anchored on:secondary world
series4 books1922
completed
similar bysecondary worldpolitical intriguefantasy
The Zimiamvian Trilogy is a series of fantasy novels by English author E. R. Eddison.Mistress of Mistresses (1935) A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941) The Mezentian Gate (1958)
series13 books1954
part of Tolkien's legendarium
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The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
series2 books1937
completed
part of Tolkien's legendarium
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The Hobbit (1937) is J. R. R. Tolkien's children's fantasy novel following the reluctant burglar Bilbo Baggins, who joins a company of dwarves and the wizard Gandalf on a journey to reclaim treasure guarded by the dragon Smaug. It stands as a complete adventure on its own, but shares its setting with the rest of Tolkien's legendarium and leads into the events of The Lord of the Rings.
series1 book2012
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Saladin Ahmed's The Crescent Moon Kingdoms opens with Throne of the Crescent Moon, set in a realm of djenn and ghuls where a power struggle between an iron-fisted Khalif and a mysterious master thief called the Falcon Prince erupts alongside a series of brutal, supernatural murders. A handful of reluctant heroes must uncover the truth behind the killings before the kingdom tears itself apart.
universe6 books1989
Start hereElenium · Start here
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Sir Sparhawk is not a young man, and he has little patience for the pageantry his order pretends to. A Pandion Knight of the militant Elene Church, he rides home from a long exile to find his kingdom rotten with intrigue and his young queen, Ehlana, poisoned — kept alive only inside a shell of living crystal. To wake her he must find Bhelliom, a jewel with the power to remake the world or unmake it. So begins a long ride across the continent of Eosia. This is warm, character-first epic fantasy from David Eddings, told across two trilogies. The Elenium — The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, The Sapphire Rose — pits Sparhawk against a corrupt church and a hungry elder god. The Tamuli — Domes of Fire, The Shining Ones, The Hidden City — carries him east into the vast Tamul Empire, where older enemies stir. Around him gathers a quarrelsome company: the Styric sorceress Sephrenia, the thief-boy Talen, the plain-spoken squire Kurik, and a small, imperious goddess who plays a set of pipes and always, somehow, gets her way. The pleasure here is the talk — grizzled knights trading dry insults between miracles and murders, a hero who solves as many problems with patience as with a sword. It never reaches for grimness or grand obscurity; it wants your good company for a long journey. Newcomers begin with The Diamond Throne and read the six in order: the Elenium stands whole on its own before the Tamuli widens the map.
series205 books1932
part of Hyborian Age
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The Conan books are sword and sorcery fantasies featuring the character of Conan the Cimmerian originally created by Robert E. Howard. Written by numerous authors and issued by numerous publishers, they include both novels and short stories, the latter assembled in various combinations over the years by the several publishers. The character has proven durably popular, resulting in Conan stories being produced after Howard's death by such later writers as Poul Anderson, Leonard Carpenter, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, Roland J. Green, John C. Hocking, Robert Jordan, Sean A. Moore, Björn Nyberg, Andrew J. Offutt, Steve Perry, John Maddox Roberts, Harry Turtledove, and Karl Edward Wagner. Some of these writers finished incomplete Conan manuscripts by Howard, or rewrote Howard stories which originally featured different characters. Most post-Howard Conan stories, however, are completely original works. In total, more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories featuring the Conan character have been written by authors other than Howard. This article describes and discusses notable book editions of the Conan stories.
series14 books1996
part of World of Ice and Fire
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A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of high fantasy novels by the American author George R. R. Martin. Martin began writing the first volume, A Game of Thrones, in 1991, and published it in 1996. Martin, who originally envisioned the series as a trilogy, has released five out of seven planned volumes. The most recent entry in the series, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011. Since then, Martin has been working on the sixth novel, titled The Winds of Winter. A seventh novel, A Dream of Spring, is planned to follow.
universe526 books1987
Start hereForgotten Realms: The Legend of Drizzt · Start here
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Come in from the cold and mind the door — the wind off the Sword Coast has teeth. Faerûn is a lived-in world, the best-charted of the many lands that share the sky of Toril: a continent of walled cities and haunted wilds where the gods are near enough to answer, magic is a craft with rules and a cost, and every tavern hearth throws light on someone with a blade, a grudge, or a tale worth the telling. Beneath it all lies the Underdark, that black underland where the drow raise their spider-city of Menzoberranzan; above, the merchant towers of Waterdeep, the frost of Icewind Dale, the ruin-strewn North. This is the sword-and-sorcery world of Dungeons & Dragons rendered into prose — grand, generous, and endlessly walkable. It is a world of many hands, and the shelf shows it: some five hundred novels across eighty-odd cycles, uneven as any long telling but rich past counting. R. A. Salvatore's dark-elf ranger Drizzt Do'Urden anchors the whole — the Icewind Dale and Dark Elf trilogies and the long saga that follows. Ed Greenwood, who first dreamed the Realms, chronicles the Old Mage in the Elminster books. Around them turn the god-walking Avatar cycle and its Time of Troubles, the six-author War of the Spider Queen, Salvatore's Cleric Quintet, and Elaine Cunningham's elf-and-drow songs; Troy Denning and a company of others fill the marches between. What holds it together is warmth — the register of a bard who wants you fed and seated before the tale turns. Newcomers should follow Drizzt first: read Homeland and the Dark Elf trilogy for his beginning, or The Crystal Shard as first readers met him. Either door opens the Realms; the other eighty cycles wait past it.
series6 books1968
completed
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The Novarian series is a sequence of fantasy stories by L. Sprague de Camp, published between 1968 and 1989. The series contains some of de Camp's most innovative works of fantasy, featuring explorations of various political systems, an inversion of the "rags to royalty" pattern characteristic of much heroic fantasy, a satiric look at the foibles of humanity through the eyes of a demon, and a consistently wry and ironic take on conventions of the genre that plays out by taking them to their logical conclusions. Another singular feature of the series is its frequent use of folk tales integrated into the plot to painlessly convey something of the background and history of the invented world. This device obviates the need for lengthy appendices, as in The Lord of the Rings.
series27 books1950
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Dying Earth is a speculative fiction series by the American author Jack Vance, comprising four books originally published from 1950 to 1984. Some have been called picaresque. The series includes short story collections, fix-ups, and novels.
series8 books2002
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The Kingkiller Chronicle is a planned fantasy trilogy by the American writer Patrick Rothfuss. The first two books, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear, were released in 2007 and 2011. The books released in the series have sold over 10 million copies.
universe44 books1982
Start hereRiftwar Saga · Start here
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On the world of Midkemia a tear opens in the air itself, a rift hung between stars, and through it march the armies of an empire from another world entirely. So begins the chronicle Raymond E. Feist has kept for three decades: the tale of Pug, a castle kitchen boy apprenticed to a magician on the very day the invasion lands, and of Tomas, his friend, who inherits the armor and the ancient fury of a dead dragon-lord. Around these two the Riftwar Cycle turns, widening book by book from one besieged frontier keep into the whole history of a world of kingdoms, guilds, thieves' dens and mage-towers. The cycle runs to roughly thirty novels, gathered into arcs a newcomer can enter and finish on their own. The founding Riftwar Saga (Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon) sets the board; the Serpentwar Saga, Krondor's Sons and the Conclave of Shadows carry the story down the generations; the Darkwar, Demonwar and Chaoswar sagas bring it toward its close. Crossing the rift to the rival world of Kelewan, Feist and Janny Wurts wrote the Empire trilogy, opening with Daughter of the Empire, a court intrigue told wholly from the invaders' side and for many the finest thing here. Shorter Legends of the Riftwar and the game-born Riftwar Legacy fill the corners; later still, Feist opens an altogether new world in the Firemane books. Feist writes fantasy in its most companionable key: apprentices who grow into archmages, tavern boys who become spies and dukes, a world you return to the way you return to an old inn. The mood is adventure before dread, friendship and rank and hard-won craft, wars that cost something, all of it rendered plainly and at a gallop. Begin where it began, with Magician, then follow the arcs in the order they were written, and the rift will carry you the rest of the way.
series39 books1988
part of Forgotten Realms
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The Legend of Drizzt is a series of fantasy novels by R. A. Salvatore that began in 1988, and consists of 39 books as of August 15, 2023. They are based in the Forgotten Realms setting in the dimension of Abeir-Toril on the continent Faerûn in the Dungeons & Dragons universe currently published and owned by Wizards of the Coast. It combines the series The Dark Elf Trilogy, The Icewind Dale Trilogy, Legacy of the Drow, Paths of Darkness, The Hunter's Blades Trilogy, and other sets into an abridged compilation. Drizzt Do'Urden is the main character of most of the books.
series18 books1964
completed
part of Earthsea
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The Earthsea Cycle, also known as Earthsea, is a series of high fantasy books written by American author Ursula K. Le Guin. Beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972), the series was continued in Tehanu (1990), and Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. In 2018, all the novels and short stories were published in a single volume, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, with artwork by Charles Vess.
series10 books1997
completed
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Lord of the Isles is a series of books by author David Drake. In 1997, Drake began his largest fantasy series, Lord of the Isles, using elements of Sumerian religion and medieval-era technology. The series consists of nine books broken into two distinct parts, the Lord of the Isles consisting of the first six books, and a final trilogy dubbed the Crown of the Isles.
series7 books2008
part of Riyria
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The Riyria Revelations is a series of high fantasy novels written by Michael J. Sullivan and published by Orbit Books in 2011 and 2012. The series consists of three original titles, Theft of Swords, Rise of Empire, and Heir of Novron. The books were previously self-published as a six-volume series selling 90,000 copies.
series26 books1950
part of Narnia Universe
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The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven portal fantasy novels by British author C. S. Lewis. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published between 1950 and 1956, the series is set in the fictional realm of Narnia, a fantasy world of magic, mythical beasts, and talking animals. It narrates the adventures of various children who play central roles in the unfolding history of the Narnian world. Except in The Horse and His Boy, the protagonists are all children from the real world who are magically transported to Narnia, where they are sometimes called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia from evil. The books span the entire history of Narnia, from its creation in The Magician's Nephew to its eventual destruction in The Last Battle.
series13 books2001
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series15 books2012
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Throne of Glass is a epic fantasy novel series by American author Sarah J. Maas, beginning with the entry of the same name, released on August 2, 2012. The story follows the journey of Celaena Sardothien, a teenage assassin in a corrupt kingdom with a tyrannical ruler, the King of Adarlan. As the story progresses, Celaena forms unexpected bonds and uncovers a conspiracy amidst her adventures. The series concluded with the eighth book in October 2018.
series6 books1971
part of Moorcock's Multiverse
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series13 books1965
completed
similar byadventuroussecondary worldquestsfantasysword and sorcery
Centuries ago, the half-elf warrior Dilvish tried to stop a dark sorcerer named Jelerak from completing a terrible ritual, and paid for it by being turned to stone and having his soul cast into Hell. Roger Zelazny's Dilvish the Damned stories bring him back when the people he once protected need him again, reuniting him with his strange metal steed Black for a string of sword-and-sorcery adventures built around his long-delayed vengeance against Jelerak. The tales run as short, episodic quests rather than one continuous plot.
series2 books1871
completed
similar byadventuroussecondary worldquestsfantasy
Dave Duncanstandalone novel1987
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Sald Harl would like nothing more than to soar on the wings of his noble eagle, but his youthful rides in the sky are cut short by an appointment to guard the prince. Sald watches his dreams of flight fade with his name and independence as he takes over his bodyguard duties. During a perilous journey to the edges of the kingdom a dark secret comes to life. Now the great Prince Shadow is accused of treason and Sald must orchestrate a desperate plan of escape or he will lose the one thing he has been ordered to defend. The only option of freedom in sight is a dangerous flight that no one has ever survived. Once again Sald may feel the freedom of souring though the air unchained from the shackles of servitude.