These are some of my favourite ‘older’ High Fantasties. They might be considered slow-paced by most standards now, but the atmosphere, characters, philosophical riddles and metaphors fill me with a sense of warmth and wonder.
There may not be a lot of the battlefield clashes (often a staple of the fantasy genre), but there’s peril aplenty, and often of a far more intimate kind.
These three titles/trilogies are very different from each other, but my fondness for them is very similar. Not just escapism or comfort reading (although they can certainly be that, too), these books have things to say. And I love the way in which they say them.
Earthsea trilogy, by Ursula K. Le Guin (1968-73)
Riddle-Master trilogy, by Patricia A. McKillip (1976-79)
Fortress in the Eye of Time, by C.J. Cherryh (1994)
