SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for books where the MC is a perfectly normal human being and then gets introduced to the fantasy/scifi world. Preferably not YA please, but may consider it if it comes highly recommended.

Any suggestions will be helpful :) thanks all

Hi! Here are some ideas that I really enjoyed:

Lucy wrote: "Hi everyone,

I'm looking for books where the MC is a perfectly normal human being and then gets introduced to the fantasy/scifi world. Preferably not YA please, but may consider it if it comes hi..."

You might try The Song of Albion Collection, about an Oxford student who goes looking for a lost friend in the Celtic Otherworld.

An older series that I liked a lot wasThe World of Tiers by Philip José Farmer. It starts with The Maker of Universes.

Another series I enjoyed a long time ago is The Apprentice Adept series by Piers Anthony starting with Split Infinity . A scientific world that intersects with a magical world and there are places where they intersect.

There's a number of older books of this type, was popular in the 80s.

The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenberg, series

The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay, series

The River of Dancing Gods by Jack L. Chalker, series

Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen R. Donaldson, series

Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff, series

**The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson, series

Silverlock by John Myers Myers

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock


**The Doomfarers of Coramonde by Brian Daley, 2 books

Magic Kingdom For Sale/Sold by Terry Brooks, series


A newer one - Miserere: An Autumn Tale by Teresa Frohock


** means I haven't read them, might be terrible :)

How about Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere? A normal downtrodden Londoner gets sucked into an alternate world...

Following on Michele's post, I remember enjoying The Dragon and the George, but it has been 30+ years since I read it.

I think this is similar to the old "Going Down the Rabbit Hole" trope, repopularized by The Matrix, which uses the same gambit of an ordinary man awaking to the fact that his world is Not What It Seems. Besides Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Narnia and Oz are also good examples of this.

Charles de Lint's stories set in Newford often have this sort of thing happen, where ordinary people suddenly discover magic is all around them.

Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster, series.

The Riverworld series by Philip Jose Farmer is sort of like this.

Thank you for your help everyone! Ive started with Neverwhere and will work my way down the list. Im sure ill enjoy them all

You could read my own HOW LIKE A GOD. A guy with a Plymouth Voyager and kids, and then life gets strange.

The World of Tiers is old, but great! And I liked it much better than the Chronicles of Amber, which was inspired by World of Tiers.

I'd also like to recommend the Seventh Sword trilogy by Dave Duncan ( The Reluctant Swordsman ).

I would suggest London Falling by Paul Cornell.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

The story is about a group of police constables who get confronted with supernatural foes and have to find ways to deal with them, without the possibility of receiving supernatural help from witches, mages or whoever. Very readable, and first book in a new series (2 books out so far)

Best regards,
Andy

Hi all! I saw this thread and two series immediately popped into my head. The first was already mentioned; the Magical Kingdom of Landover books by Terry Brooks. The humor in that series always appealed to me. Just the concept a bored, rich earthling accidentally purchasing a "fixer upper" magical kingdom, and suddenly finding himself its king, is hilarious!

The other is the Spellsong Cycle, by L.E. Modesitt Jr. That series features the traditional common person suddenly sucked into a fantasy world. What sets it apart is that the person in question is female, (a rare female MC in fantasy), and she is a soprano opera singer. The world she lands in is in turmoil, and users of magic are rare, but magic in that world is performed by singing verses into spells. As a trained opera diva, she can command magic on a level almost never heard of before, but the first order of business before her is to choose a side to support.

Both are fun, but if you want a series that has a more epic feel to it, I'd recommend the Spellsong Cycle books.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson has a protagonist that's whisked away to a fantasy world. The hero is a leper, so he thinks that if he stops his self-care and starts believing in the fantasy world, he'll die. They are pretty dark books, so be prepared :-)

I'd second the recommendation of Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionovar Tapestry (which starts with the summer tree)...a group of University students from Toronto are taken to a fantasy world, and that plays out in interesting ways.

Damien wrote: "Hi all! I saw this thread and two series immediately popped into my head. The first was already mentioned; the Magical Kingdom of Landover books by Terry Brooks. The humor in that series always ..."

I love that book (I just have the first one)! Thanks for reminding me. It's coming up in my "re-read" cycle and now I'm going to have a problem keeping my hands off of it until its turn comes up.

Another good Gaiman selection, in addition to Neverwhere, Anansi Boys fits this bill nicely.

Leaning toward the dark side, Horns by Joe Hill was fun.

Valerie wrote: "Another good Gaiman selection, in addition to Neverwhere, Anansi Boys fits this bill nicely.

Leaning toward the dark side, Horns by Joe Hill ..."

i'd recommend Neverwhere its a fantastic book.

Steph wrote: "How about Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere? A normal downtrodden Londoner gets sucked into an alternate world..."

to be pedantic Richard Mayhew is a downtrodden Scottish man in London.

I bet you're not being pedantic - I bet it makes a difference. Now I have further motivation to read the book, thanks a lot, Pickle. ;)

Pickle wrote: "...to be pedantic Richard Mayhew is a downtrodden Scottish man in London..."

There's few of us in London who were actually born here!