The 30 Best Fantasy Book Series of All Time

[Caelia]

Me:

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis: I have read all the books and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is in fact not the first book.

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling: I have read and own all of the books. I love the series and would recommend it to everyone.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman: Very good series.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien: The writing itself takes a bit to become accustomed to but still enjoyed it all the same.


Also Me: Bookmarking the list to read the rest of the books

[Kaspider]

It's pretty disappointing that I have read only a few of these.

Harry Potter
LOTR
Mistborn (first book only)
The Wheel of Time

I still have the Wheel of Time hangover and Mistborn didn't do any good. It was too simple after reading the huge Wheel of Time. A song of Ice and Fire just doesn't do it for me.

I was thinking of reading the Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams or The Way of the Kings by Sanderson.

Which one do you think is the closest to The Wheel of Time?

[Madame BookWyrm]

As I can immediately recall, my favourites are as follows, in no particular order:


Mistborn (both trilogies and the side books)

Stormlight Chronicles

Harry Potter series

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe series

Dragonriders of Pern series (until her son took over)

Belgariad series

The Incarnations series

Madeleine L'Engle's series - all (I adore the way they weave in and out of each other, each touching other books so subtly but effectively. It is quite stimulating!)

[HannibalBarca]

I did much, much more reading of fantasy as a preteen, teen, and twentysomething than I do now.  Most fantasy I read is me and my partners' work here on Elliquiy; I spend more time reading science fiction novels, biographies, history, and science these days.

The Chronicles of Prydain -- I loved these books in my early teens.  It's easy to identify with the main character, who, like so many other fantasy protagonists, is apparently an orphan with something special about him.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant -- I read the first one, and never checked out any of the rest.  Unlike so many books I've read, I remember very little of the story other than the main character.  Perhaps it was just a point in my life where the story didn't resonate with me.

Dragonriders of Pern -- Read as a teen, and loved the ones I read, which I think was the first five or six.

The Earthsea Cycle -- God, yes.  These drove a nail through my heart as a teen.  Character-driven rather than plot-driven like LotR.  The first one was one of the few books that brought me to tears at points in the story.

Harry Potter -- First read it with my ex, then to my son, who is now a forever fan of them.  Another character-driven series, and thus much more emotional in many ways.

The Lord of the Rings -- The granddaddy and my favorite.  First fantasy series ever read by me, and the yardstick by which all others are measured.  I've read it perhaps 15 times now in my 48 years.

Shannara -- As derivative as the first one obviously is of LotR, it was still a great read.  The ending of the second truly surprised me.  The

shhh!

death of Allanon

brought me to tears in the third.  The next series was decent, until the absolutely horrific close of that series in the last book, which was tied up in all of two pages or so.  Unforgivable, and I haven't read a Brooks series since.

The Wheel of Time -- I read the first four, and my interest waned by then.  Up to that point, the characters were deep and engaging, though.

I found the lack of some series startling, but then again, it is a personal list, and no one can possibly have read every fantasy series in existence.  My own list of exemplary series would include:

The Chronicles of Amber
The Book of Swords series
Michael Moorcock's Elric and Corum series
Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser books

[CrystalMaeGranger]

I was sad "The Inharatence Series" (Eragon books) wasn't on there.  :-(