Sovereign Stone Trilogy – Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman. I started reading these a long time ago (meaning middle or high school) but I was never able to find the third one at the local library. After a while I quit looking and even forgot who wrote it. A few months ago my sister brought them up since she had read the first two as well. It took us a while to remember the name or even the authors but she finally found all three of them at a used book store. The story starts out with the classic tale of a young prince who wants to be king in his elder brother’s place and then dives off into a tale of magic, both good and bad. The trilogy also has the classic races of human, dwarf, elf and ork but it’s unlike any other series I’ve read so far. While I found the ending a little lacking it’s still a good trilogy.

The Halfblood Chronicles – Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton. Again, this is something I started reading years ago. My sister and I found a book called Elvenbane at a flea market. We both liked it but it wasn’t until a short while ago that I found out it was the first of a series. I purchased Elvenblood sometime last year. This weekend I found Elvenborn at a used book store and bought it as well. It appears that the fourth book, Elvenbred hasn’t been finished yet. This fantasy series has a slightly different take on humans and elves. In this world, the elves had to flee their world and found themselves in a world of humans. Since the elves posses greater magic than the humans they have forced almost all of the humans into slavery. Dragons exist as well but they are also not native to that world.

The Sword of Shannara – Terry Brooks. I think I read something dealing with the Shannara universe years ago. For the life of me I can’t remember the name of it. I was looking for something to read a while back and my sister mentioned that she had these and I could borrow them. The Sword of Shannara is the first of the Original Shannara trilogy. While the author’s website claims that it is on par with the Lord of the Rings trilogy I’m not so convinced. (I may be a little biased, though. Just a little.) While the story is captivating and intriguing it often seems that the author was trying to fill a word count quota because of excessive adjectives and other descriptors. I probably will at least finish the first trilogy since they’re on loan but I don’t know that I’ll go looking for the others.

Foundation – Isaac Asimov. Everyone knows the Three Laws of Robotics, right? Maybe not. Again, this is a series that started reading in middle or high school. A couple of years ago I bought Foundation, Second Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Foundation’s Edge, and Foundation and Earth along with a couple of other Asimov’s books. This past weekend I found Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation. I think that is all of the Foundation books written by Asimov himself; several other writers have written books set in the Foundation universe. I’ve probably bungled the order of the books since their chronological order is not the same as their publication order. I would like to read through all of these again; seven books is a rather tall order, though.

I know there’s a ton of fantasy books listed with a smattering of science fiction. I do read other types of books but it’s rather obvious that these two genres are my favorites. In fact, the books on my ‘to read” are also fantasy:

• The Hero of Ages – Brandon Sanderson
• Brisingr – Christopher Paolini
• The Wyrmling Horde – David Farland

The last non-fantasy book I read was Persuasion by Jane Austen. I’d love to hear suggestions* about what to read next (or what to put on my “to read” list). You can check out my books page to see everything I’ve already read this year.

*If someone suggests Twilight… I’m already considering it. I highly doubt I’ll be buying the books and my local library lists all copies of the first book as being checked out and/or overdue.