The Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O Shea. Pure Irish fantasy set in real locations I know in Ireland.
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
70 points (97.3% liked)
Ask Lemmy
34035 readers
1542 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen hit me at the right time as a kid.
I got really stuck into the Artemis Foul books as a teen. I always thought they'd make a great TV series.
Old Man and the Sea, the first reading assignment I actually enjoyed. Sure it took 5 years after being weaned off of picture books to seriously get into reading, but hey I'm thankful because there's no adventure quite like the kind that comes from a good book.
The Magician's Nephew
this was my first introduction to the concept of multiple realities and it blew my little 7 year old mind
That's the Narnia prequel, right? It was by far my favourite book in the series as a kid, though I was already familiar with the concept of multiple realities thanks to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I always hoped it would get an adaptation. I haven't reread any of them as an adult, but my memory of it still makes me hope for that one day.
I mainly want to seen a screen adaptation of Jadis causing a ruckus in 1900s London lmao
yeah like at that point as a kid I had the concept of "going to a fantasy land" stories but always sorta applied Neverland logic where the existence of the fantasy land was somehow tied to our own (e.g. via wardrobe door)
The Wood Between the Worlds introduced to me the idea of multiple realities existing completely independently from our own. Ironically, given C. S. Lewis' intent with Narnia, this concept helped me challenge the Protestant beliefs that I was being raised with, and brought me some form of comfort in the idea that maybe I could someday escape Yhwh's reality.
See, child me was NOT thrilled with the idea that my afterlife was going to consist of ETERNALLY WORSHIPPING GOD AND DOING NOTHING ELSE, even if the church claimed that was some sort of unbeatable joyous bliss. After all you can be happy but still be fucking bored and that sounded like just a slightly less shitty Hell to me...
So I actually got really into mysticism as a kid to try to learn how to magic myself into a reality where you got to go to an Aslan's Country style afterlife instead of eternal sitting in church.
This did not go over well with my religious parents, lol. Thankfully I eventually dropped all the magic and religion shit in favor of a love for science. Though I still love mystic aesthetics and high fantasy ofc
load more comments
(2 replies)
The 1982 version of "The Amazing Adventures of Hercules". They re-released it in I think 2004, but butchered it.
Cujo
The first book I really enjoyed and got into after high school (as in it wasn't a required reading) was The Hunger Games.
load more comments
(1 replies)
It was a lithuanian children's book. As far as I know it's not been translated to other languages, it was called "stebuklingas portfelis" by Vytautas Račickas
load more comments
(2 replies)
Fox in Socks, Dr Seuss.
It.
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if I remember correctly is the first novel I remember reading. When we were kids, our parents bought us kid-friendly versions of the novels. I don't really remember anymore if they were condensed versions, or just the same length but with a couple of pictures added per chapter.
I never read a book outside of school (which was all fiction books, which I never got into), and then I was gifted Zygmunt Bauman's Globalization: The Human Consequences and loved it and realized non-fiction is a thing
Probably a Hardy Boys book, I used to devour those as a pre-teen.
I read most of Dan Brown's books as a child and I really liked The Digital Fortress, Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, but the one that marked me the most in my prepubescent years was probably Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho.
Maniac Magee. I read it again recently and it really holds up well.
It’s basically a book about racism. This orphan kid doesn’t understand why this town is segregated, so he keeps going on the black side of town even though he’s white. He makes friends with all the kids and eventually the adults start to understand they’re not so different. The ending isn’t unrealistic, like the town immediately desegregating or something, but it’s very charming. It’s the little impact that one kid can have on the town that leaves a lasting impression.
I legitimately cried as an adult at one point in the book, because it has a way of getting you so invested in the characters, and I won’t spoil it but something happens to one of the characters. It hits hard.
The one that really struck me was "Starstreak: Stories from space!" It was a collection of short sci-fi stories including The Haunted Spacesuit and Who Goes There.
Turned me into a lifelong SF reader.
The Mysterious Benedict Society was my childhood. I swear I read the whole series like 8 times. Got me into mystery novels and I've loved them ever since.
Star Wars: Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn
Damn it was good. Opened up the world of Star Wars and reading to me.
Since Disnep declared them null and void I refuse to read anything from the new canon.
When I was a kid I remember reading a Dragonfall 5 science fiction novel and enjoying it.
A few year's later I read To Kill A Mocking Bird for a school assignment and being impressed by Harper Lee's writing style and finding the story and topics really interesting. Around that time I also fell in love with Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels.
The Phantom Toll Booth!
Weren't they making a live action movie of that? I swear I saw a teaser trailer for it like almost a whole decade ago but don't remember the movie ever actually coming out.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Can't remember which came first, but it was either The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley or The Castle of Llyr by Lloyd Alexander.
Star wars bane books and Kevin Mitnik's ghost in the wires. I couldn't put them down.
Soup & Me
Idk about "loved," but I'll put "I can fly" since I remember reading it a lot.
In case others don't know it, it goes a little something like this (each line is a page):
"I can fly
Up, up, up
Down, down, down
Up, up, up
Down, down, down
Up, up, up
Down, down, down
I can fly"
Watership Down
There was one early teen book series that my school library has where it was a town with weird things happening and kids investigate. Twice aliens came to get help from the kids. I can't remember the name of the series though.
I think mine would probably have to be the Darren Shan saga, starting with Cirque du Freak. I think I was 10 when I picked up the first book in the series at a random bookstore in Seoul, and I can't have been older than 12 when I finished the last one. I think that ending was the first time I cried at a piece of media.
Where the Red Fern Grows
I was a very sad child and that book gave me lots of excuses to be crying all the time xD
Kingdom of Shadow by R.A. Knaak.
I played lots of Diablo 2 back then and a friend once went into this small nook with books in a local games shop and showed me they have Diablo books. I wasn't much of a reader. I read some books that I enjoyed, but moat of them I was made to read.
I wanted to know more about the world of Diablo so I bought it. I mever expected it to grab me as it did. When I came home, I was like "let me read a chapter and go to actually play after". The boom jumped right into action with the first sentence and the PC was not turned on for 3 days (unheard of until then) as I used every free moment to read the book.
I bought other books in the series right after and then started to branch out to other fantasy series. This is the book that made me a reader. And I can thank a videogame for that.
My earliest remembered favorite is The Little Red Car by Bernice Orawski. Cute little kids book with lovely illustrations about a car having the worst day of its life.
So you want to be a wizard by Diane Duane.