Help with beginner Fantasy series/books

[BlackSabbath88]

Re: Citadel of Fear (1918) by Francis Stevens.

That is quite obscure. It is a period curiosity, but it is pretty dull in comparison with Lovecraft or Howard or Burroughs (for example.) Only recommended for historical completists.

I have this edition, which I bought years ago because I was intrigued by its obscurity (pre-internet) and because of the cover:
View attachment 114016

Thanks, looks like a cool book, is it still in print today?

 

[BAYLOR]

Wow thank you, i'm reading horror for more than 20 years now and I never knew that there was a sherlock holmes dracula/hellraiser book. I'm learning here. I'm checking every book out and i'm making a long list of books to buy. My wife and wallet are not happy haha

Ive been reading Science fiction Fantasy and Horror for over 40 years, Im still finding writings ive never previously heard of some more just came ot mind

You might want oto also cwant heck out Sherlock Holmes The Cthulhu Case book Series by James Lovegrove . Those are quite good.

John The Balladeer by Manley Wade Wellman. The main character, Sliver John does battle with the force of evil in the back woods of the Appalachian mountains armed with a powerful mythical silver string guitar.

The Dark Domains by Stepfan Grabinski .
Murganstrum and Others by Hugh B Cave
Revelations in Black by Carl Jacobi
The Shadows at the Bottom of the World by Thomas Ligotti
The Great White Space by Basil Copper

Under short stories horror related

The Sombrus Tower by Tanith Lee
Fishhead by Irving Cobb
Camera Obscura by Basil Copper
The Nightwire by A F Arnold
The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce

 

[BlackSabbath88]

John the balladeer sounds amazing, I also play guitar so that's my thing. I'm taking my list to a bookstore that's in a church, in Holland maastricht, that has alot of fantasy. Hopefully i'll find alot there sinds i don't like to order books online

 

[BAYLOR]

John the balladeer sounds amazing, I also play guitar so that's my thing. I'm taking my list to a bookstore that's in a church, in Holland maastricht, that has alot of fantasy. Hopefully i'll find alot there sinds i don't like to order books online

Im always glad to recommend .

 

[Randy M.]

Thann you for the reply. That sound like good books i'll check them out. But yeah it doesn't have to be 100% the exact time periode as I can imagine there are other amazing fantasy books in a different setting maybe. But i'm really glad I posted my question here, i'm making a long list of books to buy haha.

You're welcome. And in that case, some stand alone books:
The Land of Laughs and Voice of Our Shadow by Jonathan Carroll
The Path of Thorns by A. L. Slatter
The Innkeeper's Song and The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson (whether s.f. or fantasy may depend on your cultural background)
The Circus of Dr. Lao by Charles Finney (fantasy as satire, or maybe vice versa)
On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers (more of an adventure/romp than the other titles suggested)

The best thing about stand alone novels is that you're not committing to a series of novels, you're getting your toes wet prior to diving into long, involved works like The Game of Thrones.

If you're interested in short stories, I second the John the Balladeer collections and The Compleat Enchanter (correct spelling) by Pratt and de Camp. There was also The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein, which is pretty good, and most any representative collection of Lord Dunsany's work (best taken a few at a time, I think). Some of the authors mentioned above also published good collections, notably for me Beagle, Carroll, Gaiman (who I think is even better in short form) and Slatter -- I have one by Powers I haven't gotten to yet, but I'm confident it will be quite good.

Our Lady of Darkness and The Conjurors Wife by Fritz Leiber

Conjure Wife. And another vote for both, as well as another vote for his Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser stories.

 

[Elckerlyc]

John the balladeer sounds amazing, I also play guitar so that's my thing. I'm taking my list to a bookstore that's in a church, in Holland maastricht, that has alot of fantasy. Hopefully i'll find alot there sinds i don't like to order books online

I can understand your reluctance to order books online, but the fact is that the assortment online is massive compared to what a physical bookshop usually has on offer, which mostly are the more recent or classic works. I imagine many of the books listed above can not be found on the shelves of an average bookshop. I assume you read English, but that makes it only harder to find in Belgium or Holland, where I live.
Most of the books I buy are e-books, which, by definition, are only available online. When I do want a paper edition I go to Amsterdam, to the American Book Center (ABC), which has the largest SFF section I know of, but perhaps the ABC in The Hague is larger. I am not sure whether Belgium has (or had) an ABC branch.
If that fails, I do order online, usually on Amazon.nl (though I heartily dislike them), where I also get my e-books from.

I have never visited the bookstore in Maastricht (but I may one day, always been curious about that one), so perhaps they can deliver what you seek. If not, try one of the options I mentioned here.

 

[BAYLOR]

Thanks, looks like a cool book, is it still in print today?

Yes it is , Try Flame Tree Publishing LTD . That's the edition of this book that I have .

 

[Toby Frost]

Very nice that you are a writer! Where can I find your book?

The three fantasy novels are on Amazon, HERE. The SF novels I've written are on Amazon but should be available at conventional bookshops, too.

 

[Logan Selmes]

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson.

Classic dark fantasy, and the inverse of Tolkien's Middle Earth in that it's a nordic-style legend looking in at the Christian world from the outside.

 

[BAYLOR]

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson.

Classic dark fantasy, and the inverse of Tolkien's Middle Earth in that it's a nordic-style legend looking in at the Christian world from the outside.

Published 1954 , the same Year as Lord of the Rings . Excellent read and so is his book Three Hearts and Three Lions . Anderson also wrote one the best Conan Pastiche's of all time, Conan The Rebel which, is a prequel to Robert Howard's story Queen of the Black Coast.

 

[The Big Peat]

Thanks for the reply. Memory sorrow and thorn is high on my list but I hear that it's complicated and difficult to follow. Don't know if that's True.

I don't think it's that complicated, but it is very long.

Anyway, homing in very specifically on dark medieval fantasy that doesn't have a cast of thousands -

The Wounded Kingdoms by RJ Barker (first book - Age of Assassins)

The Morgaine Cycle by CJ Cherryh (first book - Gate of Ivrel)

The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay (first book - The Summer Tree)

All three feel medieval, all three have strong elements of darkness, and all three are fairly compact. They're all trilogies too, so you won't get dragged into a 10 book series.

They're also all excellent.

 

[thunderbyrd]

i recommend "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell" by Susanna Clarke.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

But there is one more book in Cherryh's Morgaine cycle. Written much later though it was, Exile's Gate fits in nicely with the original trilogy, and is equally intense, perhaps even darker.

And though Tanith Lee was mentioned earlier for short fiction, if you are looking for dark medieval-ish fantasy, I would suggest you have a look at her novels, too. She wrote in all speculative genres, but when she wasn't writing for young readers her books can range from dark, to darker, to very dark indeed. I also second Randy's recommendation of Angela Slatter.

 

[The Big Peat]

But there is one more book in Cherryh's Morgaine cycle. Written much later though it was, Exile's Gate fits in nicely with the original trilogy, and is equally intense, perhaps even darker.

And though Tanith Lee was mentioned earlier for short fiction, if you are looking for dark medieval-ish fantasy, I would suggest you have a look at her novels, too. She wrote in all speculative genres, but when she wasn't writing for young readers her books can range from dark, to darker, to very dark indeed. I also second Randy's recommendation of Angela Slatter.

I always forget about that one simply because it doesn't follow the same naming convention.

And seconding Tanith Lee.

 

[williamjm]

Wow thank you, i'm reading horror for more than 20 years now and I never knew that there was a sherlock holmes dracula/hellraiser book. I'm learning here. I'm checking every book out and i'm making a long list of books to buy. My wife and wallet are not happy haha

There is also Roger Zelazny's excellent A Night in the Lonesome October in which Jack the Ripper, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, the Wolfman, Dr Frankenstein and others get involved in an ancient ceremony to try to summon Lovecraftian horrors.

 

[Guttersnipe]

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin. It has sequels, but I've never read them.
The Shannara Chronicles by Terry Brooks because you like LOTR
The Xanth series by Piers Anthony if you like your fantasy with humor

 

[hvoad]

dark fantasy with horror elements? I recommend Naomi Novik's Uprooted. That one is pretty highly acclaimed.

 

[BAYLOR]

dark fantasy with horror elements? I recommend Naomi Novik's Uprooted. That one is pretty highly acclaimed.

Crom by Eric Flint

 

[vanye]

But there is one more book in Cherryh's Morgaine cycle. Written much later though it was, Exile's Gate fits in nicely with the original trilogy, and is equally intense, perhaps even darker.

And though Tanith Lee was mentioned earlier for short fiction, if you are looking for dark medieval-ish fantasy, I would suggest you have a look at her novels, too. She wrote in all speculative genres, but when she wasn't writing for young readers her books can range from dark, to darker, to very dark indeed. I also second Randy's recommendation of Angela Slatter.

I do not think of the Morgaine cycle as „dark“. Maybe wistful. To me it was always a story of personal growth, of discovering a world beyond the narrow horizon that has limited one‘s perception of the world. And the two main characters start at opposite ends - one naive, the other cynical - to meet in between.

I love this story and I wish the author had given us more of it. Apparently, her publisher didn‘t want her to.

 

[KiraAnn]

I guess I should find my Morgaine books and reread. I can't remember them very well, other than she had a horse and a magic sword - maybe??