Bookshelves Past

Anyone who's poked around my Tumblr probably knows I'm a fan of the show Atop the Fourth Wall; the show looks at and reviews bad comic books, and though it's my absolute favorite show, online or off, I'm not going to talk about it (today) except as it relates to this week's post.

For March, AT4W's producer and host Linkara is looking at the history of his favorite super hero team, the Teen Titans, who first got him interested in comics and leading him to where he is today. That inspired me to look back at the media that got me where I am today. My media, of course, is novels.

((And nope, don't worry, not doing this for a solid month. It'd make my posting challenge quite a bit easier, but I really don't have that much to say on each piece. I don't think I do, anyway. Let's stop stalling and find out.))

Animorphs

K.A. Applegate

A group of five teenagers take a shortcut through a construction site, and find the ship of the dying alien Elfangor. The alien warns them of other aliens known as the Yeerks, slug-like creatures who take over other creatures' brains, gaining complete access of their mind and body. The invasion has already begun - but Elfangor gives the teenagers a morphing cube, a device that gives them the power to acquire the DNA of any animal they touch, and transform into that creature.

Animorphs was an awesome book series, even if I was a little too young to understand how complex and mature the story was until I was older. This is a series about kids fighting a war, where they're inexperienced, incredibly outnumbered, unable to tell for certain who's a friend or enemy - it's a gripping story for certain.

This series also introduced me to a lot of my favorite animals, especially birds of prey, and again, although I didn't absorb it at the time, it was an early exposure to writing from the perspective of animals, with their unique senses and sizes and instincts.

And last but not least, the first "books"  I wrote were poorly-written clones of this series , so huge points in this series' favor.

Harry Potter

J.K. Rowling

Do I even need to summarize this one? Witches and wizards, magical boarding school, fun and deep storytelling…

Funny thing about this series; I started reading it almost on accident. In the fifth grade, my friend brought Artemis Fowl and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to school one day. I had nothing to read and although I knew (well, thought) Artemis Fowl was science-fiction, I was more interested in reading that book than Harry Potter. My friend was already reading Artemis, though, so I borrowed Harry from him instead.

I was hooked. The day I borrowed the book I also had a bad stomach-ache from heat-stroke, and although I was too ill to go to a relative's party, I tore through almost the entire book that evening. Apparently fifth-grade me had decided far too early that science-fiction was the best genre.

While Animorphs may have toyed with the idea, Harry Potter went full-throttle with the idea of telling a story from a technically non-human point of view, and explored a whole different world that drew from old stories and legends, but brought them into a somewhat more cohesive, almost modern world. It was the absolute coolest thing.

So were the book's dragons.

Unlike Animorphs, which was pretty far along when I started reading it and finished not long afterward, Harry Potter was a series I felt like I grew up alongside, even though I was only on board for the final three books release.

Warriors

Erin Hunter

The Warriors series, by Erin Hunter, is the story of four Clans of wild cats. Each Clan has its own territory, leader, and reputation among in the forest, but all share basic beliefs and rituals, such as naming patterns and belief in a sort of cat-heaven known as Star Clan. The Warriors universe has since expanded to multiple series (though I've only read the original series and "The New Prophecy").

By the time I started this series, I was working on dragon novels, and this was nice confirmation that nonhuman point-of-view stories can work. It was also an important reminder that I needed to keep my characters animals and not cram in the human-like adaptations I was currently throwing into my stories.

Beyond that, it was another good series that was just fun to follow. Certainly my cat wishes I'd read it earlier so he could've had a cool name like "Lionheart" or something.

"But nooo, you stuck with ~*Butterscotch.*~ Way to go, Mom."

Michael Crichton/Jurassic Park/The Andromeda Strain

Science! Science is awesome! Michael Crichton put pure science  into thrilling book form, and it made me want to do the same. I try to include science explanations for things when possible, even though I write fantasy. Sometimes reality is just as fascinating as magic.

Dean Koontz/From the Corner of His Eye

I was probably too young for some of the material in this book when I first listened to it on tape, but I'm still glad I listened to it. Koontz writes beautiful prose, and although it can sometimes be overused, mostly it reminded me  - as his book still remind me when I get too bogged in mechanical plot details - that the language to describe what's going on is just as important as the action on the page.

The Obsidian Trilogy

Mercedes Lackey & James Mallory

 "Kellen Tavadon, son of the Arch-Mage Lycaelon, thought he knew the way the world worked. His father, leading the wise and benevolent Council of Mages, protected and guided the citizens of the Golden City of the Bells. Young Mages in training-all men, for women were unfit to practice magic-memorized the intricate details of High Magic and aspired to seats on the council. Then he found the forbidden Books of Wild Magic-or did they find him? The three slim volumes woke Kellen to the wide world outside the City's isolating walls. Questioning everything he has known, Kellen discovers too many of the City's dark secrets. Banished, with the Outlaw Hunt on his heels, Kellen invokes Wild Magic-and finds himself running for his life with a unicorn at his side." -From Goodreads

This is a very recent addition to my influences, but a much-beloved one. I'd The Obsidian Trilogy is probably my favorite piece of high fantasy, and like Warriors, it made me reconsider how deep my fantasy worlds were.  You can tell the authors spent a lot of time and creativity in setting up the world, the magic, the cultures, the characters, and the story. There's so much original material and ideas here; reading these books always makes me want to think a little more and work a little harder on all the elements of my worlds, and to be careful of using concepts the way they've always been used.

While these are far from the only good books I've read, and not the only ones that've inspired me somehow, these are definitely the ones with the biggest influence and most obvious impacts. I really encourage you to check out these books if any of them sound interesting. If nothing else, they all make for a great read.