Fantasy Novels for Gamers

Game WISH is a weekly question set by Ginger of Perverse Access Memory. Each week's WISH focuses on some aspect of roleplaying games. This week's question is about fantasy novels for gamers:

What three fantasy books/series would you recommend to other gamers? Why? What particularly makes them suitable for gamers to read? Would they be particularly good for novices or better for experienced gamers?

I've already made a list of top ten invented worlds, largely works that inspired me as a GM. Two of those three appear again here, this time as inspiration for players.

Let me state at the beginning that I'm not really a fan of most of the 'generic fantasy' published nowadays, much of which I find formulaic retreads of earlier, better works; indeed many read like fictionalisations of D&D campaigns, so much so that you can work out at what points characters gained levels!

First, Lord of the Rings, on the remote chance that the gamer in question hasn't read it already. There's not much I can say about it that hasn't already been said, but it is the work that established most of the tropes we now recognise as those of 'generic fantasy', noble elves, dour warrior dwarves, orc hordes, dark lords, good and evil wizards. And I very much prefer the original to the hordes of lesser imitations written by the legion of hack writers that followed. For novice gamers, this is a must-read!

Second, The Saga of the Exiles by Julian May. Although marketed as science-fiction it's really high fantasy in SF clothing, with high-powered magic explained by technobabble. It's also one of the few series I've read with a huge cast and many point-of-view characters that doesn't collapse under the weight of it's multiple plotlines, which says a lot about the author's talent for dramatic pacing. For gamers, the books make heavy use of archetypal characters, and the eight initial characters ('Group Green') come over very much like a party of PCs, thrust into the setting by the GM, and knowing nothing of the world they find themselves in. And finally we have one of my favourite villains in Marc Remillard, who makes his first appearance in book three.

Third, Ash, A History by Mary Gentle. This tale of a late-medieval mercenary captain and her company of mercenaries starts out resembling historical fiction but then gets increasingly strange. I chose this partly because the lead character reminds me very much of one of my on-line players; the supporting cast (i.e. the other PCs) are good as well, and some of the set-piece scenes are very reminiscent of gaming scenarios. Although there are no spell-slinging sorcerers, there's plenty of magic, and a truly terrifying inhuman enemy.

Of course, for a specific player playing in a game run by a specific GM, the best thing to read is probably whatever inspired the GM, or the published setting the GM is using. Obviously for licenced games like Dune, Amber Diceless or The Dying Earth RPG this means the original source material! For my own Kalyr game, read May's Exiles saga (above), Gene Wolfe's New Sun and Long Sun series, and anything by Jack Vance you can lay your hands on!