I started reading fantasy as a child before I even know what
“fantasy” meant in the fiction world. Then my tastes came and went as I
discovered books in all genres. In high school, The Hobbit was a required reading assignment. The best assignment
ever! The Hobbit reinforced my love
for reading fantasy and I couldn’t wait to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy over the summer. I didn’t read much
more fantasy until I discovered The Wheel
of Times series. That first book set me on a long course of gobbling up all
the epic fantasy I could find. The bigger the book, the better!
I have less time to read these bigger books now, but I wanted
to share the best of the epic fantasy books I’ve read. Some of these are the
first in a series. I may or may not have loved every book in the series (The Wheel of Time series books became
tedious and I quit reading them around book 8, but I’ve read all the books in
the other series and have loved them, and have read other books by those authors).Anne Bishop, Jacqueline Carey, Sara Douglass, Elizabeth Haydon, Robin Hobb, and J.V. Jones are all on my auto-by list now (funny how they’re all women authors!). You can’t go wrong reading any book by these authors. They’re fabulous.
1. Watership Down, by Richard Adams
2. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
3. The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan
4. The Barbed Coil, by J.V. Jones
5. The Wayfarer Redemption, by Sara Douglass
6. Rhapsody, by Elizabeth Haydon
7. Kushiel’s Avatar, by Jacqueline Carey
8. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
9. Ship of Destiny, by Robin Hobb
10. Daughers of the Blood, by Anne Bishop
