6 of the Best Fantasy Books of All Time

There are TONS of great fantasy books out there, and plenty of solid Best Fantasy Books of All Time lists. But what are the best fantasy books that have inspired the most readers and writers? The books (and authors) that stoked the creative minds of generations of authors?
Also, this is the first video of D3 Reads, so welcome! This is the "BookTube" channel of our pop culture home ‪@damperthree‬, where we discuss movies and tv shows. If you like what you see, please give us a follow!

[@cmotdever]

Pratchett/Discworld have basically 3 main story arcs. The Watch, The Witches, The Goings On in Ankh Morpork (Service, Trade, and Industry). Each bleed over into the others, and his ability to weave three or four story arcs in a single novel and wrap them all together is amazing. It would be a lie to say he hasn't changed the way I think about society and the world around me.

[@tomheinle1049]

Susan Cooper's YA series The Dark is Rising.Charles de Lint, Urban Fantasy start with "Someplace to be Flying" Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series. Fred Saberhagen's Swords books.

[@thomassmith6232]

I would Include Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. Also Magic, Inc. by Robert A. Heinlein and the Operation Chaos stories by Poul Anderson for those who enjoy the Magic in the Modern World genre.

[@D3Reads]

So this is pretty sad: my only exposure to Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is through Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (they were included in the Deities and Demigods book). I did read a story in the mid-1980s, but recall very little of it. Now that you bring this up, I feel like I need to address this gap in my reading, and quick. Thanks so much!

[@danmills8984]

@@D3Reads those stories are very much worth your time! Poul Anderson is as well. Zelazny is also a major contributor- I like to call him the best Science Fiction and Fantasy writers no one talks about. Zelazny published books in '65-'66 and one won the first Nebula Award (tied actually with Frank Herbert's Dune!) Also, regarding Tolkien, I've recently read The Voyage To Arcturus which was a major influence on Tolkien he's said. A sort of sci-fantasy Theo-dyssey of a extraplanetary philosophical journey- man, there are some concepts in that book that rocked my world. I very much recommend it! Media Death Cult actually did a great video on it which finally convinced me to pull it down off the shelf.

[@jebgordon6608]

Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword (1954) and Three Heart and Three Lions (1961) are both great and should be more widely read. The Broken Sword came out the same year as The Fellowship of the Ring and features another writer drawing upon many of the same influences as Tolkien, but taking those influences and going a completely different way.

[@D3Reads]

I'm ashamed to admit that I am not familiar with Anderson. I looked this up and it sounds great. So it's now on my Must Read list for 2024. Thanks so much!

[@AgnosticTruth]

Completely agree with your list. Definitely the heavyweights of Fantasy! Pratchett and Martin are definitely the most worthy of recent history to join Howard, Tolkien, Lewis and Moorcock in the hall of fame.

[@D3Reads]

Thanks! We really appreciate that! with so many great authors out there, we're going to have to eventually expand this list. Who who you think to add to a "Top 10 list?" I know we left off Ursula K Le Guin.

[@AgnosticTruth]

Lord Dunsany, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and even though he might be leaning more SF than Fantasy, I’d put Jack Vance up there. Modern authors; maybe Gaiman and Sanderson. I’m interested to see your top 10.

[@danmills8984]

Thank you for giving Mr. Robert E. Howard his due. Another great video.

[@D3Reads]

Thanks so much! Robert E. Howard has had an outsized effect on fantasy, both literature and ultimately cinematic. A fantasy list isn't complete without him. You gave me a great suggestion for horror writers, do you have any fantasy writers not included here?

[@tomheinle1049]

Steven R Donaldson and his First and Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant should be somewhere on the list. His writing has the ability to draw you into the story so deeply that you feel like you are in the world and not merely reading about it.

[@D3Reads]

I never read the Thomas Covenant books, and for a really dumb reason: when I was in high school I became a Tolkien superfan. At one point I picked up a copy of Lord Foul's Bane and one of the critic blurbs compared it to The Lord of the Rings, and I instantly disliked it. I read a chapter or so and never got further because I somehow took offense (I wasn't a very rational teenager, when it came to this sort of thing). After I grew up, I never went back, which I really regret. So now I have to put it on my Must Read List and bump it up toward the top. Thanks for the comment!

[@Melissa.Ringstaff]

I wish I could say I read fantasy books. But I’ve mostly just seen the movies. I did read some of the Chronicles of Narnia books as a kid though. 😅 Great list and definitely piqued my interest in them!

[@D3Reads]

Chronicles of Narnia are excellent, so at least you've already read some of the best fantasy out there!

[@alassesinda]

Tolkien is obviously the greatest influence on Fantasy there is! But another author that deserves to be praised especially for their influence on a different take on the Tolkien-esque take on fantasy is Tad Williams. His "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn" and the follow-up "Last King of Osten-Ard". Tad Williams' work was also the reason George RR Martin started writing "A Song of Ice and Fire".

[@D3Reads]

Wow, this is another case where I missed out on an author that I'd have thought I'd know. Thanks for pointing him out. I'll have to add him to my ever growing Must Read List.

[@jeanfish7]

The dragons of pern series was good too

[@D3Reads]

I hate to admit that I've never made it to the Pern books. Like with so many great suggestions here, it's not that I didn't want to read them. They've always sounded interesting and I remember seeing great reviews (I think in Dragon Magazine back in the 1980s). My "Must Read" list is really getting huge, thanks!

[@homerthompson23]

My all time favorite book series is Wheel of Time. It gets a lot of heat, but I don't see why. Each story arc is a slow burn to a big payoff. If you don't like that style, then the series isn't for you. Robert Jordan's greatest strength is his ability to put characters in situations where even when they succeed it's not in the way they intended, which pushes the plot in a new direction and keeps the story moving. I think Brandon Sanderson's strength is that he did an even better job of giving Matrim funny dialogue without messing up the tone. I particularly like how he handled Talmanes as well.

[@D3Reads]

Robert Jordan certainly deserves to be listed among the best fantasy writers of the latter 20th century, and he probably belongs on our list every bit as much as GRR Martin, maybe even more so since he not only created his own world but also fleshed out Conan. So is we revisit this topic again in the future (which we almost certainly will, in some form), we'd add Jordan and a few other authors as well. Thanks for your comment!

[@Alkemisti]

I would put George MacDonald, Lord Dunsany, Ursula K. Le Guin, and perhaps Mervyn Peake on the Most Influential list. Peake oftentimes gets forgotten when people say that Tolkien created the modern genre of fantasy, even though Peake put out _Gormenghast_ before _The Lord of the Rings_ came out. I don't think George R. R. Martin is one of the most influential. It is too early to say how lasting his influence will be, and I would rather credit Glen Cook for inventing grimdark.

[@D3Reads]

YES! ESPECIALLY Ursula K. Le Guin. That's the author I was referring to at the end of the video. I read her work years ago, and wanted to reacquaint myself with Earthsea because there was a lot I couldn't recall.

[@RatsWithLaserGuns]

I wonder if Mercedes Lackey would make such a list, perhaps underrated authors? I had never heard of her before, until book 1 of her newest trilogy came into the bookstore i work at. I was surprised to see she has over 100 novels in her Valdemar series. I started reading the first book of her trilogy, and I really like her way of constructing lore , the way she writes characters, and her scientific approach to magic, ie the magic has an intrinsic set of rules and logic. A Hard-Magic system if you will. Also a perfect book for anyone who loves horses. I would also tentatively like to suggest anne rice's interview with a vampire for establishing the modern take and aesthetic of vampires (that is NOT twilight lol) It basically goes bram stoker -> anne rice. Then there's jay kristoff who wrote the single most indulgent book ever for anyone whose a fan of dark, gothic, vampire fantasy which i feel had to have drawn from anne rice in some way. The book being Empire of the Vampire, my only gripe with that book being the title but that's just my opinion. I've also heard a lot of good things about The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, but havent gotten around to reading that yet. Also Wheel of Time, which inspired my personal favourite video game series Dragon Age.

[@D3Reads]

I love how many authors I'm learning and hearing about here. I'm not familiar with Mercedes Lackey, but I will certainly add her to my quickly growing list of authors I need to check out, so thank you! Anne Rice is amazing, and we plan on doing a "best of vampires" episode in the coming months. She will obviously be at the top, alongside Bram Stoker, if I may be that bold. I absolutely loved Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat. I didn't care for Queen of the Damned so much (well, I loved the first half, then didn't care for the resolution). But then the Tale of the Body Thief so creative that I enjoyed it. That's a long way of saying I love Anne Rice's vampires! Just started Eye of the World! thanks for all the fantastic suggestions!

[@jeanfish7]

The Ender series is very good

[@D3Reads]

I loved Ender's Game, but never went on to read the others. Not because I didn't want to read them, I just never got to. They're back on my list now though!

[@WELinde]

Impossible to really rank order these guys, though I think Tolkien is the greatest of all time. After that... not sure

[@naxgulengames9863]

I am a great fan of Tolkien's stories but, I was never a fan of his writing style and I feel that might have been what turned many away from them.

[@D3Reads]

I think there's definitely something to that. Maybe it's an old-fashioned kind of storytelling? I personally love his style, to the point that when I tried my own hand at writing I couldn't stop trying to replicate it...which led to some pretty dense, second-rate stories. Are there authors from his era that you prefer?

[@douglasphillips5870]

You mentioned Robert Jordan in passing. I would put the original Wheel of Time trilogy in with the best fantasy books

[@D3Reads]

I think a lot of folks agree with you! In all honesty, I haven't finished the Wheel of Time, but that's not because of anything against Jordan. I'm actually fascinated by him and his background. When we originally made this video, I had Jordan on the list but cut him and GRR Martin because they were both more recent (and therefore arguably not as "influential"). But Martin got put back in and Jordan didn't, and I now think we should have had both. Thanks so much for your comment, I learn a lot from fans of the genre!

[@carley_1507]

Well, compared to the writers you've mentioned (who are undoubtedly the GOATs) Brandon Sanderson is pretty recent. But even though he has not been in the industry for that long he is the new renewer of fantasy, he is my favourite writer at the moment and none of his books are bad. He has this universe called Cosmere (which is so difficult to explain barely no one has full knowledge of it) that connects most of his book sagas, kind of similar to what Terry Pratchet does but in a really creative way. So you should definitively check out some Sanderson, he is going to be even bigger that he is now in fantasy.

[@D3Reads]

He is everywhere! A friend recommended him to me recently too. And he seems like a genuinely nice guy. I haven't yet read his work but he's close to to the top of my must read list. Thanks for that!

[@d.wayneharbison8691]

David Eddings' Belgariad is THE best fantasy series ever written.