50 Fun Facts About Fantasy Books

In L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, what color are Dorothy's magic shoes, which MGM's 1939 film made ruby?

Silver shoes carry Dorothy home in Baum's book. The studio turned them red to show off the three-strip Technicolor process on screen.

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which sweet does the White Witch use to tempt Edmund Pevensie?

Turkish delight is the enchanted treat that turns Edmund against his brother and sisters, along with the Witch's promise to make him a prince.

Which British publisher agreed to print the first Harry Potter novel after twelve other houses had rejected it?

Bloomsbury took the gamble after its chief executive's eight-year-old daughter read the opening chapter and gave it a glowing verdict.

In Tolkien's The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins trades riddles in the dark beneath the Misty Mountains with which creature?

Gollum loses the riddle game to Bilbo. In the first edition he meant to hand over his ring as the prize, a scene Tolkien later rewrote.

In Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson novels, the dyslexic schoolboy Percy learns he is the son of which Greek god?

Poseidon, god of the sea, is Percy's father. Riordan began inventing the stories for his own son, who had been diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia.

J. M. Barrie gave the copyright of Peter Pan to which British children's hospital, which still benefits from it?

Great Ormond Street received the Peter Pan rights in 1929, and Barrie asked that the income they brought in never be disclosed.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, which castle built over a natural hot spring is the ancestral home of House Stark?

Winterfell is the Starks' castle and the capital of the North. The scalding water piped through its walls keeps the halls warm and the ground unfrozen.

In Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, Bella Swan moves from Phoenix to which small town on Washington's Olympic Peninsula?

Forks is a real Washington town. In the novel Bella's father is its police chief, and she meets the vampire Edward Cullen at its high school.

Which T. H. White novel about the orphan Wart, tutored by the wizard Merlyn, became a 1963 Disney animated film?

The Sword in the Stone follows the boy who grows up to be King Arthur. It first appeared as a stand-alone book and later became part one of The Once and Future King.

In The Lord of the Rings, the One Ring can only be destroyed in the fires of which volcano in Mordor?

Mount Doom is where Sauron forged the Ring, and its molten heart is the only place the Ring can be unmade. Its Elvish name is Orodruin.

In Christopher Paolini's Eragon, what is the name of the dragon that hatches from the farm boy's mysterious stone?

Saphira hatches from what Eragon takes for a polished stone. Paolini began the novel at fifteen, and his parents self-published it before a major house picked it up.

In Andrzej Sapkowski's Witcher books, which white-haired monster hunter for hire is known as the White Wolf?

Geralt of Rivia lost all his body pigment to the mutations that made him a witcher, which explains the pale hair and the wolfish nickname.

Richard Adams's Watership Down follows which animals, led by Hazel and the seer Fiver, in search of a new home?

Rabbits flee a condemned warren in the novel, which began as stories Adams told his young daughters on long car journeys.

In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, what name is given to the animal form that embodies a person's inner self?

A dæmon shifts shape freely through childhood, then settles for good into the one animal that best matches its human's character.

For American readers, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was retitled with which word in place of Philosopher's?

Sorcerer's was Rowling's own suggestion after the American editor judged the original word too archaic for young readers.

In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is crowned king of which realm, long ruled by Stewards from Minas Tirith?

Gondor had gone almost a thousand years without a king when Aragorn was crowned. He then found a sapling of the White Tree on the mountain above Minas Tirith and planted it in place of the dead one.

Which English conflict helped inspire the feuding noble houses of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire?

The Wars of the Roses, fought between Lancaster and York, fed Martin's feuding noble houses, though he avoided adapting any real event directly.

Which Oxford mathematician published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland under the pen name Lewis Carroll?

Charles Dodgson spent most of his life teaching at Christ Church, and some of Wonderland's upside-down reasoning echoes his published work on mathematical logic.

Which American author created Earthsea, the island world where young Ged trains at a school for wizards on Roke?

Ursula K. Le Guin built the magic of her islands on true names: to know the real name of a person or thing is to hold power over it.

Which book of Tolkien's Middle-earth creation myths did his son Christopher edit with help from Guy Gavriel Kay?

The Silmarillion was pieced together from drafts Tolkien left unedited and topped bestseller lists in 1977. Kay later became a fantasy novelist himself.

Which author's dragon-rider novel Fourth Wing opened the Empyrean series and became a viral hit on BookTok?

Rebecca Yarros gave her heroine Violet a fragile body drawn from her own experience of living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

Which author created the Grishaverse, the setting of the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology?

Leigh Bardugo calls her debut's style Tsarpunk: fantasy that takes its look and mood from early-19th-century Russia.

In Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments, Clary Fray meets which order of angelic warriors, also called Nephilim?

Shadowhunters guard ordinary people, whom they call mundanes, in a world where every creature of folklore turns out to be real.

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, which Patrician rules the city of Ankh-Morpork under a system of one man, one vote?

Havelock Vetinari is the one man, and he holds the one vote. Among his first acts was to legalise the Thieves' Guild, which put it under his scrutiny.

In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, which sheep herder from the Two Rivers proves to be the Dragon Reborn?

Rand al'Thor flees his village of Emond's Field after monstrous Trollocs attack it, and learns he is the reincarnation of a hero from an earlier age.

In Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, which legendary hero is hiding as the keeper of the Waystone Inn?

Kvothe agrees to tell a travelling scribe his life story over three days, one for each book of the planned trilogy.

In Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn, which escaped prisoner leads the thieving crew that recruits the street urchin Vin?

Kelsier broke out of the Pits of Hathsin, a brutal prison camp, three years before the story opens, and found there that he was Mistborn.

Which hero of Stephen King's Dark Tower novels, heir to a long line of peacekeepers, became a gunslinger at fourteen?

Roland Deschain was tricked into taking his trial of manhood years early by Marten Broadcloak, his father's treacherous adviser.

Which Neil Gaiman novel sends the ex-convict Shadow Moon on a road trip with Mr. Wednesday, an incarnation of Odin?

American Gods pits Old Gods, weakened as their believers dwindle, against New Gods born of technology, media and pop culture.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files follow Harry Dresden, a wizard and private detective, through which American city?

Chicago is home to Harry, who openly advertises as a wizard and consults for the police department's Special Investigations division.

Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass follows which teenage heroine, released from the slave camp of Endovier?

Celaena Sardothien began life as a Cinderella figure: Maas has cited Disney's animated film as the spark for the whole series.

Anne McCaffrey's dragonriders defend which colonized planet from Thread, a spore that devours all organic material?

Pern was settled from Earth, but its people have lost most of their technology and even the memory of where they came from.

Which TSR role-playing setting did Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman turn into novels set on the world of Krynn?

Dragonlance launched in 1984 as game modules and novels side by side, with the first novel retelling the adventure module Dragons of Despair.

Which dark elf ranger did R. A. Salvatore invent on a whim as a sidekick for the barbarian Wulfgar?

Drizzt Do'Urden was dreamed up on the spot when the publisher needed a replacement character for The Crystal Shard, then became the star of a long series.

Robert E. Howard's barbarian hero Conan is a native of which fictional land, also the title of a Howard poem?

Cimmeria gives Conan his other title, the Cimmerian. Howard made its people descendants of the Atlanteans and ancestors of the Gaels.

Which German author wrote The Neverending Story, in which the boy Bastian reads himself into a book he has stolen?

Michael Ende insisted on a hardcover first edition so the real volume would look like the one Bastian steals in the story.

Which Narnia prequel by C. S. Lewis shows Aslan creating the world and explains where its lone lamp-post came from?

The Magician's Nephew grew out of a friend's question about that lamp-post, yet Lewis needed more than five years to finish it.

Which Terry Brooks series is set in the Four Lands, a future Earth rebuilt long after a nuclear holocaust?

Shannara's Four Lands turn out to lie in the Pacific Northwest, where a few landmarks have outlasted the Great Wars.

David Eddings's five-book epic about the farm boy Garion and his Aunt Pol goes by which collective title?

The Belgariad was conceived, by Eddings's own account, somewhat cynically: he had noticed how often The Lord of the Rings kept being reprinted.

Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, in which the royal bastard Fitz learns to kill for the crown, opens which trilogy?

Farseer is the name of the royal line Fitz serves from Buckkeep Castle. His story carries on through two later trilogies set in the same world.

Which American author wrote The Last Unicorn and later scripted its 1982 animated film himself?

Peter S. Beagle saw his script animated by Topcraft, the Japanese studio that was the forerunner of Studio Ghibli.

Which trained archaeologist wrote the ten-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen, set in a world built for a gaming campaign?

Steven Erikson created the Malazan world with his friend Ian Cameron Esslemont in the early 1980s as the backdrop to their own role-playing sessions.

Which British author's First Law trilogy opens with The Blade Itself and features the inquisitor Sand dan Glokta?

Joe Abercrombie leaves maps out of the trilogy on purpose, breaking an epic fantasy habit: he simply prefers not to use them.

Which author's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy did George R. R. Martin cite as a key influence on his own saga?

Tad Williams opened the trilogy with The Dragonbone Chair and closed it with To Green Angel Tower, a book so long its paperback came in two parts.

Which word did Tolkien coin in his essay On Fairy-Stories for the sudden happy turn that rescues a tale's hero?

Eucatastrophe joins the Greek prefix eu, meaning good, to catastrophe, the critics' old word for the unravelling of a plot.

Which Arts and Crafts textile designer also wrote The Well at the World's End, an early novel set in an invented world?

William Morris gave the novel a cruel lord named Gandolf and a white horse named Silverfax, names that may have inspired Tolkien's Gandalf and Shadowfax.

Which Garth Nix novel opens the Old Kingdom series, about a necromancer who binds the Dead with a bandolier of bells?

Sabriel inherits the office of Abhorsen from her father, along with bells that each control the Dead in a different way.

Which Naomi Novik novel, steeped in Polish fairy tales, sees village girl Agnieszka taken to a wizard's tower?

Uprooted takes its heroine's name from a Polish children's story Novik loved, and one of its spells is sung to the tune of a Polish birthday song.

Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora is set in Camorr, a city of con artists based on which late medieval city?

Venice gave Camorr its shape, though the story unfolds on an unnamed world where the Gentleman Bastards rob the rich.

Which author's Dark Is Rising sequence follows Will Stanton, who learns at eleven that he is one of the Old Ones?

Susan Cooper wove Arthurian legend, Celtic myth and English folklore into the five books, and named Will after Shakespeare.