The best first book in a fantasy series that will make you have to devour the rest of the series

I was 13 when I was gifted Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and, for all the many times I tried, I couldn’t get into it. Some 25 years later when I sold most everything I owned to move to Nova Scotia, my unread Tolkien didn’t make the cut.

What changed my mind? A BBC Radio dramatization. I stumbled on it soon after I got to Nova Scotia and was instantly hooked. Although I’d begun writing my book earlier that year, I’d set it aside before my move, unsure whether I would ever return to it.

But I was so inspired by the BBC dramatization, and then by the books, that I immediately picked up my abandoned manuscript. Twelve weeks later, it was done. I’d finished writing my first novel!

Most people read young adult fantasy when they’re in their teens. That wasn’t true for me.

In fact, ironically for someone who would end up writing fantasy, I didn’t read much of it until I was well beyond my teens. That’s when I discovered YA authors like Madeleine L’Engle, Michael Ende, and Ursula K. Le Guin. L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, however, was the first.

At the time, I was refocusing my life—away from the logical and intellectual and toward the spiritual and numinous, not unlike Wrinkle’s main characters, whose journey became a powerful metaphor for my own creative and spiritual awakening.

Moreover, that the now-classic book was rejected 26 times over two years was a potent lesson in perseverance. It still is.

Although in my 30s when I read this first installment in Mary Stewart’s Arthurian series, I couldn’t help but identify with this tale of a young outsider with uncertain parentage who is shunned for his visionary abilities…a young outsider named Merlin.

As I followed his coming-of-age story, I couldn’t help but see myself in Merlin’s journey. At the time, I was barely a year into a life-changing odyssey, feeling pushed into embracing my own uncertain parentage and prodded into acknowledging inner realms that I would once have dismissed as New Age claptrap.

Like Merlin, I was in the midst of experiencing a version of myself for the first time. And like Merlin, I was learning to be okay with it.

A Wizard of Earthsea is a coming-of-age story. I also didn’t discover it until long after I’d passed out of my teens. Yet, A Wizard of Earthsea affected me deeply at a time when I was moving through earthquaking life changes. 

As someone who had been creatively blocked for decades — I had not yet started writing my book—I was immediately sucked in by the first line of the quote that opens the book: “Only in silence the word…” 

In the end, I was so inspired by the Earthsea series and by Le Guin’s writings on creativity that I sent her a copy of my book’s first edition as soon as it was published.

If my previous selections showed up for me at a time of profound shift and helped reignite my creativity, I was already an established author by the time I discovered The Alchemyst.

What I was looking for in those days was a compelling story, and what attracted me to this one was its blend of magic and mythology played out in a contemporary setting and involving a real-life historical figure. I love what I guess you’d call fictional biography, and the Nicholas Flamel series must be the most creative example of the genre I have ever come across. 

At the same time, Michael Scott’s imaginative use of the historical Nicholas Flamel inspired me to borrow real-life personages for my other (non-fantasy) fiction series.