Top 10 Fantasy Book Series

Here is my list of favourite fantasy series. This list will not include a number of things. As with every list, this comes with a preface that these are my PERSONAL choices, completely idiosyncratic, with all my biases.

No singular books. For example The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson (one of the greats) as it has no books preceding or following.

Can include series that are not finished. When they have an ending, the positions may also change if they are satisfactory or not.

Honourable Mentions

Grimm’s Fairytales, Arabian Nights, Le Morte D’Arthur by Thomas Mallory, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay, The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R Donaldson, Viroconium by M John Harrison, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham, Sandman by Neil Gaiman and The Black Company by Glenn Cook.

Detailed Honourable Mentions

The Witcher by Andzrej Sapkowski - layered and memorable characters. The first two books are top class - short story collections. The author thrives in the short story, my favourite being Shard of Ice. When the series becomes a tetralogy, the story sags, jumping around places and people that I had no care or interest for. When it focuses on the main characters it excels. The best of the five after the first two short story collections is Baptism of Fire which showcases Sapkowski’s best character writing.

The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny - really great concept and the plot is wild. It has some super world-building ideas and some of the most outlandish moments in fantasy. However, it suffers from mid-series lag, repetition of ideas and the characters are not so strong.

Memory, Sorrow, Thorn by Tad Williams - classic with enough of a twist to make it different. The influences bleed out of this series, and it is steeped in fantasy tradition which is both a benefit and a downfall. It is saggy in many parts, including the first 200 pages of the first book, which is usually a fatal error. The prose is very strong and the cultures are interesting - ranging from Native American inspired to Norse.

The Belgariad by David Eddings - a really formative series for me full of evocative ideas. The Grolim Priesthood who have purple or green lining on their hoods to delineate their rank, the cursed Red Murgo Gold, the Disciples of Torak who rule from different cities in the country. All of the evil dudes in this series are interesting. The good guys become caricatures after a couple of books, with the exception of Polgara the Sorceress who is the standout character, a stern, stubborn, cold yet protective witch. It is definitely something that suffers on a reread. I have fond nostalgia for this series.

Cthulhu Mythos by HP Lovecraft - one of the grandfathers. It is hugely inspiring. I feel almost compelled to put it on the list, but I can’t for the fact that almost every story is difficult to read, there are no characters to enjoy and most are not likeable in both their personality and worldview. It is the atmosphere of terror and startling originality that are almost enough to get it on the list.

The First Law by Joe Abercrombie - Fantastic characters but a fairly so-so world. Glokta the Crippled Torturer stands head and shoulders above all others. The plot is sometimes intriguing, sometimes predictable. The strongest standalone book for me is Red Country, a blend of fantasy and western, but nothing tops the First Law Trilogy so far. I met Mr Abercrombie for a book signing and he was a funny dude, he also helped with a research project I did at university. He is the first experience I had with ‘grimdark’ and probably the best with the exception of number 10 on this list.

NOW FINALLY FOR THE TOP 10

10

A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin

So, maybe not a good start to include a series that is not yet finished, but the first three books are some of my favourite in fantasy. The world is vast and fantastically internally consistent, the plot is intricate and complex with so many brilliant twists that you wish you saw coming but you didn’t.

The best thing about this series is the characters, Tyrion the Dwarf, Jon Snow the Bastard of the Night’s Watch, Daenerys the Exiled Princess and so many more.

Best book - A Storm of Swords (#3)

Link to full review

9

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance

These fix-ups really blew my mind. It includes The Dying Earth, Eyes of the Overworld, Cudgel’s Saga and Rhialto the Marvellous. The first book is from the 50s, the second from the 60s, and the last two from the 80s. In my opinion the collection of short stories within the first book are the strongest, so wild in their imagination. They are about wizards scheming for power, with the backdrop of our dying planet so far into the future, that it is basically unrecognisable. The characters are mostly cutouts save for Cudgel the Clever.

It is a huge influence on my writing, one of the best settings every created, purple prose, wacky ideas with a dark gloomy atmosphere clashing against a witty writer and quirky characters.

Best book - The Dying Earth (#1)

8

Conan The Barbarian by Robert E Howard

A short story ‘collection’, actually just a mammoth series of short stories, dozens and dozens. They usually concern fading or failing societies that Conan encounters on his travels, dark fairytales without a moral. Conan himself is iconic, a cunning barbarian who fears magic, sleeping with many woman and carving a kingdom for himself in a cruel world.

The setting is dark, the ideas are ballsy, the pacing is full on action with very few moments of respite, and surprisingly many of the stories stand the test of time (though not for modern values).

Best Book - Queen of the Black Coast and Red Nails, two novella length tales.

7

The Eternal Champion Series by Michael Moorcock

A rather large series of disparate and disorganised chronology, one that encompasses many short story collections, novellas and a few novels (though short). Elric of Melnibone is probably the best character, but I personally prefer the stories of Corum. He’s a member of an elder race struggling to fight with and against humans and the gods of chaos.

These are evocative stories drawing from many interesting mythologies, Irish, Buddhist, Norse and so on. They all have that feeling of a lost legend in a time, an epic story within a world of stories. The series has so many iconic titular characters. Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon, Jerry Cornelius, Michael Kane and Erekosé.

The series has a revolutionary idea in fantasy, that existence is divided into two factions, LAW and CHAOS. And this has stuck with me throughout my writing career and bleeds into much of my work. Our hero fights for LAW, and is always a reincarnation of that Eternal Champion, who must stop the forces of CHAOS from dominating the universe.

Best book - Knight of Swords (Swords of Corum #1)

6

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber

These short stories and novellas inspired my fantasy series, The Three Lovers, more than any other book. They follow the adventures of the titular characters in a sprawling fantasy city (Lanhkmar) and all the surrounding lands.

There is a really great relationship between the two main characters, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Fafhrd is a hulking barbarian, the Gray Mouser is a thief/magician type. They are both witty, endearing and generally good-hearted, doing bad only to bad people. Usually the stories pit them against thieves guilds, wizards or monsters and send them to fantastical locations, towers that come alive, caves in the shape of skulls and so forth.

It’s real old school sword & sorcery with a heart. It’s the only S&S that I’ve read with heart, most don’t have loveable characters. With Cudgel or Conan, you admire their derring-do, you don’t love them.

Best Book - Swords Against Death (#2 ) The Bazaar of the Bizarre

5

The Dark Tower by Stephen King

This series is the latest of my loves and jumps straight into the number 5 spot, despite having only read it last year. It blew me away, proof that something new can shake-up my top 10, kicking The Belgariad out.

It really had everything, great plot, some of the strongest protagonists of all time, one of the most interesting and creative worlds in all fantasy, super twists and an unforgettable ending that keeps you thinking about it months after the fact. I can’t wait to go back and re-read the series, but I will wait a few years.

It captured my heart and my imagination like no other series in recent years. Roland, Eddie and Susannah are some of the best characters in all fantasy fiction.

It’s Stephen King at his wackiest and most creative, he throws everything into this series and I really do believe that it is his Magnum Opus, even after reading The Stand, It and many others.

Best Book - Wizard And Glass (Dark Tower #4)

4

Discworld by Terry Pratchett

Kind of cheating just to lump all of Discworld in as one series when it has so many series intertwined.

The Guards, the Witches and Death could make my top 10 without the rest. DEATH is simply one of the greatest ever characters, a civil servant performing his morbid duties with the best of Pratchett’s humour and ramblings on morality.

Comedy is the greatest asset of this series but don’t let that fool you, Pratchett understands how people work so well, from the lowest peasant to the highest king… he just gets it.

Spanning continents and dozens of books, it’s difficult where to start, but whatever you do - don’t start from the beginning, for there Pratchett is weakest! Start with the Guards Guards!, Reaper Man or Witches Abroad. Or ignore more and start with whatever takes your fancy. As a teen I started with Going Postal and fell in love with it immediately.

Best Book - Small Gods

Art by Roger Garland (I have this print hung up!)

3

Middle-earth by JRR Tolkien

Lord of the Rings is the god of epic fantasy. Nothing has bettered it in terms of setting/world-building since its inception and I doubt they ever will.

Of course it has aged, but in my opinion like a fine wine. For a new reader it is potentially a difficult read, with the sheer amount of poetry, history and “old-speak”. For me, all of this makes it better, it lends an opulence rarely present in other series.

Its rising drama is grounded completely in the setting, its characters are legendary and deep (Gandalf, Gollum, Boromir, Sam, Frodo), its locations are more recognisable to me than many on our own Earth. Middle-Earth is the best secondary world ever created.

The reason it’s not higher is because of the movies. I’d watched (and loved) the movies years before I’d read the books (with the exception of The Hobbit). This meant I couldn’t help but be influenced by the images of those films. This didn’t detract from the beautiful prose, nor the deep history, nor the amazing poetry, but it did detract from the drama and it did detract from the realisation and creation aspect that comes with being a reader… I didn’t create it in my mind first… Peter Jackson and the Weta creators did.

Best Book - The Lord of the Rings (Return of the King)

2

The Lyonesse Trilogy by Jack Vance

For most people this would be even more difficult to read than Lord of the Rings. The prose is purple, the description is sometimes overkill and the characters are not given grand arcs to revel in. They are who they are and that’s enough.

What Vance created for me was a dream, lush and vivid. The places are forever lodged in my mind, the plot twists are sudden and surprising, the quasi-Arthurian mish-mash of history and myth is brilliant and the characters leap at you with wit.

The story is a struggle between rival sorcerers, rival kingdoms, faeriekind and humankind and magic versus non-magic. It squishes all these ideas seamlessly into a grand tapestry with so many detours and side quests that you don’t know where it’s going.

I’ve never come across something like it, so original in its approach, almost with a blatant disregard to storytelling norms, yet being grounded in European myth and fantasy so that it all works. Lyonesse is very difficult to describe, other than by saying it has everything you might recognise from European folklore but presented to you in a way you wouldn’t expect.

Best Book - Suldrun’s Garden (#1)

Link to full review

1

The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K Le Guin

When I look to how I want my first fantasy series to be, I want it to be like Le Guin’s Earthsea.

I want it to have something potent to say about the themes of life, death, time and stories and to do it with prose like her’s, in digestible tomes, not great door-stoppers.

What Le Guin achieved, for me, is genius.

I love all our POV characters, I feel for them, I watch them age over the books and feel their pains. The perspectives change superbly, the first from Ged, the second from Tenar, the third from Arren, the fourth from Tenar and others but aged. With each book we see our main characters from different perspectives. A brilliant narrative trick, especially when those main characters change so much from book to book.

Her prose is my favourite, waxing and waning lyrically but with purpose, a not a word is wasted. The setting is brilliant, hundreds of islands filled with goat farmers, pirates, scattered kingdoms and a magic school. We are taken through Ged’s life, seen from different points of view and in different phases of power. He goes from young apprentice, to powerful master, to fading master and it is beautiful.

I’ll leave the rest of my ramblings for a full review… but Earthsea is the Queen of Fantasy for me.

Best Book - The Tombs of Atuan (#2)

I hope you enjoyed my Top 10 Fantasy List!