A Maverick English teacher looks at 50 great fantasy series. The list includes both high and dark (AKA horror) fantasy, and is limited to those series that were specifically conceived as literary works by single authors or collaborators. Movie/TV novelizations, gaming series, and unattributed work have been excluded. I have stayed away from series marketed as Teen or YA ( hence no "Hunger Games" or "Divergent" ), except for a couple of cases where the crossover appeal could not be ignored. I've tried to balance the list between classics, bestsellers, and lesser known series deserving of a wider audience; that ,when combined with an arbitrary cutoff number of 50, necessitated omitting some very popular stuff. Finally, "Twilight" is not here because vampires don't sparkle; "50 Shades..." is not here because, in spite of the subject matter, the only fantasy there is the author's belief that he or she can write.
