken Sword is a great example of it. For all that the book is not much longer than a novella it contains a mighty adventure in those few pages, involving fights, love, sex, heroes and myths. It proves that you don’t have to write a lot of words to write a big book.
B
Barker, Clive –
Weaveworld published in 1987 (dark fantasy)
Barker’s best known for horror work and
Weaveworld would have been thrown in that basket if he’d written and published it a decade or so earlier. It’s the story of a carpet into which has been woven an entire world full of people. Then there are people who will stop at nothing to own it. Barker writes achingly beautiful prose and in this he gives one of the best descriptions of a faerie world that I’ve been privileged to read.
Bulgakov, Mikhail –
The Master and Margarita published in 1967, although it was written between 1928 and 1940 (literary fantasy)
Mikhail Bulgakov led a fascinating life and he poured the best of his creativity into this his masterpiece. He genuinely suffered for his art and at one point burned a lot of this manuscript and had to rewrite it. It was unfortunately not published until after his death and even then the first version was heavily censored in his native Russia. It concerns the devil, the writer (possibly Bulgakov himself) known as the Master and his lover Margarita. It’s hard not to be blown away by this and it’s had a deeper influence since it became more widely available. It inspired some of Salman Rushdie’s work in
The Satanic Verses and Mick Jagger has cited it as being part of the inspiration for
Sympathy for the Devil.
Butcher, Jim –
The Dresden Files. The first book in the series;
Storm Front was published in 2000 (urban fantasy)
In writing
The Dresden Files, Jim Butcher, largely redefined the sub genre of urban fantasy. The story has come a long way from
Storm Front where Harry Dresden was a down at heel, private eye type who advertised in the phone book.
The first few books were largely episodic in nature until it became apparent that a bigger story was unfolding. He’s only cliff hangered massively at the end of one book of the 15 that have been published. It’s a rocky start with the series for many people,
Storm Front is a fairly unpolished read, but Butcher improved and before long he was a much better writer taking people on a wild ride through everything that readers now expect from their urban fantasy these days.
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