Despite our forum dying, our forum members are not.

And, if nothing else, they are active readers who enjoy discussing books and sharing recommendations. The OCD afflicted among us can’t help but want to order the chaos. In doing so, we get revealing threads like SFFWorld’s unofficial Top 20 Fantasy Series List.

Member chris777 asked our community to list, ordered by preference, our top 10 fantasy series. And our community responded. As of this writing, the thread received over 50 individual top 10 lists.

Without further ado, here’s how the combined ranking of the Top 20 shook out.

1. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Originally published in 1954 in the U.K., Mr. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien’s fruit of his legendarium began in the humble story of a small creature in a children’s book called There and Back Again. We know it better as The Hobbit. The first book of the Lord of the Rings series wasn’t meant to be the start of a series at all, but rather was a sequel to that popular children’s tale. The Fellowship of the Ring started a long tale that didn’t end until going through The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

Even after 61 years, this series is considered the most popular fantasy trilogy ever because of its depth and enduring themes, as well as a host of interesting characters we all grew up with. It is no wonder it topped our forum readers’ lists.

2. A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin

George R.R. Martin returned to the Science Fiction and Fantasy field from his screenwriting career with this mega epic’s first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1996. The series popularity has grown even more intense since the television adaptation, Game of Thrones, debuted on HBO.

3. The Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson

With 10 book in this series, you would think Steven Erikson’s fans would be crushed under the weight, but the series endures and holds a place near to many people’s hearts. Known for its unusual narrative structure, dark gods and fascinating imagery, the series originally started out as an idea for a game, then a movie.

4. The First Law by Joe Abercrombie

Joe Abercrombie won the title Lord of Grimdark when the London film editor burst on the scene with a blazing epic of mysterious sorcerers, destructive magic, beserker warriors and bloody battles in The First Law trilogy. His also acclaimed novels Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country take place in the same universe as The First Law books, The Blade Itself, Before They Are Hanged, and Last Argument of Kings.

5. Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan

One the biggest selling series in the genre, Robert Jordan’s legendary 14-book epic saga of a world breaking apart as part of a karmic cycle blew up the fantasy field in 1990 when the first book, The Eye of the World, debuted. Jordan sadly died of a heart condition in 2007 and the last three volumes of the work were completed from his writing and notes by author Brandon Sanderson. The scope of his vision, with its clashing cultures, intricate magics and personal heartbreaks, has made it one of the most popular and influential fantasy series in the field.

In a world where a magic apocalypse has utterly transformed the landscape, shifted the balance of power, the Dark One stirs. Prophesized to battle the Dark One at the end of the age, the Aes Sedai (the sorceress-priestesses of the world) search for the Dragon so they can train him. You see, at the end of the last age the event that triggered the magic apocalypse was a male Aes Sedai going insane and with the Dark One’s “urging” tainted the magic for all male users, or channelers, such that all males who can channel eventually go mad.

Jordan has constructed a deep, rich world with strong echoes of our own. Characterized by great moments as well as overwrought details, the series is divisive but clearly has many, many fans.

SFFWorld Official Reviews: A Memory of Light

6. EarthSea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin

Another enduring classic collection first published in the late 1960s. This series spans six books and numerous related works. The renowned YA series tells the story of a world full of islands, natural magic and wizard schools, and has inspired many other authors. The best known book, A Wizard of Earthsea, won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. In later stories, such as the fourth novel Tehanu, the series further matured from its YA roots and focus on familiar fantasy tropes, such as adventure quests and heroic actions, into a more sophisticated and darker meditation on gender issues and other deep philosophical issues. This series is undoubtedly one of the greatest works of fantasies in the English language.

7. King Killer by Patrick Rothfuss

Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind made a lasting impression on fantasy fans with its tale within a tale of the truth behind a legendary wizard’s life. Although fans are still awaiting the last book of the trilogy, after Wise Man’s Fear and related novella, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, the series’ elaborate magical world building and both satirical and haunting examination of how myths are formed has made it a big favorite.

This is a fairly high ranking for Rothfuss with just two novels (and a novella) published. Conversely, the second installment, Wise Man’s Fear appeared on the #1 slot on the New York Times bestseller list so clearly, Pat built up a great many fans.  Essentially, the story in the novels are a Bildungsroman and tell the story of Kvothe coming of age, attending a school of magic, falling in love and doing something disastrous.  Well, maybe disastrous since we don’t know what that thing was. The story is framed by an older Kvothe who owns a bar and tells the tale from the distance of years.

SFFWorld Official Reviews: The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man’s Fear, The Slow Regard of Silent Things

8. Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson

From the publisher:

Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasy cycle tells the story of Roshar, a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain. It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. As brutal wars rage over the control of these magical weapons, an ancient text called The Way of Kings tells of ancient times, the Knights Radiant, and perhaps the true cause of the war. The Knights Radiant must stand again.

9. Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

The popular urban fantasy series is a blending of mystery and fantasy. Harry Dresden is the only licensed wizard in the Chicago Yellow pages. He works with the Chicago PD on cases that are difficult to explain. The series has grown in popularity since the first volume, Storm Front, to the point that recent novels (Changes, Cold Front, and Skin Game) are automatic #1 New York Times bestsellers. The supernatural elements creep into the real world to a greater degree with each novel told through Harry’s snarky first-person voice.

10. Farseer by Robin Hobb

The Farseer trilogy began with Assassin’s Apprentice and told the story of a young boy named Fitz Chivalry abandoned by his family to live the fate of an unwanted, royal bastard. The series is told in Ms. Hobb’s extensive world and was expanded with the Tawny Man trilogy. Fool’s Assassin was recently released to high acclaim, re-sparking and continuing the much beloved relationship between the Fitz and the Fool. Some forumites often criticise the series’ major character Fitz being somewhat of a sad-sack. But it’s the way that Hobb combines the traditional elements of epic fantasy with a grace and melancholy that makes this series one of the forum’s favourites.

11. Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson

Donaldson’s ground-breaking fantasy series, about a cranky leper who has either been transported to a magical alternate world to be its savior or is suffering a massive hallucination from his illness, was nothing like anyone had seen before when Lord Foul’s Bane came out in 1977. The controversial series never took the easy path, delivering an epic both exciting and thought-provoking.

Donaldson’s work was part of the great post-Tolkien boom of the late 70s, along with Terry Brooks’ Sword of Shannara, that helped launch Del Rey Books. However, the two writers’ styles and stories could not be more different. Donaldson’s protagonist is Thomas Covenant, a divorced leper who finds himself thrust into The Land, a parallel fantasy world where magic is alive, most potently in his White Gold wedding band.  The saga concerns Covenant’s coming to grips with the reality of the land and his role as hero. The series is marked by florid prose and perhaps the most angry, bitter, and unlikeable protagonist in all of fantasy, yet the story is fascinating.

12. The Dark Tower by Stephen King

From Wikipedia:

The Dark Tower is a series of books written by American author Stephen King, which incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, science fantasy, horror, and Western. It describes a “gunslinger” and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. King has described the series as his magnum opus. In addition to the eight novels of the series proper that comprise 4,250 pages, many of King’s other books relate to the story, introducing concepts and characters that come into play as the series progresses. A series of prequel comics followed the completion of the novels.

13. Broken Empire by Mark Lawrence

From the publisher:

Once a privileged royal child, raised by a loving mother, Jorg Ancrath has become the Prince of Thorns, a charming, immoral boy leading a grim band of outlaws in a series of raids and atrocities. The world is in chaos: violence is rife, nightmares everywhere. Jorg’s bleak past has set him beyond fear of any man, living or dead, but there is still one thing that puts a chill in him. Returning to his father’s castle Jorg must confront horrors from his childhood and carve himself a future with all hands turned against him.

14. The Prince of Nothing by R Scott Bakker

The first installment in this series published in 2003, The Darkness that Comes Before, was a bold salvo in the epic fantasy genre and perhaps the first to take the baton of Grimdark that authors like George R.R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie laid out.  The story takes place on Eärwa. The Prince of Nothing itself is just the opening trilogy of a ‘super-series’ called the Second Apocalypse.

Bakker blurs the line with his protagonist, Anasûrimbor Kellhus, for he is presented initially as a savior but as the series progresses, it is implied by others that he may be the lynchpin for a second apocalypse. More than any fantasy series, philosophy is a foundational element, which is no surprise since Bakker holds a PhD in philosophy.  These first three books are brilliant, thought-provoking, and challenging in nearly every imaginable way.

SFFWorld Official Reviews: The Darkness that Comes Before, The Warrior-Prophet, The Aspect Emperor

15. Memory Sorrow Thorn by Tad Williams

From Wikipedia:

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is Tad Williams’s epic fantasy trilogy, comprising The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Stone of Farewell (1990), and To Green Angel Tower (1993). The paperback publication of To Green Angel Tower was divided into two volumes, so paperback readers may consider Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn to be a tetralogy rather than a trilogy.

The books are set on the continent of Osten Ard, whose inhabitants include Sithi (elf-like immortals), Qanuc (troll-like mountain-dwellers), and other races, as well as several distinct human nations. The youthful conquests of King John the Presbyter (also called Prester John) united most of the human world into a single realm, but by the beginning of the first book, the former conqueror is too old and feeble to stop his sons from quarreling. As the conflict widens throughout their world and beyond, a young orphan struggles to understand enough of it to survive.

16. The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny

From Wikipedia:

The Chronicles of Amber is a series of fantasy novels written by Roger Zelazny. The main series consists of two story arcs, each five novels in length. Additionally, there are a number of Amber short stories and other works.

The Amber stories take place in two “true” worlds: Amber, and the Courts of Chaos, as well as the shadows that lie between them. These shadows, including our Earth, are parallel worlds that exist in the tension between the two true worlds of Amber and the Courts. The Courts of Chaos is situated in Shadow at the very edge of the pit of Chaos itself, a seething cauldron from which all that is or ever will be comes. Royals of Amber who have negotiated the Pattern can travel freely through the shadows. By shifting between shadows, one can alter or create a new reality by choosing which elements of which shadows to keep, and which to subtract. Members of the Courts of Chaos who have traversed the Logrus are also able to travel through shadow.

17. The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

The Book of the New Sun is a tetralogy of science fantasy novels by American author Gene Wolfe. The series chronicles the journey of Severian, a disgraced torturer who is exiled by his guild and forced to travel to the far off city Thrax. It is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator and set in the distant future during the final years of the dying sun. Each of the four original volumes won at least one major fantasy or science fiction award as the year’s “Best Novel”, and while Wolfe’s use of archaic, obscure language to describe the world of the far future may be too challenging for many forumites, the series has been celebrated for its deeper meanings and hidden beauty as an enduring classic of the field.

What can be said about Gene Wolfe that others haven’t already said more eloquently. The oft-quoted phrase is that Wolfe is “the greatest writer in the English language alive today.” That’s a hard one to argue and The Book of the New Sun is his most famous work. Like Rothfuss’s work, BotNS can be seen as a Bildungsroman – it charts the growth of Severian the torturer from that role to Autarch, the highest role in the world. Severian is the prime example of unreliable narrator, despite claiming a perfect memory to the reader as the first person narrator. Though one may think this to be a fantasy series, it is actually a Science Fiction setting of the Dying Earth subgenre, taking place countless millennia in Earth’s future. Brilliant prose, fantastic setting and distinctive protagonist will always place this saga near the top of any best/favorite genre listing.

18. Discworld by Terry Pratchett

From Wikipedia:

Discworld is a comic fantasy book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett (1948 – 2015), set on the fictional Discworld, a flat disc balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A’Tuin. The books frequently parody or take inspiration from J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft and William Shakespeare, as well as mythology, folklore and fairy tales, often using them for satirical parallels with current cultural, political and scientific issues. The series is popular, with more than 80 million books sold in 37 languages.

19. Bas-Lag (or New Crobuzon) by China Mieville

From the Goodreads:

New Crobuzon is a fictional city-state created by China Miéville and located in his fictional world of Bas-Lag. It is prominently featured in both Perdido Street Station and Iron Council, and serves as a plot device and background for The Scar.

20. The Acts of Caine by Mathew Stover

(Excerpted from Rob Bedford’s Acts of Caine Completist column at SF Signal.)

The first book, Heroes Die was published in 1998 and introduced readers to Hari Michaelson, the actor in the employ of Adventures Unlimited who portrays the assassin Caine, the most popular Adventurer in Overworld, a fantasyland in a parallel dimension which is exploited as the ultimate reality television experience. Caine is on what is thought to be his last Adventure – For Love of Pallas Rill – to save his estranged wife from the sorcerer Ma’elKoth who has aspirations of ascending to godhood. Subsequent novels in the series are Blade of Tyshalle, Caine Black Knife, and Caine’s Law.

All the books are available electronically, but for reasons that few people I’ve corresponded with outside of the publishing industry can understand, the second book Blade of Tyshalle is the only book of the four not available in physical format in the US. A couple of years ago, Orbit UK released the four books as ebooks.

There you have it. Our “unofficial” Top 20 list.

It’s interesting to note that only two female authors made it into our forum’s top favorites. And of all the 147 series mentioned, only 31 were written by women (21 percent). We suspect that has a lot to do with who happens to frequent our forum. We are sure if we had posed this question elsewhere on the internet, the results would be very different.

Click through to the original post for the raw data and more interesting facts.

How about you? What’s your favorite fantasy series?

© 2015 N. E. White / KatG / Rob Bedford / Luke Brown

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