Honor roll:Fantasy books of the 2000s

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Each of these Fantasy books has received at least one award nomination in the 2000s decade. They are ranked by honors received.

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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel

Susanna Clarke

English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call; they could command winds, mountains, and woods. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory.

But at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire, the rich, reclusive Mr Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England’s magical past and regained some of the powers of England’s magicians. He goes to London and…

 

American Gods

Neil Gaiman

A master of inventive fiction, Neil Gaiman delves into the murky depths where reality and imagination meet. Now in American Gods, he works his literary magic to extraordinary results.

Shadow dreamed of nothing but leaving prison and starting a new life. But the day before his release, his wife and best friend are killed in an accident. On the plane home to the funeral, he meets Mr. Wednesday—a beguiling stranger who seems to know everything about him. A trickster and rogue, Mr. Wednesday offers Shadow a job as his bodyguard. With nowhere left to go, Shadow accepts, and soon learns that his role in Mr. Wednesday’s schemes will be far more dangerous and dark than he could have ever imagined. For beneath the placid surface of everyday life a war is being fought—and the prize is the very soul of America.

 

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Book 3 of Harry Potter

J.K. Rowling

For twelve long years, the dread fortress of Azkaban held an infamous prisoner named Sirius Black. Convicted of killing thirteen people with a single curse, he was said to be the heir apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Harry Potter isn’t safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends. Because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.

 

Skellig

David Almond

When a move to a new house coincides with his baby sister's illness, Michael's world seems suddenly lonely and uncertain. Then, one Sunday afternoon, he stumbles into the old, ramshackle garage of his new home, and finds something magical. A strange creature - part owl, part angel, a being who needs Michael's help if he is to survive. With his new friend Mina, Michael nourishes Skellig back to health, while his baby sister languishes in the hospital. But Skellig is far more than he at first appears, and as he helps Michael breathe life into his tiny sister, Michael's world changes for ever ...

 

The House of the Scorpion

Nancy Farmer

At his coming-of-age party, Matteo Alacrán asks El Patrón’s bodyguard, “How old am I?…I know I don’t have a birthday like humans, but I was born.”

“You were harvested,” Tam Lin reminds him. “You were grown in that poor cow for nine months and then you were cut out of her.”

To most people around him, Matt is not a boy, but a beast. A room full of chicken litter with roaches for friends and old chicken bones for toys is considered good enough for him. But for El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium—a strip of poppy fields lying between the U.S. and what was…

 

Declare

Tim Powers

After a ten-year hiatus, British academic Andrew Hale is abruptly called back into the Great Game by a terse, cryptic telephone message. Born to “the trade” and recruited at the age of seven by a most secret Secret Service, Hale, in 1963, is forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare.

Two decades earlier, as a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Hale first encountered the incomprehensible rhythms of an invisible world. And from that moment…

 

Perdido Street Station

China Miéville

Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none—not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.

Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique…

 

Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread

Kate Dicamillo

Welcome to the story of Despereaux Tilling, a mouse who is in love with music, stories, and a princess named Pea. It is also the story of a rat called Roscuro, who lives in the darkness and covets a world filled with light. And it is the story of Miggery Sow, a slow-witted serving girl who harbors a simple, impossible wish. These three characters are about to embark on a journey that will lead them down into a horrible dungeon, up into a glittering castle, and, ultimately, into each other’s lives. And what happens then? As Kate DiCamillo would say: Reader, it is…

 

20th Century Ghosts

Joe Hill

Imogene is young, beautiful, kisses like a movie star, and knows everything about every film ever made. She’s also dead, the legendary ghost of the Rosebud theater, and one afternoon in 1945, a boy named Alec Sheldon will have an unforgettable encounter with her…in the dark…

Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with a head full of big ideas and a gift for getting his ass kicked. It’s hard to make friends when you’re the only inflatable boy in town…

Francis is unhappy. Francis is picked on. Francis doesn’t have a life, a hope, a chance. Francis was human once, but…

 

The New Policeman

Kate Thompson

Who knows where the time goes? There is never enough of it in Kinvara, or anywhere else in Ireland for that matter. When Helen Liddy is asked what she wants for her birthday, she says, “Time. That’s what I want. Time.” When JJ sets out to buy his mother some time he discovers the answer as well as some truly remarkable things about music, myth and magic. And more.

 
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