41 - 50 - the Top 100 fantasy books of all time

It took me a remarkably long time to finally pick up Raymond E. Feist’s wildly popular Magician. It was a poor lapse in judgement based solely around the fact that the lead character was another orphan and his name was Pug. Poor reasoning, I know, but there we have it nonetheless. That being said, I did finally pick it up and subsequently ploughed through Silverthorn and then A Darkness at Sethanon.

A Darkness at Sethanon: The Triumphant Finale to the Riftwar Saga (Riftwar Saga 3) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Raymond E. Feist
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 528
Publication date: 2006-09-06
Publisher: CollinsVoyager

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A Darkness at Sethanon completes the "Riftworld saga" which started with Feist's Magician. 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 Fiest has gone on to chronicle other aspects of his invented worlds. With Janny Wurts he wrote the "Empire" trilogy, which charts the rise, through the rigid patriarchy of the Empire of Tsuranuanni, of a remarkable female heroine, a woman who eventually reaches the heights of the imperial throne itself Daughter of the Empire, Servant of the Empire and Mistress of Empire. 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

Every now and again you come across an author who manages to write unlike any other. This is not something that will happen often, and I’ve personally only ever come across a handful (Tolkien, Pratchett, Hobb and Erikson). But one author who manages to write such a compelling story that you never want to put the book down is James Barclay.

Dawnthief: Chronicles of the Raven 1 (Gollancz S.F.) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: James Barclay
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 544
Publication date: 2003-07-10
Publisher: Gollancz

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This energetic first fantasy novel is familiar in outline, but told with unusual intensity. "The Raven" is a group of seven mercenaries, just starting to lose their fighting edge, who reluctantly get hired by a mage from a college of magic with a nasty reputation for blood sacrifice. Their mission: to save the world from major bad guys called the Wytch Lords. These, defeated long ago at great cost, have escaped their sorcerous confinement and will be unstoppable once they've grown new bodies; meanwhile their teeming minions are already going to war. The only hope is Dawnthief, a lost super-spell which, if correctly cast, can zap even Wytch Lords--but make one mistake and the sun will never come up again. A typical fantasy-quest shopping list emerges: you need the dragon-guarded amulet to open the ancient mage's workshop to find the portal leading to the demon watching over the parchment with the spell, which itself requires three "catalyst" talismans hidden in difficult places. What makes Dawnthief a ripping yarn is Barclay's ruthless pace and lack of sentimentality. No character is too nice, innocent or important to die or suffer hideous tortures. The death toll is horrific, as are the many exotic ways of dying in this dangerous world. This is a breathless, action-crammed fantasy thriller. --David Langford
Amazon.co.uk Review

Deadhouse Gates continues the Malazan Book of the Fallen, a story begun in the wonderful Gardens of the Moon.

Deadhouse Gates (Book 2 of The Malazan Book of the Fallen) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Steven Erikson
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Number of pages: 959
Publication date: 2001-10-01
Publisher: Bantam Books

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This is another wonderful book from Ursula Le Guin. Exploring themes such as fear of death and belief in reincarnation. This is not a fantasy book full of large battles and insurmountable odds but a book about people and how they live life, deal with grief and try to make the right choices when they are presented.

The Other Wind: An Earthsea Novel (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Ursula Le Guin
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 256
Publication date: 2003-03-20
Publisher: Orion Childrens

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In The Other Wind, Le Guin revisits some of the material for which she is most famous--the magical world of Earthsea, whose scattered islands are the home of an inventively conceived magic of checks and balances. Once before, in the fourth book Tehanu, with its hideously burned child who is part dragon, Le Guin reconsidered what she had already written, forcing her readers to abandon complacent enjoyment of the heroic in favour of something rather more straight-edge and critical.

Now, with hitherto friendly dragons burning humans out of their homes and the dead whispering ominously in a sorcerer's dreams, she questions her own premises even further. Ged, the burned-out magus of the first three books, and his wife Tenar are here, but peripheral; this is the tale of the tinker mage Alder and his dreams of his dead wife and how he finds himself caught up in the affairs of the great and good.

This is a calmer, more satisfying book than Tehanu; it is as if Le Guin is less angry with herself and her audience for the popularity of the first three books, more prepared to accept one sort of good and force us to move on from it to a more mature and ascetic vision. As always, she writes in a crisp, lyrical prose that approaches the sublime; this is a book about enlightenment that makes us believe it possible. --Roz Kaveney
Amazon.co.uk Review

Royal Assassin is the second book in Robin Hobb's fantasy series The Farseer Trilogy and follows on from the events in Assassin's Apprentice.

Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy - Book 2) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Robin Hobb
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 768
Publication date: 1997-03-03
Publisher: Voyager

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As warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must ... and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty. The old gods have no power in the south, Stark's family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, a vengeance mad boy has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities beyong the sea. Heir of the mad Dragon King deposed by Robert, he claims the Iron Throne.

A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: George R.R. Martin
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 864
Publication date: 1998-01-05
Publisher: Voyager

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A Clash of Kings, book two of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, is the follow-up to George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.

A Clash of Kings: Book 2 of a Song of Ice and Fire (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: George R.R. Martin
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 752
Publication date: 1999-10-04
Publisher: Voyager

RRP: £8.99
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George R.R. Martin writes sword-and-sorcery which concentrates on the swords. A Clash of Kings is the second volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, the sequence which began with A Game of Thrones and will take another four volumes to complete. The Seven Kingdoms are divided by revolt and blood feud; beyond their Northern borders, the men of the Night Watch fight the coming of a great cold and the walking corpses that travel with it; on the other side of the ocean, the last of the Kingdom's deposed ruling house mourns her horseclan husband and rears the dragonlets she hatched from his funeral pyre. This is character-driven fantasy--we see most events through the eyes of the sons and daughters of the Stark family, the once and future Kings of the North, whose father's judicial murder started the war. Martin avoids the cosy Californian cheeriness of many epic fantasies in favour of a sense of the squalor and grandeur of high medieval life; there is passion here, and misery and charm--and a profound sense of moral ambiguity as we learn to like the Richard III figure in this epic as much as the more virtuous Starks. --Roz Kaveney
Amazon.co.uk Review

This is the second book in the First Law Trilogy and after an electric start in 'The Blade Itself' it does not disappoint.

Before They Are Hanged: The First Law: Book Two (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Joe Abercrombie
Binding: Paperback
Number of pages: 592
Publication date: 2008-03-13
Publisher: Gollancz

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The Illearth War is the second volume of Stephen Donaldson’s First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Lord Foul’s Bane began the story and the conclusion is reached in The Power that Preserves.

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

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Steven Erikson's Gardens Of The Moon is the first book in the series and is entitled A Tale Of The Malazan Book Of The Fallen. The book was first published in 1999 and marked a sensational, critically acclaimed debut.

Gardens of the Moon (Book 1 of The Malazan Book of the Fallen) (Amazon.co.uk)

Author: Steven Erikson
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Number of pages: 752
Publication date: 2008-02-12
Publisher: Bantam Books

RRP: £8.99
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With a field as crowded as heroic fantasy, a reader is entitled to know what makes the latest blockbuster worth his or her attention: but Bantam books are throwing considerable marketing weight behind Steven Erikson, because they clearly believe he is the Next Big Thing. They may be right--he has the breadth and detail of imaginative vision, he is able to create a world that is both absorbing on a human level and full of magical sublimity, and, above all, he can write.

Gardens of the Moon concerns the military campaign by the Malazan Empire to capture the last remaining Free City on the Gernsbackian continent. War is waged with conventional soldiers as well as powerful magicians, and gods mix with mortals in a complex, but rewarding, series of narrative threads that come chiefly out of the school of Feist's Magician, although there is also something of the flavour of Gavriel Kay's celebrated Fionavar books. The moon of the title is a wonderfully grand conception, a sort of floating mountain that moves through the skies of the war-striken continent, and is the home of the 'Son of Darkness'. The various magical battles are splendidly written, and the characters are well realised. Rewardingly mellow and fiendishly readable. --Adam Roberts
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.