My sister Sarah emailed me earlier this week:

fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviewsSomeone mentioned in a comment on your Name of the Wind review that this book is what got them re-excited about Fantasy the way Dune was the book that got them excited about SF or something like that.I’ve been trying to think… what book got me excited about fantasy or SF? Can you remember? Does Lion, Witch and Wardrobe count? Is there a book that you can point to? I think there is more than one at different times in my life and different types of SF/F.

  • Dune is probably the first real Space Opera I read – I don’t consider it SF
  • Anne McCaffrey’s dragons
  • Telzey Amberdon because I’ve always loved psychic powers – which goes back to the dragons :) Which came first for me? Catseye and the Beastmaster stories by Norton or Schmitz‘s Telzey stories? Hmmm. This may take some more thought.

This got me started thinking about when I started reading fantasy as a genre. As a young teenager, I read Mercedes Lackey’s Arrows of the Queen, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonsong and Midori Snyder’s Oran Trilogy in quick succession and I never looked back. That’s when I started pursuing fantasy novels specifically, in stead of reading them if someone else recommended them to me.

So, dear readers: what book started you down this magical path? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll enter you in a drawing to win the book of your choice from our stacks.

Oh, and Sarah? We don’t have reviews for lots of those books you mentioned, in case you get bored this weekend. :)

Author

  • Ruth Arnell

    RUTH ARNELL (on FanLit's staff January 2009 — August 2013) earned a Ph.D. in political science and is a college professor in Idaho. From a young age she has maxed out her library card the way some people do credit cards. Ruth started reading fantasy with A Wrinkle in Time and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — books that still occupy an honored spot on her bookshelf today. Ruth and her husband have a young son, but their house is actually presided over by a flame-point Siamese who answers, sometimes, to the name of Griffon.