10 Books Every Fantasy Author Should Read

phantasy novel do n’t arise by magic . An aspiring fancy author has to learn the craft , but also discover the stem of illusion lit , as well as account and mythology . The more you ’ve read , the more you know — and the better outfit you ’ll be for your journey into the lands of imagination . So we asked some of our favorite phantasy authors to name the books that every fantasy author should live . ( And most of these are also books that any self - respecting phantasy reader should be familiar with . )

Here are 10 books every would - be illusion source ought to have study . And no , the listing does n’t admit Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia — because we all usurp you ’ve already interpret those .

Top icon : Dragon Dawn byAnne Stokes

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“ My ‘ single desert - island ledger for the aspiring fantasy author , ’ would believably be Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber . Tons to con from there . The style Leiber counterbalanced Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser ’s superhuman art with their blemished humanness ; his mesmeric evocation of the city of Lankhmar ; the sparkling beauty and wit of his description and dialogue — all this , plus the best swordfights ever written ! ” — Saladin Ahmed , author of Throne of the Crescent Moon .

“ This and Thurber ’s other comic poof tales , particularly The White Deer , were an enormous influence on many of us . Thurber manages simultaneously to lampoon mythic fiction , and to move us with its Sojourner Truth and ravisher . I do n’t have intercourse how he does it ; it ’s really line by line . Peter Beagle ’s The Last Unicorn , which I adore , is in gravid part a Thurber homage that nonetheless soars and sings . It ’s as if they ’ve pick out on the wizards ’ challenge to fight with one foot in piss and the other on the shore . . . and advance . ” — Ellen Kushner , author of the Nebula - nominated The Privilege of the Sword .

“ If any one book turned me toward fantasy – though I think the instinct was already there – it has to be The Wind in the Willows , by Kenneth Grahame , which was make to me by a beloved second / third - grade teacher : a tall , skinny Irish gentlewoman who looked rather like Eleanor Roosevelt , and who seemed to blob me for whatever I was early on . We persist friends until her death , and one my very proudest present moment remain the day I walk over to her household to give her one of the earliest copies of A all right and Private Place , my first novel . The Wind in the Willows remains , for me , absolutely sui generis , as much of a one - nip miracle as The Lord of the Rings itself : no more interpretable than Gollum . Children ’s volume or not , the bloody matter changed my life , that ’s all . ” — Peter S. Beagle , generator of The Last Unicorn

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“ It ’s a pansy tale in the truest sentience of the full term , but a fairy tarradiddle for adults ; a beautifully written , attractively crafted circuitous narrative that does n’t unveil its innermost secrets until it comes around full circle at the end . As a fantasy generator , it reminds me of the high to which the music genre can aspire . ” — Jacqueline Carey , author of the Kushiel novels and the lately released Saints Astray .

“ If you ’re a fantasist drop a line about a pre - Industrial society — or even one writing about the axis between that and mechanization — you need to know a tidy sum about a world enormously far from our own experience ; one in which , say , most people possess few wearing apparel because it take hours of human labor to make a few yards of cloth . Even if you ’re lucky enough to remember a mom or grandma darning socks or patch a shirt ’s elbow . . . we ’ve come too far already . societal historiographer like Braudel unearth and analyse minutely what people wipe out and wore , where and how they lived , to give a sense of the cloth of a lost world we can cherry - pluck for verisimilitude , from a well - stocked pantry . You do n’t need to know everything , but you must feel it in your bones . ” — Kushner , who also won the World Fantasy Award for Thomas The Rhymer .

“ Hofstadter showed me — and he never stops reminding me — that realness is uncanny and marvelous and complex . If you ’re going to write fantasy , you have to come disposed to keep up . ” — Lev Grossman , author of The Magician King .

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“ [ aspire fantasy author should study ] lots of mythology — any mythology , really . I ’ve enjoyed surveying the myths of many culture , but I can see the value in also going in - depth on any single cultivation ’s myth body structure . Fascinating to see the commonness across cultures , and the cycles through which myths run over the course of history . So much of fantasy these day is derivative of other phantasy ; perchance by go back to the source , we ’ll at least see more oeuvre that ’s derivative in dissimilar ways . ” — N.K. Jemisin , source of The Killing Moon , who also advocate spending lots of time onTVTropes.orgto see what ’s been done to death .

“ You ’ll retrieve alternate and arcane meanings and ideas embedded in words you antecedently take for give . Use it like a received lexicon or just open it at random and read . An accounting entry on a single tidings can generate story idea . ” — Richard Kadrey , author of Aloha From Hell .

“ illusion writer or not , Camelot freak or not , no one should go without read The Once and Future King . My test for the 1 who matter most to me is whether they can both make me laugh and cry . T. H. White can do that ; while Tolkien , undeniably magisterial as he is ( whatever that word just means ) ca n’t . The swell Irishman James Stephens can do it in spades , sometimes almost at the same time , as can Ursula LeGuin and the man she called “ the ancestor of us all ” — Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett , eighteenth Baron Dunsany . But they ’re all to be read , and there ’s no agency you ca n’t learn from every one of them . ” — Beagle , whose former book is Sleight of Hand .

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“ This is the Good Book that showed me what it mean to drop a line about legerdemain as if it were really real : draw it specifically , precisely , in ordinary modern language , with the characters who keep it react to it not with schematic expressions of curiosity and surprisal but in naturalistic , psychologically plausible ways . ” — Grossman , whose The Magicians is becoming a video series .

” I think Farah Mendlesohn ’s Rhetorics of Fantasy should be required reading for anybody in this genre . It might seem like dense academic language for some , but I in reality chance it vindicated and accessible as it broke down all illusion into four broad taxonomic categories , then analyze the commonalities — and exception — for each . For those writers who really want to understand the literary footsteps they ’re take the air , and who find our current marketing - driven genre structure restrictive and perplexing ( e.g. , is it URBAN fantasy or is it urban FANTASY ? ) , this is helpful . ” — Jemisin , who also wrote the Inheritance Trilogy , begin with The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms .

And we ’ll let Beagle have the last Logos : “ you could learn a surprising amount from third and fourth - pace writers , too – if only what not to do . As my old role model , Haff , the beggar - poet hero of the old melodious Kismet , state to — of all people , Omar Khayyam — ‘ Omar , my friend , there is always something to be learned … even from tomfool . ' ”

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