Fantasy Must Read List

Since we're naming off the classics here, I would highly recommend both Hesiod's Theogony and his Works and Days, usually packaged in the same slim volume. You get both epic worldbuilding and a cranky but empathetic look at the tribulations of Bronze Age life among the common folk.

 

Yes! I love the “Green Rider” series too, very much worth the mention.

 

Yes! I loved Battlefield Earth. Great adventure. I could read it again.

 

KATHERINE KERR
The Deverry Cycle is a series of Celtic fantasy novels by Katharine Kerr set in the fictional land of Deverry. As of November 2009, fifteen books have been published in the series. Wikipedia

SIMON R. GREEN
Hawk and Fisher
The Forest Kingdom
Nightside books
Simon R. Green bibliography - Wikipedia

The Burning City and The Burning Tower, by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Set in the same timeline as The Magic Goes Away

The Necroscope series by Brian Lumley. Dark fantasy/horror fiction.
Brian Lumley - Wikipedia

 

Fulhark, that Deverry series is one of my favs

 

He was racist

 

Many of my favourite authors on the list, any of David Gemmell's books are good reading. Has anyone read Garth Nix, his necromancer trilogy is very good. I love the fact that in the original list, I have read most of the 19th and 20th century titles, most of them in the days when libraries were just on your doorstep and you could take out 6 or 8 books and binge read. Hmmmm that makes me feel old

 

Does it have to be Fantasy, or just spec fic in general? Because: 1984 by George Orwell.

 

I'm currently reading The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, which is a thick compendium (1020 pages) of leather-bound bookmaking. Love his poems and his prose both, so much that I am working on a short Poe-esque story set in Egypt in the late 19th century. It needs works, but so far it is promising.

 

I've just finished re-reading CS Lewis' "The Horse and His Boy". There is a book which I feel should be on every aspiring fanstasy writers must read list (yes, I know the Narnia books were listed in the first post!). And for why? Well, I've always been hugely impressed by the way in which Lewis creates the realm of Calormen and details it in the first 100 pages or so. The food, the politics, its society. And it really is quite grim and dark - the way Lewis describes the scene where the Tisroc discusses Rabadash' plans to take Archenland with the Grand Vizier, and calmly notes that failure will likely mean Rabadash' death (so removing a threat to the Tisroc's rule) is an amazing bit of cynical realism for a childrens book. People talk about George Martin and Joe Abercrombie being dark and cynical, but in many ways Lewis got there first with this book.