Sixty One Nails
by
Mike Shevdon
Under the nations capital there is a whole other world where magic is real, the world of the Feyre. A dark magic will be unleashed by the Untained… Unless a new hero can be found. Sixty One Nails follows Niall Petersen who after a suspected heart attack on the London underground, falls into this hidden world that lurks just beyond everyday life.He is saved from death by Blackbird, a Feyre who appears as a sweet elderly lady. It soon becomes apparent though that in the world of the Feyre, looks can be deceiving and by simple magic you can control just how you appear. The heart attack has unlocked dormant powers and he must not only deal with a whole new and strange world, but also learn how to control this growing Feyre talents.
The Eye of the World
by
Robert Jordan
The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth return again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, when the World and Time themselves hang in the balance, a wind rises in the mountains of mist . . .The Eye of the World is the First book in the incredible and hugely succesful Wheel of Time series by the Late Robert Jordan. Strangers have arrived at the little community of Two Rivers during the annual Bel Tine Holiday. Rand al'Thor, Mat Cauthon and Perrin Aybara are all looking forward to the coming festival.
Fantasy as a genre can be very difficult to define but is usually said to encompass stories set in an alternative reality based on imagined fantastical elements like magic or the supernatural. This is the defining difference between science fiction and fantasy, science fiction deals with elements that are theoretically possible while fantasy deals with the improbable or impossible.
Fantasy can be most commonly associated with sword and sorcery stories however the genre can include contemporary (Harry Potter) and humorous (Tom Holt) tales. Fantasy, science fiction and horror can occasionally overlap and generally the term used to describe these novels is speculative fiction.
Fantasy fiction can trace it's roots all the way back to ancient mythology, especially Homer's Odyssey which was written in the 9th century BC. Homer's Odyssey chronicles the fictional adventures of a hero returning to Ithaca after the capture of Troy. The earliest surviving English text of fantasy origins is the poem Beowulf which dates back to 700 AD.
The most recognisable to modern audiences is perhaps the Legends of King Arthur and the knights of the round table. These stories have been told many times from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur (around 1485 AD) to T. H. White's The Once and Future King (1958), Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982) and Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle (1987).
The series that could be said to bring fantasy into the mainstream has to be Terry Brooks Sword of Shannara series, written in 1977 it was one of the first modern fantasy books to become a new york times best seller. Since then this has been repeated by David Eddings, Robert Jordan, Terry Good Kind and Terry Pratchett.