The Best Medieval Fantasy Books

The worlds of medieval fantasy books are often not any particular century or country, but they have a clearly medieval flavour. What are the key ingredients?

I was actually asking myself that question when I was trying to suggest books to you, because of course most fantasy worlds have their own timelines, and do not necessarily mimic what we think of as medieval – and probably European – settings. So I thought: let’s go with kings and queens, nobility, possibly a little bit of knighthood thrown in.

It’s funny – every book on your list definitely is medieval fantasy, but they’re all very different to each other. Your first choice is easy to place, because it’s drawing on Arthurian legend… Please introduce us to The Once and Future King, by T H White.

The Once and Future King is probably my favourite retelling of the Arthurian epic. I like that it’s written so colloquially and in such a friendly way. I like how it progresses through Wart’s – or Arthur’s – childhood, and then we get into adulthood. Merlyn is a very convincing and beloved character to me in this book. It’s one that I read out loud to my children, because it is so accessible; it does give such a clear retelling of the Arthurian legend, and yet at the same time, it makes all of the characters very human and very relatable. It’s not like power is conferred upon Arthur the moment he pulls the sword from the stone. We see him being baffled by the fate that has descended upon him – and that is just one of the wonderful aspects of that retelling.

How much is drawing on earlier texts, and how much is embellishing?

There’s a lot of characterization – Sir Kay and Sir Ector are given a lot of character. And of course, Merlyn has a very distinct characterization – the Disney cartoon of The Sword in the Stone does not do The Once and Future King the justice it deserves. There’s a lot of filling in the background, a lot of, “Why is Arthur who he is?”

Merlyn takes Arthur through a number of transformations to teach him about the world. For instance, there’s one episode where he turns him into a wild goose, so that he flies over the countryside with the migrating geese. And he comes to understand that borders and boundaries are simply lines on a map. They’re not real – the wild geese pay no attention to them. And there’s another section when he is turned into an ant near an ant colony, and he thinks like an ant… I’m afraid I’m doing terrible spoilers for anybody who’s not read this book, and I that’s a huge disservice. So I will simply say that the magic that transfuses the book is wonderful, and very thoughtful, and full of ideas. And I’ll stop there.

Your second choice is a big tonal switch, which really highlights the other side of writing a medieval world: not the chivalric view, but the grim reality. Please tell us – for anyone who doesn’t know!  – about George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, the series which begins with A Game of Thrones.

It’s a reflection on the War of the Roses. I first read it, actually, in manuscript form – I got the very first book in manuscript and read it and gave a blurb for it, and at the time, I instantly knew that this was George’s masterwork.

I’m familiar with a lot of George Martin’s other work. I think my first real encounter with him was at a convention, where I picked up a little chap book of his. It was an amazing little story, so full of impact in just a few pages. So then, of course, I went looking for the rest of what he’d written. If you are a reader of A Song of Ice and Fire, I would say, if you haven’t read The Ice Dragon, you’re missing out. Or if you haven’t read any of George’s other books, you’re really, really missing out. There’s so much out there by him.

A Song of Ice and Fire basically has a huge cast of characters moving through a time of great turbulence. And you know the warning: ‘winter is coming’! This is a world in which when winter comes, it doesn’t last a season. It lasts for years.

There’s just so much to this story, so many wonderful characters. Early on, he introduces some very dark villains, and then pulls the rug out from under the reader by shifting to their point of view – and suddenly they’re not dark villains. They’re people, with goals and ideas and ideals and a morality, which perhaps does not match our current morality or the morality of the other characters. But suddenly these are really fully-fledged, well-rounded characters. You have a kaleidoscope view of this world, because we are shifting between loyalties and between point-of-view characters.

It’s a complicated story, and I think the reader has to be willing to invest in it. And as we all know, we would like to have the books finished; but I would rather have it done right than have it done fast. These are incredible books, and if all you have seen is the adaptation for the television you’re missing out on so very much, not the least of which is George’s wonderful writing. So I would urge anybody who thinks they know that world and story to pick up the books and read them.

We’ve seen Arthurian-medieval, and grimdark-medieval – and your next choice takes us to the world of fairy tales. Please tell us about Beauty, by Robin McKinley.

Robin McKinley is one of my favourite writers, because I love her style. It’s not like I stop and say, oh my goodness, that was such a clever thing that she wrote there. It is that it’s effortless. The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, too, are my other favourites by her.

Beauty takes a fairy tale that we’ve heard so many times and seen in so many formats, and it re-tells it in a way that is super understandable. It’s very familiar, and the situation in which she finds herself is not because “her evil sisters wished her into it”, or anything like that. It’s a thing that befalls her – it’s a way to save her family. And her relationship with the beast, as it progresses, is very understandable. Sometimes in a fairy tale, when we’re just told the bones of the story, we have to fill in what we think happened. Robin McKinley does a lovely job of filling in the details and the emotions, and the things that would make a young woman fall in love with a beast.

Again, I don’t want to do spoilers, because I think everybody deserves to have that experience fresh the first time they go to it. So I think that’s all I’ll say about it!

In any Robin McKinley book you can pick up, I think you’re going to find a worthwhile read to devote your time to. She just is an amazing writer.

Your fourth choice is a classic of the genre. Could you introduce The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle?

The Last Unicorn is one case where the movie does follow the storytelling very, very well. So if you’ve seen the movie, you’ve pretty much experienced the book. I think that is because the screenplay was by Peter S. Beagle, so he kept it very close to what he had written as a story.

There is simply a lot of wonder built into it. The opening scenes of it are just… it takes you over the threshold from this world into that world. The characters are very well rounded. Oh, it’s just a magical book all the way through.

I will say that there’s a lot more detail in the book than they can put in a screenplay – so that’s definitely worth the reader’s time. It’s a very bittersweet book; it doesn’t have necessarily a happy ending. It has a real ending, what would most likely happen, and not all the characters end up in the good and wonderful place that they dreamed of. People find out they have work to do in the world, and things they must do. So I admire how he wrote that book.

Again, Peter S Beagle is an amazing author, and if you haven’t read A Fine and Private Place, then you’ve missed out on something. That one, I will briefly say, is the story of a fellow who lives in a graveyard, is fed by crows, and consorts with ghosts. And it’s just a lovely, lovely story. I read The Last Unicorn and then immediately picked up A Fine and Private Place. So to me, those two are always sandwiched together in my mind.

In one line, what’s the premise for The Last Unicorn?

Oh, that’s a tough one!

Feel free to have more lines. But I’m aware you don’t want to give too much away…

Yes, I’m trying not to do a spoiler. Ok… The unicorns are vanishing from the world, and there is one last unicorn; and in many ways, she will at some point choose between saving all of her kind, or finding a road she never expected to explore. How’s that?

Beautifully done. We’ve not talked about medieval beasts yet. We’ve got unicorns here, and A Song of Ice and Fire has dragons… That must be a big part of the appeal of writing the medieval world, having these bizarre bestiaries to draw on.

Definitely. They are so rich with power and symbolism, unicorns and dragons and sea monsters and giants; the Fae, the elves and the dwarves, which are a people in many stories; all of those wonderful things to touch on… I don’t really think they should be confined to medieval stories at all. I think they should be wandering around our stories today, just as freely as they do in the once-upon-a-time stories. I suppose we’ve got our own peculiarities – I mean, we have a lot of zombies now, and they themselves are being interpreted in dozens of different ways. I just think these creatures deserve a wider time span than we’ve given them, perhaps.

Could you talk a little about the dragons in Dragon Keeper in your own Rain Wild Chronicles? Because they’ve got a beautifully specific biology and lore…

A lot of readers actually miss out this piece of the overall Realm of the Elderlings story, that chronologically is rather important to understanding what’s going on. In a nutshell, the serpents have migrated up the river and are transforming themselves into dragons, and this takes them from being rather confused animals to becoming a force to be reckoned with, as they move upriver with their keepers. Again I hate doing spoilers – you can talk a book to death, and then people just don’t read it. So I’m going to dodge that a little bit and just say: it’s a history of the dragons in the world, in the realm.

It’s such a lovely narrative thread within the realm… The Realm of the Elderlings books start closer to the kings and queens, to the royalty, which as you said when we started is typically medieval; and then you build outwards. How much of the world was in your head from the beginning? Are you surprising yourself as the book expands?

When I start to write a book, very often I know the beginning and the ending, and I know a few places that I have to hit, a few events that have to happen along the way. It’s like planning a road trip across the US. I may plan to stop at the Grand Canyon, and I want to go to New Orleans, and maybe I’ll dip down to the Everglades and then go up to New York City. But everything that happens in between is unplanned. You may pick up a hitchhiker; you may find out the bridge is out, and you’ve got to go some way around it. And that, for me, is very much like writing a book. I will think I know where I’m going, and then there will be something that diverts the flow – and when I try to ignore it, the book just stops. So I just have to go with wherever the current of the story is carrying me.

I think that keeps the writing fun for me. If I wrote everything down in a precise outline and then tried to follow it, I think I’d be very bored.

Your last choice keeps us on the topic of dragons: please tell us about The Dragon Riders of Pern series,  which starts with Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey.

Dragonflight is a wonderful entry into Anne McCaffrey’s world. And of course, there are sequels upon sequels, that expand and embroider the world.

Basically, dragon eggs are about to hatch, and they try to supply people for the hatching dragons to bond with. And a young woman, Lessa, bonds with a queen dragon that is hatching. She is not a part of the society that usually deals with the dragons, so everything is new to her. And the dragons are employed to fight a substance called thread, which falls from the sky; once it hits the ground, it destroys every life that it touches, every life form. So the dragons have to fly and use their fiery breath to destroy the thread before it hits the ground.

One thing to be aware of is that this is fantasy, but it’s also science fiction. It’s very well thought out. As the reader progresses, they will start to see that there are all kinds of science fiction elements backing up this story that feels like fantasy, but isn’t really. I really, really enjoyed that aspect of the book – and the books that followed it. And I’ve read many, many of them.