The Books That Taught Me How to Read Fantasy

I’m not sure I can point to a single book and say, "This is where it happened.”

What I remember instead is a feeling. The moment when entertainment turned into hunger. When finishing one book did not feel like an ending, but like an invitation to find another door. The story had not closed. It had opened something.

Looking back, I don’t think obsession with fantasy begins with a single book. Instead, it develops gradually as you realise that for a few hours at least, you trust a fictional world more than the real one. That kind of trust isn’t automatic; it’s learned.

The books that made me fall in love with fantasy worked like a sequence of small shocks. Each one quietly taught my brain a new way of reading.

For me, like many readers, the first book that opened the door was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. If there is a defining moment, it is not Aslan but Lucy and the wardrobe. The subtle wrongness of fur coats transforming into trees. The ordinary slipping effortlessly into the impossible without warning or explanation.

What matters is not the spectacle but the confidence. The book does not pause to justify itself. It does not explain why this should be happening. It simply asks you to accept it. And something in the child reader responds. I am allowed to believe this.

That is usually when fantasy becomes safe. Not yet obsessive, but secure. A place you can enter without being laughed at for taking it seriously.

The next shift often coincides with The Hobbit. This is where pleasure transforms into momentum. The lightning strike isn't Smaug, or even the riddles in the dark. It's Bilbo choosing to carry on when he has every reason to stop. Again and again, he persists, not because he is brave in the traditional sense, but because he is decent, reluctant, and human.

This is where something important becomes clear. Courage is not a destiny, but a series of choices. The story keeps progressing, and you continue with it. Fantasy ceases to be merely charming and begins to pull you along.

Then comes The Lord of the Rings, which rarely hits first but settles everything into place. If there is a single moment, it is Frodo saying he will take the Ring. Not bravely, not with certainty, just truthfully.

Here, fantasy ceases to be merely an escape and becomes something heavier. The world feels older than the story you are reading. History presses in. Choices have consequences that cannot be undone. You realise that this is a place you could live in for a very long time. This is obsession solidifying.

What made these worlds feel more trustworthy than reality, especially when I was young, was not that they were simpler. It was that they were clearer. Real life is full of unspoken rules. Adults say one thing but do another. Fairness is promised but inconsistently delivered. Emotions are strong but rarely explained.

Fantasy did not erase danger or sadness. Instead, it named them. Courage mattered. Kindness held significance. Choices had consequences, even when they caused pain. That clarity alone fosters trust.

Something else happened too, almost without me noticing. These books took my inner life seriously. Fear was not mocked. Longing was not dismissed. Feeling out of place was not treated as a phase to grow out of. Characters were allowed to be uncertain, reluctant, small in the face of vast systems, and still matter.

That mattered more than I knew at the time.

There is a moment in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that captures this perfectly. From the beginning, you know Lucy is telling the truth. Not because she argues convincingly, and not because she persuades anyone, but because the story aligns you with her certainty. You feel the cold air. You see the lamppost. You recognise the reality of what she has found.

Then the adults and siblings do what reality so often does. They patronise her. They explain her away. They turn sincerity into embarrassment.

Crucially, the book never does that to you. It never suggests that Lucy imagined it. It tells you, quietly but firmly, that your instinct was right. That kind of validation matters enormously when instinct is often the first thing you are taught to doubt.

The same applies to Bilbo. Early on, you notice that his hesitation and unease with cruelty are not flaws. The surrounding world treats them as such, but the story shows the opposite. When he spares Gollum, the book does not hurry to justify or praise that decision. It allows the feeling to linger.

Only later do you realise how significant that moment was. Mercy was not just a detour; it was fundamental. The story was emphasising that the thing you felt was important truly did matter.

At some point, without quite realising it, this changes how you read. I stopped being impressed by characters who appeared immediately competent or morally certain. Instead, I became much more interested in those who hesitated, who would rather not be there, who chose the difficult path without enjoying it.

Courage, when viewed like that, is not glamorous. It is exhausting. And because it is exhausting, it feels real.

You see this most clearly in Frodo. He does not become braver as the story progresses. Instead, he becomes more exhausted. What changes is not his strength, but his willingness to carry on. Courage lies in endurance, not in victory.

As a child, I accepted Frodo’s ending without fully understanding it. I felt its sadness and strangeness, the sense that something had concluded without being neatly resolved. As an adult, I see what Tolkien was truly doing. Frodo does not fail because he is weak. He fails because the burden has been doing its work for a very long time.

The story honours him, but it does not pretend he is untouched. He is allowed to stop.

That was invisible to me the first time I read it. But the book trusted that I would one day understand. It planted the truth early and waited.

That early experience of being trusted through a story shaped what I still seek in fantasy today. I am attracted to books that do not rush to reassure me, that allow sadness and uncertainty to persist, trusting me to sit with complexity rather than explaining everything away.

I am still responding to the same promise I felt then. This does not need to be simplified for you. You are allowed to sit with it.

That kind of trust does not merely cultivate devoted readers. It fosters readers who come back, not to relive who they were, but to uncover what the story has been quietly waiting to reveal next.

And I hope that when you think about the books that made you fall in love with fantasy, you see them not as relics of childhood, but as companions. They remain present. Still patient. Still ready to meet you a few steps further on.

Sometimes all you have to do is check the back of the wardrobe.