Five for Friday 11: Favorite Fantasy Series

A Fantasy Come True--The Castle of Books

I never connected with Game of Thrones, sad to say. I felt the same way trying to slog through Kate Elliot/Alis A. Ramussen's Crown of Stars series and some of the books by David Eddings. I don't really read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi, at least not at the rate that I did while I was in my teens. However, there are some fantasy series that I do enjoy. Here are five (in alphabetical order), plus some "honorable mentions:"

• Dresden Files: Jim Butcher's best-selling series was not love-at-first-read for me. I really struggled to make it through the first book and I wasn't all in until book 4, Summer Knight. Sadly, there was no love connection between me and Butcher's Codex Alera series.
• Earthsea: I recently reread Ursala Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy, plus the sequels, and found that they still do it for me.
• Elric of Melniboné: Anything I write will only detract from Michael Moorcock's masterpiece. I am also a big fan of the Moorcock's other books, particularly the two Corum trilogies.
• Newford: I am still working my way through Charles de Lint's sprawling Newford series. Set in a fictional North American city, his series features an overlapping cast of slackers, hipsters, and musicians whose lives intersect a powerful, yet unseen world, where Native American and Celtic mythologies run wild.
• Tales of the Otori: A series of five novels by Gillian Rubinstein (written under the pen name, Lian Hearn), the Tales of the Otori is set in a land very much like medieval Japan. An added bonus is that the individual book titles all utilize Japanese poetic style (waka and haiku). You know me...I love me some haiku.

Honorable mentions: Fritz Leiber, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser; Terry Pratchett, Discworld; Glen Cook, The Black Company; Robert E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian; Robin Hobb (pen name for Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden...you can see why), The Realm of the Elderlings; and, yes, J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter.

Hall of Fame: J.R.R. Tolkien, Middle Earth novels

What is your favorite fantasy series?