The essential authors of science fiction, fantasy & horror — and where to start reading them.
Book Entry · Fantasy
by J. K. Rowling · 2007 · Harry Potter, book 7
No school year this time: Hogwarts is occupied, the Ministry has fallen to a Vichy regime registering Muggle-borns, and Harry, Ron and Hermione are fugitives in a tent, hunting Horcruxes with insufficient information — the series' boldest structural gamble, trading the boarding-school comfort engine for war-novel attrition. The pay-offs bank seven volumes of deposits: Snape's memories, Dumbledore's compromised past, the King's Cross limbo, and 'The Prince's Tale' as the saga's emotional settlement. The Battle of Hogwarts spends beloved characters with a war's indifference, and the answer to the series' question turns out to be the oldest one: walking into death willingly works.
The fastest-selling book in history at release (roughly fifteen million copies in twenty-four hours) and the conclusion that secured the series' canonical arc; filmed as the franchise's two-part finale.
Seven school years, one prophecy and the bestselling book series ever printed: the boarding-school fantasy that built modern publishing's mass readership.
In the Guide from Harry Potter:
The bestselling opening volume in publishing history and the recruitment event for a global reading generation: whatever else is said (and everything has been), the modern mass audience for fantasy walks through this book.
Whitbread Book of the Year 2001 — the first children's book ever to take the overall prize — and the most theologically audacious bestseller in the YA canon; the trilogy's capstone and lightning rod alike.
Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Bram Stoker awards in one sweep — the codifying text of the gods-among-us genre — and a Starz television series besides.