The 2000s were a pivotal decade for the fantasy genre, with some books standing out in how they laid the foundation for much of what’s popular today. It’s impossible to discuss fantasy without mentioning J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings books and how they established a significant number of the commonplace ideas in the genre. Much of the 20th century saw fantasy books written as emulations of Tolkien’s novels, as this was the perceived notion of the genre.
