1 The Dresden Files
I don’t think that this will be a surprise for anyone, but I really love this series. Jim Butcher does a really good job creating an interesting urban fantasy world that has some of that classic pulp feel to it while having very interesting villains and characters. The series starts a little slow, but as there is more focus to it, Harry Dresden’s world really takes off.

2 IT
I really like Stephen King and by far his standout work for me is It. I think that I’ve probably read the book a handful of times or more now. The story is just compelling and the interweaving of the past with the present to fill in the readers knowledge of what is going on works very well. I also like the fact that this book doesn’t fall flat at the end like some of his other books can do. The horror aspect is strong with this book, and Pennywise is a great villain and a valid reason for people to hate clowns.

3 The Reckoners
A series that I’ve talked about some and a game that I’m really excited to play, the Reckoners is a nice different twist on those with super powers. The Epics as the super powered are known in this series are all evil. And the Reckoners are a group of normal people who are trying to to bring some normalcy back to the world and take down the Epics who rule it. It’s a YA series and there’s a bit of it that’s not amazing at a few points in time, but overall, the series is really well done, and it’s just a good super power twist series by Brandon Sanderson.

4 Harry Potter
I’m done with JK Rowling in a lot of ways, she just needs to take her hands off  the stranglehold she has on this world, but I really like the series still. There’s something nostalgic about them for me, though I am older than the average who has those feelings about them, seeing as I read them in college. There is just something so magical about the world that allows you to overlook some pretty obvious flaws with it. The story just stands up well, and while the movies might not, the first movie is rough, I will always enjoy going back to the books.

5 Stormlight Archive
More Brandon Sanderson for the list. This series is epic fantasy at it’s best. The leader who didn’t want to be the leader now has to save the people. The slave rising up to save the day, and so many more classic tropes put together, but it feels new and unique and so huge. I mean, the books literally are massive, and the audio books are great because they are 45+ hours long, so you have a good amount of listening time to them. This is the epic fantasy that I’m always hoping to find.

Of course, I’m going to do some honorable mentions as well. My goal will be to the finish off a top 10 with them, like I did with the board games. In no particular order, my honorable mentions:

Lord of the Rings
The Hunger Games
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Good Omens
Swallows and Amazons

What are your favorite book series?

The Dresden Files

These are also good Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and 4th of July books. Okay, maybe not, but I just really like this series, and the supernatural aspect with the fae creatures, demons, vampires, zombies, werewolves, and more showing up throughout the series, every book in the series is a good Halloween book. I’m currently reading through the series again, and it’s one that I suspect I’ll do that quite often. Harry Dresden is a Wizard PI in Chicago, and Chicago is a hot bed of trouble for the supernatural. How will he almost fail at and then eventually solve the problem that he’s being faced with? The Dresden Files aren’t a scary series, but they do have that monster feel that you generally associate with Halloween.

IT

Definitely my favorite Stephen King book, and I like most of his books, in fact another will be showing up on the list. One of my knocks from just putting Stephen King completely down as the list as any of his books is that some of them suffer at the end, they just don’t wrap up as well as you would hope that they would. It, however, wraps up the best, in my opinion and makes a very well told story. The interlacing of the two timelines also works so well in the book. Most people probably have some idea of what this story is, but in Maine there is a town, Derry, that has a monster in it, and while people don’t really think about it between when it strikes, it’s always there ready to come back. They were kids when It happened to them the first time, and now as adults they are going to put an end to it.

Firestarter

Probably not the Stephen King book people would expect to see on the list, but it’s one that I enjoy a lot. It’s an interesting balance where it isn’t just normal Stephen King horror, but has a good amount of suspense and craziness. Anything by Stephen King, at least that I’ve read, has some horror feel to it. A girl who is born with powers, because of some crazy experiments done on her parents is on the run with her dad as the government tries to chase them down. It’s an interesting concept and I feel like Stephen King was channeling Robert Ludlum for some of the writing as it has some more of the intrigue feel that you get from Ludlum. Probably not a story for everyone just because it isn’t as much horror, but I’ve enjoyed it.

Under the Dome

Last Stephen King work on the list, and I know there could be a ton of other options as well for Stephen King, like I said, it could be a whole list. In Under the Dome, a city is completely surrounded by a dome, and no one knows why, where it came from, or how to get rid of it. The horror shines through in this one a whole lot more then Firestarter because it really looks at the horror of what people might do in that situation. One thing that I really like about this book is how King manages to make his bad characters really bad, but the good characters definitely are more shades of grey than they are the knight in shining armor. That makes the characters much more compelling to me, and definitely has my most hated bad guys in King’s writing.

Coraline

So a major departure from the things I’ve written about before as Coraline is definitely leaning towards a children’s or young adult book, but Neil Gaiman’s story, definitely has that Halloween feel to it. From the talking cat which feels very Halloween like, to the other mother in the story, there are great nods to horror in the book without being too scary and without having the feel of blood and gore. I would say that this is a book that a parent should probably skim or read (it’s a short book) before giving it to a child because it might be much for some children while others might be able to handle it. If it is too much, you can always start with Gaiman’s Wolves in the Walls.

Neverwhere

Another Neil Gaiman book, and you can probably now tell some authors I like quite well, Neverwhere was originally a mini-series (which is okay), but was then turned into a book. This is definitely less horror and closer to the Dresden Files where it is more urban fantasy than anything too scary. However, the story, like The Dresden Files, does have some of that feel where there’s enough unsettling or fantastical things going on that it just matches the Halloween spirit. It’s been a while since I’ve read or watched this one, I should probably do that again sometime.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Again, an urban fantasy series, but there is so much going on in this story, it has more of a gothic feel than it does horror, but that still fits well in Halloween for me. What makes this series really interesting is the fact the fantasy isn’t the standard, New  York, Chicago, London story, it’s set in Prague, and the monsters aren’t the standard Vampire, Zombie, and Werewolf. While this does run into the issue of information dumping and going a little off the rails at the end of the series, it’s still really well written and does something that is very unique. Both Kristen and I like this series a lot.

What are some books that I could have mentioned? I know that there are classics out there, which I’ll mention right now such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Portrait of Dorian Gray that also all deserve to be on the list. I don’t want to completely gloss over them, but at least Frankenstein and Dracula should be two of the books that people first think of when it comes to Halloween books and that people might generally know more about.

I’m not sure that there will be any more Halloween lists like this, but I will continue next week doing more Halloween posts, just not sure what they’ll be yet, they might be more in depth reviews of things, like I did with iZombie, or it might be ranking various Halloween things for the fun of it, or maybe even a battle between Vampires, Werewolves, and Zombies? If you have any ideas, let me know!

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