Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

Dragonlance Chronicles (Weis and Hickman). Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, Dragons of Spring Dawning. It's a great standalone trilogy, but be warned it's also the gateway drug to a big series.

First of all, I love your ID picture. I watched a ton of Slayers anime in high school. Definitely a big nostalgia trip for me. Lina Inverse is one of my favorite anime characters after Vash the Stampede.

A lot of great books set in the various D&D settings came out in the 90s.

A couple of my favorites are:

The Night Parade by Scott Ciencin. Set in the Forgotten Realms. It's about a horde of bizarre monsters trying to invade the Realms from another dimension.

The Tribe of One trilogy by Simon Hawke. Set in the Dark Sun world (think D&D mixed with Mad Max). It's about the journey of Sorak, a man with multiple personalities, trying to find a being called The Wanderer who can hopefully tell him more about his past. The three books are The Outcast, The Seeker and The Nomad.

The Cloakmaster Cycle- set in the Spelljammer universe (D&D in Space!). It's about a man trying to find the legendary ship Spelljammer, which looks like a gigantic mantra ray with a city on its back. The series is six books long, but a very quick read. And the weird space-fantasy setting is a lot of fun.

Beyond D&D there's also the Death Gate Cycle series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. The setting is a quartet of worlds each embodying the four basic elements- earth, air, fire, water. A man named Haplo is sent out by his master, Lord Xar, to explore these worlds to find traces of the vanished race that imprisoned Haplo and Xar's people in a deadly Labyrinth millennia ago.

The series is 7 books long, but like the Cloakmaster Cycle it reads very fast. This was my absolute favorite series in middle school.

I was going to say Dragonlance too, since that's what I read when I was in high school in the 90's. Though as girl I didn't make it public since it seemed a very "boy" kind of book :) I have to credit it to be one of the books that really started to get me into fantasy and dragons and such, so apparently it's a gateway drug into fantasy in general. Looks like you're already addicted so you should be fine.

In elementary school I was all horses (along the lines of Walter Farley or Marguerite Henry) though that did let me branch out into unicorns and from that into other fantastical creatures. In fact it was a long time before I picked a book not based on the creature it was about.

Though I was already into The Hobbit and LotR :)

I definitely read all the Pern stuff in the 90s and thought it was great - major foundation of who I am today

The Belgariad might fit the bill.
The Forgotten Realms were running at the same time as Dragonlance, so maybe The Crystal Shard as a starter.

John wrote: "First of all, I love your ID picture. I watched a ton of Slayers anime in high school. Definitely a big nostalgia trip for me. Lina Inverse is one of my favorite anime characters after Vash the Sta..."

Robert wrote: "Dragonlance Chronicles (Weis and Hickman). Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Dragons of Winter Night, Dragons of Spring Dawning. It's a great standalone trilogy, but be warned it's also the gateway drug ..."


Edit: I'm getting the group rules tagged to this post. Did I accidentally swear again, because I quadruple checked this post, and I don't see any swear words.


*Sttupid hipsterness of mine removed.*

(seriously though, I've looked into the Dragonlance series. It's not for me,,sorry. By all means though, please do recommend some novels like it, as I certainly love the concept!)

John wrote: "First of all, I love your ID picture. I watched a ton of Slayers anime in high school. Definitely a big nostalgia trip for me. Lina Inverse is one of my favorite anime characters after Vash the Sta..."

Ah, another person after my teenage heard. I would have LOVED forgotten Realms back then. Can you recommend some more books within it? That's where I think we're gonna hit gold! Just give me black and white stories please, so no Drizz't.

And and I love Trigun too. It has such a huge sentimental value for me.

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Andy wrote: "The Belgariad might fit the bill.
The Forgotten Realms were running at the same time as Dragonlance, so maybe The Crystal Shard as a starter."

*Stupd hipstersness of mine removed*

Considering my remergence of love for pulp, I'd probably like Drizz't again. Gonna check em out.

you know what? Change of plans. The idea is that I'm going from goosebumps to fantasy, and I would likely want more long series. Gonna start over again.

Edit: That said, I'm still gonna add books to the list. Please do keep popping in suggestions.

Have you tried Katherine Kerr's Deverry series? Daggerspell , the first one, was published in 1986 and the series was big in the 90s. Certainly a series that made me a fantasy enthusiast. It is a mix of primarily Celtic world, with magic and elves and is quite complex - with the implications of immortality and reincarnation threaded through - not all sweetness and light at all. Definitely some goosebumps available. The original Deverry series is complete and there is a sequel series too (which I've not read all of, on my to-do list.)
Been meaning to do a re-read of the first series but can't find which box they are in.....moved house a while back and Deverry is currently absent. :(

Came back to add - Barbara Hambly. Saw a reference to the excellent The Ladies of Mandrigyn on the what people are reading thread. There is definitely a goosebump moment in there. Series is now in collected book The Sun Wolf and Starhawk Series: The Ladies of Mandrigyn, The Witches of Wenshar, and The Dark Hand of Magic and Hambly is releasing some "later in the lives of" eBook novellas that follow on from this series and others.

Carro wrote: "Have you tried Katherine Kerr's Deverry series? Daggerspell , the first one, was published in 1986 and the series was big in the 90s. Certainly a series that made me a fantasy enthusi..."

Ladies sounds interesting. I'll add it.

Let us go back in time a bit further to the 1970s. Without Ballantine's Adult Fantasy imprint, edited by Lin Carter there probably wouldn't be much original fantasy on the shelves. The first book original issued by Carter as editor was Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz. Ballantine morphed into Del Rey which published The Sword of Shanarra. The Deryni books are fantasy without elves and dragons. The Deryni can use magic, something the Church considers evil. Best read in publication order. Kurtz improves as an author with each book. She revised the original trilogy a while back when it was re-released by Ace. In today's market Deryni Rising might well be considered a YA book.

Gary wrote: "Let us go back in time a bit further to the 1970s. Without Ballantine's Adult Fantasy imprint, edited by Lin Carter there probably wouldn't be much original fantasy on the shelves. The first book o..."

Sounds pretty interesting, and I'm glad that you found something you can really get into, but anything -pre-80's I find very intimitdating, Please don't take it personally, and it's just a personal problem of mine. I'm trying to overcome it.

The first author that comes to my mind is Barbara Hambly I notice someone else recommended her work too. These were my favorite series of hers:

Darwath.
The original Darwath Trilogy were her first novels, written in the early 1980s. The writing isn’t as solid as it would later become, but I really liked this series for its originality and outstanding world building. The last 2 books in the 5 book set were written in the mid ’90s. Creepy and cool.

The Windrose Chronicles. These are a bit dated, since they melded early computer tech (late ’80s ….remember floppy discs?) with a parallel world of magic in the midst of its Industrial Revolution. They are sort of pre-steampunk but still have the author’s signature blend of science, religion, politics, and magic.

Sun Wolf and Starhawk. This is a trilogy more in the classic fantasy mode, written in the late ’80s early ’90s. No parallel worlds but lots of fascinating stuff about the nature of magic and the human psyche. I really adored these characters.

I also read a lot of Tanith Lee in the ’80s and ‘90s but I can’t swear as to what year anything was written. The woman was extremely prolific and I read scads of her stuff. The five books that make up Tales of the Flat Earth are still my favorites. They are beautifully written.