The most transcendent fantasy novels

A no-brainer, of course. I first read the old (I mean the very first) Ballantine paperback edition in junior high school. I had never dreamed a writer could achieve something like this – not only sustained plot interest through classic storytelling, but genuine exaltation of the spirit. What Tolkien’s friend C. S. Lewis called “Joy.” The chase through the mines of Moria. The Ride of the Rohirrim. It was like discovering a vitamin I’d been deficient in all my life. Only later did I understand how Viking lore, which already fascinated me, informed Tolkien’s mythos by way of the sagas and the Eddas. Often imitated, never equaled.

“An animal story?” I can hear you say. “You’re telling me to read an animal story?” That was precisely my reaction when a friend first recommended this book to me. But I trusted his judgment, and dipped my toe in. Soon the river had swept me away. The animals in this book are more human than the humans in a lot of novels I read. There’s love and loss and heartbreak and tragedy and heroism and genuine wrestling with the biggest questions of our lives. Try and forget Mundo Cani Dog once you’ve met him. I’d give a fairly important body part to be able to write something as moving as this.

A wonderful book in two senses – it’s wonderfully written, and it evokes wonder. This is an idiosyncratic urban fantasy set in an imaginary metropolis called New York City (cut off from the world by an impenetrable cloud wall that lifts only occasionally, to let the trains through). In this city, amazing characters (amazingly good and amazingly evil) clash as they strive for the things that matter to them most. And the prose is as bright and vivid as a Van Gogh painting. Winter’s Tale contains one of my favorite lines in all literature, where one character is described as “breathtakingly short.”

This one isn’t very well-known. It was recommended to me by the same friend who recommended The Book of the Dun Cow, so I bought it and was well rewarded. The theme of the child who is somehow the Chosen One, destined to fight the great Evil, has been overdone in literature, and often done badly. MacLeish gets it right. Here’s a familiar world where nevertheless the supernatural somehow lurks around every corner. There’s a haunting quality here that many authors have attempted but not quite achieved.

Probably the least popular book in Lewis’ famous “science fiction” trilogy, this is actually one of my favorite novels in the world. But it does make demands on the reader. I’m listing it as a fantasy novel here, although it’s formally classed as science fiction. That’s because Lewis made a conscious effort to link this story up with his friend Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Merlin’s wizardry in THS is of the same order as Gandalf’s. The revenge of nature at the end of THS comes by way of the revenge of the Ents at Isengard. What makes THS difficult is that Lewis set about portraying evil in something like its full banality and dullness. That makes the first part of the book a slog for most readers. But everything comes together, unforgettably, in the second part.