Books like Count Scar — picked by fans

I devoured this book with gusto. I guess we all seek a bit of magic sometimes.

When I read this book some thirty years ago, I had hit a rough patch. I wanted to escape the harsh reality surrounding me. The pages of this Celtic story transported me to a better place. You know the feeling, when fear drives you through heavy fog into the unknown? Once through, the landscape opens to excitement and promise.

Steven Lawhead used wonderful imagery to transport me to a time when warriors and kings held the future; when myths were the reality, and ordinary people became heroes. I want to live in a place where bravery and magic link hands. This is where ‘Song Of Albion’ led me. It’s my past and my future.

This was my introduction to fantasy, and wow, what a story!

Of course, I eventually realised what everyone else had already known, that Sword of Shannara is basically a simplified retelling of The Lord of the Rings, but, as a first fantasy novel for a teenager to read, well, it made a huge impression on me. The second in the series, The Elfstones of Shannara, built on the strong foundation and moved away from LOTR as the author let their own imagination run free.

I liked the characters, particularly the giant druid, Allanon (yes, I have a thing for giant druids as readers of my own novels will know!), and the titular magical weapon, the Elfstones. Exciting stuff that really made my young mind full of possibilities, and having listened to it again more recently as an audiobook, I found it was still a really fun book.

A young college student with confidence issues and a knack for verse is transported to a fantasy world where he finds a beautiful queen under siege by a multitude of malevolent actors, a set of unusual companions, and an environment wherein poetry is literally magical. Stasheff’s treatment of faith and magic is thoughtful, his characters interesting and the plot engrossing. I particularly like rooting for the protagonist as he grows, learns, and overcomes. The magic system based on poetry is pure gold and the series has stood the test of time: it’s still as fun of a read now as it was when it first came out.

In this, the final novel of Kurtz’s epic series about the magic-wielding Deryni race, the half-blood King Kelson navigates dynastic marriage, alliances with far-flung kingdoms, assassination plots, and family betrayals. Kelson is a favorite character of mine: decent, brave, practical, and devout, and I felt great satisfaction when he finally met his soulmate in the spirited and courageous Princess Araxie. All doesn’t go smoothly for the pair, however, and they have to overcome many obstacles before they can be united. Kurtz is a master at atmospheric world-building, and I fell into her world as readily as I fell into Narnia and Middle Earth. I really liked how Kurtz expanded her scope to include regions similar to Byzantium, medieval Hungary, and the Islamic world. It was fascinating, thrilling, and uplifting; another of my all-time favorites.

I loved this book because it’s such a great concept.

It’s a delightfully intoxicating cocktail of Cervantes, Ian Fleming, with a twist of Beckett—shaken, not stirred. Fantastically fun and propelled by an extraordinary character who is obviously totally crazy, or maybe that’s just his cover story. An absolutely ingenious concept for a character and a book that is surprising, funny, ludicrously action-packed, yet strangely plausible, weirdly believable, and ultimately, completely enjoyable!

The characters, the locations, the menus, the yachts, the clothes, the witty repartee—I felt a little classier and more sophisticated just from having read it.

Another story that's impossible to forget – actually this is a novella in a collection of stories with this name. Again, about a lost house in a forest in France, an artist, a young man in love, and the two young women who bewitch him in turns. John Fowles is an English writer from the 1960s, whose work I loved when young and still do. He was much influenced by Alain-Fournier.

Eleanor of Aquitaine is certainly one of the most formidable women of the Middle Ages; not just because she was queen to two kings, but because she had the courage to openly defy them both.

Consequently, I raced to order Coirle Mooney’s first novel in her The Medieval Ladies series, followed quickly by the second, The Cloistered Lady. I absolutely love the author’s ability to craft vivid descriptions of time and place, especially the uncommon setting of the nunnery at Fontrevault. Joanna, Queen Eleanor’s lady-in-waiting, is a delightfully complex character.

Like Christina Kohl in my series, she is wonderfully human; but her fears and shortcomings are balanced out by her sometimes-surprising strength and compassion. I enjoyed all three novels in the series, but this one most of all.

I love this classic study in which Huizinga vividly portrays the colorful era in which my heroin, Christine de Pizan, lived. Huizinga shows that late medieval society was full of striking contradictions, among them chivalry vs cruelty, courtly love vs vengeance, blissful visions of heaven vs horrific visions of Hell. 

And now for something completely different: my other recommendations are dense, scholarly volumes, well written but demanding for a general audience.

It is often hard to imagine the people who appear in their pages, based as they are on the scarce and laconic chronicles of the early Middle Ages, as flesh and blood humans.

In this novel, Puhak breathes life into two of the most remarkable women of the period, the Visigothic princess Brunhild, married off to the Frankish King Sigebert, and her sister-in-law Fredegund, who began as a Frankish slave and rose to become a rival queen to Brunhild.

Their story of rivalry, assassination, murder, seduction, but also of governance and diplomacy as two isolated women wielded unheard-of power across the decades, makes the world of seventh-century Gaul come alive.

The ways that the memory of these two women were twisted and manipulated by both contemporary and subsequent male… show more.

I have always loved the lais of Marie de France and have taught them for years, introducing students to her proto-feminism and sly humor (check out Lanval for a send-up of the conventional medieval romance).

So when I came across this novel, I snapped it up, and it didn’t disappoint. I was captivated by Groff’s depiction of Marie: a rebel against religion and conventional gender roles, an exile in a convent who becomes the hero and hones her craft of writing.

Groff swept me into the book with her luminous descriptions of atmospheres and landscapes. I loved the gawky and ungainly Marie’s lonely fascination with Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and the way she turns heartbreak into art.