Need a sci fi/fantasy series to listen to...

[Tyrion Cheddar]

As usual, I'm craving something light enough to listen to in the background while half my mind focuses on a video game, but engrossing enough to make me want to listen to the whole thing. Strong characters, poetic as opposed to mechanical prose, if possible. Nothing so detailed that I really have to concentrate to keep it all straight, as my power of concentration isn't. Anyone got any ideas? I was remembering Julian May's Saga of the Pliocene Exiles. Something like that would really hit the spot. I tried Peter F. Hamilton but wasn't digging how he created this whole expansive, futuristic backdrop and then turned it into a murder mystery with hackneyed 20th century cop characters plodding about the universe like a giant anachronism. Anyway, fire away. Thanks.

[tomfyhr]

One example of a fantasy serie is Lloyd Alexander´s "The Chronicles of Prydain", where the first two books have losely been adapted by Disney in the movie "The black chauldron".

[Calidore]

Terrific suggestion, tomfyhr. I'd also recommend Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising series, Ursula Le Guin's initial Earth sea trilogy (haven't yet read the later ones), and Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy. Ray Bradbury in general is a safe bet also.

[Dreamwoven]

I had no idea there were so many children's fantasy tales. Saga of the Pliocene Exiles looks to be one for older children, but they are all worth looking at more closely.

[Tyrion Cheddar]

I had no idea there were so many children's fantasy tales. Saga of the Pliocene Exiles looks to be one for older children, but they are all worth looking at more closely.

Oh, it's definitely for adults. In the mid 1980s, when the series came out, I was hitchhiking around Australia and New Zealand, and reading it and glued to every page; as I gradually discovered in my travels, a lot of other people were reading it, too. Highly recommended. I've actually taken Calidore's advice about Susan Cooper and have just started listening to Over Sea, Under Stone.