There are 36 item(s) tagged with “fantasy” on this site.
Other tags used by these items: fiction, young-adult, science-fiction, harry-potter, education, faith, cyoa, classic, travel, comedy, history, horror, philosophy, chicago, television, publishing, london, interpersonal, libraries, politics, media, movies, muppets, jim-henson, romance, psychology, nyc, mexico, rpg, apologetics, satire, cyber-security, tech, dystopian, higher-education, china, military
“My daughter read this for school and asked me to read it too. It’s essentially the movie ‘Groundhog Day’ for tweens. I enjoyed it. It was well-written and had a nice theme of redemption and the need to be good to other people. Much like the movie, the protagonists can’t continue their lives until…”
“This is a fable. It was written by a Brazilian author in 1988, and has something of a cult following. A friend recommended it. It’s a story that’s also intended as self-improvement (I think…?). It’s about an ancient Spanish shepherd who travels into Africa to find his destiny. He has a dream about…”
“It’s tough to review this book. It was written 150 years ago, and I am clearly not the intended audience. It’s a children’s story, which came from a story that the author made up to tell to three young girls one afternoon. To be clear: there’s no real narrative here. The story is basically a fever…”
“A wonderful book – some cross between a road trip buddy movie and a psychedelic drug experience. I’ll try not to spoil anything, but the basic premise is that when immigrants came to America, they brought their gods and superstitions with them. Norse gods, and Pagan gods, and elves and leprechauns…”
“A shockingly good novel. I normally wouldn’t have read this, because fantasy is a genre I don’t think I’ve read a single page of, but a friend (who is a huge fan – he has tattoos…) recommended it. By page 100, I was contemplating taking the day off work to stay home and read it. What was amazing to…”
“Although regarded as a classic of the Christian faith, this is actually a novel. It’s a short story of a man who is living in a gray, depressing town. He catches a magic bus which takes him to an amazing land in the sky where he watches a series of interactions between ghosts and spirits. The…”
“This is my sixth Potter novel – I’ve read them all in order. Like the last one (‘The Order of the Phoenix’), this was long: somewhere close to 700 pages. And like that one, the book seemed to meander a lot. I said of the last one that Rowling could have cut 200 pages from the middle and no one…”
“A good installment in the series, but overly long. At 900 pages, it was the longest so far. She could have cut a third of the book out and told the same story. There were hundreds of pages in the middle where not much of anything was happening. I enjoyed the characterization of Umbridge. Also, I…”
“Honestly, I didn’t love it, which I know is heretical, but it was very episodic – just random episodes kind of strung together with very little unifying plot. This is likely due to the fact that it’s a kid’s book, but, still, I just couldn’t get into it. Also, I wasn’t in love with his writing…”
“This is the third book in Narnia series (by intention, not by publication date – the ordering of this series has always been disputed). This is set in the world of Narnia, but doesn’t directly continue the prior book. It’s an entirely different story, starting with different characters, but then…”
“Not my jam, really, but my son and his girlfriend were reading it, so I decided to give it a shot. There are a lot of characters, and time travel is involved, so the book is all over the place. At any given moment, I had the barest understanding of what was happening. Characterization was poor, and…”
“I read this as the second novel in the series. It’s better than the first one (‘The Magician’s Nephew’), but still pretty thin. There are no layers to the story of the plot – it’s very linear, very superficial. There are no twists. It seems like a heavy allegory of the Christ story, but apparently…”
“This was a later book in the series, but was written as a prequel. I read it first, before any of the other books. It’s…okay, I guess? Clearly, it’s exposition. Lewis is trying to clean up a bunch of details and set the stage for what comes next. I sort of knew that going in, so I read it in that…”
“I was headed home from Frankfurt, and I needed a book for the nine-hour flight. This was one of the few titles in the shop that was in English. Turns out, it’s a wonderful novel. A mid-30s woman in England has had a life full of regret where things just didn’t work out for her. She looks back on so…”
“Wonderful book about the history of D&D and role-playing in general. The author is a journalist, and the book is both an objective history and a personal reflection. The book is…tender, in places. It discusses the subject with clear emotional history and baggage, and I loved it for that. But hidden…”
“I originally read this novel in high school. I think I got 10 installments into the series before I graduated, and it turns out the series has grown to 40+ novels. It was essentially Harry Potter before that was even a thing – grand adventures in a magical world, sheltered from the real world…”
“First, this is not a standalone novel. It’s part one of three, and it ends completely unfinished. Second, I bought this because of Barack Obama. Seriously – I saw it on the shelf of a book and gaming store in Stockholm, and it had a praise quote from Obama on the cover. I thought, ‘Has a president…”
“Simply a great read. A very fast-moving account of what a Martian invasion might look like at the turn of the 20th century (it was written in 1898). The author captures the subtle movement from confusion to outright terror and panic extremely well. When the first Martian cylinder lands, no one…”
