Intro to Fantasy

[Joi]

I'm looking for some fantasy books. Something that could be considered an introduction to fantasy seeing as I've never read fantasy book before. Any suggestions would be helpful. Series are welcome, anything is welcome really....I just want to broaden my horizons if possible.

[Marie]

Hawksong by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes is one of the first fantasies I read as an almost-adult who was choosing her own books and still holds a special place in my heart.

Another one I highly recommend (still one of my favorites) Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. It's one of those books that's classified as a kids book but is utterly lovable by any age.

Both of these books can be read as stand alone (no cliff hangers) but are also apart of a series in the event you fall in love. As well, they're not particularly chunky books....because chunky ones can be rather intimidating (in my mind).

[lebedeva]

Falling Kingdoms

The Iron King

The Young Elites

Shadow and Bone

[Anna]

Jhereg
Night Winds
The Last Wish

For some reason I started reading fantasy with those three books when I was about 11 (or even younger, I don't exactly remember). To be honest, the content was a bit too mature for me at the time, but I was absolutely fascinated with them and I think my parents would have had to shoot me to prevent me from finishing my lecture once I started. To this day I love fantasy as a genre so I guess they worked quite well as an introduction.

[Jessica]

Magic Kingdom For Sale/Sold

The Blue Sword

These are the two that got me going, back in the day.

[Justin]

The first fantasy books i ever read was the His Dark Materials series, the first book is the Golden Compass, really good books. The abhorsen series is amazing as well, and if you get more into fantasy, try anything by branden sanderson, robert jordan, and patrick rothfuss =D Another series i just remembered was the Lost Years of Merlin.

[LauraW]

One of my favorite series: The Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Dealing with Dragons / Searching for Dragons / Calling on Dragons / Talking to Dragons It is more a YA book than adult, though. A bit feminist.

Also YA, but many different series by Tamora Pierce. She writes strong female characters, too.

[Pamela]

Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon. It's a standalone, and has lots of humor. Castle Hangnail

The Fairyland series by Catherynne M. Valente. Brilliant. Start with the first novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Start with Guards! Guards! (Fantasy about police) or Wyrd Sisters (Fantasy about witches) Guards! Guards! Wyrd Sisters

[Rosa]

Harry Potter, of course!

[Joi]

Rosa wrote: "Harry Potter, of course!"

of course

[Ann aka Iftcan]

My first introduction to fantasy was via the boy who sat in the seat next to me on the school bus going to and from school. We had a ride of just over an hour one way, and had to do SOMETHING so he loaned me Witch World and I've been reading fantasy/sci fi/paranormals ever since. And that was more years ago than I want to even admit to. :o)

If you like humour, I'm going to suggest Terry Pratchett. He has an enormous series about the Disc World a magical world that floats through space on the backs of 4 elephants who are standing on the back of Great A'tuin, the World Turtle. Sir Terry is a British writer, but he's well loved everywhere.

Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman also have a book that they wrote together many, many years ago called Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch which deals with the End of the World. It's kind of a parody of the movie The Omen. It's what would happen if Heaven and Hell lost track of The Anti-Christ and he was raised as a normal kid in Great Britain.

[Random]

Just about anything by Brandon Sanderson, especially his Mystborn series.

As Ann mentioned above, just about anything by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

Going back to some classics

The Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula K LeGuin starting with A Wizard of Earthsea

David Eddings Belgariad and Malorean series.

Raymond E Feist His series starting with Magician: Apprentice is amazing IMO.

Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series.

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Persanlly I burned out at the end of book 9, but a lot of people really love it.

For YA, Diane Duane's Younf Wizards's series. I loved this as an early teen, I love it now I'm in my 40s. Well done YA, without leaning on the stupid adult theme.




C.S. Friedman with her Magister or Coldfire series. (Though technically Coldfire is science fiction, though most poeople wouldn't recognize it as such.)

While not completely my thing, a lot of people really like Robin Hobb books, starting with Assassin's Apprentice

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I really liked this though I've seena lot of back and forth in reghards to reviews.

Anne McCaffrey Technically her Pern series is Science Fiction and not Fantasy, but I have always felt the first 10 or so bopoks were really good and were a passion of mine when I was a kid,.

[Peter]

I'll second Terry Pratchett, but I'd start with The Wee Free Men. It's the first book in a series about a young girl named Tiffany Aching. She has to enter the realm of the Fairies to save her younger brother, and in Pratchett's books the Fairies are just as dangerous as they were in the original legends. All Tiffany has to help her are her wits, an iron frying pan and the Wee Free Men, who are essentially a clan of berserker smurfs and who definitely steal the show.

The rest of the series follows Tiffany as she gets older and becomes a full-fledged witch, dealing with worse and worse threats along the way. The books are written for young adults, but like many of the best YA books I'd put them up against any five adult books you'd care to name.

[Sophie]

Joi wrote: "I'm looking for some fantasy books. Something that could be considered an introduction to fantasy seeing as I've never read fantasy book before. Any suggestions would be helpful. Series are welcome..."

Percy Jackson series even though some people many consider it mythology
Then there is keeper of the lost cities
and of course harry potter

[Ann aka Iftcan]

I'm going to second Random's suggestion of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders/Dragonsingers books. While they are technically science fiction (set in the far future on another world) they really read more like fantasy, since the Pernese (the planet they live on is called PERN, which we don't find out until like book 11 or so, stands for Parallel Earth Resources Negligable) have forgotten almost all science, so they are about at a Medieval level technologically speaking. Except, (and this is the reason that when I was a kid I really wished I'd been born on Pern) that there are DRAGONS......... Intelligent, telepathic dragons, who bond with a chosen human rider. Sigh, I so wanted my own dragon after reading the first Dragonrider's book. . . . The Dragonsinger's series starts with a much younger group, almost YA, and is about the Pern equivalent of bards. I'd have loved that too, except that I can't carry a tune in a bucket, so I'm out of luck with that one. :o)

But it's well worth reading, in case you couldn't figure that was my opinion.

[Keith]

Obvious recommendation is obvious: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien.

In the "fantasy that intersects with the real world" category (like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson), another series I'd recommend is Derek Landry's Skulduggery Pleasant, about a girl who becomes the sidekick/apprentice to a wisecracking skeleton wizard detective.

If you want a different take on high fantasy from all the Tolkien clones and teen-fiction stuff, an author I highly recommend is Michael Moorcock.

[Aaron]

Generally I recommend sliding into the genre rather than diving in, or even worse debatably starting with a bunch of old classics.

For 1 fantasy is a huge HUGE genre with vast swaths of subgenres, that can be vaguely broken down into fantasy that takes place in our world and fantasy that takes place in another.

For starter forays I'm probably going to recommend stuff based off other things you like.

Police Procedurals:
Rivers of London - It's a hybrid genre blurring Police Procedurals and Urban Fantasy into one.

Video Games/Table Top Games
The Final Empire - While this one is pretty clearly just pure otherworld fantasy, the magic it's using and influence is pretty clearly from the gaming era with much more hard rules and is thus called hard magic.

Three musketeers/Adventuring
Theft of Swords - A very good and very safe pick for a more fun small team adventuring through fantasy.

Military stories.
Into the Storm - Basically Band of Brothers, now with 1000% more giant lightning swords.
The Thousand Names - Napoleonic era style fantasy.

The one I'm a bit loathe to recommend for a variety of reasons but does cover Fantasy extremely broadly and is well loved is The Name of the Wind. It covers so many common tropes in fantasy today it's almost a joke, it's also extremely well loved.