Why am I passionate about this?

I love the fantastic—madly, insatiably. Far too much, indeed, to limit myself to what the publishers label “fantasy”. Such labels don’t enlighten us, however much they condition us to predictable purchasing behavior. We’re better off ignoring them. We’re better off defining fantasy for ourselves. These five knockout novels are saturated with fantasy. It’s high time we fantasy lovers recognized our kin.


I wrote

Master Assassins

By Robert V.S. Redick,

Book cover of Master Assassins

What is my book about?

“This book has everything I love: clean, crisp worldbuilding. Characters who live and breathe. A story that teases and surprises…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Beloved

Robert V.S. Redick Why did I love this book?

I first read Beloved years ago in Argentina, over three wonderstruck days in a cold room in the Andes. It was one of the busiest times in my life, but everything stopped when I opened Morrison’s masterpiece. This tale of slavery’s long shadow over the lives of a Black family in Ohio is breathtaking on many levels—language, characterization, tragic moral force—but it is also, to its very core, a fantasy novel. This is magic, not metaphor. The dead return and take up sustained physical life among the living. What could be more fantastical? Of course, there’s an idea that “the fantasy readership” isn’t looking for earth-shaking literary novels, but that idea has more traction among those who talk about fantasy readers than the readers themselves. The latter are an avid, omnivorous bunch. Hand them something as brilliant as Beloved and come back in three days.

By Toni Morrison,

Why should I read it?

40 authors picked Beloved as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heart-breaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times

Discover this beautiful gift edition of Toni Morrison's prize-winning contemporary classic Beloved

It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home, Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved, returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her…


Book cover of Invisible Cities

Robert V.S. Redick Why did I love this book?

Invisible Cities, all by itself, blew the walls off my notions of what a novel could be. Picture it: Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, likely stoned, certainly world-weary, kicked back on cushions in the Great Khan’s palace. That’s it. They talk. And yet the book overflows with movement and discovery. Polo speaks of the cities he’s visited; Khan describes those he dreams his empire might contain. As the night progresses, the cities pass from odd to eerie to utterly fantastical: cities built like spiderwebs over canyons, cities enslaved by the very accuracy of their astrologers, cities whose people all have doubles in a netherworld below. And the tension! For looming behind these mad dreams is an ever-deepening paranoia about what humanity could become.

Calvino, like others on this list, is denied the “fantasy writer” label because he’s a literary darllng. Of course, that’s nonsense. This is fearless, genre-shredding fantasy, and reading it changed me forever.

By Italo Calvino,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Invisible Cities as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A subtle and beautiful meditation' Sunday Times

In Invisible Cities Marco Polo conjures up cities of magical times for his host, the Chinese ruler Kublai Khan, but gradually it becomes clear that he is actually describing one city: Venice. As Gore Vidal wrote 'Of all tasks, describing the contents of a book is the most difficult and in the case of a marvellous invention like Invisible Cities, perfectly irrelevant.'


Book cover of One Hundred Years of Solitude

Robert V.S. Redick Why did I love this book?

So much has been written about One Hundred Years—and so many prisoners of Comp Lit 101 have been broadsided by its strangeness—that I’m tempted to beg you to forget everything you’ve heard and dive in. But that’s insufficient advice. Before going off to the Colombian village that time forgot, you should also discard your ideas about story structure. Take pacing: months can pass in a sentence or two in Gabo’s masterpiece—but on the next page, the sun may stop in the sky. Or character: the tangible reality of these people is breathtaking—but are they all shards of the same few souls we began with? This novel casts a spell like no other. I’ll never forget my first read of its final pages: their feverish velocity, and the utter magic with which they transform the novel before your eyes. At least once in your life, I hope you can surrender fully to that magic. Safety not guaranteed.

By Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa (translator),

Why should I read it?

19 authors picked One Hundred Years of Solitude as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad, and alive with unforgettable men and women -- brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul -- this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.


Book cover of A Question of Power

Robert V.S. Redick Why did I love this book?

Do you like a good scare? Well, Stephen King is one kind of scary, but A Question of Power is something else altogether: a descent into a sunless valley writhing with monsters. We know that these monsters dwell in the mind of the main character, Elizabeth. But there’s no safety in knowing that, for we’re locked in with them. If we sometimes climb a tree and feel a fresh breeze on our faces, it’s with the knowledge that those tentacles can slither up and snatch us back into hell at a moment’s notice. And they do. 

I didn’t start with what many consider the most important facts of this novel: that Elizabeth is a mixed-race woman born in South Africa and exiled to Botswana. And those are vital facts. But Elizabeth is also one luminous, suffering soul. Watching her fight her way out of that dark valley is a terrifying experience. But when at last she feels the sun on her face—oh, we feel it too.

By Bessie Head,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Question of Power as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"It wasn't any kind of physical stamina that kept her going, but a vague, instinctive pattern of normal human decencies combined with the work she did, the people she met each day and the unfolding of a project with exciting inventive possibilities. But a person eventually becomes a replica of the inner demons he battles with. Any kind of demon is more powerful than normal human decencies, because such things do not exist for him." Bessie Head

In this fast-paced, semi-autobiographical novel, Head exposes the complicated life of Elizabeth, whose reality is intermingled with nightmarish dreams and hallucinations. Like the…


Book cover of Blindness

Robert V.S. Redick Why did I love this book?

A mere glimpse at the plot of this novel—blindness sweeps over the world in a global tsunami—should establish that it’s a fantasy. But once again, publishing labels are destiny Blindness was published as that other thing, literary fiction. Who cares? The story’s riveting. We spend nearly all our time with a self-effacing woman (“the doctor’s wife”), whose immunity to the blindness plague is as mysterious as the plague itself. As society crumbles into gang rule (the blind killing or enslaving the blind), the doctor’s wife has to choose between helping evil, dying herself, or keeping her sight an absolute secret. It’s the classic What if? scenario I’m always seeking in fantasy, written in fire by a modern master. I couldn’t put it down.

By José Saramago,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Blindness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

No food, no water, no government, no obligation, no order.

Discover a chillingly powerful and prescient dystopian vision from one of Europe's greatest writers.

A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind. An ophthalmologist tries to diagnose his distinctive white blindness, but is affected before he can read the textbooks.
It becomes a contagion, spreading throughout the city. Trying to stem the epidemic, the authorities herd the afflicted into a mental asylum where the wards are terrorised by blind thugs. And when fire destroys the asylum, the inmates burst forth and the last links with a supposedly civilised society…


Explore my book 😀

Master Assassins

By Robert V.S. Redick,

Book cover of Master Assassins

What is my book about?

“This book has everything I love: clean, crisp worldbuilding. Characters who live and breathe. A story that teases and surprises me. I like this book so much I wish I'd written it, but deep down, I know I couldn't have written it this well.”Patrick Rothfuss, author of The Name of the Wind.

A road trip. A desert adventure. A family gothic. An anti-war war story. A meditation on love, fanaticism, and the nature of genius. Master Assassins is epic fantasy like you’ve never seen before.

Book cover of Beloved
Book cover of Invisible Cities
Book cover of One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Christmas Actually

By Lisa Darcy,

Book cover of Christmas Actually

Lisa Darcy Author Of The Pact

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Cat lover Traveler Reader Amateur tennis player Foodie

Lisa's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Every picture tells a story, but it’s not always the one we expect or remember. Christmas Actually is a festive drama about family and forgiveness and a snapshot of modern family life, addressing Instagram to motherhood and everything in between.

Why Christmas? My publisher wanted my new novel to have a festive theme, specifically set in Australia–sun, surf, sunburn, and prawns. Christmas in Australia is very different from Christmas in the UK, USA, and Canada. We typically wear shorts and t-shirts, eat salad and seafood for Christmas lunch, and play beach cricket in the afternoon. Despite the season, conflicts, secrets,…

Christmas Actually

By Lisa Darcy,

What is this book about?

Time spent with family can be challenging, especially at Christmas actually…

Kate Cavendish is stuck in a rut. That is until a former colleague contacts her and offers her a chance to fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming a successful photographer.

With her focus pulled in all directions by her children, her pregnant sister, her newly-dating mother, and the niggling worry that her husband might be having an affair, Kate is filled with self-doubt.

Then as the countdown to Christmas begins, and memories of her own childhood resurface, Kate’s anxiety deepens – both personally and professionally. Can she move on…


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