In August, I made a wonderful escape from the broiling LA summer, to a cabin on a lake in Maine. Just me, my brilliant and eccentric brother (learning 18 languages on Duolingo, and reading a book a day), his wife who is the best cook (such blueberry pies and lobster rolls, and an Indian feast), and their polydactyl cat, Kusuma. Canoeing across the lake, portaging further upstream, returning in the placid morning. Ploosh! Suddenly a loon popped up from below, twelve feet away, with a crayfish in his mouth.
Sounds lovely, eh? Too much paradise for me. So I escaped again, into a 2000 page dystopia, where the mistborn swallow vials of eight metals, then burn each in their gut, to acquire different magical powers. On a world where volcanoes rain ash across the sky, the sun glowers blood-red, and mists blanket the ground at night. And many mysteries, and journeys, and personalities besides.
Ah, I do live a fortunate life. Family and fantasy, bad jokes and good feasts. In nine days, I gained six pounds. So worth it.
One Hundred Delicious Enchantments
What is so special about wild and well-written Fantasy and SF books? How do they excite a part of me that almost nothing else can? This thrill is not as simple as it sounds, it’s not like Fantasy just pushes a button in me. It’s more like it activates a constellation in my imagination, a wreath of christmas lights, which good Fantasy ignites with marvelous colors.
I enjoy all kinds of book, but Fantasy offers my favorite escape. Curiosity is a deep engine in me, and I like swimming in daydreams. I love to travel on an imaginary adventure to an exotic world, where people are strange and reality runs on different laws. I’m fascinated by magic, and the best Fantasy and SF books make me feel enchanted.
When you’re a kid, you love candy; sometimes when you’re an adult too. You can get transfixed by the look, smell, touch, and especially taste of sweets. One day you wander into a dazzling new candy shop, with hundreds of colorful, eclectic confections. It feels like magic. As an adult, I stumbled upon a list of NPR listeners’ favorite 100 Fantasy and SF books and series: a very fine list, picked out by the tastes of 60,000 dedicated fans. It is the most dazzling candy shop my imagination ever beheld.
I’ll return to that list at the end of this essay. First, let’s look at a series I discovered in that candy shop of the mind, a 2,000 page epic that I read last month.
Brandon Sanderson's ‘Mistborn Trilogy’
Ash fell from the sky.
Vin watched the downy flakes drift through the air. Leisurely. Careless. Free. The puffs of soot fell like black snowflakes, descending upon the dark city of Luthadel. They drifted in corners, blowing in the breeze and curling in tiny whirlwinds over the cobblestones. They seemed so uncaring. What would that be like?
Vin sat quietly in one of the crew’s watch-holes—a hidden alcove built into the bricks on the side of the safe house. From within it, a crewmember could watch the street for signs of danger. Vin wasn’t on duty; the watch-hole was simply one of the few places where she could find solitude.
Sanderson dives right into his heroine’s hidey-hole, at the start of her evolution and many adventures. But what’s up with that uncaring ash, why is the whole sky shrouded in black with the dimmed sun fighting through it to nourish brown-leaved plants? Why do mists cover the land every night, mists that most of the people fear, and bolt their doors against?
These puzzles, their layers, Sanderson’s interlocking systems and histories are very deftly woven. You keep thinking you see what’s going on, then discovering more elements and meanings behind the surfaces. The ash-spewing volcanoes appear to be the biggest blight on this world—until you find they were a band-aid, ripped into being by godlike magic, to defend that earth from an even greater peril. This earth is ruled, and all its skaa (peasants) oppressed, by the Lord Ruler, who has been in power for a millennium. We keep learning morsels about him, but it takes three books before we see him whole, with all of his selfishness and cruelty and good intentions, all of his divinity and mortal failings. Every character here has their nobility and pettiness; all of the main ones go through major changes, across all the windings of the plot.
I found a lot to like in this trilogy. Well, not quite a trilogy, as Sanderson has been adding another tetralogy, set a few centuries later on the same world. He also has several other series-in-progress, including The Stormlight Archive, intended to eventually include two five-book cycles. He gets carried away by his fertile, sweeping imagination. All I’ve read of Sanderson so far is this Mistborn Trilogy. It is bold and expansive in its world-building, but it does wrap up completely into a satisfying whole by the end.
When we first meet Vin, she is a fifteen year old thief, one of the lesser members of Camon’s crew. Vin has some power that she doesn’t understand, she just calls it Luck. Camon senses it, because he finds delicate missions go better when he brings Vin along. He’s too canny ever to mention it—then he’d have to give her credit for it. But he resents her for having some power he can’t understand, and can’t just take from her for himself. Right now, he’s been waiting for Vin for half an hour.
“There you are!” Camon lifted a squat, fat finger and jabbed it toward her face. “Where were you?”
Vin didn’t let hatred or rebellion show in her eyes. She simply looked down, giving Camon what he expected to see. There were other ways to be strong. That lesson she had learned on her own.
Camon growled slightly, then raised his hand and backhanded her across the face. The force of the blow threw Vin back against the wall, and her cheek blazed with pain. She slumped against the wood, but bore the punishment silently. Just another bruise. She was strong enough to deal with it. She’d done so before.
“Listen,” Camon hissed. This is an important job. It’s worth thousands of boxings—worth more than you a hundred times over. I won’t have you fouling it up. Understand?”
Vin nodded.
Camon studied her for a moment, his pudgy face red with anger. Finally, he looked away, muttering to himself.
He was annoyed about something—something more than just Vin. Perhaps he had heard about the skaa rebellion several days to the north. One of the provincial lords, Themos Tresting, had apparently been murdered, his manor burned to the ground. Such disturbances were bad for business; they made the aristocracy more alert and less gullible. That, in turn, could cut seriously into Camon’s profits.
He’s looking for someone to punish, Vin thought. He always gets nervous before a job. She looked up at Camon, tasting blood on her lip. She must have let some of her confidence show, because he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and his expression darkened. He raised his hand, as if to strike her again.
Vin used up a bit of her Luck.
She expended just a smidgen; she’d need the rest for the job. She directed the Luck at Camon, calming his nervousness. The crewleader paused—oblivious of Vin’s touch, yet feeling its effects nonetheless. He stood for a moment; then he sighed, turning away and lowering his hand.
Vin wiped her lip as Camon waddled away. The thiefmaster looked very convincing in his nobleman’s suit. It was as rich a costume as Vin had ever seen—it had a white shirt overlaid by a deep green vest with engraved gold buttons. The black suit coat was long, after the current fashion, and he wore a matching black hat. His fingers sparkled with rings, and he even carried a fine dueling cane. Indeed, Camon did an excellent job of imitating a nobleman; when it came to playing a role, there were few thieves more competent than Camon. Assuming he could keep his temper under control.
The room itself was less impressive. Vin pulled herself to her feet as Camon began to snap at some of the other crewmembers. They had rented one of the suites at the top of a local hotel. Not too lavish—but that was the idea. Camon was going to be playing the part of ”Lord Jedue,” a country nobleman who had hit upon hard financial times and come to Luthadel to get some final, desperate contracts.
Alongside Sanderson’s bold imagination and complex systems, his human understanding is his great gift. I found him exceptionally insightful, and very skillful at seeding hundreds of little details throughout his pages, that gradually add up to a three-dimensional picture of a compelling human being. His tender awareness operates on many levels. He sketches the curves and currents and differences within a society—a city, an army, a species—so that the dramas between his main characters have deep backgrounds surrounding them. He observes the small events that impact one person’s character, then shows how all these events add up them falling in love and finding their full self; or growing their convictions and charisma until they can lead a rebellion; or yielding to their own lusts, and becoming a ruthless villain. Very finely realized characters, a world full of heart.
I do have one quibble with Sanderson: he can get sloppy. There are moments in his timelines and places on his maps where things get fudged, where important details are missing or plain wrong. I have a pedantic side, and greatly admire a series like Lord of the Rings, or a movie like Bladerunner, where the author/director has applied such thought and craft that I can’t spot a single flaw.
After a while, Sanderson’s several small fudges stopped bugging me. There was too much grand spectacle and caring in his tapestry, to distract me from them. He’s only 41, and he’s been extremely prolific — so perhaps he was galloping to keep up with his imagination, and didn’t find time to double-check all of his work. He’s becoming a small industry, so I expect he now has assistants to double-check for him. Also, few readers are as pedantic as I am; I’m sure many never noticed the small flaws in his design. If you’re looking for a captivating escape to 2000 pages of another world, I recommend the Mistborn Trilogy.
Well, that title links to “the most dazzling candy shop my imagination ever beheld”, so go check it out. Then bookmark it, to refer to later. For extra fun, here is a flowchart Guide to Navigating NPR’s top 100 Fantasy and SF books and series, to help you decide which one to read first. As you’ve already noticed, I’m kind of obsessed with books. I have a few dozen lists of books, all bookmarked in various folders on my computer. This one from NPR is my favorite.
Fantasy and SF have been somewhat ghettoized by critics and literati: they were seen as genre, and lowbrow, and not worthy of serious attention. On the one hand, this means that fabulous Fantasy and SF novels were overlooked by the literary establishment, and didn’t win the Nobels and Pulitzers they deserved. But on the other hand, Fantasy and SF dodged a bullet, because they were never owned and administrated by the makers of polite opinion. The reason NPR’s Fantasy and SF list is so good, is that it has nothing pretentious or proper about it. It’s based entirely on how much fun the true fans had reading these books, and which books stood their test of multiple rereadings. No matter how well you know Fantasy and SF, this list will point you towards more good reads.
I’ve been escaping into Fantasy and SF since I was a child, so I’ve already read 44 of these 100. There is a special joy in discovering a series of books set in a brand new land or cosmos. You race through the first book; then, even when it’s all gone, you still have a few more to look forward to. So much fresh discovery, so many surprises and characters to get to know.
Perhaps, like me, you’ve read many of the books and series on NPR’s list; or perhaps you’re a more advanced fan, and have read all of those books; or perhaps you’ve hardly read any fantasy at all. To open up this conversation to all grades of Fantasy & SF readers, I’ll share some impressions of series on NPR’s list that I’ve read all or much of, and then I’ll conclude with a poll of the series on NPR’s list.
Twelve Fantasy & SF Series that I’ve Enjoyed
Ursula Le Guin, Earthsea Trilogy — Straight out the gate, I’m already cheating. This isn’t on NPR’s list, though they have two other books of hers. But I had to put this first, as it’s my favorite fantasy series, and some of the books that most enchanted my youth. The heart of the spell here is, Le Guin is a phenomenal writer, full of poetry and power, subtlety and heart. Years later, Le Guin returned to Earthsea and added two more books (and eight short stories) to this series. Another writer called the first book, A Wizard of Earthsea, "the most thrilling, wise and beautiful children's novel ever". It is.
C.S. Lewis, The Space Trilogy — I think this made NPR’s list, instead of the Narnia series, because the writing is more adult and deeper. I enjoyed the Narnia series a lot, just before I found Earthsea. But when you return to Narnia, it can feel childish, awkward, and forced in its Christian proselytizing. The Space Trilogy is more challenging and resonant. I like Lewis; but I think Tolkien and Rowling are better writers, for grabbing your imagination and making it dance.
Aha. I see that the NPR list has no Earthsea, nor Narnia, nor Harry Potter, nor The Hobbit, nor A Wrinkle in Time, nor any Lewis Carroll nor Oz books. So, the NPR listeners (or the editors) have chosen not to include books aimed primarily at Young Adults, in this list. I disagree, as I find most of those books appeal to my adult self, and some of them have grown in the meanwhile. Ah well.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings — I’ll kindly assume that we have all read this one already. If you want more flavor than that, then please go read my earlier diary, How 'Lord of the Rings' is Not a Very Good Book - and Yet, is a Great One.
Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, etc. — These are splendid books, full of vast imagination and many of the funniest jokes ever constructed. Adams is an endless source of joy, obliquity and surprises. You’ll emerge from his books slightly larger than you went in.
Neil Gaiman, The Sandman — A Graphic Novel series, but just as much Novel as Graphic. A cornucopia of delights, weaving together myriad stories and art styles into a dream cosmos. For more on The Sandman, please look at DrLori’s series of Sandman diaries. Then click her follow heart, so that all of her Monday ‘Language of the Night’ Fantasy diaries will appear in your stream.
Neil Gaiman is reliably splendid. Try also Good Omens for sparkling dark wit, or American Gods for an ambitious contemporary mythos. Gaiman’s always sensitive and wise, with weirdness and magic in the corners of each frame.
Frank Herbert, Dune Chronicles — The first one, Dune, is considered the SF bestseller of all time. This is like a futuristic, outer space Lord of the Rings. Insofar as, Herbert builds a startling and overwhelming world, and dives deep into this otherness, exploring every grain of sand. Giant and terrifying worms, nomad tribes, religious orders following sacred prophecies, and pilots intoxicated on the spice that allows them to navigate deep space. An essential epic. Read the first, then continue through the series until you lose interest: as is so often the case, each book is a little less fresh and brilliant than the one before.
Dune was the first novel to win both the Nebula award (given by Fantasy and SF writers) and the Hugo award (given by Fantasy and SF fans).
23 novels have won both Hugo and Nebula awards. I’ve read 15 of those, and find this a solid rubric for discovering excellent new Fantasy and SF novels.
Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time — Jordan had so much imagination and ambition that they got away from him, and took his books with them. I read the first book, Eye of the World, and adored it. I loved the second one. I like the third. After the fourth, I gave up: the plot had metastasized. But if you enjoy tons of ideas, and have the patience to follow a hundred subplots, you might love the whole series. This was supposed to be six books long; by the time he died, Jordan had written twelve. Then his wife, impressed by Sanderson’s first Mistborn book, drafted him in to write three more Wheel of Time novels, to complete the series.
Roger Zelazny, Chronicles of Amber — Nine Princes in Amber, the first book, is one of the most mind-blowing and fun books I’ve ever read. You wake up in a hospital bed with no memory, then piece by piece you discover your powers, your family, all their personalities and intrigue, and then the various worlds they can walk between. Zelazny wrote five books in the ‘70s, which are all stellar. In the ‘80s he came back and added five more, adding a malevolent AI to the mix; they’re still fun, but not quite up to the first five. All these plotting and counter-plotting siblings, their various magics, the vivid and varied worlds they inhabit: this is a marvelous escape.
T.H. White, The Once and Future King — These are fantasy classics, almost eighty years old. They are also beautifully written and shaped, wise books. We meet King Arthur as a boy (“Wart”), Merlin trains him for his fate, he grows into love and war, and the books gradually darken. Magnificent.
Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mists of Avalon — A feminist retelling of Arthurian Legend, through the eyes of
Morgan le Fay, more sympathetic here than ever before. I just now discovered that Bradley said, “About the time I began work on the Morgan le Fay story that later became Mists, a religious search of many years culminated in my accepting ordination in one of the Gnostic Catholic churches as a priest.” Bradley brings her paganism and insight to the tale, and weaves it anew.
Isaac Asimov, Foundation Trilogy — Here is Science Fiction’s Golden Age, for better and for worse. This series has startling ideas and smart plotting, but I find most of the characters and writing don’t hold up. Asimov was on fire when he wrote this, though, and it’s as classic as SF gets. He wrote eight short stories in the ‘40s, collected into Foundation in 1951, with second and third volumes following in the next two years. (30 years later Asimov added two prequels and two sequels, that I never read). Hari Seldon is a mathematician who spends his life developing a new field, Psychohistory, which then allows him to predict likely futures for large masses of humanity. He then devises cosmic plots to improve our interstellar fate. These play out through the galaxies, with battles and romances and grand surprises. There are a few well-drawn characters, and the space opera is a fun ride.
Kim Stanley Robinson, Mars Trilogy — Forty years after Asimov, Robinson brought a similar epic vision, but with better psychology, and far more scientific detail to back it up. This series is nerd heaven. Robinson applies knowledge of a dozen fields to figure out what it would take to terraform Mars, then adds in strong personalities, gamesmanship, the pressures of this exodus, and earth politics. He spins all of this out over two centuries, to create a spellbinding and convincing evolution.
There are six other NPR series that I’ve read or started, but I’ll just throw all the remaining series into a poll. Then readers here can see them all, and may comment below on their favorites.