 | The Hobbit: 70th Anniversary Edition: or There and Back Again by J.R.R. Tolkien
Buy new: £11.75 / Used from: £7.90 The starting point for the greatest fantasy story ever told.
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 | The Lord of the Rings - 3 book boxset (hardbacks) by J.R.R. Tolkien
Buy used from: £75.00 The greatest fantasy story ever told. Get the books separately, so you get all those wonderful appendices.
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 | The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
Buy used from: £2.50 Chronologically the first stories, but easier to read last. Beautiful and tragic.
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 | The Worm Ouroboros (Millennium Fantasy Masterworks) by E. R. Eddison
Buy new: £7.19 / Used from: £2.84 A true classic. A little hard to get into but well worth it. Unlike anything else in fantasy fiction and a book you'll never forget.
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 | Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Buy used from: £1.49 The first in the Amber series. No-one did or does intrigue like Zelazny.
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 | The Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) by Glen Cook
Buy new: £3.43 / Used from: £0.75 The start of the Black Company series. Cook's gritty realism is unique. This overtook Amber as my favourite series.
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 | Silver Spike (Chronicle of the Black Company) by Glen Cook
Buy used from: £2.77 Cook really makes you care about his characters. I almost cried when Silent died. (OK, I did cry!)
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 | Bleak Seasons (Glittering Stone) by Glen Cook
Buy used from: £7.06 I could list all the Black Company books, but I'll end with this one. Bleak indeed, but brilliant.
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 | Old Tin Sorrows (Garrett P.I.) by Glen Cook
Buy new: £3.99 / Used from: £0.66 The Garrett series is variable in quality, but this is the best, and the darkest.
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 | A Princess of Mars (Modern Library) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Buy new: £4.53 / Used from: £2.97 Does anyone still read Burroughs? If not, they should, for sheer escapist fun. Start here and read all 11 in the series.
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 | Elric Of Melnibone (The Tale of the Eternal Champion) by Michael Moorcock
Buy new: £5.81 / Used from: £2.06 Moorcock's most tragic hero. The Eternal Champion may be the greatest fantasy character ever created. Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum and Erekose are all essential reading.
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 | Legend by David Gemmell
Buy new: £5.99 / Used from: £0.01 Some of his books are formulaic, but they're all readable. The Drenai books are the best. The battle scenes in Legend are unmatched.
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 | Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
Buy used from: £1.64 This and it's sequel Lavondyss treat racial myth in a completely new way, but at heart it is a love story. Imaginative and compelling. You need to read both books for the whole story.
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 | Magician (Riftwar saga) by Raymond E. Feist
Buy new: £6.70 / Used from: £0.01 The first Riftwar trilogy (Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness At Sethanon) were quite brilliant. The series got increasingly disappointing afterwards, I couldn't finish the Serpentwar saga.
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 | A Game of Thrones (Song of Ice and Fire) by George R. R. Martin
Buy used from: £4.68 Epic in scale, with great writing, if a little bit too medieval for my taste. Thankfully not afraid to kill off important characters where necessary.
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 | Dwellers in the Mirage by A. Merritt
Buy used from: £2.85 A wonderful story centred around Norse mythology.
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 | A Spell for Chameleon (Xanth Novels) by Piers Anthony
Buy used from: £0.02 I'm not usually a fan of humour in fiction, but the first few Xanth books (of which this is the first) were delightful. They are also good stories, not just played for laughs.
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| Wizard of Lemuria (Tandem science fantasy) by Lin Carter
Buy used from: £0.49 Lin Carter rivalled Burroughs and Howard in his time. I liked his World's End series a lot, but Thongor was his greatest creation. Sword and Sorcery at it's best, at the dawn of time.
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