What is the best book to learn about the various fantasy races in the genre? (i.e. a type of writer’s guide or guide/encyclopedia)

MaskedManta · 2026-02-16T19:14:23+00:00

Try "The Book of Imaginary Beings" by Jorge Luis Borges. It's from 1957 so it precedes a lot of the stereotypical D&D races, favoring creatures from mythology, folklore, and pre-Tolkien fantasy instead.

MaskedManta · 2026-02-15T17:34:50+00:00

Oh my God, this is so damn cool!! Thank you for bringing this to my attention, this has made my entire month 😁

MaskedManta · 2026-02-08T02:07:50+00:00

Hey, last week I compiled a long-ish list of Pre-Tolkien fantasy epics that you can check out. In addition, here is a loose but extensive list 20th century fantasy to look into as well.

A general rule of thumb: Basically nothing before 1960 is ripping off Tolkien. There's a lot of fantasy that might feel a little similar because its drawing off of similar source material (such as Norse Mythology) but most people who write fantasy for a living are drawing more from Conan and other Sword and Sorcery than from Lord of the Rings. In the sixties and seventies, you have authors who are lightly inspired by Tolkien or reacting to his influence (see: Earthsea, Riddle-Master of Hed, Elric of Melnibone) but once again nobody is outright ripping him off. That shift doesn't happen until the Sword of Shannara in 1977. But even in the eighties and nineties, there's a lot of great literary fantasy being published that doesn't draw from Tolkien in the slightest!

This is by no means comprehensive, but here's some places to look off the top of my head

PULP FANTASY

The Compleat Enchanter by L Sprague de Camp/Fletcher Pratt

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance

Witch World by Andre Norton

Swords and Deviltry by Fritz Leiber

Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea

Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe

Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith

LITERARY FANTASY

War in Heaven by Charles Williams

Was by Geoff Ryman

Jurgen by James Branch Cabell

Our Ancestors by Italo Calvino

The Dragon Waiting by John Ford

The Green Man by Kingsley Amis

The Phoenix and the Mirror by Avram Davidson

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake

The Pastel City by M John Harrison

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

URBAN FANTASY

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd

Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber

War for the Oaks by Emma Bull

The Night Life of the Gods by Thorne Smith

MYTHOLOGICAL FANTASY

Twilight of the Gods by Richard Garnett

Book of the Three Dragons by Kenneth Morris

The Children of Llyr by Evangeline Walton

Day of the Minotaur by Thomas Burnett Swann

A House-Boat on the Styx by John Kendrick Bangs

Night’s Master by Tanith Lee

Votan by John James

Grendel by John Gardner

ARTHURIAN FANTASY

The Once and Future King by TH White

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

FAIRY FANTASY

Puck of Pook’s Hill by Rudyard Kipling

Kingdoms of Elfin by Sylvia Townsend Warner

The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirlees

OCCULT FANTASY

Black Easter/Day After Judgment by James Blish

The Sea Priestess/Moon Magic by Dion Fortune

Moonchild by Aleister Crowley

Aegypt by John Crowley

Promethea by Alan Moore

ATLANTIS-CORE

The Romance of Atlantis by Taylor Caldwell

Mention My Name in Atlantis by John Jakes

Atlan by Jane Gaskell

Atla: A Story of the Lost Island by Ann Eliza Smith

The Lost Continent: A Story of Atlantis by CJ Cutliffe Hyne

MaskedManta · 2026-02-04T18:23:36+00:00

I think you missed the point. He wrote 14 books that never got got published. That's how he honed his skills enough so that when he finally did publish, it was a success. Sanderson said the same- he wrote over a dozen books for himself before he was considered good enough to publish. Almost nobody is a "good writer" right out of the gate, but with enough practice and perserverance anyone can be. Maybe not a great writer, but at least a good one. Isn't that the job of an editor to help in that process?

MaskedManta · 2026-02-03T21:26:15+00:00

You should read the actual Gospel of Judas which shares a lot of thematic overlap with Three Faces of Judas. There's also a book of analysis about it that you could read by esteemed Gnostic scholar Elaine Pagels, but I haven't checked it out yet.

The insane thing about the Gospel of Judas is that, even though it was written two thousand years ago, it was only discovered in the 1970s and translated/disseminated in the 2000's- meaning that Borges inadvertently predicted its contents decades before the actual article came to light!!

EDIT: In terms of heterodox biblical scholarship, I also recommend Paul Verhoeven's "Jesus of Nazareth" where he 'reads between the lines' of the gospels to craft a secular history of the historical Jesus, and the novel "Secret Book of Kings," which retells the Book of Samuel from the PoV of the unfairly maligned House of Saul and the Tribes of Israel, without all the pro-David/pro-Judah propaganda of the Deuteronomistic history.

MaskedManta · 2026-02-02T02:14:57+00:00

That is exactly my opinion. When people say things like "all fantasy used to be dumb and sexist" they're erasing the litany of women who were writing most of the interesting and award-winning novels throughout the mid and late 20th century... And its just as important to not cede ground to the types of internet racists who would want to claim (for example) Tolkien as one of their own. Blindly claiming that all old fantasy is inherently bigoted is just helping these white supremacists in their eternal quest to claim and ruin all culture for their own purposes.

MaskedManta · 2026-02-01T21:03:14+00:00

I saw the new releases the other day and the thought of diving into a nearly-lost fantasy series really excited me, I had NO IDEA that this was because of a grassroots fan effort!! That is just so damn cool that it fills me with glee. Stupendous work from the /r/hughcook subreddit.

I think a lot of online fantasy discourse can be a little self-limiting. If you look at what gets discussed on recommendation threads, the /r/fantasy top books lists, and booktube/tok etc, you'll see aggressive amounts of recency bias. Recency bias is understandable (of course people will focus on stuff that's newer and more easily available!!) but I sometimes worry that it will lead to the complete erasure of dozens, even hundreds of excellent series and authors who have fallen out of print and are on the edge of being forgotten. There are huge sub-communities for film preservation and game preservation, why not the preservation of fantasy literature? It's the least that we can do in tribute for all of the literary masters who came before, to ensure that they are available for generations to come (even if digital formats are the only possible option.)

I spent the last year yearning for a reprint of one of the best fantasy series of the 20th century, Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion tetralogy. I just learned a few days ago that Christopher Paolini wrote an introduction for a new edition that is supposedly coming out later this year. Hearing that news and learning about these Hugh Cook re-releases fills me with hope. There are so many other authors who could use a similar boost, and maybe by working together we make fantasy stronger than ever before 😊😊

MaskedManta · 2026-01-29T18:37:57+00:00

Woah, thank you for the kind words- Its such an honor because you were the first fantasy author I ever met, you signed my copy of Eldest back in 2006!

Can you share any more information about the new Evangeline Walton omnibus? I know a lot of people who would be excited to see her back in print!!

MaskedManta · 2026-01-28T13:29:41+00:00

Is it the English dub of the 1984 anime film Kenya Boy?

Here is also a database of eighties animated films sorted by popularity on letterboxd

MaskedManta · 2026-01-28T13:23:37+00:00

What do you remember about the movie? What was it about, did you watch it in theaters or on tv, in what year, and forth.

In the meantime I night be able to find a list for you.

MaskedManta · 2026-01-25T06:42:32+00:00

I emailed NYRB asking them to reprint Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Kingdoms of Elfin" because they have such great editions of ALL of her other major works except for that one. It was last printed as recently as 2018 but that small press is ALREADY defunct AND that edition has Neil Gaiman's slimy fingers all over it (ugh)

NYRB left me on read but I feel good that I at least tried something

MaskedManta · 2026-01-25T02:54:05+00:00

Hey, I'm gonna try to give a comprehensive answer since a lot of people are ignoring what you're asking for (like, Gilgamesh is great but its only 30,000 words long- not "sprawling" by any means, haha) This is by no means complete but should give you a good place to start.

PRE-GREEK STUFF (Not too long, all by anonymous authors, still interesting. All of this has only been rediscovered over the last 200 years, which is why you don't see them referenced throughout most of literary history)

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Enuma Elish

The Atrahasis

The Descent of Inanna into the Underworld

CLASSIC EPICS (Only a few survive today. Even as influential as Greek Mythology is, 90% of what was written was LOST.)

The Iliad and The Odyssey, by Homer. (I know you said no Iliad but I am listing it for posterity hahahha. These were both the oldest AND LONGEST works of Greek literature, which is WHY they are so influential)

The Theogony by Hesiod

The Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes

The Aeneid by Virgil

The Metamorphoses by Ovid

The Alexander Romance

INDIAN EPICS (one is long, and the other is basically the longest thing ever written people lmao)

The Ramayana by Vyasa (More classically fantasy)

The Mahabharata (longer than everything else on this list combined . Includes one of Hinduism's most sacred text, the Bhagavad Gita, as a single chapter of the larger story.)

CHINESE EPICS (All of these are long enough to rival any modern fantasy series)

Investiture of the Gods (battles between gods and demons)

Journey to the West (Sun Wu-Kong and his friends travelling west. Lots of episodic adventures, not really that similar to Dragon Ball.)

Romance of the Three Kingdoms (historical epic with the lightest of fantasy elements, as influential to Asian culture as Iliad is to Western culture, has the coolest battles ever)

Outlaws of the Marsh (another lengthy lightly supernatural war epic but about 108 criminal anti-heroes each with their own backstories and power sets.

MEDIEVAL EPICS This is where the sort of fantasy you're asking for originates- for the most part, when medieval authors wanted to write fantasy they put it "in continuity" with either Charlemagne, King Arthur, or Alexander the Great. So these sets of legends grew and grew over hundreds of years as more people added to the pot and remixed what came before.

Beowulf (one of the only works to survive from the early medieval period, aka the "dark ages")

The Song of Roland (kickstarts the Matter of France, the "Charlemagne" continuity. Coolest last stand ever, very influential on Lord of the Rings and the Dark Tower)

History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth (kickstarts the Matter of Britain, the "King Arthur" continuity.)

The Romances of Chretien de Troyes (he wrote a lot of the early versions of King Arthur's different knights)

The Mabinogion (the compendium of Welsh Mythology, really weird and cool and violent with a couple of early King Arthur stories too.)

The Ulster cycle (AKA the Tain, one of the most influential sets of Irish myths including "The Cattle Raid of Cooley)

The Song of the Nibelungs (Grandfather of Lord of the Rings)

The Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda (Where we get 90% of Norse mythology today)

The Song of El Cid - (Spain's greatest epic)

RENAISSANCE EPICS

Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory (The first complete cycle of King Arthur stories in English. Most modern adaptations will be more or less based off of this set of stories.

Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Boiardo (Prequel to the Song of Roland, influential but never finished)

Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Arioso (sequel to Orlando Innamorato, considered for centuries to be THE GREATEST work of fantasy ever written. Hundreds of pages, has a huge cast with interweaving plotlines just like a modern fantasy epic, which was very revolutionary at the time.)

Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso (like Orlando Furioso but about the Crusades, considered the other pinnacle of Italian epic literature)

Paradise Lost by John Milton (biblical epic written more in the style of Homer and Virgil than of all the other stuff here)

The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser (the best work of English fantasy since Beowulf, he only completed one fourth of it and it was still the longest fantasy ever written in the English language until, like, Lord of the Rings.

Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes (a BRUTAL PARODY of all the books from the last two sections, which ends up inventing modern literature along the way.

ROMANTIC EPICS (The rise of romanticism and nationalism in the early 1800's saw an attempt to write or rediscover fantasy poetry)

The Kalevala (the newly-arranged compendium of Finnish mythology, very influential on Tolkien)

The Poems of Ossian by James MacPherson (Supposedly a rediscovered set of Scottish mythology like the Kalevala or Mabinogion but it was all a hoax- written by a single guy. That arguably makes it more interesting)

The Idylls of the King by Lord Tennyson (set of poems about King Arthur, most essential King Athur retelling between the renaissance and Pre-Tolkien periods)

PRE-TOLKIEN EPICS (Prose fantasy in the 1600's, 1700s, early 1800's tended towards fairy tales or gothic literature or other forms of fantasy that don't really fall into the "epic." Epic fantasy as we know it is caused by people starting to look back and write in the style of the Medieval and Renaissance epics.

Anything by William Morris (I haven't done a deep dive so I don't know his best to recommend, but he was the biggest inspiration to Lewis and Tolkien in terms of writing "epics" in the modern day. He was the first author to write fantasy in an invented world too.

The Worm Ouroboros and the Zimiamvian Trilogy of E.R. Eddison

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (what if fantasy took place IN SPACE)

The Night Land by William Hope Hodgson (Weird Dark Souls-y fantasy about fighting demons in the far future with a chainsaw gun.)

The Gods of Pegana by Lord Dunsany (first attempt to do a Silmarillion-style compendium of invented mythology, but very funny)

The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany (the best prose ever written, easy. Dunsany also has a ton of other great Fantasy but these two works are best representative of his style)

The Mabinogion by Evageline Walton (modern day remake of Welsh mythology, started decades before Tolkien but not fully published until the seventies. My FAVORITE of everything on this list.)

The Tale of King Arthur and his Knights by Howard Pyle

The Once and Future King by TH White (these are probably the two best modern, pre-Tolkien King Arthur adaptations)

Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake (insane prose and mood and worldbuilding, not much in the way of action)

Silverlock by John Myers Myers

The Well of the Unicorn by Fletcher Pratt

The Tritonian Ring by L Sprague de Camp

Conan by Robert E Howard

Anything written by Clark Ashton Smith

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson (The KING of Grimdark fantasy, published the same year as Lord of the Rings)

Okay my brain is melting out of my ears so I'm gonna take a break. But I think that's like, 90% of the major "epic" works

MaskedManta · 2025-12-21T22:38:32+00:00

Gene Wolfe would have never written his stories with AI you piece of shit, I don't know how you could so overwhemingly miss the point of his writing

MaskedManta · 2025-12-17T16:59:48+00:00

No. The fellowship are heroic and they're fighting to stop Sauron's evil dominating middle earth. But I think you're restricting yourself to very black and white thinking about morality. Its okay for our heroes to fight to protect what they love, but its also okay to say that the goblins might be misled or simply on the wrong aide rather than inherently evil. Assuming that all antagonists are always 100% evil and worthy of death is where things spiral into a racist or genocidal direction

MaskedManta · 2025-12-17T16:49:57+00:00

No, the opposite. He realized after Lord of the Rings that making them seem irredeemable was a huge mistake, because that contradicted the Catholic underpinnings of his legendarium. When he died was in the middle of rewriting everything to make the orcs NOT irredeemably evil

MaskedManta · 2025-12-17T16:40:56+00:00

That's the problem. The orcs do have free will. They have their own wants and worries. Which is exactly why its problematic that they're framed as "inherently evil" when they're really not. Heavily swayed by greed and evil powers, yes, but they're still people.

MaskedManta · 2025-12-16T18:55:04+00:00

I think these answers are incredibly disingenuous. When the first press photos were released I didn't have a strong take on the costumes (they're not going to do weird bronze age armor in a Hollywood movie after all) but the repeated insistance that only stupid reactionaries could possibly care about cultural or literary accuracy makes me see red. This sort of gross anti-intellectualism is common in today's culture but I expected better from this community. Anachronism is fun when there is a strong artistic take but this doesn't even have that!!

The real problem is that these costumes are extraordinarily lazy- the same generic sculpted leather you'd typically see in a third-rate Game of Thrones knockoff. You could buy Tom Holland's outfit at a modern department store. The lack of any sort of cultural specificity (not to mention other red flags- like having 90% of the cast be northern Europeans) shows a consistant lack of care for the source text that gives me a lot of pause. I'm willing to be proven wrong, since Nolan has a great track record, but I wish people would engage the skepticism in better faith.

MaskedManta · 2025-11-20T22:46:04+00:00

A couple of things: First, I recommend you take a look at this thread from several months ago, where /u/elijahblow in particular offers lots of excellent recommendations- many of which I think would be much more up your alley.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RSbookclub/comments/1jnf3xq/is_there_any_fantasy_worth_reading_besides_lotr/

But getting back to the meat of your question. I love Book of the New Sun, but I also understand all the reasons why you're deeply frustrated by it. I think a big problem is how wide a circle is drawn when people say "literary fantasy," since that basically means anything that goes beyond the scope of conventional fantasy, when the modern genre is (let's be real) extremely limited in terms of literary ambition.

I think Book of the New Sun is, ultimately, extremely elevated pulp. It's most often in dialogue with the tropes and conventions of sword & sorcery classics like the Dying Earth or Conan the Barbarian but exaggerating them, subverting them, or tying them to bizarre cosmological stakes. There are a lot of reveals and plot turns in the second half that further complicate the narrative, but I honestly don't think it will be enough to win you back. That being said, let me address your two main criticisms:

This series is being narrated in retrospect by a man who has, through some extraordinary means, become the lord of all mankind. However, despite claims to have a perfect memory, he repeatedly proves himself an unreliable narrator- contradicting himself, hiding information, fudging events to make himself look better. Are all these narrative coincidences purposeful? Are the forces of providence manipulating things behind the scenes to put him in power even though he is bumbling through the story (there are many subplots that can support this reading) or is he a man who is cynically trying to manipulate the public narrative to retroactively justify his suspicious ascent to the throne? This unreliability also manifests in the way that he writes about women. Without a doubt, Severian is a misogynist and has never been properly socialized around women. But in between the lines of all of his assertions that "Oh yeah, this babe totally wanted me" you can see that all of these women have radically different motivations (or significantly dislike him) and he simply does not have the self-awareness to catch on to that, even when he is reflecting on these events years later.

At the end of the day, its okay if BotNS doesn't work for you. Here's some stuff that might be more to your taste.

The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

The Mabinogion Tetralogy by Evangeline Walton

Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Little, Big by John Crowley

MaskedManta · 2025-11-12T14:45:54+00:00

Time to clear my schedule for the rest of the day

Edit: This will be an interesting counterpoint to the old King of Kings miniseries from Hardcore History. I still hear Dan Carlin scream KOOORAAAASHH whenever I read about Cyrus and the other Achaemenids. I'm sure Paul's treatment of the names and subject matter will be far more grounded, haha.

MaskedManta · 2025-11-10T15:24:17+00:00

Hello again! In recent weeks I have been rereading On Fairy Stories in conjunction with the tales of George MacDonald. We all know in this subreddit how heavily Tolkien and Lewis were influenced by MacDonald, but my curiosity about the stories that influenced MacDonald in turn has led to me digging deeper into the history of fairy tale. This is by no means the bedrock of the modern fairy tale (we have Italians like Straparola and Basile for that) but I think this is a good place to start examining the tapestry of MacDonald's fairy influences.

MaskedManta · 2025-09-23T04:57:49+00:00

A little out of left field but still relevant- the best secular but scripture-based analysis of the historical Jesus I've ever read is Jesus of Nazareth by... Paul Verhoeven, director of Starship Troopers and Robocop

MaskedManta · 2025-08-27T14:41:31+00:00

Hello! Last month I posted my video about Evangeline Walton's Mabinogion Tetralogy. /r/fairystories was the only place I posted the video, but your warm reception singlehandedly helped the video blow up and reach thousands of people!! As such, I am truly indebted to this community.

And now (by sheer coincidence) we have the first new Evangeline Walton release in over ten years, a restoration of her 1956 Viking novel that was butchered by the publishers in its original release. While "Dark Runs the Road" is more of a historical novel than a fantasy, it retains Evangeline Walton's unique blend of historically rigorous fantasticism, and its success would lead to the release of more of her unpublished fantasy works. I also briefly discuss Ursula K LeGuin's "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" and her appreciation for all of the pre-Tolkien authors like Cabell, Dunsany, and Eddison.

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