Not too long ago, fellow promiscuous reader Angela shared a link with a decision tool for choosing sci-fi and fantasy books. It's a flow chart for navigating NPR's top 100 sci-fi and fantasy books. I took a walk down memory lane as I made my way through the fantasy side. It made me think about the fantasy book series that have stood out as favorites as I've grown.
During middle school, my cousins and I would team up for long sessions of Hero Quest (think Dungeons and Dragons) during sleepover weekends. From this, I learned about the Dragonlance series. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman started this books series, based on their own D&D type game play. They wrote several trilogies that explored the world of a set of characters. From there, other authors took the denizens of Krynn through many adventures. I've lost count, but I've read close to 60 of these novels. These were definitely a young adult series.
High School
A friend of mine recommended the Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley during junior year of high school. I'm sure reading this took precedence over my assigned English class reading. This is an Arthurian/Camelot story from the point of view of Morgainne le Fey. As the saying goes, every story has many sides and the plethora of Arthurian books attests to this. In the Mists of Avalon, the priestesses of the Goddess in Avalon are trying to save their traditions from being swallowed by the encroaching priests of Christianity and their God. I was hooked after reading Mists, and moved on to the many other books Zimmer Bradley wrote in this story-line. She connects Avalon back to Atlantis, and even reaches ahead to Helena, the mother of Constantine.
College
I read many books in college to give my brain a rest from studying. I have to say, I wasn't too creative in my search and went to well-known books to keep myself entertained. The series included the Harry Potter books and The Golden Compass trilogy. My list also included other Arthurian novels like Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy.
Grad School
In graduate school, a fellow student introduced me to Mercedes Lackey. Lackey has many different series, and I've thoroughly enjoyed three specific series. I started with the Valdemar books, and polished off 30 of these my first year of grad school. It was a typical fantasy series, with many strong female characters that appealed to me. During my second year of grad school, I delved into the Elemental Masters series and the 500 Kingdom series. Both of these re-work traditional fairy tales and put a new, sometimes much more adult spin on them. Lackey is still publishing, so I keep my eye on her list for new books to check out at the library.
What is next?
Surely, there is no shortage of fantasy/sci-fi series to discover or those yet to be written. I'm truly looking forward to reading the rest of the All Souls Trilogy and was recommended to check out Connie Willis. Thank goodness for recommendations from friends and the internet!
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