Fantasy Fan by Leon Husock

People always group science fiction and fantasy together like they’re one genre, and while I understand it (there’s a lot of overlap in audience appeal), for me it’s always been fantasy and fantasy alone at the top of my list.  I wrote my college thesis on fairies in English literature, and I’ll probably be talking about it a lot more and in more depth in my future posts, but suffice to say my mother read me the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was five and I’ve been hooked ever since.  Fantasy offers a purity of story and of imagination that you’ll be hard-pressed to find anywhere else, and to that end I’ll give you a list of some of my favorite authors and books by them, both new and old, in no particular order.



-J.R.R. Tolkien (The Silmarillion is an underrated gem, but not for the fair-weather fan)

-Garth Nix (Abhorsen Trilogy, Keys to the Kingdom series)

-Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell)

-Patrick Rothfuss (Kingkiller Chronicles)

-Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising)

-Nancy Bond (A String in the Harp)

-Tamora Pierce (The Circle of Magic quartet)

-E. Nesbit (Five Children & It, The Phoenix & The Carpet)

-Edward Eager (Half-Magic, The Time Garden)

-Roger Zelazny (The Chronicles of Amber)



Next time I’ll be talking about the progressive de-ghettoization of fantasy, and what it means for the future of the genre.