Over the summer, NPR listeners voted on more than 5,000 science fiction and fantasy titles. The nerds... ahem... I mean the experts over at NPR then narrowed the list down to the top 100 picks. The result is an eclectic mixture of classic and modern titles. Some of the titles I expected to see. If it had been missing obvious cult favorites like Lord of the Rings, Dune, or Star Wars, I would have had to dismiss it as an inferior list. Many of my old favorites were there, but imagine my delight when one of my new favorites made the cut. Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher is relatively new and Butcher's other series The Dresden Files seemed to be the more well known.
The setting is the fictional world of Alera. Here people bond with elemental furies, Earth, Air, Water and so on giving them magical abilities. Tavi never bonded with any element, and that makes him handicapped, which forces him to be inventive. When war breaks out, Tavi needs all of that inventiveness to survive and save the people he loves. The characters are complex, the worldbuilding is rich, and the storylines are thrilling.
Interested in the other gems on the list? If lists are not your thing, you are in luck because the people over at SF Signal made a flow chart for all the titles. Even better they made an interactive version. So here's to finding and reading some of the best science fiction and fantasy of all time.
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