A top ten list of books isn’t ever going to be definitive. For starters, it says a lot about me as a person and where I was at the time I read them. I tend to re-read most of the top ten every 5 years or so, and I’m sorry but I can’t be objective about my selection. I was a precocious reader as a youth, I went from primary to secondary school and effectively started reading adult fiction at that point, some of it quite hard going. I don’t think I’ve ever really progressed from that point either, which is a shame.

So in no particular order, here we go with the first five.

The Stand- Stephen King

I’ve read a lot of Stephen King’s horror fiction over the years. Most of what he wrote in the 1970′s is head and shoulders above anything he’s written in recent years, particularly after his serious lorry accident that got him a lot of hospital time and broken bones. I’m a fan of the Shining, IT and Firestarter for example. But my favourite novel of Kings was only his fourth, and that is the Stand.

What King does so very well is write with an accessible style about characters that are in the most believably real. Even if most of his supernatural stories end up with some sort of deus ex machina ending (or a supernatural firework display as the 12 year old me once complained), the path that takes you there is always an interesting one.

The Stand could easily be a standard post apocalyptic tale, in this instance a mutated form of flu is released from a germ warfare lab, but it goes on from that, containing Kings trademark supernatural elements as two sides build, one around Mother Abigail and the other around Randall Flag. Both these two characters have supernatural elements to them but it doesn’t distract from the grounded interaction between the rest of the characters. At the time, the Stand was the longest book I read, and in it’s uncut version, is still probably one of the longest single volume pieces I’ve read. But it’s not hard work, it’s an easy read thanks to Kings style of writing and doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Wilt- Tom Sharpe

From one genre to another and in this instance it’s on to humour. Wilt was written in the 1970′s (and turned into a rather crap film with Gryff Rhys Jones in the 80′s) and follows the life and adventures of the titular character as he works at the local ‘tech and tries to keep his wifes misguided ambitions under control. Sharpe has written some jolly entertaining books over the years, although his output has diminished in both quantity and quality in recent times, there are many many things in this book to find hilarious. It is very much of it’s time and in certain areas is both politically incorrect and rather rude but I guarantee you’ll not reading anything as remotely funny for a very long time.

Wilt dreams of offing his overbearing wife Eva but would never actually follow through and commit the crime. Unfortunately, circumstance leads him to burying an inflatable sex doll in the foundations of new build and when someone pouring concrete into the hole spots the doll, a sequence of events starts that Wilt is powerless to halt. Reading the Inspector Flint interrogations of Wilt count amongst the most entertainment I’ve had with my clothes on. This book was written by an absolute comic genius.

The Colour of Magic- Terry Pratchett

I once read a quote that said something along the lines of “The world is divided into two camps, those that say they’ve never heard of Terry Pratchett and those that say, Yes of course I’ve heard of him, I’ve read all of his books!”

This was about 15 or so books ago, maybe more but I still think it stands more or less true. Discworld is a phenomonem, so much so that when JK Rowling proclaimed she thought it was nice that Harry Potter had reinvigorated fantasy but she didn’t consider it fantasy, Pratchett was one of the few successful authors able to pull her up with some authority.

The earlier Discworld novels (to my mind) are much funnier than the later ones. I’m not just saying this as I read them first time around to be one of those irritating people who says, “I was there from day one, I’m a true fan” or anything, I think before the enormous cast of characters came about there was something funnier about it all.

The Colour of Magics main protagonist, Rincewind the Wizard, is one of natures great cowards and his inherent ability to flee in the amusing fashion is one of the great features of this novel. Although the fantasy world is pretty well realised, Pratchett’s strength in this and all the early novels is his great ability to write humour and bomb us all with gags. When the denzins of the city of Ankh-Morpork are introduced to the concept of insurance, it takes literally minutes for the first arson based insurance job to happen- just one example of the lovely skewed logic of it all.

A Game of Thrones- George RR Martin

If you’ve read the book, the recent HBO series isn’t very good, the budget needs to be about ten times higher to do the book justice but if you haven’t read the book and you’ve seen the series, you’ll have enjoyed it. That says a lot about the book to me.

A lot of people who don’t read fantasy have some fairly cliched views of the genre, wizards, elves and magical swords feature fairly prominently in their prejudices. In fact the prologue to A Game of Thrones does see some wights attacking people and the main castle at Kings Landing has the bones of some dragons in it but (in this first volume at least) the book is firmly rooted in terra-firma.

Pleasantly the story follows a series of noble houses as they vie for power in a kingdom that has only really been united for a relatively short period of time. There are no village boys who have to follow their destiny on a quest here, there is political machination, violence (and some incest bizarrely), assassination and betrayal, all written with a brutal realism and an attention to detail that make the world utterly believable.

It would be interesting to see what Martin could do in a straight historical setting but to a degree that’s more or less what you get here. The book isn’t short, weighing in at 864 pages, which is about the length of Lord of the Rings in total but if you’ve never dipped your toe into the realm of fantasy, this is an excellent if daunting starting point.

 The Blade Itself- Joe Abercrombie

This is another fantasy novel but about as far as you can get from traditional fantasy. Abercrombie is a relatively young author, well he’s under 40 anway, and has only got 5 books to his name. The Blade Itself is the first in a relatively short trilogy and does away with a lot of the conventions of fantasty. You can tell that from the first couple of pages where our barbarian hero, Logan Ninefingers, is running away through the woods shouting “fuck” loudly.

Abercrombie only sketches location with a broad brush, it’s enough to get an idea of where the characters are but descriptive his works are not. His strengths are in the dialogue which is often laugh out loud funny. In a later book one of his characters monologues, “We talked of many things, Duke Orisno and I. He said he’d have my head, I said I quite understood, I found it immensely useful myself.” There is an underlying vein of very dark humour, which at times isn’t underlying so much as sitting on the surface and blowing a raspberry at you.

Abercrombie delights in taking fantasy convention and turning it on it’s head- there’s an unlikely wizard, a baseborn lad who becomes king and a spectularly terrible quest, as well as the sort of behaviour that would make Pratchett’s Rincewind take notes on how to run away more effectively.

If you’ve tried fantasy in the past and didn’t like it, try this. It’s so very different.

Until I just had a look, I always thought JVJ pushed this series out fairly rapidly but it turns out its 4 books in 11 years, which compares unfavourably to George RR Martin’s 4 books in 9 years (and I never thought I’d use the word unfavourably in comparing release schedules against Martin!). Still, its mostly due to a 5 year hiatus between books two and three, which caused me to reread books one and two at the time.

Book four, Watcher of the Dead, sees the action really hotting up. “Relentless” isn’t a word I use a lot, especially in a 400 page novel but it really is suitable in this instance: from Angus Lok, to Raif, to the Eye, Effie, Raina and so on, at the start of each and every chapter you’re desperate to continue the story of the person from the last chapter. For all of two pages anyway, and then you’re gripped by the continuation of the next characters story arc.

Poor old Raif is looking like he’s going to be held together entirely by scar tissue at some point in the not to distant future, there is some imagination involved in the regular torments he suffers. Certainly wouldn’t want to get the wrong side of the person that dreamt them up.

Part of the skill is keeping a tight rein on your characters, if they wander off you spend too much time getting them into place for the finale, and this is where series can lose it in the middle- endless trekking, contrived reasons for going somewhere and a lot of boredom for the reader. It’s obvious JVJ has spent a lot of time planning this series and this book particularly because at volume 4 we’ve not really encountered pointless marching for the sake of getting the chess pieces in the right place.

The only issue I have with this book is a silly one really. It’s so well written if you read the series back to back it exposes the shortfallings of the first book. Thats not to say Cavern of Black Ice is badly written because it isn’t, but this is on a different level, the writing is up there with the top contemporary fantasy crowd. I shudder to think the level of research thats gone in to some of it (although hopefully not as much research into the torture aspects as the post Iron Age technology and so on).

All in all, well worth reading. If you’ve read the other 3, it’s a no brainer to get this, if you haven’t, go grab volume one, A Cavern of Black Ice, you’re in for a treat.

If you want to see some more detailed analysis (containing *SPOILERS*), there are some after the click through.

In terms of the story, the main protaginists are followed, mostly on a chapter at a time basis, sometimes we’re lucky and get two on the trot.

With Raif (much like Rand in the WoT), the under tone to the whole story is the hero and his battle to maintain his humanity as he battles to save humanity. Early on he is captured by renegade Sull and kept drugged, forced to fight in an endless stream of duels. Raif’s constant fighting reminded me of a Stephen Donaldson short story, the Killing Blow, in that in involved incessant fighting and the dehumanisation of the participants. I think the relentlessness of it came from this attempt to dehumanise him. The death of Addie is equally shocking as we’re used to the Sull being hard but noble. By the end of it he’s escaped but again is a different person to who he was at the beginning of the book. When he next meets Ash, I think the difference in him as a person will be really bought home.

Effie’s story line was interesting, I see her as possible a Bran analogue from George Martin’s Ice & Fire series; presumably there will be some hefty sorcery in the final battles in later volumes. Magic has a place in the books, although not as prominent as in other fantasy series.Having said that Barralis’ story wasn’t advanced in this volume, so we are still waiting to see what happens there.

The Doglord sees the first alliance between Sull and Clan, and I assume this will be built on. Other than that, he spends the few chapters he has gradually strolling back towards the Bluddhouse. We do get an insight into how common the attacks by the Unmade are becoming through his perspective though.

With Raina, we’re seeing the start of the fall of Mace, which will tie that story up and, dependent on the battle at the Crab Gate in the next volume, either see Blackhail as a force or not. I was jolly chuffed to see the Scarpe’s evicted bodily from the Hailehouse.

Angus’ story is two fold, its a revenge story but its also a mechanism for giving us an insight into the Phage who are stepping up their activities. Assassinating the Eye’s father in Law, poisoning the Scarpes well, the Phage have a more active role in this volume, above and beyond the rangering the Angus has done in the first two volumes. For what its worth, I thought the ruthlessness he showed was quite chilling, and shows how morally ambiguous the Phage can be- it tied in nicely with Bram’s story.

Ash doesn’t have as a dramatic story line in this book but that’s understandable to a degree. In many ways she’s a bit like a nuclear weapon- every times she’s bought into play things have to escalate, and that doesn’t really have a place in this book.

It’s an apt description to some degree but also does the man no favours. I remember reading he was mortified to know having a strap line from Pratchett was the best way to increase sales but I digress.

Mr Rankin portrays himself as a teller of tall tales and this is the first of them. A common locale for his stories is the London borough of Brentford (it hosts the Olympic games, and is apparently the site for the Garden of Eden amongst other things), in an indeterminate time period that has some modern technology but uses pre decimal coinage.

Ostensibly the book follows the exploits of two gentlemen of the parish, John Omally and James Pooley. They are the sort of gents who put more effort into not having a job than they would put into actually having a job. I have a mental picture of a sort of Lovejoy/Tinker set up without the antiques.  And with more drinking.

Rankin wrote a lot of his early books in the pub in spiral bound notebooks. He’d know he’d written enough for a novel when he’d filled a certain number of notebooks. This shows through in his writing, he has no love for computers, mobile phones or video games.

Whilst he might not love the modern, his clear affection for traditional drinking culture and the workings of the saloon bar. I’ve sat in a number of pubs in my time and Rankin captures the atmosphere so perfectly, even Inspector Morse wouldn’t be able to detect a problem.

The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the extra ordinary is dealt with in a very charming manner. Brentford has its own Gandalf figure in Professor Slocombe who introduces the arcane nicely.

This is probably one of my favourite reads and one of Rankin’s most accessible. Some of his later books don’t so much breech the 4th wall, as knock it down an rebuild it as a barbecue. The first three Brentford books, the Aramgeddon books and the Cornelius Murphy trilogy are all completely accessible to newbies and I would really recommend you give him a go.

And Ender’s Game is a very good read. It details the experience of a group of hyper intelligent children, including the eponymous Ender Wiggins, who are recruited by the military to be trained as leaders for use in the inter stellar war with an insectoid race know as the “buggers”.  It’s intelligently written, deals with the violence and ruthlessness needed to be a keen military mind but above all it deals with the action in a pretty exciting and vivid manner.

It was originally written as a short story in the late 70′s, turned into a novel in the mid 80′s and revised for political sense in about 1991 (I think). Great books work regardless of when they’re written, popular webcomic xkcd has name checked it a couple of times, and thanks to the upates, its not really aged.

I loved it and I know I was in a minority for liking the sequels too. For as action orientated as Ender’s Game is, the sequel Speaker of the Dead isn’t. It is thoughtful, talky and contemplative, almost philosophical and still a bloody good read. Orson Scott Card has written an awful lot of science fiction so it’s difficult to know where to start, so to that end, this is probably the place to start.