Is this the real life or is this just fantasy?

I took last Thursday off from work to go audition for a new fantasy-based reality series with a few friends. One of the questions asked of everyone was how we got into fantasy. This actually required a bit of thought as I couldn’t recall off the top of my head how it occurred for me.

As far as I can recall, my sister was responsible for getting me into fantasy, as well as science fiction, which in turn led me into my love of comics which lasted for about 15 years. Specifically, it was a graphic novel series called Elfquest.

Elfquest was a comic book series written and drawn by Wendy and Richard, revolving around a group of elves (the Wolfriders) and their attempts to survive in a world hostile to their kind. My sister had the first four volumes of The Complete Elfquest, which were glossy, magazine-sized graphic novels that compiled the first twenty issues of the series.

I don’t remember when exactly I was exposed to the series, but it was likely in my very early teens, and they were a wonderful source of content for my dreams and imagination. For years I imagined myself as the lone human to be accepted by their tribe, running through the forest with them, hunting with them, going on daring adventures with them.

While I did have friends, I didn’t really see any of them outside of school, so I was often left on my own for entertainment, and these books were an oasis for me. And more importantly, they were the gateway into the larger world of comic books that kept me hooked up until a few years ago, when I finally stopped purchasing titles on a monthly basis.

Of course, that wasn’t my only source of education in the world of fantasy. Around that time I got into Dragonlance, also through my sister, and the original Chronicles trilogy cemented my love for the genre. From there I branched out into other novels of the same series, classics like Legends trilogy, dealing with the troubled relationship between the warrior Caramon Majere and his brother, the mage Raistlin Majere, The Legend of Huma, and Kaz the Minotaur. Sadly, I didn’t get into Forgotten Realms until my mid-20s, and then it was only for the Drizzit novels (good stuff).

I actually haven’t read any of those in over a decade, and now that I’ve thought about them I really want to go back and give them another go and see if they’ve stood the test of time. Thankfully, most used book stores tend to have hoards of them, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Hell, the library may even still have some of them in stock!

If you haven’t read Elfquest of any of the classic Dragonlance novels before I would highly recommend you check them out. All the Elfquest comics can be found online for free now, and as I mentioned previously the Dragonlance novels can probably be found just about anywhere there’s a used book store.

But if you’re looking for the very cream of the crop in the Fantasy world, I would have to point you directly to Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind and its sequel, The Wise Man’s Fear, which are the first two installments of The Kingkiller Chronicle. These are probably the best written fantasy novels I’ve ever read, though not my favorite.

That titled goes to a random series I stumbled across called, Guardians of the Flame: The Warriors. It’s a compilation of the first three books in the series, which revolve around a bunch of college kids who suddenly find themselves thrust into the pretend world in which they had been playing. I think at my peak I owned three different copies of the book.

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4.