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Your fantasy introduction


Quiver

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NOTE There is a topic similar to this, but the last post in if was made about this time in 2012. Starting a new topic seemed fine, but if moderators or admins disagree, feel free to fold this into that old topic.

(For reference, it's on the third page, and started by KChan).

Anyway, what was it that got you into reading fantasy?

When I was a kid, I read the Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter, but they weren't what 'turned' me. The thing that made me go out and start reading fantasy seriously was The Fellowship of the Ring. That film blew my mind in more ways than I can count. I bought The Two Towers and Return of the King because I had to know what happened next. I spent the next year talking about that film! and trying to come up with a cool fantasy story of my own.

Is that bad? Maybe. I haven't read Elric of Melnibone, or the Wheel of Time, or Gormenghast, or any of those classics of the genre, but I'd still consider myself a fantasy fan. Since then, I've read an okay-number of fantasy books, but I'm always going to remember the three that I read first, because they were the first fantasy novels I bought myself. They had nothing to do with movies, or tv shows, and that was when I started thinking of myself as a genre fan.

Those books were Rise of the Serpent Queen, Eragon, and Voyage of the Jerle Shannara.

It's funny. Now, I dislike those books and authors, for various reasons... But they were my first books. And LotR was my first fantasy. I can honestly say I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those.

Edited by Quiver
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One of the first fantasy novels I ever read was Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist. The Riftwar Saga captured my imagination in a truly epic way. After that I think I read Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams, and from there my life was predominantly composed of ravenous searching for new books. :)

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I also started out at a really young age with the Narnia books but my love of reading waned in middle school and early high school due to all the boring "classic" crap they force you to read at that age. Dickens might be a great writer but he puts me to sleep. When Enders's game came around, though, I remembered why I loved reading. Science Fiction was the bulk of my reading for a while after that with the Ender's Game/Shadow Series and Dune still being some of my favorites.

A year or so later, while replaying Baldur's Gate on the PC, I was walking through the bookstore and saw the covers for Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy and thought, "Hey, that's the Drizzt fellow that kicks everyone's chull when you put in a cheat code". So, I picked up the book and ended up reading straight through about twelve of the Drizzt books. They weren't exactly high literature but they were fun and piqued my interest in the freedom of imagination in fantasy. I've since learned there is much better fantasy but Salvatore's Forgotten Realms books will always hold a special place for reintroducing me to my love for fantasy, which is probably 3/4 of what I read now.

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Interesting. I don't seem to have a specific book or turning point that made me a fantasy fan, that I can think of - I can remember always enjoying fantasy.

That being said, the earliest fantasies I remember loving were The Dark Is Rising, Deltora Quest, Narnia, Harry Potter, Ranger's Apprentice etc. I also went through a massive fairy/unicorn/sparkly rainbow stage very young, but I don't remember what any of those were called. First physically massive epic fantasy I read was probably Eragon, but I could also make a case for Obernewtyn (or is that sci-fi?).

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I wasn't a Fantasy reader until quite recently. I started with WoT and managed to finish the first 13 books, by completing coincidence, the day before aMoL came out. Before that I mostly read Sci - Fi, but not very often. WoT changed that. Since amok I've been reading constantly. I started with Sanderson then KKC, Demon Cycle, asoiaf then back for more Sanderson when I got a copy of WoK ... Robert Jordan, and to an extent Brandon Sanderson, have literally changed my life. They gave me interest and a thirst for reading that I've been missing since I was quite young and pointed it in exactly the direction it needed to go.

I had to fork out for a kindle halfway through WoT because of space issues. (After seeing the fantasy shelves at Water stones it was clear I would never have enough room to keep most of my books if this new fascination continued.)

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Though I've read LoTR when I was younger, it was reading WoT in 7th grade that started it for me. Before that, I was a Philip K. Dick fan, but WoT changed all that and launched me in the direction of fantasy, finishing some sagas (SoT, Asoiaf, Majipoor, Chronicles of Amber, Discworld) and generally hungering for more. Sanderson is a very recent addiction, and considering the speed with which he churns out books, the addiction will stay for a long long time.

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Before college, the only novels I enjoyed reading were detective, mystery, and thriller novels. Just like most people, I read fairy tales as a kid, but in my early teenage years I had this misguided notion that reading about magic (what with its made up words and make-believe physics) was childish, unproductive, and silly, so I mostly restricted myself to non-fiction and non-fantasy fiction. Heck, back then the only speculative fiction novel I remember reading in full was H.G. Wells' the Time Machine, and that was sci-fi, not fantasy.

Then in my first year of college an upperclassman sent me a RAR file containing hundreds of speculative fiction novels. He suggested I try out Terry Pratchett's Discworld series first. As he seemed pretty intelligent, I respected his opinion and decided to give Pratchett a chance, which was honestly one of the best decisions I've made in my life. That, I suppose, was my introduction to fantasy fiction.

What got me into Pratchett was that his books had a satirical nature that gave me an excuse: I told myself that I was reading a parody of fantasy literature, not "real" fantasy, so it's okay. Being a "hater" actually made me enjoy the Discworld series more because I got to laugh at the silly tropes that were made fun of in the books. Little did I know that because of Discworld, I was slowly getting used to reading about magic. Before I knew it, I was learning to appreciate the magical elements of the story as they were, as opposed to what they were referencing. Then when I read another, more serious fantasy book (I think it was the Fellowship of the Ring, but that may have been later), I noticed that I no longer cringed at the use of magical terminology, no longer rolled my eyes after each magical explanation. In short, for once I suddenly found myself liking fantasy.

Edited by skaa
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Tolkien. :)

 

Though I read stuff like Dostoyevsky and Thomas Mann before that and still enjoy 'literature', too.

 

Since I came to Tolkien in the early 80ies, many of the books out then were sorta generic, sometimes fun like Edding's Elenium or the first Riftwar novels, but I really got into Fantasy with Tad William's Dragonbone Chair which started a new sort of Fantasy - or made me aware of its existence. It was not so easy to get English books in Germany prior to Amazon, and I don't like to read translations. The coming of the Internet (and I got mine as early as 1993) made it easier to learn about new books. I still fondly remember some Geocities websites. :)

 

Nowadays my shelves are an unholy mix of 19th century novels, Fantasy, historical fiction, Icelandic sagas and such, and non fiction books about Roman and Mediaeval history, sorted by whereever I can fit another book in. And I swear they procreate when I'm not looking. :D

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Me to many many yrs ago although now I can't read generic fantasy for some reason. I can't stand Dwarves either unless it's Tolkein.

 

Dragons of Spring Dawning Spoiler:

 

Come on Flint's death scene, where he admits his bromance to Tasslehoff?  Get's me everytime

 

Though I feel that way about The Belgriad. Loved loved loved so much at High School.  Tried to read it a couple of years back.  I cried, it was like finding out there was no santa.

 

On the subject of Dwarves, I picked up the Dwarves (against my better judgement).  Wished I hadn't.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Though I grew up with Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter, I don't really count those as high fantasy.

 

The first real high fantasy I ever read was Maggie Furey's Aurian, which I loved.  I remember thinking it felt like very traditional fantasy, with your basic Anglo-French setting, dragons, a big bad, and elemental magic. 

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There hasn't been a time in my life where I haven't been reading, so finding a Tipping point wasn't easy but what really got me into High Fantasy was Wheel of Time when I was twelve or so. I got way of kings and towers of midnight at the same time which was kind of funny actually because the only other brandon book I'd read at that point was alcatraz. In between devouring Brandon and WoT I read Dragonbone chair, which was in a lot of ways My lord of the rings, even though I'd already been reading epic fantasy for a while by then.

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Even before Harry Potter I used to try and read Fantasy/Sci-fi books, they just seemed cool to me.

Around 4-7th grade, and in between all the Harry Potters, I remember reading some of the Everworld series books, I read the War of Souls Trilogy from the Dragonlance, and a bunch of other small, random things. And then around 8th grade or so I started reading Stephen King, and the Dark Tower series. I mostly stayed on King and other stuff, but then around the time Game of Thrones came out, my friend told me about Wheel of Time. Luckily was on book 10 or so already by time book 14 came out, and that was my introduction to Brandon Sanderson, of course reading the Game of Thrones books too along the way and now many others.

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Lord of the Rings, as a child. I dabbled with The Inheritance Cycle and Harry Potter too. Poor substitutes, those. Mostly read Star Wars novels until I stumbled onto the Erevis Cale trilogy in Forgotten Realms. Even after that, I only started reading more fantasy novels due to Suvudu's cage match. Introduced me to Kelsier, Jean Tannen, Moiraine and Kylar Stern. Decided to pick up the novels mentioned there and never looked back.

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Read my first book(last half of it) in 2011. Rewatched Harry Potter movies as last part was coming out in a week or two, then watched them again, couldn't wait anymore and started reading. But HP isn't one that introduced me to fantasy. It introduced me to books, but mostly YA stuff like Percy Jackson and Mortal Instruments. I got bored with them soon and friend recommended me Name of the Wind. Then Mistborn happened, followed by Night Angel and that's how I got into fantasy novels. But I've been into fantasy/sci-fi(mostly sci-fi) stuff since I was 7-8, just too lazy to read...

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  • 4 weeks later...

Believe it or not, it was Eragon for me. I'd actually read LOTR prior to that so I'd have read it before the movies came out (I was about ten at the time), and while LOTR is a great book, it's not that accessible to a ten-year-old. But I read Eragon and loved it. Then I found the Redwall series and Narnia, and I was firmly hooked. :)

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I started with the LOTR trilogy. I had younger siblings so I got into the Bartimaeous Trilogy, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Children of the Red King. I wasn't really into reading all that much back then, I mean I enjoyed it, but I could go for long periods of time without reading for fun (high school and college were intense). After I read the Way of Kings, I found myself putting down one book and looking forward to the next. I have a long queue of books to get through and I'm enjoying every second of it. So I guess my true introduction to fantasy is through Brandon Sanderson books.

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As a kid, I consumed every book in sight (my mother had to hide the ones I was too young for), so I honestly can't say what my first fantasy was. But I remember enjoying those cliche'd fatasies one always find in the children section of the library, normally involving a talking cat. Then when I was 11 I picked up thirst Eragon book and was mindblown. I searched everywhere for every kind of fantasy I could lay my hands on, until my sister's ex borrowed me the first Mistborn book. MINDBLOW AGAIN. Now, at 16, I know enough about fantasy to see the many and numerous flaws in the Eragon books, but I still occasionally re-read them, for nostalgia's sake.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

Anyway, what was it that got you into reading fantasy

 

The Eye of the World, by Robert Jordan. I think there could have been no better introduction to fantasy than this one. Maybe, The Name of The Wind, or The Final Empire.

 

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I am constantly reading. When I was younger, all the realistic fiction and non-fiction books never really did it for me. I started reading Harry Potter when I was really young, and it changed my life. I ventured into the world of fantasy at a young age and since then I have been addicted. Fantasy is the one way to escape from the world you live in - whether you're happy in it or not. Whenever I feel like I need to escape what's really happening or just relax, it's the most amazing experience to witness things you know would never happen but feel so real. 

 

Fantasy Rocks!  :D

 

Eskridge 

 

 

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  • 5 months later...

The book series I started out with when I was young were Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom (which are amazing and I highly recommend) and the Artemis Fowl (which I also recommend) series. Percy Jackson gave me my love of mythology and made me love fantasy. My brother gave me the first Mistborn book for Christmas two years ago and I absolutely loved it and read the second and third and when I finished, I knew that I had never read any other book that could compare to those. I read all of the other cosmere novels after that. Brandon's books are what got me into the worldbuilding side of fantasy.

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