Cover – Conan the Barbarian #1 comic (October 1970), by Barry Smith and John Verpoorten, also used as the cover of the original comics omnibus Volume 1 published by Titan Books in February 2025 (fair use). Note once again the classic Conan pose
TOP 10 FANTASY BOOKS
(SPECIAL MENTION: CULT & PULP)
I’ve ranked my Top 10 Fantasy Books but fantasy is too prolific – and phantasmagorical – a genre to be confined to a mere top ten books or even my usual list of special mentions.
Instead, I have two lists of special mentions – one classic and the other cult and pulp.
This is obviously the latter – for those fantasy books or works that don’t quite that iconic status or recognition within popular culture and imagination of my classic special mentions but I like them anyway!
That or they’re an enduring influence on me despite (or perhaps because of) their “cult & pulp” status.
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
Yes – it’s the ur-text of (Advanced) Dungeons and Dragons, the iconic cover of the Player’s Handbook for the first edition of the game, featuring its classic art stealing the stones from the eyes of a demonic idol (by artist D.A. Trampier), as featured in the book profile in the Forgotten Realms Wiki
(1) DUNGEONS & DRAGONS
Although I do have a special mention entry for an actual Encyclopedia of Fantasy, Dungeons & Dragons remains the best de facto encyclopedic treatment of fantasy themes and tropes- which is not surprising for something that strives to systematically codify the genre of fantasy for obsessive-compulsive rules-lawyering geeks to play as a game.
Of course, the standout is its holy trinity – the three enduring core rulebooks of The Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual and The Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Dungeons and Dragons essentially kills two birds with one stone – a twenty-sided stone. As the fantasy game, it set out to codify both fantasy and games – fantasy tropes or themes for use in play, and the mechanics of role playing games to play them. And its achievement is unparalleled in both.
Firstly, it is THE tabletop role-playing game – “While Dungeons & Dragons may not have created tabletop roleplaying games, it codified many of the mechanics and tropes associated with them, is what most people picture when they think of a tabletop RPG (even if they’ve never played one), and is by far the most popular tabletop RPG of all time”.
My interest in it, however, is more for its codification of fantasy tropes or themes, reflecting my use of it more as comprehensive reference work rather than game – “Dungeons & Dragons is one of the trope codifiers of the modern era, having single-handedly mashed swords and sorcery and epic high fantasy into the fantasy genre as we know it today”
And even more so than entries from the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, I (and probably most contemporary readers of fantasy) tend to default to descriptive terms or codified tropes used by Dungeons and Dragons when I think of fantasy – its distinctive character classes, alignments, schools of magic and so on.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
(S-TIER: GOD TIER)
St Martin’s Press, hardcover 1997 edition – the edition I own
(2) JOHN CLUTE & JOHN GRANT –
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASY
The best single reference work concerning fantasy fiction in all media – even better now that it is online, although sadly, not updated like its companion and predecessor The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.
However, that it is not updated does not detract from its greatest strength as a reference work and influence on me personally, which is not so much its entries for individual authors or works, but its compilation of fantasy themes and tropes, including its classification of fantasy subgenres. Many of these are compiled as entries under an evocative or striking phrase, many of which in turn were invented by the editors – one notable example being ‘thinning’, for the gradual loss of magic or vitality from the world.
Others include the descriptive term for one of my favorite subgenres of fantasy – posthumous fantasy, a fantasy set in the afterlife. The latter is more usually styled as Bangsian fantasy, named for John Kendricks Bangs who arguably codified or pioneered it as a modern fantasy subgenre – but often leads to confusion with its more conventional use for fiction or in this case fantasy published after an author’s death when I casually use the term posthumous fantasy elsewhere.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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The map of Fantasyland in the book and also part of the satirical deconstruction of fantasy tropes. It may also look oddly familiar
(3) DIANA WYNNE JONES –
THE TOUGH GUIDE TO FANTASYLAND (1996)
Following on from Dungeons & Dragons and the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, this is the third of my top three or god-tier entries that are all effectively encyclopedic reference works for the genre of fantasy, whether informally as for the rulebooks of Dungeons & Dragons or formally as for the Encyclopedia of Fantasy. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland leans more to the formal reference work of the latter arranged in alphabetical order, but with a twist – its meta-fictional premise that it is a tour guide to “Fantasyland” as the generic setting of pretty much all fantasy. The creators of fantasy stories are the “Management” of Fantasyland and their stories are “tours” for their audiences, so the book is in the style of a tourist guidebook, albeit a fictional parodic one – hence the title, adapted from the popular Rough Guide series of tourist guidebooks at the time.
The end result is a Devil’s Dictionary deconstructing the tropes or cliches of the fantasy genre – such as entry on elves, which has lodged itself deep in my psyche ever since such that I have never quite been able to look at the elves in The Lord of the Rings the same way again.
“Elves appear to have deteriorated generally since the coming of humans. If you meet Elves, expect to have to listen for hours while they tell you about this – many Elves are great bores on the subject – and about what glories there were in ancient days. They will intersperse their account with nostalgic ditties (songs of aching beauty) and conclude by telling you how great numbers of Elves have become so wearied with the thinning of the old golden wonders that they have all departed, departed into the West. This is correct, provided you take it with the understanding that Elves do not say anything quite straight. Many Elves have indeed gone west, to Minnesota and thence to California, and finally to Arizona, where they have great fun wearing punk clothes and riding motorbikes”.
RATING: 5 STARS*****
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A-TIER (TOP TIER)
*
Creative Education 2008 hardcover edition cover art
(4) SHIRLEY JACKSON –
“THE LOTTERY” (1948)
Like the Awards named after her, Shirley Jackson is known for stories of psychological suspense, horror and dark fantasy, ever so subtly bubbling to the surface of our world. This is amply demonstrated by her most famous story “The Lottery”, and indeed, in her collection of stories, named for it – The Lottery and Other Stories. One might consider the nature of her stories as fantasy to be arguable, but as I said, the fantasy in her stories is a subtle intrusion into our world – maybe mundane, maybe magical. The Lottery and Other Stories bore the subtitle The Adventures of James Harris, for a recurring figure in the stories of that collection, who may or may not be supernatural – he certainly seems to be a daemon lover or Dionysian force, complete with his retinue of maenads (who can then take over people’s apartments by sheer force of persuasion).
As for “The Lottery”, it has an ambience of dark fantasy to it – set, it seems, in an alternative United States. One in which small American towns casually celebrate an annual festival in much the same way as any other annual event – a lottery which the winner does not seem eager for the prize (and indeed vociferously protests its unfairness), but which the townsfolk insists on giving to her. Because, you know, the crops and harvest depend on it. Cue the stones…or in the words of John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn – “Who are these coming to the sacrifice?”
Of course, the story’s power is in its symbolism, resonant of so many images of the dark underbelly of American society, or the American Dream. After all, it doesn’t take too much to imagine something like the Lottery – perhaps not so blunt of course, but still, you know…
As newscaster Kent Brockman referred to it in an episode of The Simpsons, it is a chilling tale of social conformity – and not, much to Homer’s disappointment on checking it out of the library, a guide to winning the lottery.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Apparently, not one but two films were adapted from Leiber’s short story – one in 1967 and one in 1995, with this as the poster for the latter. I’ve never seen it so I don’t know if it’s any good or lives up to its blurb as the best horror film of the year. I suspect not.
(5) FRITZ LEIBER –
“THE GIRL WITH THE HUNGRY EYES” (1949)
Fritz Leiber rocked my fantasy world, as he did the world of literary fantasy in general, even if he is sadly overlooked in the genre now. I guess that’s the fate of most fantasy writers that aren’t the current thing or aren’t named Tolkien. There’s also Leiber’s love of cats, chess, and theater – which are all fun to see pop up in his stories like playing the fantasy nerd equivalent of a drinking game.
Anyway, there simply is too much Leiber to choose from for its influence on me or the genre. There’s his novels, of which the standout is The Big Time – an SF novel of time war, as in two sides fighting a mysterious cosmic war against each other across time and space by changing history on each other (or the Change War as they call it). It’s even more intriguing as much of the vast cosmic backstory is only dropped in hints or remains mysterious (even when Leiber set a few other stories in the same universe). Indeed, the entire novel is set in a kind of cosmic waystation (in the titular Big Time, outside Little Time or the space time of our universe constantly being changed by the war), once again evoking Leiber’s love of theater both in the story (as the waystation is for rest and relaxation) and for the story itself as it is easy to imagine it as a stageplay. It is strikingly multi-layered, as the story extends through time and space as a cosmic backdrop yet effectively takes place entirely within the one “room”, albeit a room somewhat like the Tardis.
However, it’s his stories that effectively made his reputation as well as his influence for me or the genre – stories that largely created or inspired at least two sub-genres of fantasy. There’s his most famous creations, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, an adventuring duo of unlikely heroes in the world of Newhon (or “no when” backwards) and the city of Lankhmar – defining many of the tropes of the so-called sword-and-sorcery or heroic fantasy subgenre. However, it is his short stories that largely created or inspired the genre of contemporary fantasy – that is, adapting fantary or horror tropes to the setting of our contemporary or modern world.
It was a close call for this entry with my runner-up story – “The Man Who Never Grew Young”. This story is not so much contemporary fantasy but a parable all of its own, although not unlike the time changing science fiction of The Big Time – the narrator lives in a world recognizably our own, but one in which history and time are now running in reverse, such that people do indeed grow younger, “born” into existence from the grave and ultimately going back to the womb before disappearing into time. Although as the title suggests, the narrator himself is mysteriously unaffected by this part of the time reversal – never growing younger although history is still going backwards all around him. I particularly like the hints, at least in my perception, that this has come about from some terrible weapon deployed in a war in the future – which has of course become the distant past to the narrator – such that time itself was broken and reversed.
However, I have to give this special mention entry to the story that has remained and resonated with me ever since I read it – which definitely is one of his stories of contemporary fantasy – and that is his modern vampire story with a twist, “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes”.
“She’s the smile that tricks you into throwing away your money and your life. She’s the eyes that lead you on and on, and then show you death. She’s the creature you give everything you’ve got and gives nothing in return. When you yearn towards her face on the billboards, remember that. She’s the lure. She’s the bait. She’s the Girl”.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Promotional art for the Amazon Kindle edition
(6) JAMES BLISH –
BLACK EASTER / THE DAY AFTER JUDGEMENT (1968 / 1970)
Black Easter essentially reads like a joke – an arms dealer, a black magician and a priest walk into a bar…
Well, not quite a bar but the arms dealer does a deal with the black magician to release all the demons from Hell on Earth for a single night. The reason – partly for the lulz but mostly to drum up business for arms. The priest comes in due to a pact between white magicians (from the Vatican!) and black magicians to monitor each other – incredibly, the priest does not attempt to interfere with the deal but is simply there to ensure the black magician sticks to the rules of the pact.
It’s a slow burn – dare I say it, something of a shaggy dog joke, or is that shaggy God joke? – a short story premise expanded to novel or novella and mostly focused on the details of the black magic involved, but like any good joke it’s all set up for the punchline.
And that punchline is (spoiler alert) that they have unleashed the apocalypse on the world, except that God is dead and there is no power to return the demons to Hell. (One wonders why the demons didn’t break out on their own before if that was the case.)
The sequel novel doesn’t quite have the same wham effect for its punchline. The characters from the first novel as well as everyone else in general deal with hell let loose on Earth in – where else? – California and Las Vegas.
The punchline arises from the apparent premise that God may not be so dead after all as something seems to be restraining the force of Hell. The punchline, delivered with Miltonian effect by the Devil himself, is that something turns out to be Satan, who now has to assume the role of God – something he now realizes he never really wanted and so is undone by his own Pyrrhic victory.
It might seem a fantasy duology based on one or two theological punchlines (depending on whether you like the second as much as the first) but it has continued to endure as an influence on my imagination and psyche.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Cover art of The Compleat Discworld Atlas, Doubleday UK 2025 edition
(7) TERRY PRATCHETT –
DISCWORLD (1983 – 2015)
*
Discworld needs little introduction to fans of fantasy – a literal flat-earth (hence its name) balanced on the back of four titanic elephants in turn on the back of the cosmic turtle, Great A’Tuin. This world is the setting for a fantasy comedy series (spanning over 40 books and a similar number of years) which is a parody or satire of virtually every trope within fantasy and many outside it, as well as virtually every major work of fantasy – from Lovecraft through Conan to Tolkien and even the bard himself, Shakespeare.
Books in the series follow different story threads or characters within it – with my favorite being those that follow the cowardly ‘wizard’ Rincewind, “a wizard with no skill, no wizardly qualifications, and no interest in heroics”, ever since his role as the protagonist in the first two books (escorting the naïve tourist Twoflower and his Luggage). Sprawling in some degree through most of the books is the city of Ankh-Morpork (and its City Watch, the protagonists of their own story arc or thread of books within the series) – a city clearly influenced by Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar, and like that city, a city which somehow survives despite itself.
*
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
*
Collage of cover art of all twelve Nightside books published by Ace (and the editions I own)
(8) SIMON R. GREEN –
NIGHTSIDE (2003-2012)
“The Nightside. That square mile of Hell in the middle of the city, where it’s always three AM. Where you can walk beside myths and drink with monsters. Where nothing is what it seems and everything is possible.”
Simon R. Green is the author of one of my favorite of the ‘trenchcoat brigade’ of occult detectives following in the footsteps of Hellblazer’s John Constantine – John Taylor of the Nightside. The Nightside itself is an eldritch and extra-dimensional suburb of London, except of course that it is not so much a suburb as a hidden world inside London. And in it is all manner of beings, gods and eldritch abominations. As for John Taylor, he has a magical gift or ‘inner eye’ for finding anything, or would if it generally didn’t find him trouble first – or worse, allow trouble to find him.
What I particularly enjoy about the Green’s writing in general and the Nightside series in particular is that it has the tongue-in-cheek sensibility of writing in comics – indeed, the Nightside series often feels like a prose comic, particularly in its vivid characters with matching names or titles. Protagonist John Taylor is of course somewhat nondescript in his name, but then there’s his colleagues like Shotgun Suzie, Razor Eddie, Sinner (and Pretty Poison), Madman, Dead Boy and the Oblivion brothers. Not to mention antagonists or abominations like the Harrowing, the Lamentation and Kid Cthulhu.
The highpoint of the series is the first half of it, with its longer story arc through the individual books in which John Taylor confronts the mystery of his mother – a mystery which was best left unsolved, particularly as it involves his apparent destiny in ushering in the Apocalypse (and the source of the Harrowing which pursues him), a destiny even more disturbing because he has seen it for himself in the future…
Close runner-up is his standalone novel Shadow’s Fall, although it has a similar premise (and was ultimately interconnected with) the Night Side series – “a town, where legends, human and otherwise, go out to live their lives as belief in them dies” on the brink of apocalypse (or apocalypses)…
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Cover art from Killing Pretty, seventh book in the series
(9) RICHARD KADREY –
SANDMAN SLIM (2009 – 2021)
How could I resist a hero – or anti-hero – named Stark? No simple revenant clawing his way out of the grave – James Stark or the titular Sandman Slim is a revenant who claws his way like a badass out of hell. Literally. The first book (and series) had me at hell – I have a soft spot for heroes back from the dead, or even better, gone to hell and back. Stark is a naturally talented magician (not wizard, because wizarding is for wimps like Harry Potter) in the secret magical underworld of Los Angeles and falls afoul of one of his colleagues, who sends him straight to hell, before stealing the keys to the universe to return to our world for revenge on those who dealt out his damnation. And that’s just where the first book starts!
The other books in the series up the ante even more – from hell coming to Los Angeles and Los Angeles going to hell…
The series might well be described as dark fantasy noir or occult detective fiction, sharply written with an engaging cast of characters, not least Sandman Slim himself (whom I can’t help but picture as author Richard Kadrey). If you read contemporary fantasy, you must read Sandman Slim. Where the hell is the screen adaptation?
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
*
(10) JAMES LOVEGROVE –
PANTHEON (2009 – 2019)
“Watch closely, everyone. I’m going to show you how to kill a god”
That’s not from James Lovegrove’s Pantheon series – it’s from the film Princess Mononoke – but it captures much of the same spirit (heh).
The premise of his Pantheon series is straightforward – each is a standalone story with a human military or paramilitary protagonist reacting to or resisting one of the titular pantheons of gods (and goddesses) literally returning to the modern world to rule it. Note that standalone as each story features only one pantheon at a time – they don’t return in combination or all at once, although that would make an interesting premise of competing pantheons. Obviously the titular pantheon in the first book The Age of Ra is the Egyptian one – the series continues through The Age of Zeus, The Age of Odin, and so on.
The premise of these series particularly resonates with me because it reflects my own unwritten – and let’s face it, only partly baked – story ideas involving the same premise, both for single pantheons and multiple pantheons returning in combination. So kudos for Lovegrove for actually baking the cake and icing it – although I suppose there’s still room for competing pantheons.
It’s a similarly dark premise to David Brin’s Thor Meets Captain America (and even more so its sequel The Life Eaters) – hence why I also like those works as well. And it’s a somewhat parallel premise to that of a higher entry on this list.
RATING:
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
*
Cover art of the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant – I think from the 1996 Harper Voyager paperback editions but certainly the editions I own
(11) STEPHEN DONALDSON –
THE CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT (1977-2013)
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant might seem a lot like The Lord of the Rings and indeed it is to a point. It has a similar fantasy secondary world – the Land instead of Middle Earth – menaced by a similar Dark Lord, Lord Foul the Despiser, who if anything is even darker than Sauron, as his name indicates. It even has a Ringbearer in its titular protagonist, albeit that ring is a mundane object in our own world – Covenant’s white gold wedding ring – but the ultimate ring of power in the Land.
At a certain point, however, the reader becomes aware that the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a profound deconstruction of The Lord of the Rings. Typically, that point is a plot point soon into the first book of the first trilogy, Lord Foul’s Bane, where Covenant is overwhelmed by the sensory overload of the Land and commits a crime that has consequences through the first trilogy. If not that point, it is typically a point in the second book of that first trilogy, The Illearth War, where the leader of the military forces against Lord Foul fails despite his best efforts and must resort to a self-sacrificial Pyrrhic victory.
Or that point may be the overarching nature of its titular protagonist – where The Lord of the Rings had three Christ-like heroic figures (Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragon), Thomas Covenant is the Land’s literal leper-messiah. Worse, because of his leprosy in our world, he has spent a lifetime of managing the disease to the effect of rigorous mental discipline that he cannot believe in the false hope of any magical cure or else he will succumb to the disease – his survival depends on such things as his habitual VSE or visual surveillance of extremities. Hence, when he finds himself transported to a world in which there is a magical cure, it goes against a lifetime of literally life-saving mental discipline and so he cannot believe in that world, becoming Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.
And yet after the deconstruction comes reconstruction, as the series ultimately returns to something like The Lord of the Rings after all – with the heroic resistance of the Land against Lord Foul and Covenant finding some balance between unbelief and doing the right thing, even in a dream, because as he himself says, Lord Foul laughs at lepers.
And between the deconstruction and the reconstruction falls the resonance – a resonance of phrase and fable that lodges in the psyche long after reading it and refuses to go away. Phrases such as Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Lord Foul the Despiser, and my personal favorite – the Ritual of Desecration, the original sin that almost destroyed the Land in the distant past.
RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
*
Cover 1995 Ace Books paperback edition – the edition I own
(12) SEAN STEWART –
RESURRECTION MAN TRILOGY (1995-2000)
Stephen King meets Ibsen. Trust me.” – Neal Stephenson.
Contemporary fantasy or magical realism in which magic comes bubbling back into our world as a wild and uncontrollable elemental force, coalescing as beings from the force of Jungian collective unconscious.
And it is very much Jungian collective unconscious, pointed out in exposition by way of a stand-up comedy routine (a device of exposition I have not encountered elsewhere) – as opposed to Freudian, although I would like to have seen a fantasy based on the elemental forces of magic bubbling out of our Freudian unconscious.
Admittedly, I found the world-building more intriguing than the actual story in Resurrection Man, which doles out that world-building in fragments and hints – a world “profoundly altered by WWII and the increasingly monstrous magic it unleashed’, first as golems from the camps and then as minotaurs from the American ghettoes. A world in which China is superpower – not through economics as in our world, but through geomancy or feng shui.
That world formed the setting for two other books by Stewart with more intriguing stories, Night Watch and the World Fantasy Award winning Galveston. In the latter, the Texan city has been isolated and divided by the flood of magic, literally into a normal ‘non-magical’ half, scraping and scavenging its living from the increasingly derelict remnants of science or technology, and Carnival, an endless magical Mardis Gras celebration.
His novel Mockingbird had a similar theme, but on a family rather than world scale.
Sadly, after this creative flurry of novels in the nineties and noughties, Stewart moved from writing novels to writing interactive fiction or games.
*
RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
*
Cover Prometheus 2009 paperback edition
(13) MARK CHADBOURN –
THE AGE OF MISRULE (1999 – 2009)
The magic goes away…and the magic comes back.
Those two tropes – two of my favorites in fantasy – pretty much sum up the premise of this trilogy, or more precisely trilogy of trilogies with The Age of Misrule as the first trilogy (followed by The Dark Age as second trilogy and The Kingdom of the Serpent as third trilogy).
It’s not an analogy used by the books but the magic struck me as like the Ice Age we are still in, with the magic going away corresponding to the interglacial period on which the rise of human civilization depended – and precariously rests. Just as the return of Ice Age glaciation would threaten to overwhelm our civilization, so too with the return of magic in these books – except less threatening to do so than actually doing so.
Give or take just a little, the series matches up with the trope description for The Magic Comes Back in TV Tropes:
“The past was an exciting time to live in: Magic was real, mythological creatures roamed the Earth, and humans lived side by side with elves, dwarves, hobbits and the rest. Such a shame that it didn’t last and we’re stuck with plain, old boring mundane life. But wait, reports are coming in that something strange is happening all over the planet: Mysterious creatures thought only to exist in storybooks have been sighted in isolated areas and their numbers are increasing with each passing day. Some humans are starting to exhibit fantastical powers that science can’t explain…What’s going on? Why, the exact opposite of The Magic Goes Away. Maybe it completely disappeared at one point or maybe it didn’t exist at all. Regardless of the past situation, however, magic is back and, as a result, can often pave the way for an urban fantasy setting. If magic and science are inherently opposed then certain areas of civilization may revert to a primitive form.”
Yeah – you can check off almost all those points in Age of Misrule. In this case, the titular magic apocalypse is a fairy apocalypse. No, not fairies as in cute little gossamer-winged pixies like Tinkerbell. We’re talking the older fairies of British and Irish folklore – most aptly styled as the Fair Folk, itself a euphemism for things that would flay you and walk around in your skin. In fairness (heh), only one of the two warring groups of fairies – the Fomorians – is so extreme as to literally flay you and walk around in your skin. The other group, the Golden Ones or Tuatha de Danaan, aren’t as extreme – or least more indifferent to wanting to flay you and walk around in your skin.
Fortunately, one effect of the magic coming back is that there are humans who can use it to save the day – the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.
“You can’t bring back the gods and demons of Celtic mythology without a few side-effects, though. Cue rolling blackouts, alien abductions, lycanthropes, spooky visitations, psychopathic goblins…”
RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
Cover 2000 Puffin paperback edition
(14) RICHARD HARLAND –
HEAVEN & EARTH TRILOGY (2000 – 2003)
Australian post-apocalyptic fantasy trilogy that combines two of my favorite fantasy tropes – a post-apocalyptic setting, particularly in its rarer fantasy version as opposed to the more common science fiction version, as well as the rage against the heavens or war on heaven trope. The latter is the source of the apocalypse.
The premise is straightforward. It turned out that space wasn’t the final frontier, but heaven was – as human technology turned to the exploration of the afterlife. So, like all frontiers, exploration led to invasion, as humanity’s celestial astronauts – psychonauts – trampled the sacred fields of Heaven.
Of course you know, that meant war – and it didn’t go too well for us. Eurasia is still burning – the Burning Continents – from the portions of Heavenly ether that fell on it from the Great Collapse, while much of north America is frozen under an angelic ice sheet.
And we’re still fighting the war against Heaven – except that by we, I only loosely mean humanity. Most of actual humanity that has survived the war, at least in Australia, have been reduced to so-called Residuals living in tribes. The war is waged by the possibly posthuman and certainly inhuman Humen, led by the technocratic Doctors, although they seem to use that title in the same sense supervillains do – or Doctor Josef Mengele, who seems to be invoked by the name of two Doctors who led the war against Heaven from South America.
The Residuals are nominally allies with the Humen against Heaven and its angels but are used more as cannon fodder – in perhaps the most literal way possible. All this changes when the titular young male Residual happens across a stray angel left behind after being wounded in battle…
As I said, it’s Australian post-apocalyptic fantasy – both in its setting, and perhaps not surprisingly given that setting, fantasy written by an Australian author (albeit originally from Britain). Forget Harry Potter – with Garth Nix in my top ten and Richard Harland in my special mentions, it seems all the best young adult fantasy is from Australia.
RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
Cover of Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey, first book of the Kushiel’s Legacy series, 2002 edition
(15) JACQUELINE CAREY –
KUSHIEL’S LEGACY (2001-2023)
Who can say no to literal s€xy French angels as courtesans? It’s a oui from me!
RATING:
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Excerpt clip from the American Gods TV series adaptation
(16) NEVERWHERE & AMERICAN GODS
“So do you have mighty bacchanals in her honour? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon while scarlet candles burn in silver candle holders? Do you step naked into the sea foam chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?”
I had quite the quandary with this entry, which I ultimately resolved by separating the art from the artist by effectively featuring the works anonymously, without reference to their author, as I can’t deny the enduring influence of these two works on me. Also, as I understand it, the author seems to have retired from writing, possibly due to the same reasons for which I separate the art and the artist. And in a sense, these two works exist independently of their author in other media. Indeed, a little like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Neverwhere began as a BBC TV series, albeit also written by the author. Apart from the novelization of it, it has also been adapted to nine issue comics series (written by Mike Carey) as well as a radio play, although I anticipate it’s unlikely to see further adaptations. American Gods has seen an adaptation as a TV series – I liked the first season, although it went in some very different directions from the book. The second season apparently fizzled with the departure of the showrunners for the first season, although it may have bounced back in its third and final season. The book has also had a sequel novel (or more precisely a novel set in the same world with the same premise) and two sequel short stories (that are indeed sequels to the book), as well as an adaptation as a series of comics.
Of the two, my favorite is American Gods and its premise is also more straightforward to explain. Essentially its premise is that all myths are true, to the extent that people believe in them. However, that is not as good as it might sound for the myths in question. Yes, all the old gods of all the people that came to America still continue to exist but eke out that existence on the dregs of whatever belief in them that remains, even if half (or completely) forgotten and even if only as symbol or metaphor. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they’re squaring off against the new gods, such as the god of Media, who are very much coked up to the eyeballs on belief in them. It also has one of my favorite protagonists of fantasy, Shadow Moon – who wants nothing more than to return to his wife and a job with his best friend after release from prison, but the gods have other plans for him. Literally.
Neverwhere has a similar premise, not quite all myths are true but that there is a magic – not unlike megapolisomancy in Fritz Leiber’s literal urban fantasy novel Our Lady of Darkness – formed from large cities and that takes shape in their magical underground equivalents, such as London Below. I particularly like how each city has its mystical Beast at its heart.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD-TIER)
This but we’re doing it to both of them – indeed, there’s even the pun that the Sun of Man rose up in Heaven when we nuke it. The Son casts the Rebels out of Heaven – 1885 illustration by Gustave Dore for Milton’s Paradise Lost (public domain image)
(17) SALVATION WAR
Yes – it’s cheesy and never evolved past its raw first draft as a playful tongue-in-cheek thread on an online forum (hence the wild-tier special mention) but I still have a soft spot for it. After all, what’s not to love about humanity taking on both sides of the apocalypse, heaven and hell? And winning!
Sadly, it remains unedited and unpublished as an actual book as it should have been – and also unresolved, as only the first two parts of a trilogy (although the war on heaven at least reached its conclusion), as the author firstly faced issues with its publication and then passed away as he was working on the third part. That author, Stuart Slade, did publish another series The Big One as self-published books – the title referring to its opening premise of the United States nuking the crap out of Nazi Germany in 1947 after Britain made peace in 1940).
The premise of The Salvation War is simple. What is humanity to do when God abandons Earth in the apocalypse, declaring it and everyone on it forfeit to the forces of Hell? Well, what else but declare war on both Heaven and Hell – and to kick ass doing it!
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Screencap of Hookland account on Twitter
(18) HOOKLAND
Hookland is reminiscent of my top 10 entry for Night Vale, similarly an eldritch fantasy kitchen sink setting – but where Night Vale leans more to conspiracy theory and urban myth (as well as outright Lynchian surreal fantasy), Hookland leans more to English folklore, ghosts and the fair folk.
The key distinction – by which Hookland ranks as wild tier special mention rather than a top 10 entry as for Night Vale – is that where Night Vale has spread from its original podcast to books, Hookland remains in its original form as a ‘web original’ project on social media, primarily (at least for this reader) through the Hookland Guide Twitter profile (which dates back to 2014). Indeed – I yearn for books from Hookland, although it is perhaps apt that Hookland Guide is almost as elusive as Hookland itself, teased though gossamer strands and tantalizing threads on Twitter. I understand that it is a collaborative project, with its origin (and prime mover) in author David Southwell.
Another key distinction, albeit not to my fantasy rankings, is that where Night Vale is primarily narrated through the town’s community radio broadcaster, Hookland is narrated through a number of voices – dramatis personae teased out through threads across time, from witches to police detectives. Despite the consistency of narrator in Night Vale, Night Vale and Hookland – like the best fantasy or SF in general – doles out their mythos or world-building in doses, mostly hints and oblique references. For Hookland, however, these are in sore need – at least to this reader – of compilation in more formal reference, such as an encyclopedia or wiki, even as pages in Wikipedia or TV Tropes (from which it is sadly absent). The closest thing is the working map of Hookland posted
Despite Night Vale being an American desert town and Hookland an English county, both are similarly amorphous – not quite fixed in time and space, although remaining within the confines of their respective nations (albeit as quasi-independent entities), and dotted with distinctive landmarks.
As I said, Hookland leans more to English folklore, notably ghost and fair folk – but has many more elements in its fantasy kitchen sink setting, all the way to technofantasy or SF, such as the Hum, electricity pylons as latter day ley lines and mystic transcendence.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Screencap Neoltitude account on Twitter
(19) NEOLTITUDE
Evocative magical realist short-form poetry or surreal fantasy micro-fiction on Twitter – wild tier special mention because I’m waiting for the book compilation.
Like haikus – but, you know, instead of the formal structure of three phrases and seventeen syllables, it’s a limit of 240 characters, as each tweet is its own embedded story.
I’ve encountered quite a bit of microfiction on Twitter but Neoltitude is the one to which I keep coming back. Of course, that’s because I follow them, so it would be more accurate to say they’re the one I stuck with or never left in the first place.
That’s because they’re good – always evocative, often haunting or beautiful images that burn themselves into your psyche. Much like the angels or gods that are their frequent subject.
And because they’re fun – leavened with wit and humor, often self-effacing. As in their Patreon –
“You can think of this like carbon offsets, only for making the world more confusing & surreal…Hi, I’m ｃｔｒｌ. I have written over 9000 short fiction tweets, which I estimate have cost me at LEAST several years of my life. In order to gain back some of this lost time, I am reaching out in desperation to you, kind reader. please, this is all I have”.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Classic cover art by Boris Vallejo for Tarnsman of Gor – questionable book content but quintessential fantasy art!
(20) FANTASY ART
On the face of it, this may not appear to be my usual kinky entry I throw in among my wilder special mentions as my final or twentieth special mention – but it is, o yes, it is.
Fantasy art – the art illustrating subjects from cinematic or literary fantasy, whether as art of itself or book covers and film posters or promotional art.
You know the ones – the ones from about the 1970s onwards, particularly in the pulpier book covers. Conan books as well as comics, particularly in the archetypal Conan pose with leg cling – the leg cling of course being the scantily clad damsel clinging to the warrior’s leg.
And that reference to the Conan pose alone shows where the kink comes in – that fantasy art tends to default to pinup art, for both male and female subjects.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that – we’re talking Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo and Luis Royo among others.
Perhaps the pinnacle of fantasy pin-up cover art is for Gor – the book covers for the Gor series, the best of which was by Boris Vallejo. The books may be pure pulp in content – I’ve never read them, but I know the basic premise – but that content, which I understand to be increasingly of female bondage and submission as the series goes on, is perfect for for pinup fantasy art.
RATING:
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
