Best Fantasy Books

Young Tristran crosses the wall separating his English village from the magical kingdom of Faerie to retrieve a fallen star for the girl he loves — only to find the star is a person with her own ideas about being retrieved.

T.H. White's retelling of the Arthurian legends follows Arthur from his education by the wizard Merlin — who lives backwards through time — through the founding of the Round Table, the love triangle with Lancelot and Guinevere, and the final destruction of Camelot.

A standalone epic fantasy featuring three women across three continents facing the return of a world-ending dragon, woven through with questions of faith, queerness, and the nature of historical truth.

Jude holds the power behind the throne, controlling the High King she placed there — but court intrigue and her impossible feelings for Cardan threaten everything she has built.

Chaol Westfall and Nesryn Faliq travel to the Southern Continent to seek an alliance with the Khagan of the Southern Continent — and to find healers who might restore Chaol's ability to walk. What they discover in the Torre Cesme will change everything they thought they knew about the war.

Two sisters from a conservative mountain kingdom are sent to the colorful, decadent city of the Gods, where the divine Returned don't believe in their own religion and a war is being engineered by forces neither fully understands.

Clary Fray must protect those she loves as Valentine prepares to raise a demon army, while the revelation about her relationship to Jace casts a shadow over everything.

In a world where a magical city of gods has fallen and its inhabitants are cursed with a living death, a prince, a princess, and a priest navigate politics, religion, and the mystery of what destroyed Elantris.

Locke Lamora and Jean Tannen have fled Camorr for Tal Verrar, where they plan the most ambitious con of their careers — robbing the impregnable Sinspire casino — until a naval commander forces them to become pirates instead.

Alina is trapped underground, her power diminished and her allies scattered. To defeat the Darkling and end the Fold, she must find the firebird — the third amplifier — before he does. The fate of Ravka and all of its Grisha rests on a choice that will cost Alina everything.

Croaker, the Black Company's physician and annalist, chronicles the mercenary band's bloody journey as they are hired into the service of a terrifying sorceress called the Lady — and slowly realise there may be no good side in this war.

Two city-states occupy the same geography but citizens must 'unsee' the other city on pain of intervention by a mysterious force called Breach. A noir detective novel and a meditation on perception.

Poppy learns the truth about her origins and what she truly is — a revelation that shifts the entire Blood and Ash series into a larger, more mythological conflict. The third book takes the story from personal stakes to civilisational ones.

The mythological history of Middle-earth, from the creation of the world by the god-like Ainur through the ages of the Elves, the forging of the Silmarils, and the great wars of the First Age — assembled posthumously by Christopher Tolkien from his father's lifelong writings.

In the aftermath of the Red Wedding and the fall of King's Landing, power vacuums open across Westeros. Cersei Lannister consolidates control in the capital, Brienne of Tarth searches for the Stark girls, and Arya begins her training with the Faceless Men in Braavos — while the Iron Islands hold a kingsmoot that will reshape the shape of the war.

Poppy has been taken captive and must survive with Hawke — revealed as Hawke Flynn, a Prince and not the Royal Guard she believed him to be. With truths unravelling around her, Poppy must decide who to trust in a kingdom that has kept her blind.

Jace has disappeared — taken and bound to Sebastian Morgenstern — and Clary must go undercover to find him, pretending to join Sebastian while searching for a way to free Jace from the demonic tie that controls him. The stakes are higher than ever as Sebastian prepares to raise an army.

Will, an orphan boy at Castle Redmont who dreams of becoming a knight, is instead chosen as apprentice to Halt — the kingdom's most enigmatic and skilled Ranger — and must develop the arts of stealth, archery, and tracking to help face a rising evil threatening the kingdom.

Alina Starkov is on the run from the Darkling — the powerful Grisha commander who wants to use her light-summoning abilities to control all of Ravka. Seeking safety at sea, she instead discovers a new amplifier and a privateer named Sturmhond whose motives are far more complicated than they appear.

The first Discworld novel follows the hapless failed wizard Rincewind and the naive tourist Twoflower across a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant star turtle — a comic masterpiece that parodies epic fantasy.

Rand's military campaign through the Westlands takes a dark turn as the One Power begins to behave strangely around him, while Egwene al'Vere leads the rebel Aes Sedai in an audacious campaign to reclaim the White Tower from Elaida.

Locke and Jean are coerced by the Bondsmagi into rigging an election in Karthain — and Locke discovers his opponent is Sabetha, the one woman he has always loved and never quite managed to win.

A graduate student discovers a mysterious book in his university library that contains a story about his own childhood — and is drawn through it into an underground world of stories, doors, and a sea that smells of honey and blood.

Rand attempts a desperate and unprecedented gambit to cleanse saidin — the male half of the One Power — of the Dark One's taint, while Mat is trapped in Ebou Dar under Seanchan occupation and Perrin searches for his captured wife.