The Return of the King

Well, after a week of voting, the results are in. We?ve decided what the top ten fantasy series titles of all time are. (We are the deciding committee after all right?) It?s been a lot of fun, and I have to admit I?ve added several new titles to my TBR list. I?ve also discovered that for polling purposes, the VIZU tool wins hands down.

We had a few less voters in this final round. Not sure if that?s because it?s Saturday, (and a beautiful Saturday here in Utah) or if the ranking tool was a little more intimidating. In any event, even with the slightly lower numbers, the voting was surprisingly consistent. There were a few wildcards. But you generally agreed on who went where for at least the top six or so.

I don?t think the top three or so will be all that surprising to most of you, but the order they came might. I wondered if HP had replaced LOTR in the hearts of fantasy readers?especially the younger ones. But clearly it hasn?t. It also makes me happy to see everyone still loves Narnia.

I have to admit, my heart raced a little as I considered having my novels join a group like the ones we?ve discussed. Not that I would ever dream of being compared to these top titles, but they very fact that I?ll be on the same shelves with them makes me smile all the time. So with no further writing, here are your top ten winners and the average place they were voted.

Hope you enjoyed this half as much as I did. Back to our normal programming next week.

Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien 1.4
Narnia by C.S. Lewis 3.7
Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling 4.3
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan 5.5
Inkheart Trilogy by Corneila Funke 6.1
The Time Quartet by Madeline L'Engle 6.1
The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud 6.7
Fablehaven by Brandon Mull 6.9
Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card 7.2
His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman 7.2

Hope you enjoyed this half as much as I did. Back to our normal programming next week.

Final Fantasy

And thus ends the second to the last round. We?ve narrowed the fantasy series titles from sixty to ten.

The second five to go move on are as follows.

In first place, with 78.9% Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling

Coming in second, with 52.6% The Time Quartet by Madeline L'Engle

Then we have a two way tie between The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman, each with 42.1%

And finally Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card 42.1%

For the final shootout, I am going to try something a little different. Rather than just voting for your favorites, I trying a tool that will actually let you rank your favorites from 1-10 (1 being the highest, 10 being the lowest.) Just click the arrows until you have the titles in the order you want and click vote.

It doesn't look like I can have the results show after voting, So I'll post the full results at the end of the voting Saturday. Good luck and good voting.

Round 5 Goes Out With a Bang

Wow, the number of people voting has skyrocketed. And the competition was fierce. (Although just wait until Saturday!) Out of ten very good fantasy series we have narrowed it down to five that will go on.

They are:

With 88.9% of the votes, first place goes to Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
In a close second with 85.2% of the votes, was The Chronicles of Narnia
With 55.6% of the votes, the Inkheart Trilogy by Corneila Funke
With 44,4% of the votes, Fablehaven by Brandon Mull
And finally, with 37% of the votes, The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud (Which was actually out at one point. Cool comeback.)
Now for Round 6, which will decide the final five books that will make it to the ultimate fantasy shootout.

Round 4 1/2 -- Pick the 5 That Go On

Wow. This has been a tough one. It?s like watching a triple overtime basketball game, or a baseball game that goes twenty innings. Since I need to get up the next poll. I took the one clear winner, The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud, and picked the second winner by the scientific method of asking my wife to pick a number between 1 and 4. Since the Vizu poll opens in random order, it seemed as good a way to pick as any. The last series to make round five is . . . (internet drum roll please) . . . The Chronicles of Prydain by Alexander Lloyd. (loud tooting of cornets!)

Let the next round begin. Step 1 in, THE FINAL COUNDOWN!

Round 3 Results

First let me highly encourage you to go out and get the third book in NY Times Best Selling Author, Brandon Mull's Fablehaven YA fantasy series. I seriously believe this may be one of the most enjoyable series since HP. I got a chance to get an early copy, but it's on sale everywhere today, and it totally rocks! Fablehaven 3 Grip of the Shadow Plague


Another day, another round completed. Today I?m ending things just a little early as I?m on a business trip in Michigan, (Can you believe 70+ degrees? That?s like 25 degrees warmer than Utah today. Shirt sleeve weather!) so I?m ending just a little early to hit the hay. No ties today. The winners are clear:

His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman and Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin tie for first with seven votes each.

Dresden Files by Jim Butcher with six votes

Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card with five votes

And Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis with four votes

Maybe the biggest surprise is that Inheritance didn?t make the cut. Does that say something about plot, writing, movie, or all three?

In response to anon's comment about Ice and Fire, (which I haven't read yet. so I can't comment on it) unlike movies, there are no ratings on books. So, I would recommend you do a little research before reading any book or series. With the number of reviews available online these days, there's no need to read something you are uncomfortable with without knowing in advance that the type of novel may not be your style. Different people have differnt tastes.

So on to Round 4. Should be a couple of familiar names in this round.

On a totally unrelated note, can I just say I am so pumped for the Speed Racer movie? I know that says a lot about my geekdom and age. But I grew up with the Mach 5, and it looks like they did a great job with the movie. Yes!

Round Two Winners

I guess I should have foreseen some ties coming. We have three clear winners in Round 2. They are:

Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien with 15 votes.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Steven R. Donaldson with 8 votes.

And Redwall by Brian Jacques with 5 votes.

We also have a six way tie for fourth place. Each of the following got 4 votes.

Tawny Man by Robin Hobb
Temeraire by Naomi Novak
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
Word and the Void by Terry Brooks
The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron

So here?s what we?ll do. Let?s move on to rounds three and four. After round four, instead of going to round 5, we?ll have a tiebreaker round. This will include any titles that tied for moving on, and maybe even a couple of titles brought back by popular choice. Then we?ll move on to rounds five and six, and the final round seven. There will still be only 10 series in each of the last three rounds, so if we need another tie-breaker after round 4 1/2 , it will be by coin toss.

Again, thanks for your votes, I may be a fantasy geek, but I?m really enjoying this. E-mail me if you can't get the vote button to work.

Oh, FYI, if you see a few new series showing up, that?s because a few got disqualified for not being fantasy, so I?ve been scouring my bookshelves.

Round 1 Winners

Okay, gang. The first round of voting is officially closed. The winners of Round 1 are:

The Chronicles of Narnia with 14 votes
Dragonriders of Pern with 12 votes
Inkheart Trilogy with 9 votes
Fablehaven and Sword of Shannara with 8 votes each.

Each of these will move on in round 5

Honorable mentions go to:

The Bartimaeus Trilogy and Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

On to Round 2 which closes on midnight Sunday

For the next three rounds I'll continue using this poll format even though we've had some problems. Once we get to rounds 5-7 I can go back to the old format. Again, e-mail me if you can't vote.

And The Winner Is

Okay, gang, comments are officially closed for the fantasy series contest. First of all, let me just say, "Wow! You folks are good!" Even with a few titles that I pulled out because I didn't think they completely qualified as a fantasy series, there were 59 nominations. I went ahead and added one more to make it an even 60 for voting purposes.

First let's announce the winner of the contest. Then we'll get to the voting process. The winner, as randomly chosen by some random number generator I found on the internet is . . . Raych. Congratulations! E-mail me at scott at jscottsavage dot com, and I'll send you the fantasy novel of your choice.

You all have listed a ton of great fantasy series. I'm actually going to print this out and start taking it to conferences for when people ask what fantasy books are good. I'll post the full list below. I'm sure I've got some mistakes here, so feel free to point out if I've misspelled an author's name or series. Voting for the best of the best begins tomorrow.

Here's how we'll do it. I'll divide the books into four groups. Using the poll on the right we'll pick the best from each group, with one round per day. Each round will consist of 15 titles. You can pick up to five from each group. Once we have twenty titles (after four rounds), we'll narrow it down to ten (almost like March madness.) Then the final ten will duke it out head to head. Each round will last one day, beginning Saturday and ending next Friday.

One note. Rather than divide the list completely randomly, I'm going to try to make sure there are an even number of heavy hitters in each group.

This should be fun. Here's the full list:

The Chronicles of Prydain by Alexander Lloyd
Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey
The Ships (Ship Who Sang) by Anne McCaffrey
Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey
Tower and Hive (The Rowan) by Anne McCaffrey
Catteni (Freedom's Landing) by Anne McCaffrey
Fablehaven by Brandon Mull
Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
Redwall by Brian Jacques
Chanur by C.J. Cherryh
Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh
Narnia by C.S. Lewis
Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis
The Southern Vampire Novels by Charlain Harris
Newford by Charles De Lint
Inheritance by Christopher Paolini
To Say Nothing of the Dog, and The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Inkheart Trilogy by Corneila Funke
Pendragon by D. J. MacHale
Belgariad and Mallorean by David Eddings
The Runelords by David Farland
Young Wizards (So You Want to be a Wizard...) by Diane Duane
Warriors by Erin Hunter
The Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix
Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin
Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
Children of the Red King (Charlie Bone) by Jenny Nimmo
Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan
The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, and The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Time Quartet by Madeline L'Engle
The Death Gate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
The Rose and the Prophet by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
Temeraire by Naomi Novak
Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card
His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman
Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony
Riftwar by Raymond E Feist
Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan
Conan the Barbarian by Robert E Howard
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
Tawny Man by Robin Hobb
The Liveship Trilogy by Robin Hobb
Farseer by Robin Hobb
Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
Samaria by Sharon Shinn
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever by Steven R. Donaldson
The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper
The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron
Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams
Alanna by Tamora Pierce
Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks
Word and the Void by Terry Brooks
The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind
Discworld by Terry Pratchett