Fans pick 100 books like The Eye of the World

J.R.R. Tolkien's masterful storytelling is unmatched, and The Lord of the Rings weaves together moral dilemmas and profound philosophical ideas seamlessly, encouraging me to contemplate the nature of power, the importance of preserving the natural world, and the significance of individual choices.

The book's themes of heroism, friendship, sacrifice, and the struggle between good and evil resonate deeply. In addition, each of his characters feels like an aspect of oneself; the introspection it inspires is brilliant!

The Lord of the Rings instills a sense of wonder, ignites the imagination, and imparts timeless wisdom, which heavily transformed my perspective on life, my values, and my understanding of the human condition.

Game of Thrones, right? This author has created so many characters that fit this category, and they all handle their situations in a different manner. I love the three major ones, Arya Stark, Sansa Stark, and Daenerys Targaryen, who could not be more different from each other. Sansa and Arya have grown up in privilege, but one scheme to be a pampered lady, and the other would be happy sleeping in the kennel with her dire wolf.

Daenerys has been hidden much of her childhood to protect her, and suddenly, she is thrown into the game with her arranged marriage to a wild horse lord, where she grows up very fast in order to survive. Sadly, as women in Westeros, they do not control their own fates, and following how their lives evolve and intertwine is fascinating.

Like The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Frank Herbert’s book tells the story of a man who could be the villain or the hero, depending on who you ask. I love watching how an intelligent yet malleable person can be swept up in feelings of duty, responsibility, and leadership only to make highly questionable decisions.

Paul Atreides’ moral ambiguity is undeniably engineered by the shifting and slimy political landscape of the Dune universe, driving home the idea in my mind that good worldbuilding can set the stage for truly complicated characters.

The only Young Adult book on this list but firmly deserving of its place, this book is the perfect example of how to successfully blend science fiction and fantasy. 

Colfer takes a traditional fantasy fairy society and gives them advanced weaponry, surveillance gadgets, and time-stopping devices. It works incredibly well, and through convincing world-building I was immediately bought into the idea of fantasy creatures with sci-fi technology. 

A standout feature of the novel is the characters, whose backstories, motivations, and behaviours all help to build this science fantasy world. We get an elf “LEPRecon” officer with access to bionic wings, a centaur who heads the technology department of the “Lower Elements Police,” and a dwarven thief who sells stolen human property on the black market. They were all enormously fun to read.

Chances are many of you have heard of this one, or at least of its author.

Neverwhere is not Gaiman’s best-known or best-selling book. Not by a long shot on either score. But it is my personal favorite, in part because it is less flashy than his other books, while managing to be just as exciting and suspenseful.

Like all of Gaiman’s work, it is at once humorous and dark, fanciful and brutally believable. Our hero, Richard Mayhew, is hapless but ultimately lovable. Our villains, a pair of killers named Croup and Vandemar, are terrifying.

And the characters we discover in the world below the streets of London, are charming and worth fighting for.

Who doesn’t want to right the wrongs committed against them? I try to be a grown up and move on with my life when someone antagonizes me, but sometimes I wish there was justice in the world. Who doesn’t, even if sometimes we know we are not being mature? Revenge is the ultimate ending, and Abercrombie’s clever stand-alone novel examines just how cold it really can be. It turns out, not at all. Monza has been screwed over bad. She has every reason to want to get even—which means everyone who tried to kill her needs to end up dead. The bodies certainly pile up but when she reaches victory, Monza finds it more absurd than cold. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and more than a little darkly humorous. Take it with a shadowy laugh.

I love this series of three short novels enough to have read it more times than I can count. The language of the novel is simple and evocative. I love the main character, a young wizard who starts out as proud, angry and arrogant, but becomes deeply compassionate when his hubris leads him to make a tragic and evil use of magic.

I could feel myself grabbed by the world of the novel, a world of men and dragons, of islands dotted in an endless sea, of powerful mages who interfere at their peril with the precarious balance of the world between good and evil. 

Who hasn’t dreamt of being able to converse with a wolf? We get our chance in this intriguing story of Fitz Farseer, my all-time favorite character.

There’s much to enjoy in this series—royal assassins, secret mentors, and family betrayal—but what I love most is the outlawed magic that creates a deep bond between Fitz and a fearless wolf named Nighteyes, allowing them to communicate.

Nighteyes, another favorite character, reminds me of my childhood golden retriever, only with sharper fangs and claws. He reveals exactly how much we’re missing out on when we can’t converse with animals like him—sharing their sharper perceptions, grasping the wolfishly obvious, or having our human foolishness pointed out in their bluntly canine way.

I do not think any list relating to fantasy books would be complete without an entry from David Gemmell, a true gold standard of the genre. Legend is another book I first fell in love with as a teenager. I loved the simple enough premise: countless enemies at the gates of a fortress, and if the fortress falls, the Drenai Empire falls.

The story also introduces what I believe to be one of the most iconic heroes in heroic fantasy, the Deathwalker—Druss The Legend. While there were battles like nothing I had ever read before it was the interaction between the characters and the fellowship of the embattled defenders which brought me into this world fully as I read. The expert craft of the story made me really care about each of the characters and their fate. 

There is an expertly realised villain in Ulric, the leader of the enemy,… show more.

This is the first book in a series that goes on and on, following the life of a couple of characters as the world changes around them. Spanning two different worlds, this first book builds up a number of characters you want to keep reading about. As the series continues through time, new threats to the two worlds introduce new characters. What I like most about this series is it keeps moving the worlds forward instead of stagnating.