Book Challenge -- Day 5

5. Favorite fantasy books

I don't really have favorite fantasy books, I have favorite series. They are usually vivid stories with characters I can relate to or adventures I wouldn't mind being a part of. And there's usually some kind of magic.
     The Chronicles of Narnia are some of the most powerful stories from my childhood--talking animals, political intrigue and unrest, aboard-ship voyages, family relationships that aren't perfect "everyone-gets-along" or "we hate each other" relationships, friendships that are based on mutual respect, and magic. The biggest draw was probably the talking animals and the magic when I was younger, but as I re-read and think about them more I enjoy the politics and the language of the stories. And the fact that the characters grow older and move beyond Narnia.
     Kim Harrison's Hollows series is more adult, featuring a sassy witch who is just as unsure of herself as the rest of us, only better at hiding it from everyone else. Rachel is passionate and concerned about doing the best she can with the life she's been given, the only problem is that everything keeps going wrong. I can identify with Rachel's struggles (more in the empathizing sense) and I enjoy that she learns to depend on the people who love her. It does help that she's got some kick-ass magic and moral dilemmas to deal with.
     The single novel A Game of Thrones is fascinating--I've only read the first book, but the series is complicated and intricate, it takes me forever to get through a single story because I constantly want to skip over to a different character and finish their story before moving on to contemporaneous events. Though I know it wouldn't make sense to do so because of spoilers, I like hearing about one line before moving on to the next. So much happens in A Game of Thrones and the characters are so powerfully imagined that I just want to dive back into their world, as much as I don't really want to live there.
     The language of the Lord of the Rings drew me in immediately: it is fluid and graceful while still having peaks and valleys. Tolkien was a master linguist and it shows in his storytelling. He knows how to keep the audience invested in the tale without making it seem like it couldn't happen. While some stories rely on surprises to keep the reader going, you expect the plot and it makes the story just as thrilling because the author has built an expectation and delivered on his promise of a fantastic story.
     My attachment to Harry Potter is more nostalgic than any of these stories (probably excepting Narnia) because I was part of the Harry Potter Phenomenon. When the books came out I was the same age as most of the characters; I stood in line to check out the books; I waited with baited breath for the titles of the new book, and begged my parents to take me to the movies when they finally arrived. The Harry Potter series was a huge part of my childhood, as it was for many of my peers and every time I pick up the book I remember how I felt the first time I read them and I discover some new tidbit I didn't catch last time. Still, I am reminded how the stories of Harry, Ron, and Hermione gave my siblings and me a time to be together as a family imagining and talking about something with anticipation. I imagine my mom reading the books to us was like the great classics of the nineteenth century being released weekly in the newspaper. And it is a powerful tradition.