21 - 30 - the Top 100 fantasy books of all time

It has taken me a little while to work up the courage to write this review. Terry Pratchett has always managed to write a book a year for the last little while, and as a result has provided me with a sure-fire birthday present for my father; no questions asked. This year was no different, and when I got my copy of Unseen Academicals in the mail I was stoked.

Unseen Academicals (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Terry Pratchett
Binding: Hardcover
Number of pages: 400
Publication date: 2009-10-01
Publisher: Doubleday

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The story begins in Crydee, a frontier outpost in the Kingdom of the Isles. An orphaned young boy named Pug becomes a master magician’s apprentice and two world’s destinies are forever changed. The peace that he has known all his short life disappears and is replaced by war in the shape of invaders from another world. A magically created rift in space brings together the two worlds, the world that Pug has always known and the world of the invading Tsuranuanni.

Magician (Riftwar Saga) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Raymond E. Feist
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 704
Publication date: 1993-06-28
Publisher: Collins

RRP: £8.99
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Like a venerable patriarch, Magician stands at the head of a great tribe of fantasy writing. When Raymond Feist's enormous novel was published, critics called it "the best new fantasy concept in years", and Feist has refined and explored that concept over a dozen novels. His "concept" was to bring together two (and later, more) whole, intricately realised fantasy worlds. Midkemia is a Tolkienian realm, a European- Medieval series of kingdoms in which magic is prominent, and where men share the earth with dwarves and elves. Feist's genius was inventing another sword and sorcercy realm based more closely on eastern models, the Empire of Tsuranuanni, as vast as Ancient China, as formalised and devoted to the arts of war as a samurai Japan. A magical rift in time-space brings these two worlds clashing together, and the young boy Pug and his soldier friend Tomas are thrown into the ensuing maelstrom of invasion and epic battle, before embarking on a more fundamental magical journey towards the very roots of evil itself. Feist's two sequels to Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon complete the richly conceived Riftwar Saga, and Feist has gone on to chronicle other aspects of his invented worlds. More recently he has returned to the world of Medkemia, and to his hero Pug, with the Serpentwar saga, beginning with Shadow of a Dark Queen and continuing with Rise of a Merchant Prince, Rage of a Demon King and Shards of a Broken Crown. Heroic Fantasy is a crowded-enough field, but Feist stands out in it for his sheer inventive power, the scope and range of his narratives, the diversity of his characters and his thundering battle sequences. Start reading here, and you may find yourself unable to stop until you have followed the saga right up to date. --Adam Roberts
Amazon.co.uk Review

After having read and thoroughly enjoyed the Farseer trilogy I was expecting more of the same again. I was not disappointed; in fact I found the writing of even higher caliber ...

The Liveship Traders 1: Ship of Magic (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Robin Hobb
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 896
Publication date: 1999-03-01
Publisher: Voyager

RRP: £8.99
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Robin Hobb, author of the Farseer trilogy, has returned to that world for a new series. Ship of Magic is a sea tale, reminiscent of Moby Dick and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series in its details of shipboard life. It is also a fantasy adventure with sea serpents, pirates and all sorts of magic. The "liveships" have distinct personalities and partner with specific people, somewhat like Anne McCaffrey's Brain ships and their Brawns, though these are trading ships and have full crews.

Hobb has peopled the book with many wonderfully developed characters. Most of the primary ones are members of the Vestritts, an Old Trader family which owns the liveship Vivacia. Their stories are intercut with those of Kennit, the ambitious pirate Brashen, the disinherited scion of another family who served on the Vestritt's ship, and Paragon, an abandoned old liveship believed to be insane. The sentient sea serpents have their own story which is hinted at as well.

Though Ship of Magic is full of action, none of the plot lines is resolved in this book. Readers who resent being left with many questions and few answers after almost 700 pages should think twice before starting, or wait until the rest of the series is out so that their suspense won't be too prolonged. But Hobb's writing draws you in and makes you care desperately about what will happen next, the mark of a terrific storyteller. --Nona Vero
Amazon.co.uk Review

Duncton Wood is the moving love story of Bracken and Rebecca and the trials they must face and overcome to be as one. It is unfortunate that this work must be compared to Watership Down but that is the only book with which I can really compare it to in terms of story-line and excellence. This book is about moles and unlike anything you have ever read before. The animal kingdom is savage and survival of the fittest is a fact of life (or death). This is a book for adults and is at times as dark as it is uplifting. The book was first published in 1980 and has since become a best-selling novel.

Duncton Wood (The Duncton Chronicles) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: William Horwood
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 736
Publication date: 1985-07
Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd

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Thomas Covenant, a novelist and happily married with an infant son is stricken with leprosy. After having the last two fingers of his right hand removed he is taught that leprosy is incurable and that his only chance of survival is to reject all hope of relief. He returns to his home, Haven Farm to find his wife has divorced him and fled to protect their son from his illness.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: "Lord Foul's Bane", "Illearth War" and "Power That Preserves" (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Stephen Donaldson
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 1168
Publication date: 1993-07-26
Publisher: Collins

RRP: £16.99
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Legend was David Gemmell's first novel. Published in 1984, it has become a world-wide best-seller and is the beginning of Gemmell's Drenai saga.

Legend (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: David Gemmell
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 432
Publication date: 1986-08-21
Publisher: Orbit

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Robin Hobb is rightly classed as one of the finest authors the genre has ever been fortunate enough to have. The Farseer Trilogy established this status – does the Liveship Traders keep the high standard? The answer is yes, the quality of the writing is once again excellent and the characters are full and lifelike. I did enjoy the trilogy but not to the same degree as The Farseer Trilogy. There is something about the characters that stopped me from getting completely behind them. They are undoubtedly well written but also often highly annoying (this may be intended, if it was, then it was done superbly well.)

Ship of Destiny (Liveship Traders) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Robin Hobb
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 912
Publication date: 2001-03-05
Publisher: HarperVoyager

RRP: £8.99
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Robin Hobb's books combine heroic adventures by land and sea with a passionate urgency about the morality which underlies her character's deeds. Ship of Destiny, the third in The Liveship Traders trilogy, involves us further with the efforts of the Vestrit family to reclaim the fortunes which war and piracy have cost them, raising interesting questions about the sources of even an attractive family's wealth. It is clear that the liveships Vivacia and Paragon were carved from husks which should have hatched dragons; that the attractive personalities of the figureheads are only pale shadows of the autonomous beings they might have been. Malta Vestrit has freed the last of the real dragons from an underground prison, and he is not especially grateful. The slave-liberating pirate Kennit, one of Hobb's richest creations, is ever more drawn to the darker side of his flawed nature in an attempt to hide from the secrets of his past.

This is one of the most satisfying heroic fantasies of recent years, simply because it is about difficult choices and complex emotions, while Hobb's tight plotting and fast-moving storytelling are fascinating in their own right.--Roz Kaveney
Amazon.co.uk Review

Titus Groan is the Seventy Seventh Earl of Gormenghast in waiting and his birth begins this story and that of his rather eccentric family, their servants and the kingdom of Gormenghast itself. The story covers the first two years of Titus’ young life, from birth to his investiture as the seventy-seventh Earl and everything that happens in the Kingdom of Gormenghast during this time. The events, which lead up to the ‘Earling’ of little Titus, involve treachery, greed, murder, madness and revenge. There are also touches of real affection and lots of subtle humour.

Titus Groan (Gormenghast trilogy) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Mervyn Peake
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 512
Publication date: 1998-03-07
Publisher: Vintage

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In a land where war is imminent and race relations grow ever more strained, Ciri, the prophesised child, must find her way under the protection of Geralt, the famed and feared ‘Witcher’. Holding the promise of incredible power, for good or for evil, it is up to Geralt to ensure Ciri takes the right path and remains safe from those who hunt her…

Whenever someone new comes to review books, there is always going to be a measure of consternation at their choices for best books. It gets worse when you narrow it down to genre, because then not only have you narrowed down the people, but in a most perplexing mathematic equation their passion for those books increases.

Night Watch: A Discworld Novel (Discworld Novels) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Terry Pratchett
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 480
Publication date: 2003-10-01
Publisher: Corgi Books

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The new Discworld novel Night Watch has the power and energy that characterizes Terry Pratchett at his occasional best, as well as the wild surreal humour he always gives us. Sam Vimes, running hero of the Guards sequence, finds himself cast back in time to the Ankh-Morpork of his youth--a much nastier city, with an actively deranged Patrician and a sadistic secret police--and finding himself filling in for Keel, the tough honest copper who teaches the young Vimes everything he knows. And, more worryingly, who dies heroically in the insurrection Vimes knows to be imminent. With a psychopath from his own time rising in the vile ranks of the Cable Street Unmentionables complicating things, Vimes has to ensure that history takes its course so that he will have the right future to go back to, and to keep his younger self alive--this is Pratchett's plotting at its most thoroughly constructed and wonderfully devious. Ankh-Morpork has for a long time been one of the most thoroughly imagined cities in fantasy--here Pratchett gives us a fascinating gloomy glimpse of its past and of the younger selves of some of his best-loved characters, and of the brief-lived People's Republic of Treacle-Mine Road. --Roz Kaveney
Amazon.co.uk Review

Book View Cafe is a cooperative site created by a group of writers - including internationally renowned authors Katharine Kerr, Ursula Le Guin and Vonda N. McIntyre - who want to take advantage of the internet's possibilities for reaching a wider audience and to distribute their work directly to their readers. The Book View Cafe is a place where you can find free, original fiction plus the authors' best and out-of-print work for a fee. Fantasy Book Review spoke to Book View Cafe member, science fiction author and memoirist Chris Dolley in February 2010.

Lewis Carroll, the elusive author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, has been the subject of enduring fascination for the past hundred years. The destruction of many major documents about his personal life by his descendants has only magnified the mystery. Jenny Woolf's biography, published to coincide with the release of the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland film, lays waste to the myths and suspicions that have obscured Carroll's reputation by placing him firmly in the context of his own time.