5-4-Fri: Fantasy Series

If you are like me, and you aren’t, when you were a teen you didn’t have to furtively search the used book stores of major cities for dogeared copies of There and Back Again like your elders--you simply rode the wave of America’s fantasy novel explosion. Okay, there was a downside to reading fantasy: no girlfriend (or was that the headgear?), no respect, and no more money for comics anymore bacause these books went down like a cool bottle of Mountain Dew on a hot summer day and you had to own all of them, right.

Here are five series that I enjoyed at various ages:

1. The Prydain Chronicles -- Lloyd Alexander’s classic Welsh mythology about Taran Wanderer coming into manhood during a time of threat and darkness. What elementary schooler doesn’t love an oracle piggie?!

2. The Shanara Series -- With cringe-inducing titles (Sword of Shanara, Elfstones of Shanara and Wishsong of Shanara), Terry Brooks follows the adventures of three generations of Ohmsfords--Shea, Wil and Brin--as they face doom at the side of the wise and powerful Allanon. Teenage goodness.

3. Incarnations of Immortality -- the somewhat sexist but hilarious Piers Anthony is the Steven King of fantasy (sorry, Uncle Stevie, The Dark Tower didn’t cut it). Among his series are this one that posits the notion that our anthropomorphic icons--Mother Earth, Father Time, Death--are real job titles. Sometimes, folks get tricked into taking the job. When you discover girls it’s time to discover Piers Anthony.

4. Lord of the Rings -- As I got older I understood these masterpieces more thoroughly. It’s as if Jo Rowling wrote The Sorcerer’s Stone and then pulled a Melville and veered off into creating her own shadowy meta-narrative on Northern European mythology and providing a critique of WWII. You know them. You love them. Time to re-read them, which I did as the recent movies came out. ‘Nuff said.

5. Dresden Files -- Lately, I have been enjoying the exploits of Harry Dresden, Wizard. A sad sack denizen of Chicago, Harry plays detective, fumbles with the ladies, unwinds his personal history, and fends off the unwanted repercussions of having a hot fairy godmother while sharing the couch with his dog-sized cat (and then also with his adoptive dog). Get a case, get beat up, pull everyone’s bacon from the fire, nurse your wounds with a pint of "Mac" McAnally’s homemade beer--lather, rinse, repeat.

PS - Woefully, I have to recommend the cliched path of starting each series with the first novel. In order: The Book of Three, Sword of Shanara, On A Pale Horse, The Fellowship of the Ring, and Storm Front. Oh, and "American Girls" by Counting Crows is great to read by; now playing on iTunes.