The best books to whisk you between worlds

I was enchanted by The Chronicles of Narnia the first time I read them, and the seven volumes of this series continue to charm, both entertaining kids and offering a more thought-provoking journey on later reading. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the best-known book of the series, is a high fantasy novel but also a portal fantasy: our heroes exit wartime Britain through the back of a wardrobe and emerge in Narnia, with its talking animals, evil witches, and mysterious (at least to an American kid) Turkish delight. If you’ve ever longed to step through an ordinary doorway and find yourself in a magical world of adventure, this is an all-ages classic.

The Magicians is what happens when a kid who’s obsessed with a series like The Chronicles of Narnia grows up, is accepted into a magical university, and discovers along the way that the fantasy world he so loved reading about is real…but not quite what he imagined. This novel, the first in a trilogy, offers a more jaded look at some of the beloved aspects of children’s fantasy and how they might play out with young adults discovering themselves and seeking purpose.

While Coraline may technically be a children’s fantasy, it’s sufficiently creepy to keep adults turning the pages. When Coraline and her busy parents move into a flat in an old house, she has few companions but her eccentric neighbors. One day, she opens a door that previously led to a brick wall, only to discover a building much like hers on the other side: the “Other World,” where the neighbors are entertaining and Coraline’s parents dote upon her. Her “Other Mother” tells her she can stay forever…but only if she agrees to have buttons sewn over her eyes. With a plucky heroine and a great villain, this is an excellent read.

Clever, with rich worldbuilding and a cast of flawed, fleshed-out characters, this book is a definite page-turner. Nora Fisher’s life is in a slump: her dissertation is stalled, and her love life is in tatters. While attending a friend’s wedding, she slips off for a hike and accidentally winds up in another world, one far more beautiful than her own but where nothing is as it seems. Escaping her gilded prison is one matter, but to find her way home again, Nora will need to discover her talent for magic. I thoroughly enjoyed both this book and its recent sequel, How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic.

The first thing to come to mind when you hear “Stephen King” is probably “horror,” and that’s well deserved. For those who like their fantasy gritty and sweeping, however, The Dark Tower is not to be missed. The Gunslinger, the first volume, introduces Roland Deschain, a knight-like figure from Mid-World who seeks the Dark Tower, the imperiled axis upon which all worlds turn. While Roland hunts the mysterious Man in Black across the desert, he meets Jake Chambers, a boy from another world who may have just died. Part Western, part epic fantasy (and with an eventual appearance by a version of the author himself later in the series), this is not to be missed.