What are your all time favourite top fantasy books? I bet many of you will have thought Lord Of The Rings immediately! With the recent success of Game Of Thrones on television and a second series possibly on the way as well as a movie version of The Hobbit coming our way next year it's probably fair to say that the fantasy genre is as strong as ever. For those of you who aren't fans of the genre or maybe just passive fans then hopefully we can convert you!
The fantasy genre really started way back in Victorian times with authors such as William Morris and George MacDonald. The success of fantasy books today though probably lays at the door of one man, J.R.R Tolkien, creator of some of the top fantasy books such as Lord Of The Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. It was Tolkien who was the first to really create an entire world to base his books in, his world as many already know was Middle-Earth.
It has been said that Tolkien came up with the idea of Middle-Earth when sat in his back garden looking over the hills and imagining wars between different races taking place across them. It was from this imagination that one of, if not the greatest book trilogy's of all time were created.
At the same time as Tolkien was creating Middle-Earth a good friend of his, C.S. Lewis, was also creating his own fantasy world known as Narnia, his books also went on to huge success with The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe becoming one of the top fantasy books of all time, not only that, it also has a few movie variations in the decades after, making the 1950's the true-birth of fantasy.
If we fast forward 60 years and walk into any decent book shop the fantasy genre is probably one of the largest sections, much of its success must be pointed towards it's founders but even today we have classic fantasy books coming out all the time. Fans of the television series Game Of Thrones may have since gone out and bought the book, maybe even the titles after in the A Song Of Ice And Fire series, one of the greatest fantasy series of all time. It's because of these current authors such as Martin and Hobb that the fantasy genre continues in such strong fashion and it's because of them we will never get bored of the fantasy genre.


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