Kevin's Favorite Fantasy Books

Click Here To Return to my "Book Categories"

Books Reviewed:

 

 

 

By Orson Scott Card. (1) "Prentice Alvin"; (2) "Red Prophet"; (3) "Seventh Son."

Orson Scott Card is one of the most renowned sci-fi authors (his "Ender's Game" series is an amazing work), and he writes just as good quality fantasy. This trilogy describes an alternate-universe America in the 1700s, where magic exists and the Native American (Indians) have more of it than the British colonists, so the Colonials haven't conquered as much of the continent as they did in real history... But that doesn't stop them from waging a war of extermination against the Indians. There are a couple of pretty inventive curses in these books that might find some use in D&D. Unfortunately the trilogy ends with some plot threads unresolved, and the author doesn't show much sign of continuing it, so be prepared to be left a little hungry at the end.

 

 

By Edgar Rice Burroughs. (1) "A Princess of Mars"; (2) "The Gods of Mars"; (3) "The Warlord of Mars"; (4) "Thuvia, Maid of Mars"; (5) "The Chessmen of Mars"; (6) "The Master Mind of Mars"; (7) "A Fighting Man of Mars"; (8) "Swords of Mars"; (9) "Synthetic Men of Mars"; (10) "Llana of Gathol"; (11) "John Carter of Mars."

Oh sure, this series takes place on Mars, so you might find it in the "Sci-fi" section of the bookstore. But come on, this is Victorian science-fiction (1910-1920), where people have swordfights on the decks of dirigibles filled with "gravity-defying light rays." So this whole thing could easily be translated to D&D; all it would take is some draconian curtailing of the magic system. Modern writers refer to this stuff as 'elegant trash', but I say hey, it's a quick read and quite entertaining. Yes, this is the same guy who originated "Tarzan of the Apes."

 

 

By Lloyd Alexander. (1) "The Black Cauldron"; (2) "The Book of Three"; (3) "The Castle of Llyr"; (4) "The High King"; (5) "Taran Wanderer."

If anybody saw that awful Disney cartoon that purported to depict the first book of this series, try and forget about it. The original books are a lot more enthralling and have a great swords-and-sorcery feel to them. They're meant for younger readers but they don't shy away from depicting the horrors of war and the consequences of power. Nevertheless, they maintain a good humor a lot of the time. For example, in this series dwarves can turn invisible for as long as they can hold their breath. So we get this immortal line from a dwarf who tried to spy on the evil wizard: "I just wanted to eavesdrop a little longer, but there were spots dancing in front of my eyes and my ears were buzzing like bees... I just had to take a little breath... and BAM! Next thing I knew, I was a toad!"

 

 

By Phyllis Eisenstein.

This was the most recommendable of four very good fantasy books by this author. It's about a young man born in a swords-and-sorcery world with the mysterious ability to teleport at will. Obviously, misadventures and hilarity ensue, but the character is pretty admirable and the writing is great.

It's been so long since I read these that I can barely remember the names of her other books. The author wrote a sequel about the teleporting minstrel which was called "In the Red Lord's Reach," I believe. But unfortunately this takes place later in the character's life when he's teleported himself very far away from the trouble he got into during the first book, and I kind-of missed the characters he left behind. She also wrote a pair of books called "Sorceror's Son" and "The Crystal Palace" which were very entertaining stories about wizards who deal in elemental magic.

 

 

Compiled by Edward W. Gifford and Gwendloline Harris Block. This is a factual book about a fantastical subject. It's a compilation of the oral legends of the Indians of California, and a rich mine of fantasy it is indeed. The myths of this nearly-forgotten culture have a trippy subconscious resonance to them, partly because many take place at identifiable places in California such as San Diego, Mt. San Jacinto, and Sonoma. But more than that, these legends -- from cannibalistic Rolling Skulls to vicious warriors who transform themselves by donning shirts of bear hide -- harken back to classic myths the world over. There's a small amount of cultural anthropology which doesn't get in the way of the artistic appreciation. This book is a goldmine of creepy legends for use in writing or Role-Playing Gaming.

 

 

By Brian Daley. (1) "The Doomfarers of Coramonde"; (2) "The Starfollowers of Coramonde."

These two books are an excellent and quick read. A wizard from a swords-and-sorcery world called Coramonde casts a spell to summon help from another dimension and gets a U.S. Army tank squad. Answers a lot of very interesting questions like "what would happen if a dragon swallowed a live hand grenade?" But besides that, each of the many characters was very memorable, especially some of the minor characters (like Dunstan the Berserker) who suddenly became very important in the second book.

The author, Brian Daley, also wrote a series of Star Wars books detailing Han Solo's life story which other people say were great (but I haven't read).

 

 

By Susan Cooper. (1) "Over Sea, Under Stone"; (2) "The Dark Is Rising"; (3) "Greenwich"; (4) "The Grey King"; (5) "Silver On The Tree."

These are among my all-time favorite books, they were among the first books that got me hooked on fantasy. They're meant for children/young adults, but I got a lot more out of these books at age 10-11 than I got from Tolkien at age 13. The author weaves a rich, thick tapestry of authentic Celtic legends together with well-written modern characters (OK, okay, the "modern" characters are starting to get a bit dated because the books were written in the late '60s.) The series postulates that King Arthur had another son besides Mordred, and Merlin transported him into the present day in order to hide him from the forces of evil. (Although the character of Arthur's son doesn't actually show up until the 4th book.) The imagery and feel of the books are simply beyond compare, and several times they've served as inspiration for certain D&D details. I recommend to people that they read the 2nd book first and then the rest in order, that way you get a clearer idea of what's going on. Bearing in mind that they're young-adults' books, they never wear thin on re-reading even though I'm past 30.

 

 

By Michael Moorcock. (1) "Elric of Melnibone"; (2) "The Sailor on the Seas of Fate"; (3) "The Wierd of the White Wolf"; (4) "The Bane of the Black Sword"; (5) "The Vanishing Tower"; (6) "Stormbringer"

Hasn't every D&D player read these? Moorcock is a great writer with an endless supply of amusing and frightening characters, but if I had a dime for every time some damn player tried to bring the sword "Stormbringer" into my D&D campaign, I'd be a rich man. Still, this series is brimming with exotic locales and strange magic, and over the course of the books, he really gets you thinking about the nature of violence and the results of worshipping Chaos. Moorcock wrote a bunch of sci-fi stories about living at the End of Time which I also enjoyed. In recent years he came out with several supplemental Elric stories, like "The Silver Warriors," "Elric at the End of Time," and "The Fortress of the Pearl," but I don't think these add-ons (though amusing) were nearly as good as the core of the series. My "Music" page also notes that Blue Öyster Cult wrote a cool song about these books.

 

 

By Jonathan Swift.

This book, like C.S. Lewis' work, is often presented as a kiddie story, but when you read the text it's loaded with satire and commentary about then-current philosophies and social conditions. Definitely meant for adults. In particular, there's a chapter in here where Gulliver is shipwrecked on an island where intelligent horses keep feral humans as work animals. During conversation, he attempts to describe to his master what a "lawyer" is, and the description still has some resonance today, 400 years after the book was written. (Apologies to my lawyer friends... present company excepted, of course.) Here's an immortal quote, however, speaking of the feral humans, the Yahoos: does it sound like anyone you know?

"For if (said he) you throw among five Yahoos as much food as would be sufficient for fifty, they will, instead of eating it peaceably, fall together by the ears, each single one impatient to have all to itself."

 

 

By Robert Silverberg. (1) "Lord Valentine's Castle"; (2) "Majipoor Chronicles"; (3) "Valentine Pontifex"; plus some much later books I haven't read yet.

Robert Silverberg is a classic science-fiction writer, and this series would technically be science-fiction, but I actually ran a brief stint of this as a D&D game once among a couple friends who had read the book. The premise is a planet that's been colonized by several different races, including humans. But the colonies are so ancient that they've degraded back into primitivism, and the technology is so advanced, seamless, and automatic, that you could just as well call it magic. A lot of sword- and knife-fighting goes on. Very well-written.

 

 

By C. S. Lewis. (1) "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe"; (2) "Prince Caspian"; (3) "The Voyage of the _Dawn Treader_"; (4) "The Silver Chair"; (5) "The Magician's Nephew"; (6) "The Horse and His Boy"; (7) "The Last Battle".

Here's another one that has been done many times over on TV, but the original books are so much meatier. Like "Gulliver's Travels," people latch onto the exotic fantasy imagery of the first book and present it as a fairy tale for kids, when the original books were really written for adults. C.S. Lewis was a deeply Christian writer with a gentle, reverent, yet humanistic philosophy that shines through beautifully in these books.

Ironically, Southern fundamentalists sometimes burn his books because they describe witchcraft, several of the sympathetic characters are satyrs, etc. Yet the world of Narnia has countless parallels to actual Christian theology (just to scratch the surface, the god Aslan in the first book is the "Son of the Emperor-Beyond-The-Sea"; he offers himself as a willing sacrifice in order to expunge somebody else's sin, and then he comes back from the dead.) {Sometimes I wish that God had as much sense when He designed Reality as C.S. Lewis did when he came up with this milleu.}

My favorite scene is probably one in the fifth book, "The Magician's Nephew," where Aslan is discussing how horrible a certain devastating magical weapon is -- and at some point the realization hits you that he's really talking about the atomic bomb. The books are packed with stuff like this.

 

 

By George MacDonald. (1) "Lillith"; (2) "Phantastes."

These books were written at the turn of the century (the turn of the 19th to 20th century, that is) and received beautiful reprints back in the '80s. George MacDonald is another writer, like C.S. Lewis, who's deeply Christian and works his philosophy into fairy tale stories of magic and questing. Years after reading, his work helped crystallize an important tenet of my personal philosophy: that evil, as the term is usually defined, basically doesn't exist.

I also live by two other quotes he provided me:

George MacDonald is a bit more Victorian than Lewis, however, and that means he's extremely verbose, almost like Lovecraft. Also he has a longing for death, as a surcease from the trials of life, that can be quite depressing if you're not in the right mood. On the plus side, these books are jam-packed with brilliant imagery and fantasy elements that can very easily translate to D&D.

 

 

By Robert Jordan. (1) "The Eye of the World"; (2) "The Great Hunt"; (3) "The Dragon Reborn"; (4) "The Shadow Rising"; (5) "The Fires of Heaven"; (6) "Lord of Chaos"; (7) "A Crown of Swords"; (8) "The Path of Daggers", and more yet to come.

The first several books of this burgeoning series are truly amazing. You get to the end of a 500 or 600 page book and you're just dying for a few more pages. The author creates a veritable legion of extremely compelling, sympathetic, and very different characters; he adds to that a tantalyzing back-story (history of the planet), and ices the cake with an exquisitely detailed and self-consistent system of how magic works (very differently for males than females). The author infused inspiration into my own writing by his style of using only medieval metaphors, like "squeaky as a wagon wheel", all the time; this gives the reader a sense of immersion in the story. My favorite is probably the fourth book, where you learn about how Evil originally came to the author's world, and this revelation turns many of the "facts" you learned from the previous books completely upside-down.

Unfortunately, the author's been slacking off quite a bit. The first half-dozen books came out about once per year, but now it's been a good two-and-a-half, maybe three years since his last one. If he dies before finishing the series there'll be a lot of angry fans out there. And, alas, the quality has been declining, too; in the 6th and 7th books, hardly any events happened that substantially advanced the plot, although the quality of the writing and the appeal of the characters didn't really diminish. At least some important events managed to come to a head in the 8th book. A lot of my friends have given up reading this series because of the long time and the sense that the author is just "milking" his success; but I've invested too much time and effort to quit now.

 

 

Return to my Utilitarian Home Page


***