Official JC Book Review Club: Fiction...has moved.

Some good fantasy series for kids/middle readers/young adults:

The Dark is Rising Series by Susan Cooper: Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch; The Grey King; Silver on the Tree
(Award-winning twist on Arthurian legend.)

The Prydain books by Lloyd Alexander: The Book of Three; The Black Cauldron; The Castle of Llyr; Taran Wanderer; The High King
(Another Newbery Medal winning series--this based on Welsh mythology.)

The Earthsea books by Ursula K. Le Guin (mentioned above): A Wizard of Earthsea; The Tombs of Atuan; The Farthest Shore; Tehanu; Tales from Earthsea; The Other Wind
(Great series--interesting philosophy of magic--Le Guin just added the last two books to the series after a gap of twenty years or so.)

A more sf spin on magic and wizards is the So You Want To Be A Wizard? series by Diane Duane.

And of course, the classic by Tolkien, The Hobbit.

 

For anyone interested in a good, complex fantasy series, I'd recommend Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas convenant, very dark and involving.
The same could be said for his sci-fi series, The Gap novels, which are a fantastic achievement. They combine space opera elements, epic space battles,etc, with complicated political sub-plots, and ambigious characters, there are many characters in this series it's not easy to categorise as heroes or villains. They veer between extremes.
One set of books I'd say are a must read are the collected short stories of Philip K Dick, the man was a genius, it's no coincidence that so many of his concepts have been picked up by film makers. Beyond lies the wub and Second variety are my personal favourites, but they're all good, and most of them have a sting in the tail, sort of like Roald Dahl writes sci-fi.

 

LittleLadyVader, I was under the impression that Black House was a sequel to The Talisman, which was the previous joint venture by King and Straub. It wouldn't suprise me, though, if references to the Dark Tower were made. King has done little cross-overs before. In Wizard and Glass, (I'm reaching back into my cobweb memory here), Blain the Train makes a stop at a world which contains a blatant reference to the plague written about in The Stand. There was also a Flagg character in a book whose name I know I'm about to butcher...Tears(Eyes?) of the Dragon, or something like that. It has been some time since I've read it.

I also love the Dark Tower saga, btw. I was told by my brother-in-law just the other day that King's latest collection of short stories has one set in the Dark Tower world. He will let me read it when he is finished.

 

Just finished reading the last book ever by Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt. <Sniff, sniff>

The Salmon of Doubt is collection of his essays and works that were unfinished when he died in May 2001. Included in this collection are ruminations on computers, the Internet, the Beatles, Richard Dawkins. There's also a fragment of the unfinished Hitchhiker novel. For fans, there's an appearance by Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged. And, of course, there are a ton of great one-liners.

For example: "And now we have the World Wide Web (the only thing I know of whose shortened form--www--takes three times as long to say than what it's short for)..."

"My favorite piece of information is that Branwell Bronte, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantlepiece, in order to prove it could be done. That is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees."

Adams in one of the few authors who has ever made me laugh out loud while reading.

So long, DNA, and thanks for all the fish.