Some Of My Favorites on World Book Day

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(I know I have some author friends who read my blog. I hope I didn't hurt any feelings by not including people for the sake of friendship.)

I'm getting reports that today is World Book Day. I'm also getting reports that World Book Day is on April 23. I'm going with today because I feel like writing this post today and who knows what April 23 will bring? I thought that, in celebration of the day (allegedly) I'd share some of my favorite books and series in a format known as “Whatever Category I Can Extract from My Third Point of Contact.” I dunno if that works as a concept or not, but it's the one I'm going with.

Book Above All Books: First and foremost, I have to mention the Bible. I'm a Christian. That's just the way it is. I find it to be uplifting and amazing. Having read the Bible, I also find that most of the crap its detractors say to be false, but how can I compare my knowledge of what's written, having actually READ it, versus their feelings?

Best Fantasy Novel: I wanted to go with Dragons of Autumn Twilight here, but I'm actually going with Dragons of the Hourglass Mage. Either way, the book is by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. I wanted to go with Dragons of Autumn Twilight because it was the book that made me fall in love with the Fantasy genre, but really I enjoyed Dragons of the Hourglass Mage more because I'm a huge Raistlin mark and also because, honestly, the same authors wrote Hourglass decades after Autumn Twilight and they were just better writers by then. Practice makes perfect, right? And a couple of decades of practice can make even the best authors better.

Best Fantasy Trilogy: Oh dear. Oh God. I just, I mean, this is how I take my fantasy and uhh.. Well...
I'm going with the Dwarven Nations Trilogy by Dan Parkinson. Yes, that's two straight Dragonlance references.  I need to buy a new copy of that at some point. Listen folks, its dwarves, doing dwarven things and playing lots of loud drum music. I love this trilogy. Flint Fireforge, Bruenor Battlehammer and this trilogy are the main reasons I'm working on writing a novel starring a dwarf and the D&D campaign I DM is centered around dwarven cities and towns. I'm not ever sure if this is still in print, but if it is check it out. It's a good time.

Best Fantasy Series (More Than Three Books): I'm an unapologetic fanboi and it should come as no surprise to anyone that I'm going with Harry Potter for this one, especially after my praise of J.K. Rowling last post. Harry Potter has captivated the minds and hearts of millions, including mine. The world is beautifully crafted, the character growth is real and sustained and if I hate Umbridge worse than Voldemort, who cares? They're both evil. (And I've studied totalitarian regimes and what they did IRL. Umbridge was every bit the totalitarian that Mao, Lenin and Hitler were.)

I want to make an honorable mention to Brent Weeks and his Lightbringer series here. You didn't quite make it, but if my ex hadn't bought me that copy of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone...

And now I can hear my dad in the back of my head talking about hounds and rabbits.

*AHEM*

Continuing on...

Best Science Fiction Novel: Ya know, I've been reading Science Fiction for longer than I've been reading fantasy. I've read a lot of Science Fiction novels. I've bought them, checked them out of libraries and borrowed them. There is one that stands out for me though. It's the one I spent three decades searching for because I checked it out of the Ferndale Public Library when I was a wee little Jimbo and couldn't remember what it was. I know some people don't like Robert A. Heinlein, but that's their problem. For favorite novel, I'm going with Citizen of the Galaxy. It's a story of love, of profit and of freedom. I know most Heinlein fans prefer his other works, but they can bite me. This is my list and for me it doesn't get any better than this.

Best Science Fiction Trilogy: Suzanne Collins, take a bow. I almost didn't read The Hunger Games Trilogy. I bought my first Nook the weekend that The Hunger Games movie came out and they offered me a free copy of one of the books, so of course I went with the first one. I had heard it was all girly and love-triangly (That's totes a word. Get over yourself.) and not worth reading, but it was free and I had a lot of room on my Nook and no books to fill it with yet...

And I went to see the movie with a girl I knew that weekend. I was hooked. Within a week of seeing the movie, I had read all three books. It does have a bit of a romance angle to it with the Katniss/Peeta/Gayle love triangle but there is A LOT more to it than that. The first novel was gut-wrenching. Seriously, if you haven't read about the Reaping do so. Catching Fire was insane. Mockingjay was off the chain crazy. I'll never quite get the part where Katniss was shooting down jets with a bow, but no book is perfect I guess.

...and both of David Brin's Uplift Trilogies get shafted. Sorry bro! Love your work!

Best Science Fiction Series (More Than Three Books): Oh Gosh, O Jeez, I mean, this is how they do it now-a-days right? Everything is a never ending sequence of awesome. You know what, it's my list right? I just found two subcategories for this hanging from my posterior. Are you ready? (And yes, that's a cop out. Whatever. My blog, my rules.)

Best Science Fiction Series (More Than Three Books)(Multiple Authors): Kill aliens. Get paid. Live the free-wheeling life of a merc and get rich if you survive. If you missed it, I'm speaking of the  Four Horsemen Universe, started by Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy but expanded to include too many authors to name here. I'm lazy. But dude, if you don't like cruising the star lanes and looking for trouble why are you here? Plus Asbaran Solutions has the best combat sequences I've ever read ever. Yes, I wrote ever twice on purpose.

Best Science Fiction Series (More Than Three Books)(Single Author): Admiral Steadholder Lady Dame Honor Stephanie Alexander-Harrington is one of the most amazing characters ever and the Honorverse is amazingly well-built with characters that live and breathe (well, unless you're Paul Tankersley, but I digress) . In order to fit this into the Single Author category, I have to limit the winner to the mainline Honor novels, but the ancillary novels are amazing as well. I just needed a loophole here.

Best Alternate History Novel: Roma Eterna by Robert Silverberg. Listen, I grew up on watching Ben Hur and reading Roman History from the library. Granted, I study American History because I speak the language (serious historical work is done in the vernacular and I don't speak Latin, Classical Greek or Italian) but I've always loved both Roman history and art. This one presupposes that the Roman Empire never fell and survives to the modern day. I reads like an anthology but it's really entertaining.

Best Alternate History Trilogy: The Celtic Crusades by Stephen R. Lawhead. I'm told his Robin Hood stuff is really good too, but I haven't gotten to it. This is a trilogy split between modern day Britain and the Crusades. On one hand, we have a character studying what came before as part of a secret society. On the other hand, we get flashbacks to the actual Crusades and the recovery of several Christian artifacts. These books were amazingly well done and entertaining. I need to read more Lawhead I think.

Best Alternate History Series (More Than Three Books): I'm going with a super long series that is actually several serieses (is that a word) but is all one timeline. It's by Harry Turtledove. It starts out with How Few Remain, continues through The Great War Series followed by the American Empire Trilogy and the Settling Accounts Tetralogy. Combined their known as the Southern Victory Series. I just learned that. At any rate, the series pre-supposes a Confederate victory in the American Civil War and continues the timeline up until the end of World War II. It's a bleak time in the Americas when war comes to the home continent and people die in droves. It's really amazing.

Oddly enough, my second place for this award was the Turtledove series where aliens invade during World War II and my third place was Crosstime Traffic, by -you guessed it- Harry Turtledove. Seriously, if you like Alt-Hist read this guy.

I could go on for days, but I need to get to work. If you feel so moved, please do share some of your favorites below.

Some of the above mentioned books are available at the links below. If you click my links and buy literally anything I get a small percentage at no cost to you: