Genre — Fantasy
Now there are, to my mind at least, three categories of Fantasy.
1) High Fantasy — world building at it’s best
2) Fantasy standard — magic, alternative reality
3) Cozy Fantasy — light hearted fantasy
The first sort are stories that live in the hearts of people around the world
J R R Tolkien and Middle Earth
George R R Martin and The Seven Kingdoms
Charlaine Harris and The Southern Vampires
The second sort are stories about fantastical characters and settings
Alan Dean Foster and The Spellsinger Adventures
A not great guitar playing college student gets sucks into an alternate dimension. When he plays guitar and sings in the new universe, magic happens. Real magic. Oh, and most animals are human sized and sentient, and talking.
Blurb from book #1 The Spellsinger
Jonathan Thomas Meriweather is a typical college student, interested in girls, music, and an occasional taste of reefer. But when a journey through an interdimensional portal lands him in a world of talking animals and ominous sorcery, he finds he is on a very different trip indeed. Here, when he plays a strange instrument called a duar, peculiar things happen: powerful magic that may be the only way to stop a dark force that threatens his new world—and his old one. Reluctantly, he finds himself teaming up with a semi-senile turtle wizard; a thieving, backstabbing otter; and a bewildered Marxist dragon to rally an army for the war about to come.
Mercedes Lackey and the Serrated Edge series
Hard to find nowadays, even in paperback, this series is about a bunch of Elves who are into auto-racing and saving human kids from pedophiles.
Blurb from book #2 Wheels of Fire
Al and Bob work as mechanics for a race car driving team. There's just one catch - Al happens to be a centuries old elf and Bob a human fosterling brought up after being abused by his father. Al has a soft spot for children as it happens
Tom Deitz the David Sullivan series
David Sullivan is an ordinary boy growing up in Georgia, until the day he isn’t.
Blurb from Book #1: Windmaster’s Bane
Young David Sullivan never dreamed that the myths of marvels and magic he loved were real. But in his blood was the gift of Second Sight. And near his family’s rural farm lay an invisible track between worlds…where he would soon become a pawn in the power game of the Windmaster, an evil usurper among those the Celts called the Sidhe. David’s only protection would be a riddle’s answer and an enchanted ring…as he began his odyssey of danger into things unknowing and unknown…
The third sort are often found under the romance umbrella which I’ll cover as a separate entry in the future.
As you can see we are focusing on the 2nd group today.
While Mercedes Lackey and Alan Dean Foster both wrote A LOT more than these identified series, it appears that Tom Deitz wrote only the David Sullivan stories. Which is a loss to the readers of the world, because the universe Tom created is wonderful.
EDIT: I was wrong and commenter Youffraita leaves a link to the rest of his bibliograpy in her message. Thank you!
I read a lot of fantasy now, but most of it in the paranormal women’s fantasy sub-genre. It’s mostly about women over 40 who are living dull lives and then one day, something out of the ordinary happens to them, and their dull lives are over, for good.
I’m glad I chose this genre to cover this week because it made me go buy ebook copies of the David Sullivan series which were never available at Amazon before and I sold off my paperback copies to Powell Books years ago. Now I get the opportunity to revisit a world I remember fondly over the next week!
If you have read any of these books or any Fantasy story you’d like to talk about, c’mon in, sit down and put your feet up and Let’s Talk BOOKS!