8 Best Fantasy Books That Need To Be Made Into Movies

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is arguably the greatest and most influential modern fantasy series, a self-admitted primary influence on the development of A Song of Ice and Fire. The massive trilogy of books takes place in Osten Ard, a world of dizzingly complex histories and cultures, alternating between multiple different points of views and having a morally ambiguous tone far from the simple world of Middle-Earth. Sound familiar?

But unlike the aggressively brutal world of Game of Thrones, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a complex, tragic tale of friendship, loyalty, loss, and romance. It begins with (you guessed it) an orphaned kitchen boy named Simon, who unexpectedly finds himself thrust into the center of a dark, growing conflict between the ghosts of the past and the seemingly peaceful, idyllic world he knows.

In many ways, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn is a series that begins where old legends end and asks what happens for the next generation. The first fantasy book in the series, The Dragonbone Chair, begins with the death of King John the Presbyter, a legendary dragonslayer elevated to a living legend, and challenges both the characters’ and readers’ expectations of exactly what heroism means.