The Lord of the Rings “ J R R Tolkien
It’s inconceivable that we start a listical featuring fantasy series without this classic set from JRR Tolkien. LOTR, as it’s popularly known, is probably the series that spawned a genre. It’s filled with tales from Middle Earth, talking trees, an all seeing evil eye and a bunch of heroes who have one simple mission - Destroy a ring. This series is a must read.
A Song of Ice and Fire “ George R R Martin
This glorious high fantasy tells the tragic story of treachery, greed and war that threatens the unity of the Seven Kingdoms south of the Wall, thronged with memorable characters, a story of treachery and ambition, love and magic. Set in a fabulous world scarred by battle and catastrophe, it tells of the deeds of men and women locked in the deadliest of conflicts and the terrible legacy they will leave their children. In the Game of Thrones, you win or you die.
The Dark Tower “ Stephen King
King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, the Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner, on a spellbinding journey into good and evil, in a desolate world which frighteningly echoes our own. In his first step towards the powerful and mysterious Dark Tower, Roland encounters an alluring woman named Alice, begins a friendship with Jake, a kid from New York, and faces an agonising choice between damnation and salvation as he pursues the Man in Black.
The Harry Potter Series “ JK Rowling
This may have been a series that became increasingly popular with kids but it’s an epic world nevertheless. Harry Potter is an ordinary boy who lives in a cupboard under the stairs at his aunt and uncles house, which he thinks is normal for someone like him whose parents have been killed in a ‘car crash’. Until, he is literally rescued by a world where nothing is as it seems and magic lessons are the order of the day.
The Earthsea Cycle “ Ursula Le Guin
Earthsea is a magical world, full of enchantment. The Wizard of Earthsea must fight off the forces of evil and darkness in their various shapes before, ‘done with doing’, he flies off on his dragon to ‘the farthest shore’. Comparable with the work of Tolkien and C S Lewis, who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, a series that would have been on this list, were it 6 instead of 5.
